Surprise trip to LA

We flew out to LA to surprise Sarah and Gabriel and get to celebrate Gabriel's first birthday! It was so much fun! We got there and were standing in Sarah & Richard's driveway when they pulled up from church. Thanks Tim, Marlene, Rose & Gladys for helping us surprise them. It was really exciting and we had the best time.

The boys had so much fun hanging out together. They followed each other everywhere. It was so sweet!

They even shared a carseat. Ok maybe only for a second. Unless I could get a ticket for blogging this...then not at all officer.

We even got to read stories all together. Gabriel sat calmly while Tabor tried to turn the pages at lightening speed. I could get used to reading to these two every night, but Gabriel's parents wouldn't let me steal him.

They even took baths together. Yes they are going to be mad at us for taking these pictures someday.

This is one of my favorite pictures! We had fun giving them stylish soap hairdoes. 

Tabor and I stayed at the Pitchford Manor for half the time. It was SO much fun! We stayed up late chatting and laughing like usual. One night Tim even made one of his famous smoothies. (yes only ONE NIGHT! ha!)

Marlene, Sarah and I had a great time hanging out too! We went to Suzie Cakes and had AMAZING cupcakes and coffee while we chatted. The boys played quietly in the fun double stroller! I seriously love that thing!

Yes we dressed the boys alike a few times. We even took them to Target dressed like twins. :-) We are dorks!

Gabriel's party was super fun too! I'm so glad we got to be there. Of course the decor was cute and the cake was as amazing as you'd expect!

Check out Dr. Seuss's hat cake! Sarah you're so talented!!

Marlene and I helped make the water bottle labels. So fun! Sarah we loved your theme! It was so cute!

Ok and I told Sarah that I'd love to make Dr. Seuss pops which of course I did, but I now remember why I no longer make cakeballs for a living. They take forever and I had 2 helpers! Gabriel for you I'd make them all over again! Marlene, Sarah's mom and I were exhausted after making these but they turned out pretty cute.

 Even Gabriel had a mini Dr. Seuss hat smash cake! Sarah you're such a great party planner and ok Marlene you're pretty amazing yourself! Gabriel was a little unsure what to do with his smash cake.

It didn't take him long to figure it out though...

He was so proper though. Hardly made a mess. I hope Tabor is the same way. Somehow I doubt it.

Sarah made really cute Dr. Seuss cookies as party favors also. I think I crave these every time I make a cup of tea. (hint hint)

Gabriel thanks for letting us be a part of your first birthday party. We had such a blast with you all. We miss all of our friends in the South Bay and love you all so much!!

Groins rock!!

We took a day trip to Gruene, Texas. We'd heard it was a fun place to see and it was. We walked through the little town and took fun pictures, antique shopped and had a blast checking out the general store and the Music hall. 

Marlene's favorite shop was an antique shop where she found a ton of amazing things. She would've bought more if she had more suitcases to take home with her. :-)


The cute little stores were fun to shop in. Even Tabor tried on some cowboy boots:

We ate lunch at the Gristmill which took most of the afternoon. It was so much fun.

Tabor had a feast because they brought me a bowl of hot water to defrost his cubes in and I squished an avocado for him. Marlene had a rack of Baby Back ribs that everyone stole from her.

It was a great lunch. The dessert was a pecan pie made with their pecans and we all agreed it was the absolute best pecan pie we've ever tasted. We wished we hadn't been too full to enjoy it more! Tim & Marlene also had their first Shiners. :-)

We found a target afterwards and while Marlene & I stocked up on baby food all 3 boys napped in the car. Which was good because it refreshed them enough to agree to take us to the outlet mall in San Marcos. Ok. I knew this was an amazing outlet but I'd forgotten just how amazing... You need a week to go through the entire thing. Seriously. Marlene had the best afternoon!! Everything I found somehow was still regular price so I wasn't as successful! (well the term successful may be relative according to Tim haha)

Again the 3 boys hung out while the girls shopped. We met up with them at Starbucks after our trip to Michael Kors, Tory Burch, and Sperry. Sigh... so many things we wanted to purchase!! Ha! We decided to save all our money and make another trip out here just to shop. San Marcos...get ready...we'll be back!!!!

