Everything from eating lunch at our favorite local sandwich place, to slip-n-sliding in the sun, to hanging out with Aunt Jamie while she works at Anthro (still can’t believe she let my kids color at an $800 table).

Of course we are making good use of our year pass at the Santa Barbara Zoo!

Plenty of watermelon… and a trip to the Ikea showroom with the Aunties.

Personally I’m hoping for a few more beach days, now that the sun comes out on a regular basis!  It was a really foggy summer here!

]]> http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/2010/08/29/end-of-summer/feed/ 3 http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/2010/08/12/wilkinson-campout-2010-the-next-generation/ http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/2010/08/12/wilkinson-campout-2010-the-next-generation/#comments Fri, 13 Aug 2010 05:31:58 +0000 Mollie http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/?p=1357 We had a wonderful time this week on the Wilkinson Family Camping Trip!  This was a tradition when Andy was growing up, and made such a lasting impression on everyone involved, that we all want to continue it with our growing families!  What an awesome extended family.

The kids really bonded with their cousins!  Apparently the Wilkinsons just have a knack for producing super cute, sweet natured kids.  The little ones played so nicely together and seemed to love camping.  I know Natalie was thrilled to sleep in a tent and Ben loved being covered in dirt for 2 days straight!  Cousin Eden is one year younger than Natalie and these two had a blast together.

It was nice to have plenty of hands to help. You will notice that in every picture has someone is holding a baby?  Thats what happens when you take 5 kids age 3 and under camping!  They did incredibly well, I thought.  (Though Ben made it clear that he has his girl cousins beat in the tantrum department.)

Breakfast story time with Cousin Crystal (who Natalie keeps calling Aunt… close enough).

Josh entertaining the kiddos while we make dinner:

Aunt Becky with quite the audience:

Natalie has no problem drawing everyone into her imaginary games… hey wait, is Lexy smiling in this picture?!?

Like I said, plenty of willing baby-holders like Andrew and Michelle… love it!

We had one visitor who was most definitely not related to the Wilkinson clan…  but we will never forget him or the TWO visits he paid us! (Wish I had a picture of Ricky, the heroic bear chaser.)

I have tons more pictures to share, and will try to get those into a Facebook album tomorrow!  Also Andy will put the hi-res versions of all of them online so our fellow campers can download them and print them if desired.

Admin Edit: The pictures should now correctly appear in all versions of Internet Explorer.

He’s become an expert climber, which allows him to climb up and help himself to Natalie’s abandoned breakfast on a Saturday morning…

I guess oatmeal is just not the same after Ben messes with it… even when daddy puts chocolate chips in it.

So Ben has this brown blanket.  It is his favorite thing EVER.  He drags it all over the house, can’t sleep without it, cackles like a crazy person when you mention it, and finds strange comfort in chewing on the corners.  I’m not sure how he managed to get it to the breakfast table one morning, but it was pretty funny to see how he wrapped “brown blankie” around himself and always had it in one hand.

Natalie of course was horrified.  This was her face after she said, “MOOOOOOOOOM! Oh no! There’s crumbs on his blanket!”

They keep us laughing at table!

]]> http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/2010/07/31/breakfast-at-our-house/feed/ 4 http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/2010/07/04/weekend-getaway/ http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/2010/07/04/weekend-getaway/#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 04:46:39 +0000 Mollie http://thetoads.hawkbats.com/?p=1287 On Father’s Day weekend, Andy and I had a rare opportunity for a relaxing weekend out of town.  We traveled up to Madera for the wedding of a friend while the kids stayed at Grandma & Grandpa’s house.  It was nice to not be in a rush to get there, so we took the longer (more scenic) route up the coast and stopped along the way for good food.  I feel like it is my job to research awesome new places to go, but this trip I cheated and took Andy to places I had been but he hadn’t.  First stop… Fresco Cafe in Santa Barbara.  We were not disappointed.

Can you tell we are excited to be on a trip by ourselves?

(PS- My bangs aren’t actually crooked, nor did I cut them myself even though it looks like it. Just having a bad hair weekend I guess. Sorry that was just really bothering me.)

I didn’t really take many pictures at the wedding, unfortunately, so here’s our smiling faces, along with Cathi (Andy’s mom) and Danny, who we got to catch up with during our stay in Madera (nice to see you guys!).  It was beautiful there, in a picturesque setting with a river on one side and a vineyard on the other.

Side note: Andy and I love vineyards.  Not only for what they produce– the perfectly uniform rows of grape vines just really satisfy our compulsive need for order and organization.  We had some good laughs over that, but truly it was sooo soothing to drive through miles and miles of vineyards. Yeah, we’re weird.

