acacia park

on christmas eve day we went on a family outing to a little park. it was so warm and sunny that day, i loved it!

i love these next few pics of penny with my dad. so cute.

i LOVE this picture of my parents. could it be any more perfect?

hi max!

leaves!

what a perfect way to spend the day before christmas. so many people were out walking and saying "merry christmas!" to each other, there was just a happy feeling in the air, i loved it.

merry christmas!

our tinsel-drenched tree.

opening stockings...

paul with the ira glass tickets i got for him.

derek and brian with their toilet mugs, courtesy of older brother jordan.
penny LOVED this blanket my mom crocheted for her so much that i had to show a picture despite my no-makeup face. that's love.

how derek and brian tagged penny's present. (sorry it's kinda blurry...)

we had a great time in california this year with my side of the family. we only visit my hometown once or twice a year and it's always so nice. the weather was great (the rain stopped once we got there), i even got to wear flip-flops! penny loved playing with her cousin max and i loved just relaxing, hanging with the fam and watching movies. hope you all had a great holiday!

this would've been our christmas card photo if i wasn't so lazy and actually sent one out...

and some outtakes:

hope you all have a happy holidays!

new york...continued!

it's a christmas miracle!

remember this post when i uploaded new operating software and *accidentally* erased everything on our laptop? well, i was poking through some old files and voila! this darling little laptop decided to miraculously save all of our new york pictures from this summer and store them in a random, dark corner of our files. i was so excited i think i peed a little. just kidding...maybe.

without any further ado, here's the rest of our trip in new york this summer:

the new york city temple, where nate and claire attended church on sundays.

we had heard that gray's papaya was THE place to get a new york hot dog. (i don't know if paul enjoyed his very much...he took one bite and got pooped on by a pigeon haha.)

central park! i didn't realize how huge it was. there were entertainers and food carts everywhere, it was like a mini amusement park. everything was so green and pretty.

radio city music hall!

rockefeller center! we went on a tour through nbc studios and i loved it! we got to go inside the SNL studio and i'm a total SNL junkie so that was very cool. that place is tiny! there's only 3 little stages that they perform skits on, including the main one where the hosts come out to do their monologue. we saw some other studios, too and i was amazed at how small they were and how much larger they appear on camera.

in front of the prometheus statue at rockefeller center. it was summertime so the ice skating rink was covered up with tables and stuff.

the t-rex in the museum of natural history! (yes, i put my hands on my hips in every picture...i don't know what else to do for poses.)

at the shake shack! we heard this was another place in new york that we had to try and it was very tasty indeed. this was our last night before we flew home in the morning and it was a great way to end the trip.

that's all folks!

the wheels on the bus...

"ALLL TRU...DA TOWN!"

is it weird that i think her tone deaf-ness is cute? she LOVES singing this song - in the car, when she's getting dressed, in her crib...all the time. there are times when we go through like twenty animals and she just copies every animal sound i make, it's so cute. in fact, she loves singing period - 5 little monkeys jumpin' on the bed, the yo gabba theme song, popcorn popping on the apricot tree, or just random tuneless songs. i love it.

(i think she's a little distracted by the tree at the end...haha.)

thanksgiving weekend

i know you wanted to stare at paul's mustache blog post forever, but here's some pictures of thanksgiving weekend in albuquerque with paul's sister, kenna, and her family.

getting ready to dig in. it was so good!

our gracious hosts: gabe, kenna and maddie (plus baby brother on the way).

pretty princess penny in her pearls, waiting for the turkey to be done.

gramma debbie with maddie and penny. (this is the best picture we could get of those two...)

it was so nice to have a break from the routine and relax for a few days. we ate good food, hung out with family, and saw harry potter (which i LOVED). pretty nice.

just to prove he could.

(the answer to "so WHY did paul grow a creepy mustache??")

(yes, i know what you're thinking. the beauty of this warhol-esque montage is too much to handle.)

it gets better, friends. these two chuckleheads decided to DYE THEIR MUSTACHES to make them darker and "more awesome."

they have a special bromance.

just kidding, you're VERY masculine.

(don't worry, it's gone now...and so is paul's happiness.)

yo gabba live!

it was so much fun! penny was in a happy trance the whole time. she couldn't take her eyes off the stage and was smiling like a fool. the show was great, they did all the best songs (i loved the people dressed up as food sliding down a plastic slide into brobee's "tummy").

we met our friend ruth there and she was so nice and gave us after party passes, and we got to take the picture above with all the characters! penny could not stop whipping her head around to stare at all of them, we almost couldn't get a picture of her looking at the camera. she even gave muno a high five when he put his hand up, it was so cute. thanks ruth!

it was definitely a good show. penny loved it. click here to get tickets!

the ol' two-six

we had a fun little party on saturday. we went laser tagging with our friends nate and claire while paul's parents watched penny and norah. i hadn't been laser tagging since high school, it was so fun! i'm pretty sure we were the oldest "kids" there...those 12-year olds were quick!

then we had some ice cream cake and paul got me these shoes that i've been wanting for a while. and he made me lunch AND dinner on sunday, my actual birthday. pretty nice. yay for 26!

toga baby!

(little cheeseball)

it took me forever to figure out what to make for penny's costume. first, she was gonna be a strawberry (too expensive for how i wanted to do it), then she was gonna be a superhero (too time consuming to make all the accessories), and so the day before halloween i threw this little number together and i actually really love it.

it was so easy since i already had like 80% of her costume: the shoulder broach is a vintage piece i got at a thrift store forever ago (isn't the cameo perfect??), the gold ribbon, leaves and gold glitter paint were in my craft supplies, and the gold sandels were from last summer. i did have to buy some white fabric and gold rope but since that was only $3 total, i think we'll be okay.

we went trick or treating with penny's cousin, max, and penny loved it. she was super shy about saying "trick or treat!" but definitely not shy about grabbing a fistful of candy out of the bowl. since it was raining we only made it to like 5 houses. that's fine by me, but we'll try to do better next year. hope you all had a fun halloween!

jellabee giveaway!

hey folks!

just wanted to make you all aware that i'm doing a little giveaway on my other blog for a $15 certificate to my jellabee shop because...i reached 1,000 sales on etsy. gah! so exciting!

i don't know if you've noticed...i don't have two etsy shops anymore. i combined them into one shop just to make everything easier.

anyways, go here to enter the giveaway. just leave a comment sometime before thursday november 4th at midnight. i would love to send some free stuff to a friend!