Sailors

Braden is 6 months old in just a few hours! I can't believe how time flys. I am LOVING him growing up! It's so much fun to play with him, make him laugh and watch him learning.

My mother in-law has a little sailor outfit that all 8 of her boys took pictures in when they were around 6 months so we made it tradition to use the same outfit for our boys. She found a girl one when Riley was little too. Both Riley and Braden are 5 months in these pictures and look SO much alike it's crazy. Josh and i decided that they have different shaped mouths and eyebrows. Other than that they look pretty identical to me!

Riley 5 months old

(i had to add the picture above because she is just cracking up, which in turn makes me crack up!)

Braden in a dress, right?!

Braden 5 months old

his little GQ pose

cats=poop=one unhappy camper

I just celebrated this BEAUTIFUL day by mowing the lawn! I actually love love love to mow the lawn. It'f fun to be out in the nice warm sun and take a shabby lawn and turn it into a sharp looking lawn with just a little work.

We've had about a week or so of nice warm weather and i'm Heaven. I feel as if i can crawl out of my cave and come alive again!

Back to the story and the inspiration for this post.

I was mowing the back which consists of picking up all my neighbors' cats's poop after when the shorter grass can reveal it all. Yes. There are tons.

Lets set the record straight. I don't own a cat. I don't want a cat. Correction both josh and i don't have the desire to EVER own one for so many reasons. We dont want to feed one, take it to the vet, pick up after it, have hair all over the house, pet it etc. (ya we aren't really animal people.) Now i don't mind when other people have cats. I like to pet them a little then and what not, but i think you understand how i feel about them. :)

So back to the mowing, or shoveling i should say. I haven't mowed the back in quite some time because it's been so rainy. So when i finally did there was SO much cat poo; it's disgusting.

As i was cleaning it all up so we can have a nice place to play and smell i was wondering to myself as i do everytime i mow the back, "Self, why am I picking up tons of cat crap when I don't even own a cat?" I still haven't come up with what to tell myself about that.

I would love to tell the neighbors to come do it for me but can't think of a polite way to say it, which again, why i am worrying about being polite when my neighbors are the ones letting their kitties pooooo all over the neighborhood?! (yes, i know it would be totally weird to ask that of them, i've never seriously considered doing it. but i do fantasize about have a block meeting and having all cat owners set up a schedule of when and how to share the duties of there cats', well, "doody's". haha

Whenever I see a cat in the back yard or on our fence i race out the sliding door and yell at the cat to go away, i've even thrown some bark at them. I never hit them, on purpose, because although i don't want a cat i'd still feel bad hurting one. I just want it to know it's SO NOT WELCOME in this house! Riley always tells me when she sees one and she runs back and forth across the yard telling them to go away too hehe. I've considured buying that stuff you can sprinkle around and i guess cats don't like the smell or something. But that makes me so mad. Why should i have spend my money on a cat i never wanted in the first place?! So then i add into my little fantasy all my neighbors paying me to buy the stuff :)

I have a solution. Keep your cute little kitty inside or on a leash. Just like a dog! Let it poop in your home, your grass or your little box. PLEASE.

oops wrong video

I was informed i attached a wrong video to the "chicken vs. chili" incident. well here it is!

Videos Galore

I usually don't take a ton of videos because i'd rather have pictures to frame but lately i've shot a few funny ones. Most of them are only about a min long or less so take a look and hopefully they'll make you laugh a little!
I have no idea what to name this first one. This is Riley in a nut shell i guess!


Josh has a ton of younger brothers which is soooo nice because they all love kids. These are his two youngest brothers (the ones with most of the energy) making the girls laugh their heads off!

I LOVE this video because you can see Braden's eyes light up when he gets to be by his sister. He ADORES Riley. And notice his funny little "squawk" when he gets really happy.

I caught the tail end of this episode unfortunatly but Riley was so upset that i was going to eat leftovers "chicken" and her and josh were having chili. She really wanted me to eat chili with them, so much she sat down and started crying. As soon as i whipped out the camera to capture this she wasn't quite so upset but you can still get the jist of it.

This last one just shows how incredibly happy Braden is in his jumper. He gets going pretty good. And at about 1min. into this video he starts laughing :)

Riley Got Jipped!

