SF House

So I have had a few requests of some pictures of our house. I have slacked around and haven't gotten to post them, even though I have had most of these pictures since October. So, here it is. Our little abode in the Bay area.

To start off here are some of our animal friends......

The picture on the left is of a coyote (click to enlarge). We always have deer friends. Unfortunately, we have been unable to get pictures of the turkeys (lots of turkeys), squirrels, raccoons, skunks, owls, vultures, and I did see the tail of a rat skury off of our porch a while ago (ewww). Needles to say I don't go outside without making a lot of noise first, especially at night. Our neighbors have told us that cougars and bobcats have been spotted in the area, hmm I hope I am inside when those friends come visiting.

And here is the house....... at least the main floor of the house. Upstairs there are some bedrooms, bathrooms, and an amazing linen closet-nothing too exciting, they're never clean enough to take pictures of :) remember you can click to enlarge.
Notice Meadow in the kitchen at one of her favorite spots (rummaging through the junk drawer) and yes that is Suite life on Deck on the TV. Only the educational stuff is watched at our house.

Christmas pictures

It's that time of the year again. Christmas pictures must be taken. I usually only take a picture of the kids for the cards, but this year I included Cache and myself. You'll have to wait until you get the card to see the final, but here are a few outtakes. Well, not really outtakes. I love them and I'm going to put them on my wall.

Halloween

Here is a re-cap of our Halloween, some of you saw the original post, but it had to be deleted because I messed up the HTML and didn't know how to fix it. I am too lazy to re-write it.

new do.

Meadow is rockin' a new do. what do you think? It usually lasts a total of 2 minutes, before she has pulled it out

And since we are on the subject of Meadow. Here is what I do all day..............
I am constantly lifting this girl off of the table. Seriously, CONSTANTLY! This particular morning, she decided she was still hungry and helped herself to the older kids' breakfast leftovers.

Mr. Spidey.

I don't like spiders. They give me the shivers and a stomach ache. I try to act brave in front of the kids, but inside I am screaming. I looked out the window tonight and this is what I saw......

(Only one spider and a few reflections due to the beveled glass in the window)

I checked Mr. Spidey one more time before bed and this is what I saw.............

(That is a big moth.....Stomach begins to churn)

I am thinking of framing this last picture to add to my halloween decorations. Kinda creepy.

So here is the question: I bought some spider spray which is supposed to keep spiders at bay for over a year. We live in the woods and therefore have a lot of spiders. A lot of spiders= a lot of webs which we are constantly walking through or putting our hands on as we reach for the outside railing. Do I use the spray and kill spiders or do I come to a mutual understanding with them that if they don't hurt me, I won't hurt them? What should I do? Part of me says "die spidey die" the other part says "do they really need to DIE??".

Smile.

I opened the door to giggles running down our endless driveway and these on our front steps:

They brought a smile to my face on a day which my face has not had a smile. So, Thank You!!

Never underestimate small acts of service.

This picture makes me laugh, because this is a face we see often in our household right now. Fin is our bundle of energy. 100% pure boy. Constantly wanting to wrestle, punch, or kick anything in his way including his sisters. He loves superheros, Avatar the Last Airbender, Spongebob, video games, and playing war outside with his Trans-former walkie talkies. By the end of the day it is time to pass him off to his father because he wears me out. I love him more than anything and enjoy his energy most of the time, but love those quiet moments of hugs and snuggles as he begins to wind down.

California Academy of Sciences

A long time ago, before school even started, the kids and I and some friends from our new Ward went to a very cool museum in the heart of Golden Gate park. If you venture to San Francisco and have a full day to spend at a museum, you must go here.

The kids loved it and we only saw a tiny portion of it. We took advantage of free museum day in the city. So we arrived early, waited in line and froze in the San Francisco Summer.

Some of the kids favorite memories: walking through the aquarium tunnel, the butterfly's flying everywhere, the parrot, ants, big spiders, white alligator, hands on experience in the tide pool exhibit.

Happy Birthday Fin,

                                  

Finley has now been on this earth for 5 whole years.  Wow, I felt like it wasn’t too long ago that I brought him home and he was sleeping in his suit case of lights.

 

While we were still in Utah we celebrated his birthday with several of his friends at Chuck-e-Cheese, knowing that we wouldn’t know anybody in San Francisco to invite to his party.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures. But thanks to Gus, Leo, Macy, Cooper, and Isaac we have a home full of zhu zhu pets, transformers and mighty beanz (which is a good thing).  

 

For his actual birthday we celebrated by going Here. Maybe you have heard about it HERE. Let me tell anyone that comes and visits us in SF, I will take you here. It was so delicious!

