Doggy Door Installed? Check! (finally)

I wasn't thinking clearly enough this morning to take the "before" pics. So instead, you get the "in progress" pic (with Iz making the final inspection):


And the "after":


Yay!! I don't think I need to remind you how great this will be for Odin, Lola, the cats, and us.

The coolest part of this project is, our contractor (who is a long time family friend of ours), did the work for free! He came over last night to talk with us about the project and toward the end of his visit we all had our iPhones out chatting about them. Mundo mentioned he's been frustrated because he can only receive, but never send, email from his phone.

Jon grabbed the phone from his hand with a "Let me see" muttered under his breath, disappeared into his office and 2 minutes later, voila! All fixed.

Mundo has had his phone for about a year and has never been able to get his email to work (even after asking several "computer savvy" friends to help him). He was soooo incredibly grateful he refused to accept payment from me today saying, "Bree, tell Jon THANK YOU. I am so happy he fixed my email and phone, you don't even know. What he did was amazing. We are even, don't worry."

I argued with him for 10 minutes telling him he was being silly, but he wouldn't budge.

You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. I love it.

That New Car Smell

Picked up the new wheels last night. What a fun sporty little car,
and with a lot of punch! Just what I need. ;)

Picky Eater

Give a boy (who loves fruit!) a whole nectarine and he spends an hour molesting it, trying to peel off every square inch of skin.

And then try to offer your help to peel it and all you get is a polite and boyishly sweet, but adamant "No" (translating to "Leave me alone. I can do it myself Mom!") back. *sigh*

The Fruits of Our Labor

After berry picking Friday morning, Logan took a really long nap (who knew berries and sticks would exhaust a boy?!) before the two of us headed downtown with my parents and brother Kai (visiting from LA for the weekend) for a really nice (late) lunch at Mezcal. After that, we decided to walk off some of the huge meal we just ate and see if Logan was interested in playing in the water fountain at the César Chávez park.


Logan was verrrrrry cautious about touching the water and playing near the other kids. It took a good 45 minutes to just get him to stand near the water and touch it himself. My mom was super patient, taking her time with Logan to introduce him to the fountain slowly and at his own pace (I caught a couple cool moments on video but will have to upload them later in the week).


After getting soaking wet from standing near the fountain, we stopped off at Arena Green, Guadalupe River Park & Gardens since my parents have been wanting to take him on the carousel there. It didn't seem like Logan enjoyed the ride too much - he had a tight grip on the bars at all times and didn't really smile or laugh like you'd expect. Yet, every time the ride was over, he kept asking for more. And, when we finally ran out of tickets and decided to move along (to the playground next door), he got very upset. :( I guess we'll need to make another trip back soon!


We ended the day playing a lively round of Settlers of Catan (our latest favorite board game) with my parents, who have never played before. Surprisingly, my mom was in the lead for the first half of the game but my dad pulled a fast one on us all and beat everyone, out of nowhere! It was loads of fun.


Saturday morning, we met up with my parents and Kai for an early morning breakfast at our favorite joint, Stacks. Amazingly, there wasn't a wait (note to self, apparently no one eats breakfast on 4th of July, probably because they're getting their grills ready!) which was really nice. We all stuffed ourselves silly before my dad and Kai took off to a Giants game.


Jon and I left Logan with my mom for a few hours while the two of us did a little shopping - CAR shopping! We bought a new car, which we are totally excited about and can't wait to start driving. Since we were looking for a specific color with certain options, we have to wait forthe dealership to drive it in from another local dealership in the Bay Area. So, we won't have the car until tomorrow, but we're excited nonetheless. :)

Peekaboo!

The rest of our 4th was spent doing a last minute bike ride (which turned sour when Jon got a flat!) and then visiting with the Hicksons for some water play and BBQ in their backyard. Once the kids went down for the night, the four adults played Settlers of Catan until late at night (did I mention it's our latest fave game?).

Today has been a lazy Sunday - mostly because it feels like we've been running non-stop the last couple of days and work is around the corner. Other than another short visit with Uncles Zane, Kai and my parents, we had nothing else planned. So, I decided to take a stab at making some jam from the berries we picked on Friday. Because we didn't have enough hand-picked berries that the recipe called for, I did cheat a little and supplement with store-bought berries. :) For a first attempt, I think it came out pretty well. The hardest part I struggled with was sealing the jars! Half didn't seem to seal properly. :( I'll be giving those away to family and close friends who (hopefully) won't mind and will help us eat it up right away. ;-)


It was a pretty fun exercise for me, and once I had all the equipment ready, it actually wasn't too hard. Now, with jam galore, you can bet we three will be eating PB&J sandwiches for the next few months. I know Logan, at least, won't mind.