Riley is in the process of being potty trained and doing pretty good now. I used to reward her with a piece of candy everytime she went on the "big potty" instead of in her diaper. But now that is getting pretty frequent and i didn't want her to eat that much candy so i made a "potty chart" and put it on the fridge. It's pretty simple. it has a series of five boxes going across the page and at the end of the five boxes there is a reward: go on a walk, go to the park, buy a new book, go on a date with daddy, have a picnic, and go on a date with mommy. So now each time she goes to the bathroom-on the potty- she gets to put a sticker in one of the sqaures to work towards her reward! It's a concept she is still trying to grasp,she tries to put them in random boxes instead of five in a row to get the reward at the end. It took her just over 1 day to earn her first reward "going on a fun walk" and she just put on the last sticker-as i type-to earn a trip to the park, which she is ecstatic about :) Here are some pictures of our walk and why riley got jipped.

Cute little bridge she had fun on.

We were at this water resevoir thingy by our house, it's filled with fun pebbly trails to follow and usually has tons of water in the embankments, not today. Jip #1.

Braden haning out enjoying the scenery
On our way back to the car after finding out that the "fire crew" there cleaning was really one fireman guy watching tons of PRISONERS cleaning and walking around. I had a weird feeling when we started off on our walk and i almost got the kids back in the car to take them home but Riley was so excited that i told myself i'm sure it was nothing. We start going and i see the fire crew truck and see orange jump suits thinking ok, maybe it's just people doing their community service time. I get closer and it's a bunch of adult guys in orange with "prisoner" down there legs...ya....we headed back after that. Jip #2
Fire ants, i think. Definetly not little black ants that invade kitchens. These were HUGE, sort of reddish with weird heads or butts, not sure what end was what and i wasn't stickin' around to find out! This is where riley got jipped the 3rd time!

This cool huge tree by my car looked like a good photo op. So I stuck riley in there and she was pretty excited to "climb a tree". I get close ups, walk wayyyy back to get a picture of the whole tree. Then when i come back i ask her "Riley, want to get down or stay up there some more?"

Riley replys calmly "i want to get down because there are ants on here." So i get on my tippy toes to look expecting tons of little black ants. NO! Just a TON of those nasty ones. I grab her right away and start checking her to see if any where on her. There were a few, a couple on her arms and legs, so i quickly brushed them off and ran her near the car, took off her sweater and shoes and did a whole body check.

That sure was a crazy walk. Not the most enjoyable. Needless to say i owe her a do-over.

Josh did it again!

My brother is getting married in June and this past weekend was the engagement party. His Fiance Mariel heard about the cake josh did for Riley's second birthday and jokingly said he should do her wedding cake the same way, so we surprised them with one for their engagement.

Wedding barbie. Complete with a veil, diamond ring and boquet. There were no groom barbies to be found so we had to settle for this guy, almost looks like my brother when his hair is longer i suppose!
Josh wasn't very satisfied with how it turned out. I thought it looked great for using a box cake mix and mixing bowl to shape it! It started to fall apart on the drive to the party to, see the rift in her dress! But it was yummy, we used a marshmellow fondant that is SUPER easy to make and tastes good. Visit my friend's blog to get the recipe and directions here. (the recipe is

about 6 posts down on this page, with the ghosts!) This is Josh's dad, "Opa" with the kids

Last weekend a middle school near by had a book fair, by one get one free! We went to check it out and had a blast. They had a lot of different organizations from the city there giving out free things. Riley got her face painted by one of the middle schoolers and LOVED it.

We got to plant a flower to take home and they had kids from the schools near by singing and dancing. They also had clifford come and riley was pretty freaked out. She kept her eye on him at all times to make sure he didnt come near by! And she got to go "fishing", and caught a bag of gold fish. It was fun and nice to get out and do something with our time!

P.s.we bought a a couple books and one is called "When sophia get angry" haha, i thought it would be perfect for miss riley, too bad they didn't have one called "when riley gets sassy"!

awww rest

I accidently went to bed about 7:15 'ish last night. I was laying in bed with braden just playing and before i know it it's 1am and josh is down stairs sleeping to a movie, Riley in bed and Braden sleeping in Josh's spot. I got about 12 hours of sleep last night and i feel FANTASTIC today, see i even took pictures to prove it. This is us PLAYING at 7:30 am. usually i'm making breakfast looking like a zombie.

Female Model Wanted!

My friend Jen Gagliardi who did Riley and Braden's photos I shared a few months ago is in need of a girl ages 2-6 (or 7 or so) to try out a few new ideas she has!

There are a few restrictions:

The little girl needs to own a pair of cow boy boots

Needs to be able to take direction, not perfect, but able to listen at least :)

Needs to be able to travel to the Rancho Cucamunga area for the photo shoot

Jen will style the rest of the shoot herself!!!

She will also give you $100.00 print credit on top of the already free photo session.

Please visit her site www.jengagliardi.com to send her an email and a few recent photos of your cute little girl!