The night ended with a Bang!! We got to see Ilka, Kelly-O, Alex, Michael & my fam. We had so much fun! Ilka set out a panini bar and we spent the night laughing and having a blast.

Here's Michael & Tabor playing with his new toy. :-)

Another successful day.

Scoreboard:
Marlene's souvenirs - 1,390
Tim's unused outfits - 47

A pic of Tabor before we headed out for the day. He was full of energy and ready to go!

Remember the Alamo

We had a fun filled day sightseeing and being tourists. We ate breakfast in our hotel and Tabor began his campaign for Mayor. He has chatted up every person in our hotel and sweet talked every girl. Parents lock up your daughters!! This little boy is a smooth talker! Ha.

We toured the Alamo and learned all kinds of Texas history. Tabor picked leaves off the floor instead of paying attention though so we'll have to work on his attention span.

We went souvenir shopping where Tabor was pinned as the new sheriff in town and Marlene acquired more souvenirs than I may be able to total up for the scoreboard! We also stuck a Davy Crockett hat on Tabor...making him Baby Crockett. :-)

We had lunch at the original restaurant on the Riverwalk -Casa Rio. Tim & Marlene had "Queso" for the first time and loved it. Tabor ate his body weight in Mum Mums and Marlene & Danielle nearly fell in the river after drinking strawberry margaritas. :) We had to get coffee after all the food in order to continue our afternoon fun!

We then got on the Riverwalk boats and went on a boat tour of the river. We loved it. Except at one point I turned to see that Tabor was holding a little girl's hand behind us!! Seriously this kid is trouble!!!

We hit up the Rivercenter mall in our quest to find baby food. Poor Tabor just does not like baby food from a jar but we didn't have a way to defrost his cubes so we found some shady looking stuff at a convenient store that he ate only because he was so hungry, but he let us know he wasn't thrilled about the idea with all his funny faces.

Marlene found a pair of amazing walking shoes that have now made the trip that much better because her feet are super comfy and cute!!

The night ended with cheese, bread & wine and a bandu/Bananagrams tournament that Danielle dominated. (I'm the one blogging so I can type whatever I want ha!!)

A few more pictures explained:

1. Tim belt buckle shopping


















2. A bike rental vending machine!!













3. A Texas Christmas tree


4. Tabor picking out a cowboy hat

5. Tabor's first stroller nap :)

Road Trip

7 hours trapped in the same car. Luckily no further fumigations occurred!!

Tabor did great. He did get tired of riding in the car at one point but who could blame him. We were ALL ready to arrive!!!

We did have one important pit-stop which nearly caused a car accident because the jerky sign came too close to the actual shady jerky shop. So we passed the sign & shop and a crazy u-turn followed.

We all got out of the car (our 20th stop much to Ty's annoyance but this one was his & Tim's fault) and we trooped in to sample their crazy road kill jerky. Tabor had fun, was called a pretty girl and we all got out of there alive.

We stopped for emergency m&ms, stinky corn-nuts (to mask stinky toots), and lots of other super non healthy snacks which made us all sick by the time we did finally arrive in San Antonio. Ha!

We arrived and found a parking spot and were nearly robbed within minutes of arriving due to our sweet little naive selves almost falling victim to a bad scam! We parked and some crazy little man tried to get us to pay HIM for the parking and what have him away was that he asked us to leave our window cracked so he could slip in the parking ticket once he could get the "machine working again". Yea right! Anyway after that (and after deciding to valet instead) we joined our hotel happy hour and the fun began! We walked around the river walk and had such a blast!! Tabor was excited to stay up late and we then stayed up super late chatting like old times.

