Poppies on the Grapevine

 The Grapevine is a road grade that starts at the mouth of Grapevine Canyon at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and ascends the canyon to the Tejon Pass in the Tehachapi Mountains via Interstate 5.

The mountains are quite impressive.  Steep.  And appearing to jump up out of nowhere.  You are driving for days down the middle of California seeing nothing but cows and orchards and then BAM! 4000 feet.  On the way down we saw these poppy fields.  Aren't the colors just amazing?! (Jono wouldn't stop for a photo op.  Something about traffic and getting somewhere.  Blah. Blah.)  Then on the way back it had disappeared into a snowstorm!  So many reasons to lift my eyes up!

"I lift my eyes up to the mountains--where does my help come from?

My help come from the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth."

Psalm 121:1-2 



Laguna Beach

The real Orange County

(right?!)

 What do you do at the beach when it is too cold to go in the water?

Go treasure hunting.

Chase waves.

And stomp on them.

Practice pitching.

And posing.

Protect sunbathers from wild animals.

Take a geological survey.

International Surfing Museum

At the International Surfing Museum in Huntington Beach we learned a little history.

Some of the first surfboards were these monsters.  Nine to ten feet long.  Made from Redwood trees.  They were so heavy they couldn't even transport them off the beach.  They just buried them in the sand and dug it up the next time they went out to ride!

Of course, we think we all would make pretty sweet surfers.

Check out these sweet surfers...

Sunset Beach

I love going, doing, and seeing new things and places and our family had some great adventures over spring break.  So much so that by the end of it Abby was begging for a "lazy day".   But our favorite part of the week by far was hanging with our friends.

These peeps.

They took us over to

SUNSET BEACH

for some sand and surf!

Heather took a quick pic of the fam.

Joe's brother from a different mother photo bombed us. :)

Things we saw...
kite surfers

pelicans

I love the beach.

Angels in the Outfield

One of our spring break adventures was going to the kids' first major league baseball game.

Angels vs. Royals

First, a little pre-game tailgate.

Walking to our sky box.

(If sky box means the highest seats in the stadium)

First view of the field.

The dugout.

Albert PUJOLS!!!

Dylan--ready to catch a pop fly or a foul ball.

Top row of the upper deck.  It could happen.

After the game, the kids were able to go down on the field and run the bases.  Pretty cool.

It was a bit of a learning experience for me.

The Angels are not the A's despite the fact that all of their paraphernalia has a giant A on it.

You can lead off of any base.  I thought it was only first.

Major league pitchers do walk people. 

Also, balking was explained to me and why the batter can run sometimes on a third strike.

Oh, baseball, you have so much to teach me.

Carrots + Juicer

A friend passed on a juicer to us. 

I was thrilled!

Joe was thrilled.(?)

Maybe he'll have a future in the food industry.

Hmm.  Or maybe he just likes to mash things to a pulp.

So I whipped out the few carrots I had in my veggie drawer and we went to town.  We had one cup of marvelous carrot juice!  To share between all 6 of us.  One cup of juice and one bear of a clean up.

It was decided that the next time the juicer came out it better be for a good deal more than 1 measly cup of juice.

Enter the 25 pound bag of carrots.

Abby spotted it in the grocery store.

Perfect!  That definitely merits getting the juicer out!

And we juiced us some carrots!

Joe was tired of it after about 5 pounds.  But we went through the ranks, everyone got a turn to throw the carrots in and shove them down to their juicy end.

I poured the juice into my muffing tins and froze them.

I quit measuring after a while but we got at least a gallon of carrot juice.

Each carrot cube equals about 1/3 cup of juice.

They are great for adding to...

smoothies

orange juice

pancakes

muffins

zucchini bread

soup

chili

spaghetti

and on and on!



I'm so glad to have another sneaky way to get veggies into my kids' diets.

What else do you think I should do with all this carrot juice?

Bang-a-rang

So, Joe has been letting his hair grow out.  Which is fine.  I like long hair on guys (obviously since I haven't made Jono cut his yet).  However, I rarely see Joe's face.  He refuses to tuck it behind his ears and his bangs have grown so far out I don't think it's right to even call them bangs.

We started doing a little Google research on boys with long hair and bangs.

This one was nixed immediately

because (sorry) it's Bieber

This one got cut for a similar reason.

High school musical just doesn't scream "cool in a tough way" to an eight year old.

 We tried to find some styles on people he didn't know.

This one almost made it. 

Until he saw Jaden.

What about that doesn't say "cool in a tough way"?!

 I agreed to give it a try.

What do you think?

I think he has gorgeous eyes (even though he likes to scowl most of the time in an effort to appear cool in a tough sort of way).  It's been so long since I have seen all of his face at one time I almost forgot what he looked like under all that hair!  We finished it Wednesday night. 

By Monday it was majorly fuzzified.

Strands of hair were leaking out everywhere.

It had to come out.

I hope you got a laugh out of that one.

We sure did.

Not sure he can work the cool-tough facade with that do!

And we are back to square one.  Either find a haircut we can agree on or find some kind of product that will make those braids last longer that a few days.

Any suggestions?