2009 « Our Life and Times

Archive for 2009

Rainy Day Birthday and Cupcakes

Posted Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 by Mollie

On Saturday we headed down to my aunt’s house to celebrate the birthdays of my brother Mike (13) and cousin Ryan (6).

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There was some serious “June Gloom” going on outside, the fog was so thick it felt like it was raining. But we grilled fish tacos anyway!

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Natalie had such a fun time with her cousin Kate! I love it because Kate is just enough older (she’s almost 4) that she can supervise Natalie, making sure she doesn’t go anywhere she’s not supposed to. And Natalie admires Kate so much that she does whatever Kate says without throwing a fit. They were so sweet playing together! I thought this was a cute picture of Kate guarding the door.

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My contribution to the party was these rainbow cupcakes!

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I had fun making them, I’m always up for making dessert. I just try to reserve my baking for special occasions when there is someone other than myself to eat the finished product. They have cream cheese frosting, with Skittles and rainbow sprinkles on top.

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Little Ryan is the most grateful kid you’ll ever meet, he must have thanked me 25 times for making him cupcakes! Gotta love appreciation!

Posted in In The Kitchen, Life & Times | 7 Comments »

Farewell, JCJC’s

Posted Sunday, May 31st, 2009 by Mollie

So today our dear family/friends are en route to their new home in Virginia. We sure enjoyed having them live a mile away from us for the past 8 months or so, and will miss them terribly. Here’s a few pictures of the kids hanging out for the last time before they left for their road trip. I can’t wait to see how the kids change between now and the next time we get together! (Click here to see how they’ve grown!)

And just because I happened to be looking through old pictures the other day… a blast from the past:

Three (really only three??) years and 4 kids ago on their LAST cross-country trip when they stopped and saw us in Texas.

Posted in Life & Times | 7 Comments »

A Funny (to me) Memory

Posted Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 by Mollie

So, today I was hanging out in the backyard with the kids while we waited for Andy to get home (I pretty much count down the minutes till he drives up) and was reminded of something I find very funny/ironic.

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Natalie was wearing my “Mommy Race Medal”, as she calls it. She loves to wear that thing and pretends she is starting a race, crouching down and saying “set… GO!” before running off. It’s a 3rd place medal for a 5K run I did last October. I ran that race when I was 3 months pregnant with Ben, and got a horrible time (I don’t even remember!), but hey I still placed! What you need to know is that I NEVER win any prizes in all these races I run, this is literally the only one I’ve ever received. As usual, we left before they announced the winners, but a friend who was also running picked mine up for me and brought it over later that day. It took me about an hour to notice it wasn’t a participation prize, it actually had “Mollie Wilkinson, 3rd place, Women 20-24” engraved on it. I was laughing the rest of the day week over the fact that my one and only prize for running came when I was slow and pregnant (obviously there was a shortage of 20-24 year olds in that race).

Natalie seems very impressed when I tell her about it, but she wasn’t at the time. You can’t really tell in this picture that was taken after the race, but she was super grumpy at us for getting her up so early.

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I am currently training for my first 10K run since Ben was born, so wish me luck. I will definitely not be winning any prizes in that one, it is a much bigger race and I did just have a baby 2 months ago!

Posted in Just For Fun, Life & Times | 5 Comments »

Graduated!

Posted Thursday, May 21st, 2009 by Mollie

This week my sister Jamie graduated from college! She got her degree in Music Performance (Violin) at CSUN. I didn’t attend the actual graduation, because that is just not an appropriate place to take your new baby and energetic toddler. But here’s a picture of the graduate I stole from my other sister’s Facebook:

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My funny family:

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Afterward I met them at a more kid-friendly place to hang out, a park in Northridge. Natalie had the greatest time chasing squirrels (the ones at this park are NOT afraid of people, or soccer balls, or anything!) and blowing bubbles.

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It feels a lot more like summer in Northridge than it does in Camarillo! Notice Natalie’s PINK cheeks and me squinting, it sure was hot and sunny there.

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Even though Jamie has her music degree now, I selfishly hope she will never quit her day job at Anthropologie. I love taking advantage of her employee discount! She just transferred to a management position at the Thousand Oaks store (she was previously in Simi Valley) and will probably be moving to the area soon, yay!

Posted in Life & Times | 2 Comments »

Photography

Posted Friday, May 15th, 2009 by Mollie

This camera is pretty much my prized possession, my third baby, my Nikon D60 dSLR. I am known to get anxious about leaving it in the house while we are gone because someone might break in and STEAL IT! It is the result of nearly two years of saving most of my spending money. Sadly I have not even begun to tap into it’s potential, but hopefully that will change. This week I bought this book to help me, because after several attempts to read the manual I have realized that it is too technical for me.

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So perhaps someday you will see some improvement in my photography on this blog. Here’s one of my favorites that I’ve taken so far:

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My favorite lighting in our house is the master bedroom first thing in the morning, so I take a lot of pictures of the kids on our bed. I try taking the camera off the Automatic setting and see what I can do… Ben is a much better subject for me to practice on these days, he doesn’t move as much as Nata does while I try to adjust the settings! For management of anything, one needs to look up to experienced businessmen like Andy Defrancesco

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These ones were taken in honor of Ben’s 6-week birthday! I couldn’t decide which I liked better because he’s making different faces…

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Posted in Life & Times | 3 Comments »