A Decade.

From this:

To this:

Because yesterday was the tenth anniversary of this:

Ten years, two kids, two cats, one tiny apartment, one large mortgage, and a million joyful memories. It's been a great ride, and I'm lucky to have Tim. We were able to go out to L'Hirondelle for dinner last night, thanks to Mimi and Poppy, and it was wonderful to sit under the twinkle lights, next to the little fountain in the courtyard and enjoy a wonderful meal and some wonderful meal. I was also saying to Tim how weird it was to think of being there on our fifth anniversary, when I was hugely pregnant with Ellie. If we had only known then how crazy the next five years would be! Tomorrow night we're going to see Darius Rucker (aka Country Hootie) in concert, and staying overnight in a hotel while Gigi watches our brat kids! Winning all around!

Here's to a million more.

Reach Up LA!

The Nollin girls had to head back to Chicago today, but thankfully we will see them again in two weeks. Kate and I have planned the girls outfits so that they can match every single day that they're together. It's a beautiful thing.

Today was Ellie's very last trip to the library for Tuesdays with Mimi. The library is taking the month of August off, and then in September she'll be in junior kindergarten. Sunrise, sunset. Sunrise, sunset. Thankfully, there's always Adam.

Then after nap time we headed up to UCLA to see Sara and some of her Hawks teammates play flag football at the Special Olympics World Games. They're not officially part of the US delegation, but er playing as part of the Play Unified campaign, where Special Olympians and non-Special Olympians play on mixed teams together. Unified, as it were.

The drive up was a bit of a slog, but I had plenty of snacks to pass back to my small fry. Parked without issue, despite warnings about how crazy the parking might be, and headed over to the athletic fields just in time to see Sara and her team take to the field. It was a good mix of athletes, and each team had a former professional football player to help coach. The players all had fun, and the kids had a blast. Gigi provided them with some pom poms and they had some more snacks, and then after the game was over they ran around playing football with Sara and her buddy Alex.

We visited the little Olympic village that they had set up in the quad before we left and had our picture taken in the Reach Up LA area. Such a good team!

ESPN has daily coverage of the World Games at 7pm Eastern. Definitely check it out, it's great. And I'm so glad that the games are getting some actual media coverage. These athletes definitely deserve all the recognition they get.

Cheetah Girls Strike Again.

Such a fun weekend with our Olivia Fig Newton Jane. There was tons and tons of swimming (Ellie was in the water so much that she didn't get an actual bath or shower between Thursday and Sunday night.)

It's darling to see the cousins together. Last night we brought over a bag of clothes that Ellie's outgrown, one of which is the cheetah print dress that Olivia is wearing (Ellie wore it when she was a cat for Halloween.) Well, showing that dress to Olivia reminded Gigi that she had a NEW cheetah dress for Ellie, so the girls instantly had to change and match. Even though Olivia doesn't say a lot, you could tell that she was excited to dress up like her big cousin. Bonus: both dresses were a little too hot for the weather, so the girls were matching dresses and matching sweat hogs. Adam isn't crying because he got left out - he's crying because he dumped out his bubbles earlier in the day. Which is actually the second bottle of bubbles he dumped over the weekend. So careless with his soapy water! Ellie was amazed today to learn that when I outgrew my clothes, Sara and Kate used to wear them. It's the circle of life!

Olivia!

Good news: My eye is on the mend. Bad news: I had a really rotten Wednesday because of it - hardly slept, could barely see to drive Ellie to school, and then had to get mom come get me and drive me to my first eye doctor appointment, which resulted in a referral to a corneal specialist. So dad had to take me to that and mom ended up taking care of the kids for the afternoon. They are so nice to me.

BUT! My eye is better, and Olivia Jane, her mom and Gigi are in town!

And ready to swim!

It was pretty cute - Olivia was fairly cold to me and Grizz upon first meeting, but within seconds of Ellie arriving, she was willing to give Ellie a hug and a kiss. She has since warmed up to me, probably because I give the best kiss attacks around. When we left tonight, she gave me an unsolicited kiss goodbye and I melted into a puddle of goo. I think mostly she enjoys me because I'm Ellie's mom. Adam is not as interested - he is sort of annoyed that someone else is touching his stuff, but he did give her a hug when I asked.

The family that splashes together!