 

Our friends from Cache’s work who have also moved to SF came with us and it got a little wild with 6 kids and 5 huge scoops of ice cream………….the evidence:

                       

o.n.e

This little one turned one all the way back in June. June 2nd to be exact. The day before we left to visit San Francisco. We rushed a party in before we left. I actually decorated with UNO cards and decorated a very fantastic cake to look like an UNO card (get in UNO=1)

note:my computer screen is in desperate need of calibration. I edit pictures and they look fine on my PC and then I check on the MAC and they have a total color cast. I hope to get it fixed soon. Just know that I know and it is totally bugging me. I wish I had PS on the MAC.

The 3 year!

 

Peanut is seriously my hero, I don’t mean to go on like some crazy over proud mother, but I am truly amazed by my 8 year old.  

(first day of school at a new school, in a new state)

Our conversation before school

me: are you nervous?

Peanut: nope, not all.

me: really?

Peanut: why would I be it’s just school?

 

I go on to think, but who will you play with at recess? who will you sit by at lunch? How will you know what to do?

 

She is my hero, so confident in herself and who she is, that it would be okay to sit by herself at lunch, it would be okay to play at recess on the monkey bars alone.  I wish I could be more like her. 

 

For memory sake: oops! thinking Peanut was registered, even calling the office a week before school to make sure and them telling me she was.  And then to find out the evening before school that Peanut was not registered and did not have a teacher.  This error resulted in a mad rush to find birth certificates, immunization records, and proof of residency.  Sounds easy? It wasn’t nothing was in our favor.  The only thing I had on hand was her birth certificate.  But in the end it all worked out and she was able to attend school the next morning after some frantic calls to Dr. offices, renting real estate agents (her name was mistakenly left off our lease, and it needs to be on there for school purposes), and calls to utility companies for proof of residency. The office secretary went on to tell me that if she was in 1st or 2nd grade she would have to go to a different school because those grades were full.

  All is good! and she loves her teacher, who actually lived in Utah for a few years! a total plus in Peanut’s eyes.

mmmm...

I am so behind and the thought of catching up overwhelms me. How about when school starts on Wednesday, I will get back to posting. sound goods to me.

SF exploritorium

On Day 2, I felt adventurous and decided to find a bus and travel to the Exploritorium. First, I should tell you that I am not a very independent person, I don't like going to the neighborhood grocery store by myself, so to pack three kids up and herd them on a bus, take them across town in a city I am not familiar with is very unlike me. We had some bumps along the way like getting on the wrong bus from the very beginning, luckily I asked the driver if this bus went to the exploritorium and she informed me thatI needed to be catching a different bus on the other side of the street, doh, by this time Peanut and Finley were already seated at the back of the bus and I had to yell from the front to get them to hurry and run to get off so we wouldn't keep the other passengers any longer. EMBARRASSING!

Second mishap--Before leaving the hotel I asked the concierge how to get to the museum and what buses to take (didn't help) she informed me that I would need to catch bus 30 and just stay on it and it will drop me off about a block away from the building, okay easy enough. So once I was on the correct bus, (which took awhile, 3 of the correct buses had passed because they were so full they couldn't stop to pick us up) standing with a baby backpack and trying to balance myself and my two other kidlets, the bus stopped about 15 minutes later and the driver said "this is the end of my route, everybody out" WHAT??? according to the map we weren't near the exploritorium. I started to sweat. I told the driver where I was headed and he explained I needed to catch ANOTHER bus that will take me the rest of the way. luckily I had some extra cash in my wallet and was able to pay for the extra bus, otherwise I don't know what I would've done. There was another family that was going to exploritorium too, and they said I could just follow them and the teenage son even helped me with all my gear--I love nice people. So, I made it there without getting too lost, I was pretty proud of myself.

Peanut and meadow near the exploritorium, Finley refused to be in the picture.

This exhibit was based on emotions and said that this toilet had never been used and the water was perfectly safe, but not many people would drink out of this fountain just because emotions involving toilets are so strong they make it hard to put your face down and take a drink. -very true I had to convince myself it was okay.

As we walked out of the museum at closing time one of the employees was teaching about bubbles. The kids had so much fun watching and playing in these great bubbles.

After leaving, I noticed that we could see the bay if we crossed the street. so we headed over and Peanut decided she wanted to walk on the sand which ended up with her looking away for a minute and a wave coming up and getting her feet wet and pulling off her flipflops (which she was luckily able to catch), which then resulted in her feet getting sandy and us having to wash her feet off in a drinking fountain. Not a big deal, but I guess to her it was traumatic "but I didn't want to get my feet wet and the sand feels weird" was her reply.

The bus ride back to the hotel went smoother, but Finley fell asleep on my lap, meadow started crying because she was crammed into her stroller and surrounded by a dozen people standing around her and Peanut had to deal with a oriental woman trying to tell her how to make Meadow stop crying. And then I started to panic wondering how I was going to get a sleeping 4 year old, a baby in a backpack stroller, and and eight year old off of the VERY crowded bus. Obviously it all worked out and I will just say again how much I love nice people.