Cali trip part 3: IKEA, G-ma's house and oranges galore

 Last Friday, after Disneypalooza the day before (congrats if you made it through that post, btw!) we were ready for a low key day. And there's nothing more low key than sitting in LA traffic, right?? Ha.

 There's an IKEA in Burbank, which is pretty close to my G-ma's house, so we decided to go there after checking out of our hotel in Anaheim. It was only 37 miles away, but it took us an HOUR and a HALF to get there. (G-ma said that was actually making good time, and that made me want to vomit...) But we eventually arrived and I fiiinnaalllyy got to shop at this glorious place. First ever visit!

I made sure to take pictures of my wish list items for future reference. We are in the market for some bookcases and dining room furniture. And couches....etc. etc. etc. We have an IKEA in Draper, UT but it's still three hours away. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and pay for shipping. There was so much cute stuff!!

 

The kids were super antsy and hungry and Madelyn had a HUGE meltdown when she found out there was a kid's play area we could have dropped her off at in the front of the store but we refused to take her (because Luke couldn't have stayed there and then HE would have had a huge meltdown...). It would have been a lot more fun shopping there without the munchkins, but oh well. We ended up buying that abacus and circus tent. :)

We didn't get to my G-ma Murset's house till around 3:00 pm (4:00 pm Utah time, and aside from snacks in the car we hadn't eaten since breakfast, and Luke hadn't napped, so no wonder the kids were cranky). The first thing I noticed when we stepped out of the car was this wonderful smell. I thought it was gardenias, but it was this:

 

 ORANGE BLOSSOMS!!!!!

That's it. We're moving to California. I'm sick of this dumb Utah weather!! (It's snowing right now as I type.)

We had a nice lunch/supper provided by G-ma (fresh fruit salad, chicken noodle soup and bread pudding), I put Luke down for a nap, and then we just lolled outside in the sunshine. It was awesome.

 Mark and Madelyn hid plastic Easter eggs in the back yard that we had brought along with us

 I just love G-ma's backyard! It's a magical place.

 G-ma had Mark do a few things around the house that she couldn't do herself, and had him plant some poinsettia plants. See that red flowering bush behind Mark? That's a poinsettia. I didn't know they got that big! Mark didn't know you could plant them in the ground at all, haha.

  Luke got up and frolicked around outside with Madelyn

 G-ma (who's a 94 year old widow who lives by herself) told us about how she was robbed just a few days earlier during General Conference. A guy who claimed to be the son of her tree trimmer came to her door and asked her to come around back to talk about a neighbor's tree he said he was going to cut down that might fall into her yard, and while he was talking, three black guys got out of an unmarked Mercedes SUV, went into her house and dumped her entire jewelry drawer into one of her pillowcases and took all the cash from her purse! Can you believe that?!!?! People make me sick. Some of her neighbors saw and started approaching the house, so they hurried and left, but they didn't call the police and G-ma didn't realize they'd taken anything till a day or two afterward. (Then she called the police.)

 

 My cousin Autumn's son Carsen (age 8) wrote this note and sent it to G-ma: "Dear G'ma, I am so sorry that you got robed! :( And I will give you money from the bank. Love Carsen." Is that not the sweetest thing?! We're just glad that she's OK.

 G-ma had Mark pick some oranges (that are actually from her neighbor's tree, but they let us help ourselves)

These are the best oranges in the entire world. They are juicing oranges, but I just eat them like a normal orange. I am still enjoying some here at home (the snow is reaching about 3 inches now....).

Luke started saying a new phrase while we were on this trip. He kept saying what sounded like, "No rocket" all the time while we were in line at Disneyland, and I finally figured out that he was saying, "No like it." He "no like" most of the food we ate, so he subsisted a lot on Wheat Thins and Cheez Its...

 Break dancing in the kitchen...

 Madelyn dyed some Easter eggs that evening. The newspaper I put down on the table announced that Justin Beiber had just bought a $6M mansion in the valley. Thank goodness my daughter hasn't really discovered him yet...

 Luke kept letting himself out the back door, which was a little alarming.

 Around 8:00 pm that night, Mark and Luke and I decided to head to Ross, which is somewhere we have to go every time we go to G-ma's. It's only a block and a half away!

 Not that it's any nicer than your usual Ross, but it's two stories and has WAY better stuff, seeing as stores on the coast get first dibs on the merchandise that comes through.

 I really wished we had room to bring one of these big, hamper sized sea grass baskets home with us.

(cell phone pic I sent to Maria) I ended up with this cute maxi dress and mustard yellow sandals along with *ahem* QUITE a few other things. Well, it just wouldn't be a Cali vacation without some shopping! :D

My little mountain goats

12/1/10

Madelyn started climbing on stuff as soon as she was able to crawl. Luke had been happy on the ground thus far, but Madelyn STILL climbs everywhere and so apparently he caught on. Now every time I turn around he is standing on top of something, looking very pleased with himself.