On the drive home we stopped in charming Los Olivos, which I knew Andy would enjoy as his Father’s Day treat.  It is almost completely made up of little shops and wine tasting rooms, and beautiful gardens.  Mom, you MUST go here some time… this shop has the most amazing succulents and you would love it.

I wanted to take this beautiful boxwood home with me very badly, but settled for a picture.

Pretty gardens… I would like my yard to look like that.

But this was the real treat we were there for:  cupcakes perfectly paired with a wine tasting at Saarloos & Sons.  Flavors included Peach Ginger Chardonnay (WOW, especially paired with the Chardonnay), Chocolate Blackberry Syrah (pretty and delicious), and my personal favorite, Dark Chocolate Salted Caramel. They were tiny and we were splitting them, but really it was the perfect amount.

We both loved it!   After that we headed back to our kids, who were in fact glad to see us despite their fun filled weekend at Grandma’s.

Last week we went blueberry picking at a friend’s ranch, and came home with about 5 pounds of blueberries!  Not bad considering I was picking one-handed, holding Ben in one arm (he was having a rough morning).  Natalie was a great little helper until she decided to dump her bucket out on the ground and start over… AHHH!!  But she had a ton of fun with her BFF Bekah, and other friends from church.

Ben was only happy when there was a steady stream of blueberries from the bush to his mouth!  I had to work hard to replace the berries he was taking from my bag.  He was covered in dirt by the end, but that’s pretty much the way it goes around here.

That’s what my 5 pounds of blueberries looked like… I froze 1/3, gave 1/3 to my mom, and the last 1/3 was eaten fresh within a week.  I didn’t even have a chance to make some kind of special dessert!

One day Natalie saw one of the older classes jumping off the diving board, and became obsessed with it (which I thought was funny since she was kind of scared of the water and hated putting her face in it).  On the last day, the three kids in her class got to jump too.  I was really surprised, but she came up smiling, then jumped a second time!

At three years old, it is pretty hard to be coordinated enough to swim with arms and legs at the same time.  Natalie got a lot of practice with the kick board and empty milk bottles (genius idea).  As you can see, she is all smiles in these pictures.  She gained so much confidence by the last day, she even let go of the side and floundered around a bit, whoops… thankfully she’s become practiced at holding her breath, and managed to come up not even sputtering.

She can float like this for 10 seconds! Hopefully we can get enough pool time to keep her skills up this summer.

I got to play hostess this time around– summer dining on the patio!

The beautiful ladies… so glad to have them in my life!  There is never enough time to say everything that needs to be said!  Thanks for being so funny, informative, and honest, girls.

Made-from-scratch chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting… rich and perfect, thanks Hannah!

We had  Memorial Day BBQ at my parents’ house, where Natalie and Ben each quickly found a group of friends to hang out with.

The kids also got to pick out new pajamas on Memorial Day.  Apparently this is a very exciting thing, and that’s why Natalie wore hers to the BBQ.

Last week Natalie and I got to see a real ballet!  This was not Natalie’s first trip to the theater– we also saw Beauty and The Beast here back in March.  Never too early to appreciate the arts!   This ballet was a a brand new show, a retelling of Noah’s Ark.  I didn’t know what to expect, but blown away by how amazing it was.  The story was beautifully told through the dance, and even quite moving at times.  I was telling Andy that there was “like, a hundred” people in the cast and he didn’t believe me, so I looked it up online and the newspaper said it had a cast of 150, and 80 of them were the animals.

Natalie sure enjoyed it.  Despite the lack of dialogue, she followed the story very well (with a little explanation from me along the way) and didn’t get restless until near the end of the 90 minute show, when she wanted to get up and dance herself!  I was very proud of her for sitting still and paying attention.  She loved the dancers in animal costumes… the bumblebees in the picture below (children who could not have been more than 7 years old) were her favorites.  Perhaps Natalie will want to dance on stage some day?  She told me she did, after this!

Here are some of the sweet little friends we went with… looking a little tired after the show but all the girls did SO well! I think they were all inspired!

New necklace, a gift from my sis for Mother’s Day! Roses from the property we live on. I’m really into braids right now.

It seems that I am loving orange and green this week? Andy likes the way Natalie carefully separates her veggies.

I often dress us alike subconsciously and don’t notice till someone points it out to me, or I see it in pictures. Do see this weekend’s theme?

We found this grasshopper in our garden. I love bugs! What a great weekend.