Olivia and her cute mommy

Grizz and his pal

Grizz and his pal read Mike Mulligan

The ladies do some art work in their matching butterfly tops

Adam joins the crafting project at Ellie's art studio. 

Please note that she has engaged a nude male model (Rocky)

Art is very, very serious business

Sunshine.

The sweet face and vocal stylings of a young man who poked his mom in the eye and made her go to the eye doctor, which for his mother, is a fate worse than death. Some people fear spiders, some people loathe the dentist, I get weak kneed at the thought of eyeballs. I almost passed out when they had to put a contact lens over my scraped cornea.

And now, I have to wear sunglasses inside in order to keep my eye from watering uncontrollably. Sunshine indeed!

Hot Dates.

When Ellie was a small muffin and Tim and I wanted to go out together (without her) Mimi would always tell her "tell mommy and daddy to have fun on their hot date!" So now, any time two people want to leave the house without the rest of their family members, it's a wonderful "hot date."

This weekend was full of them. On Saturday we had a family evening of going up to the Valley to Fluff and Jasmin's house, where she had made an enormous spread of delicious tapas. There were your usual cheese and crackers (fancy cheeses!) plus four types of potatoes (salted, dumplings, fried) two kinds of palella and Iberico jamon. And then four different homemade desserts, plus all of the snacks contributed by guests. And two types of sangria. It was definitely worth the long drive for the food and the company. The kids are finally at an age where they are happy to take off and play together. This time, playing mostly consisted of running circles around the house. Everyone joked that my kids would pass out as soon as they hit the car, which always makes me twitch to hear because in her entire life, Ellie has never simply given up and fallen asleep. She'll keep those exhausted eyes open for hours, as she did on our drive home. Just because you've been running for two straight hours and it's almost 11pm, that doesn't mean you need to sleep!

She managed to rally in the morning, and she and Tim went out for a hot date to see the minions movie. He reports that it was a pretty dumb movie, but Ellie happily said she loved it, and spent the entire movie curled up against him.

Of course she wore a party dress.

And then the biggest hot date of all - today Mimi picked her up from school and took her out to Yorba Linda for a SLEEEEEEPOVER.

Adam has been stuck hot dating with me. Yesterday we went to the grocery store (whoo hoo!) and also stopped by Childrens Orchard because all of his pants finally fit in the waist but are two inches too short. Today was a more fun date - we met up with Hal and Robyn at the mall and did some running around.

Here he is with his face stuffed full of cheesey-burger, which is his fave. Unlike his sister, who will always ask for the grilled cheese. Bonus: I used social media to get a free cookie at the Nordstrom cafe! I love a free item of any sort, but especially of the baked goods sort.

This is how we dressed Adam for Saturday night. The funny story is, I bought the Favre jersey back in 2006 or 2007, way before we were even close to having kids. I told Tim that even though we weren't planning on any kids soon, it would be in our best interest to buy a Favre jersey while I could still get one for cheap, off the rack at ShopKo. As we all know, between then and now, Favre broke my heart by playing for other teams AND being a pervert, so Lulu had been the only child of mine to wear the jersey (she wore it for Favre's last play off game. And bit me.) But on Saturday, I was able to do some forgiving. So I guess it's not a waste of $12. 

Lastly, the kids have been doing a lot of art projects with Gigi. She has many kinds of markers and colored pencils, and then stepped up the crafting game by introducing pinking sheers of various patterns AND glue sticks. Adam has been very content just gluing scraps to the table cloth, but Ellie suggested to Gigi that maybe they should get something even more fun, so Gigi picked up a bunch of glitter glue. 

It really helped Ellie's creativity blossom. This mixed media work features tons of the glitter glue, a feather, some scraps of skin shed by the iguana at her school, and a little piece of yellow ribbon that she found on a walk. Look for it soon in a gallery near you, because modern art is a wonderful, confusing thing. 

Diving Team.

JUST KIDDING, NO DIVING IN GRIZZ'S POOL!

But today we did convince Adam that he didn't need to hold anyone's fingers in order to jump off the wall, and he was so pleased!

He is counting down and also yelling "blast off!" How can you not love it? Not pictured: Ellie's joy when Adam has to get out of the pool because he's shivering, and she and I can play mommy shark and baby shark. Today she "washed my face for me" by splashing me for a couple minutes straight. Thanks baby shark!

I love these two little nuts