This was him not five minutes ago. Standing on a speaker, bopping up and down to Charlie Brown Christmas music, chewing off the erasers from all our pencils, messing with daddy's candy jar and plotting to pull out all the Kleenex and eat the Balmex later. A whole new world of possibilities has opened to him!

I just know he learned the stand-on-end-table-then-flop-onto-couch routine from Madelyn.

 Here she was at 3 1/2. She used to follow Mark up onto the roof. She'd find the ladder set up outside (she used to call the ladder "the reach") and climb all the way to the top and then yell for him until he pulled her up. It used to drive me nuts! Thankfully this was when we had a flat roofed house in Albuquerque. Not that us having a slanting roof now has stopped her from wanting to go up there.

 I am in the middle of cleaning out closets and putting things into bins, and Luke thinks they are there just for him to play with. He was even standing on the gliding ottoman that is in his room. He knew he was living on the edge. He was wobbling up there going, "Ah-rah-da-da-da-dah!" He rarely talks--just when he knows he's getting away with something. May the Lord bring peace to my soul now that I have two climbers....

 That silly boy.

 

 And here he is eating a crayon, just, you know...because it was there.

 

 Madelyn has thankfully been devoting her energies more to Barbies and less to death-defying stunts

 

She DEMANDED that we get the Christmas stuff out the other day.

She and I put up the tree yesterday, using whatever ornaments happened to be in the random Christmas bin Mark brought down from the attic (I have, um, quite the collection of holiday decor...). Luckily it happened to be full of our snowflake stuff, which is neither breakable nor wire-hooked. Because.....

 

...all Luke wants to do is eat the tree.

Madelyn thought that adding her hot pink feather boa would be a nice touch.

I thought it looked a little sparse, so I raided her dress up basket for a few more. I can't wait to see how excited she is when she sees it and how much Mark will have to pretend to be excited.

Although he's pretty much resigned to living in kiddie land already.

Ready for a Quote of the Day

by Madelyn?

(Isn't that the cutest sweater dress, btw? I got it at Old Navy a year or two ago. People kept stopping in the hall in church to exclaim over it.)

She is very preoccupied with birthdays lately, since hers is in 3 weeks. 

Me: Do you know whose birthday is in February? Grandpa Yoder's!

Madelyn: We'll have to make him a cake! A little old man cake!!

 Check out this gnarly 5-foot long icicle. I walk by it when I'm getting the mail every day and wonder if one of these days it's going to fall and spear someone like a CSI I saw once. Word is that it's going to get up into the 40's soon so it will probably just dripdripdripdrip onto our neighbor's heads whenever they go out the front door. Ahh....winter.

I guess I should get my heiny off the computer chair and go put the fall decorations away. All the orange foliage is clashing with the red and green sparklyness (and feather boas) and giving my house an identity crisis.

When in doubt, get new toss pillows! And change the format of your blog.

11/17/10

I am sooo behind on my crafting posts. Projects beget projects around here. Just when I'm starting to make a dent in my sewing pile, I think of more and more things I could make.

I have been bored with my toss pillows, even though I made/recovered a bunch of new ones in May. There was this ugly old thing:

 

I found a snazzy little remnant of  green gloriousness at Jo-Ann's when I went a few weeks ago. I had just enough to recover this pillow.

 

Isn't it fabulous?!? :D

And this was new-ish (slip cover from Target), but I'm moving away from red decor in the living room and needed something different.

I had some pale celery green polka dot fabric and also a zipper that I'd bought for something else but was the wrong size. I figured I might as well try it out on a slipcover.

 

 

I got these Better Homes and Gardens pillows on clearance at Walmart a few months ago. Add them all to the puckered green pillow I made in the spring...

Still not perfect (new couches would be perfect).... and not exactly fall colors....

....but everything looks a little brighter now. :)

I'm behind on this, too:

Mess of the Day

by Luke

I thought he was all cute getting himself a snack of chow mein noodles from the pantry. I should have known.

Well, at least it kept him out of my hair for 15 minutes!

Also:

Quote of the Day

by Madelyn

Me (from the front seat of the car): Something smells like ketchup. Madelyn, (who had just dragged Mark to Panda Express and actually probably smelled like soy sauce) you smell like ketchup!

Madelyn: I don't smell like ketchup, I smell fresh, like butterflies!!

Now I've got to get back to my sewing. I'm glad that Thanksgiving is next week because now I have a deadline for when I need to be finished. My kids and my laundry pile will be so happy.