Gone Berry Picking, Come Back Later

Both Logan and I had yesterday off (Jon had to work - damn start ups, they don't give any days off!). Jon had brought up a great idea a couple of weeks ago - to take Logan berry picking since, 'tis the season! So, I found out about a nice "pick your own" berry farm not too far away that was perfect for us.


The season hasn't produced too many berries for this particular farm and this was the last weekend they were open, so most of the berries were picked over. But it was close (about 25 min drive) and in between home and the city (Jon joined us since it was still a little early in the morning and then took off afterward for work). And, since I didn't know if Logan would really like the excursion, nor did I think he'd really care if we didn't find too many berries, we took the plunge and went.


It was great! Once we showed Logan how to pull the berries off the vines, he kept asking for "more" to pick and drop in the baskets. But, even that was only entertaining for so long. Our always-on-the-move kid was interested for about 20 minutes before he moved onto the next big thing (in this case, finding the perfect stick which he could play in the dirt with).


Unexpectedly, Jon and I enjoyed the berry picking ourselves. :) The Southern in Jon came out, insisting we need to make jam with the berries - although now that I've looked up instructions on how to make jam, I'm not sure we ended up picking enough! So, we'll see - they may just end up in a blackberry cobbler, when Jon's not looking, instead. ;-)


Hope everyone is having a fun and relaxing 4th of July weekend with their loved ones! :)

(Click on any of the pics above for several more from our berry picking morning!)

My Mom, the Pack Rat

I'll start by saying I've seen a lot worse pack rats. But, my Mom is definitely in the camp that likes to hold onto anything and everything. Particularly the stuff with some sentimental value attached. Which is hard for me to explain to my husband, the man with a heart of stone.

I guess I'd fall somewhere in between the two. I definitely have my share of things I want to keep - perhaps forever? But, I'm also known to go on a crazy cleaning spree and shred every last bit of my grad school, college, high school *and* middle school notebooks and papers that have been sitting in my garage, all in one weekend. Without shedding a tear or looking back. Because I'm just crazy like that.

But enough about me, I was talking about my mother here.

I remember when I was young, we'd have to clean out our closets every once in a while to make room for the new toys, clothes and stuff coming in. But, we'd have to make sure and put everything we wanted to throw away in a separate box so that Mom could go through it first. There was no getting past that lady. If there was something that she felt was worth holding onto, even when we insisted it really wasn't useful or cool anymore, she ignored us and hid it away somewhere where we'd never find it and tease her about it later.

The other night we were enjoying dinner together and the topic came up about that day's newsworthy events. Most notably, my childhood idol, Michael Jackson, had died. I have always loved his music, but when he was at the top of his game I was the most impressionable. And, in a rare moment of wanting to fit in with every other teeny-bopper around, I somehow convinced my parents to buy me a rhinestone-studded glove necklace, with MJ's initials at the top (because, you know, you might not know what the glove was referring to).

My Mom, having not yet read my post of the day, commented what strange timing, since she had just found my old necklace while cleaning out her jewelry chest the other day.

And so, instead of teasing her, the conversation went something like:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey Breezy, I found that Michael Jackson necklace of yours the other day.

SHUT UP. You did not.

Yep, I sure did.

Wow, that's crazy. I just blogged about it! Did you know that?

Nope, haven't read your blog yet. But now you're going to have to blog that you found it!

Totally. And, maybe I'll wear the necklace to work next week too.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn't wear the necklace to work. I'm pretty sure my coworkers might look at me funny if I tried to convince them that it's cool to wear leg warmers, scrunchies, different colored layered socks, and necklaces with a bedazzled MJ glove again. Although, I do get away with wearing my new idol's symbol on my chest all the time, so you never know.


Mom, thanks for digging this out of the attic, or jewelry chest, or wherever you managed to hide it all these years, and dust off the cobwebs of my past. I keep forgetting that sometimes you're right. ;-)

It's definitely fun to relive some of those old memories from time to time. I can't wait to do the same with Logan someday too.

3GS Baby!

Jon got one of the new iPhones last week and, because I've been a good girl and have been using the First Gen for the past two years, I decided to get one too. ;-)

One of the main reasons I decided to snatch one up was for the video camera (and improved digital camera) - since I almost always have my phone with me, but don't always carry around one of our two cameras. So, tonight on our front porch, hanging out in our brand new chairs before swim class, I decided to test out the video myself. It's a little long but I left most of it in so that you could hear Logan say a few words (altho, he's more interested in his juice than chatting with Mommy). *sigh*



You can see hear a couple of times the sound is super muffled. It took me a few minutes to realize I was covering up the mic when moving the camera around. But other than that, I really like the functionality! I can't wait to start using it more often! Logan also really enjoyed watching himself immediately on the playback, pointing to his sippy cup and informing me it was "juice" over and over again. ;-)

(Funny, the quality looks a lot better on my iMac than it does on YouTube. Still, not bad for a phone.)