Ok the current standings are:
Marlenes souveniors- 5
Tim's unused outfits- 4
Car fumigations - 1 (hope this number doesn't go up!)

Souvenir Shopping

Day 2 started with a visit from Santa at Flo's house. We had so much fun waking up in our matching pajamas (pictures to follow once I upload them from the camera)

Then while Tim & Marlene sipped their coffee & people watched at Market Street (yes their new favorite local hangout in Lubbock) Flo practiced making Eggs Benedict which I will say I was very nervous about but... The end result was amazing! We devoured them without time to take a pic so below you'll only see the practice shots!

After our amazing brunch we played a couple of controversial appletter games which were all won by Flo and then the girls escaped to hit up a few of Lubbocks boutiques.

After experiencing two of Lubbock's boutiques & some of the Texas locals Marlene has officially exclaimed that she LOVES Lubbock and could actually possibly see herself enjoying LIVING here! Ha!

Marlene acquired a beautiful handmade monogrammed cutting board, a new collection of bracelets and a Texas pandora charm!

We ended the day meeting my parents at Hayashi for a delicious Habachi dinner!! Oh but Tim didn't get to change before dinner so again an outfit was wasted.

Oh wait the night didn't actually end there. We went back to Hotel Colorado for drinks and then a night tour of Texas Tech (with a frozen custard stop along the way!)

Tallies:
Marlenes souveniors-4
Tim's unused outfits-3
Car fumigations -1

Howdy Pitchfords

Tim & Marlene have finally arrived in Texas! Wait not just Texas but Lubbock, Texas!!

They arrived and were immediately vortexed into the Touchstone "no break" itinerary. Tim started off the trip a little disappointed because he had an outfit planned for each event and we didn't give him enough time to change before attending his first Christmas party. So as of Day 1 he already had one unused outfit.

Marlene & I ran to Hotel Colorado to drop off their bags and then by Market Street to pick up some wine and bread for Party #1. Marlene loved Market Street. I had to promise her we'd take her back just to get her to leave. She did buy her first Texas souvenir there though. A Texas sized & shaped cookie cutter ;)

We had a fun Christmas party at Grannie Annie's. Kyle, Trey, Ty, Tim & Tabor dominated at the Kinect games and the rest of us were worn out just watching them.

After the party we swept them off to the after party at Flo's. Another unused outfit was put aside. The tally was at 2 by the end of day one. A Bananagrams tournament and more Red Velvet Cupcake wine ended the night. Danielle exceeded her wine quota and annoyed everyone with her clever game tactics thus ending the night. ;)

So the score at the end of Day 1:
Tim's unused outfits -2
Danielle exceeding wine quota -1
Marlene souvenir collection -1

Side Note: since I'm blogging from my phone I'm not sure how the pictures will post so I'll explain them.

1. The Tabor pic. This is the face Marlene was welcomed to when she got in the car at the airport.

2. The Trey pic. This is Trey at Party #1 after playing lots of Kinect!

3. The Tim pic. This is Tim exhausted at the end of the day.

Hermosa Beach pics

We took a few family pics while we were back in LA. We love Hermosa Beach! These were actually right by our first house there.

No clue why Tabor started making this Benjamin Button face. A week later his trick was sticking out his tongue. A week after that he clicks his tongue. How does he learn these things so fast?!

Father and son. Tabor was getting tired at this point but I still thought this picture was cute.

The little Touchstone fam. Tabor was probably looking at Sarah, Richard or Gabriel rather than the camera.

Ok so see that wave behind us... it was much bigger than we thought! As you'll see in later pictures below.

We love the beach! Can't wait to go back to visit.

So the wave that you saw earlier ended up soaking us! You can see how high up it hit if you look at Ty's shorts.

Tabor kept looking down to see what the fuss was about. ha!

We couldn't quit laughing. We had to go home and do laundry after our little photo shoot!

Thanks Sarah & Richard for being our photographers and for a fun filled waketime!