Wood Transfers - Another Craft left half done

OK.

How could you not love this picture?

Kim's babysitter took this of Charley, and as soon as I saw it,

I knew I had to do more than simply print it out,

so I transferred it to wood.

Here's the end result:

It's flipped, but I love it!

It greets everyone as they come into our house.

For the record, I have about five other wood transfer projects half completed,

but since I finished one, I thought I'd take this quick victory lap around my blog.

June 2013 - A retrospective

I have stepped away from the business of blogging,

as I have done so many times before, but there is such a chasm

of time between now and then

that I am racking my brain and trolling my old e-mails to see

if I can gain some insight on where we were, collectively, 2 summers ago...

It was our very last month at the Co-op!

We were there for two formative, fulfilling, nurturing and draining years.

For the unfamiliar, a co-op is a preschool run by parents.  There are teachers, but a great deal of work is done by the parents.  The school "welcomes" tagalongs, but by the end of our time there, we had two tagalongs.  Nola was the one enrolled in school (along with her giant bow), 

Payton was attached to my ankle (often in her own state of 2-year old turmoil), 

and Charley was on my chest (often nursing & weighing a lot), 

while I washed dishes at school & neglected the pile of dirty dishes in my own sink.

It was time to go.  

I loved it for all that I learned about parenting.

I loved the other families, but I also love being able to drop my girls off at school

and wash my own dishes each morning.

Charley has a healthy heart!

It was about this time (I honestly can't remember the exact month), but our sweet baby girl got the all clear from Dr. Leong!  To refresh: She was born with a condition known as Premature Atrial Contraction (PAC), which our doctor projected would clear up by early adolescence, 

and in classic Akl lady fashion, Charley decided she didn't want to wait that long,

and it cleared up by her fifth month!

Payton has clothes on!

And then she doesn't...

Honestly, I had two pictures of her for this whole month with clothes on,

and this cute one with her felt snake was the only one in focus.

Love these girls.

Love all that they've taught me.

But I also love where we are today and tomorrow.

Summer, Summer, Summerland

We had a mini-reunion with some sweet friends from college

and their even sweeter progeny.

Kama's girls are in purple, the other two blondies are Erin's,

and you might recognize Nola (in yellow).

Two-thirds of the kids missing in this picture were our youngest.

Sadly, I didn't get any great pics of them, but I'm sure we'll be back there soon

(thanks, Aunt Jaimee, for letting us crash your pad!)

Memorial Day

This year, we hit the ground running with Memorial Day festivities.  

In fact, in a course of four days, we squeezed in four pretty big events. 

I don't know if I was more impressed with the girls, or myself...

Considering I didn't get any pictures of either the Cajun Festival or Blueberry picking, 

I'll have to say the girls were the most impressive.

For the events I did manage to get pictures of, they were:

   

Sesame Street Live!

 Payton stayed in her seat long enough to get this picture...

 then spent the rest of the time photo-bombing and doing other things along those lines.

Day 2: Chalk Festival at the Santa Barbara Mission, 

which was the highlight of kid-friendly events for the weekend. 

The girls got to draw in their own kid-sized squares,

which thoroughly entertained them for at least a solid 30-minutes 

After which time, they were ready to join the rest of the festival...

 Good thing Father Charley is looking out for them.

This Baby Vomits Like You...

To be honest, the only thing holding me back from sharing this little video with the world

is the fact that I look haggard (and I mean, HAGGARD) at the end.  

If anyone has the ability to edit my sleep-deprived face out of this,

please contact me offline.  

Better yet, I'll stay in, if you could frost my face a la

Cybill Shepard in Moonlighting.  I'm open to either option...

just don't let my tired mug steal the show from the real star here.

Charley's Birth Announcement

 Inspired by Raphael, we decided to get a little fancy for Charley's birth announcement.

This was our goal:

And these were our models:

Try it again... no smiling!

Try it again... no fish mouth!

 Come on ladies!  Nonnie and mommy are willing 

to take at least 100 more of these until we get 

the perfect shot!

And there it is!

And here she is...

Our littlest angel!

Brought to you by:

Charley's Angels

(& Nonnie)

Fire on the Mountain

Our old house (which is currently rented out, and filed under "Things we really wished we hadn't purchased before the housing bubble burst") was evacuated, because it was essentially Ground Zero for the fire.  

The old neighborhood, Camarillo Springs, is the "Springs" in the Springs Fire, which ended up destroying about 12,000 acres of the Santa Monica Mountains. 

 Our former neighbor, John, took this photo, as he was evacuating --

his house has the covered car in the driveway, and our old house is to the right.

Most of the smoke and ash was blowing straight toward the ocean.

This was pretty scary to see, as I was driving Nola to school.

The fire raged on that day (and for a few days after), 

as you can see -- I think this was later in the afternoon...

One cool perk, was the "Command Central" for the fire-fighters

was right next to our little preschool, so the kids got to see all the fire engines...

and news vans.

But the coolest part of all, is that no houses were burned AT ALL,

and this is how everything looked just a few days later. 

From this picture, you can barely even tell that the hills are totally charred.

One friend, whose house was about five-feet from the flames said,

"I just want to kiss every fire fighter I see!"

I, like most other women, totally agree.