Staycation!

Following Paul's promotion, he finally got some vacation time, woohoo! It's been a long 18 months with only a quick trip home for Christmas last year to break it up. We were really looking forward to a fabulous 2 weeks in Utah in the fall, but alas, it was not to be. We kept trying to convince ourselves that we could keep our trip to this ridiculously small budget. We agreed that we would strictly stick to gas money, dinner at our favorite restaraunt, and some BYU chocolate milk. As vacation time came closer and closer, though, I found myself doing a lot of "that's not in our budget, but I'll just squeeze it in anyway - how can I go to Utah and NOT _____??" One night I finally fessed up to Paul that I'd already grossly overspent. "oh, man! me too!" he responded.

Thus came the tragic death of our vacation back home. There was a wake, followed by all the stages of grief, and then we had to just let it go.

We threw around a few other ideas, and ultimately decided that a Staycation would be the best for us. And we had so. much. fun!

First things first, we stopped off at Disneyland a couple of times. Paul's birthday landed on the first day of vacation, and he was hell-bent on getting back the $72 from our annual passes that Disneyland promises on your birthday. For me, it was $72 off of my pass - for him, it was a $72 gift card. I asked him what on earth he wanted to spend it on and he said "I don't care if it's $72 worth of KEYCHAINS, I'm getting my money back!" haha In the end he found the Oakley stand in Adventureland and bought himself some snazzy new sunglasses. We went twice, once as a family on Paul's birthday and once with our friends the De Leon's. Can't get too much Disney!! (will I still be saying that after I watch Pocahontas 800 times in the near future??)

Halloween Time at Disneyland is basically the same thing as regular Disneyland, just oranger (more orange? Orangerier?). Although the whole demon-ghost thing on Space Mountain was pretty cool.


This ride is my new nemesis - me+heights+centrifugal force+the liar ride operator that said all three of us would fit just fine in one spaceship = not my favorite 3.5 minutes in the world. Sam loved it, though!

It was so fun to finally take Sam on some rides, he loved them! Sam's absolute favorite ride in the magic kingdom?

King Arthur's Carousel!

Maybe next year we'll skip the expense of annual passes and just hit the Valencia mall once a month. :)

He also thought Tarzan's treehouse was pretty awesome

Maybe not as awesome as Paul, though...

The next night we enjoyed some beautiful Porto's cake (our birthday tradition) with the Eddy's

Then the festivities continued the next day with a pool party at Gramps' house with Paul's mom's side of the family - it was GREAT to see Carlos, Amber & the kids (even if it did get a little dramatic!), it'd been too long!

We also went to the beach, but didn't get any pictures of that - it was pretty cold outside, but the ocean was warm and beautiful. Yes, I did have a freak-out-oh-wait-that-was-just-seaweed moment. :)

We spent lots of time at home, getting long-postponed projects done and just really enjoying each others' uninterrupted company. It was awesome.

Sam thought it was the coolest thing in the world when Da-eeee! crawled into his crib with him one morning. Lots of wrestling and playing "sopla" (blowing raspberries) ensued.

Sam's absolute favorite toy at the moment is the lock-and-key system on our filing cabinet (where does he come up with this stuff??). He will literally sit there for up to half an hour carefully steadying his wobbly little hand and trying to get that key in the lock. By now he can do it almost as well as we can! So much for secret documents.

Sam has been going through some MAJOR teething lately (2 popped up already with several more making their presence known - ps aren't those little teething blisters nasty looking?!) which led to several of these

But thankfully also quite a bit of this

Another favorite is watching Sesame Street with Da-eeee! in the mornings whilst mommy drools peacefully on her pillow for another hour (how great is that? Sleeping in on his vacation! What a honey). Sammy is quickly becoming obsessed with all things Elmo, which is fine by me when I look around at the other options - Yo Gabba Gabba? Seriously?!

Side note: we went to our good friends' son's 2nd birthday party a while back (I rocked that jumper - "add-on" Queen, right here, booyah! - at least until some poor girl puked up her pineapple juice and I ended up being the only adult around and had to pretend like it was all ok) and Sammy immediately found the birthday present table, which had a rather large Elmo bag right at the front of it. A little later, the kiddie party CD started playing the classic ballad "Elmo's Song". My 14-month-old son dropped everything, turned a 180 and booked it to the presents table, his eyes nearly popping out of his little head over that pacifier as he anticipated seeing Elmo live! He kept pointing at that bag and saying "na-na daa?" (translation: "I want that" - yes, spoken Napoleon Dynamite style). But my kid won't be one of those "brand name" kids...right? :)

Here's another newbie that Sammy's been doing for a while but I have some serious issues with Blogger's video thing not uploading for me so haven't put on here yet - holding any handy electronic button-filled device up to his ear (ok neck) when we say "hello?". Please excuse the messy room - another classic favorite is pulling out as many books and pieces of laundry as possible onto the floor. He really loves books - he just wants easy access to them. It's really annoying to him when I put them away. :)

One of my highlights from our staycation was the brief return of Paul's full-blown faux-hawk and goatee. Oh, how I've missed it! I actually got him to shave it down to a copper-'stache when he was prepping to go back to work, and I was so excited when he promised me he'd keep it around for a week!...until he shaved it off twelve hours later. Weenie. He actually trimmed it down to an Adolph-'stache for a while, but beaner hitler was not working for me, so that quickly left, too. I'm SO bummed that I didn't get any pictures before he shaved it off - it was seriously sweet.

We also did several DIY renovation projects around our home, including these yard sale beauties

and the freebie entertainment center inherited from the Eddy's that used to be this color


but they're not QUITE done yet, so that'll be my post for next time. I know - you'll be biting your fingernails until I let you in on the before/after shots. I'll placate your anxiety by sharing with you the Greatest Garage Sale Find of All Time - a gun safe worth well over $1200

for less than 15% of that! We got it from this semi-crotchety old man that had the most killer garage sale of all time. It was literally like my dad was having this garage sale - there were knives, tools, and various gun paraphernalia all over the place, and I heard the S-word more than twice. I almost hugged him, he was so much like my dad a couple of times...except that he was also pretty intimidating, due to aforementioned crotchetyness. :)

Paul is happy to have a gun safe, I'm happy to have a fireproof place to store our pictures and other valuables, and we're both really happy to have a safe place for our weaponry now that Sam is getting old enough to dig through drawers and cabinets.

Thanks, Dad, for the final advice that snapped us out of our garage sale currency snootiness (anything over $100 might as well be $1 million when you're garage sale-ing, and you can definitely lose sight of some awesome deals by being in that mindset) and got us to buy it! And thanks, Chris, for yet again helping us move a ridiculously heavy object at the drop of a hat. :)

Wow. Maybe I should just write a book next time...how do my posts get so looooong??

love, mary