We love San Diego

We spent last week in San Diego.  It. was. wonderful.  We loved it.  The weather was cool, the ocean was gorgeous, the food awesome, but the best part was time away together!  Here are a few pictures from our time there....

First afternoon there....we went straight to the beach!

 Seals at the Children's Pool in La Jolla

One of several mornings at Coronado Beach.  We found so many sand dollars!  And like all good tourists we looked for them with our Starbucks in hand.

Lots of shells made the trip back to Texas.

We spent one day at the San Diego Zoo.

The sloth statue at the zoo.  I thought he looked more like a beaver and since Sunshine has a imaginary beaver friend named Michael, I thought it made a fun pic.

Exploring the tide pools at Scripps Aquarium.

Riding the ferry to Coronado.  We jokingly called this our "walking vacation".  We'd take the ferry to Coronado and then do a lot of walking.  Sunshine was a trooper...she probably thought her parents were crazy for making her walk so much.

San Diego Safari Park

The last morning at the beach, Sunshine fell and got soaked.  So we stripped her down and she wore my jacket until we could buy her a warm sweatshirt.

This morning

Those of you who know me well know that I am a homebody.  I love "homedays".  Today has been one of those days.  For Sunshine's sake, I am going to document what we did this morning.  She'll be reading soon and someday I hope she'll be looking back at this blog to see what life was like when she was younger.

Before heading outside we started our morning with spice pancakes and bible stories.  I planned on playing in the water, so we just went with the swimsuit this morning.  Sunshine is such a helper.  Here she is filling up the water for the chickens.  We had the water on the other side of the fence, but the heifers came over this morning and drank it all.

We picked and weeded the garden.  Today's haul included okra, cucumbers, tomatoes, & green beans.  I usually weed while Sunshine picks.  Last week she was sick with an ear infection so I had to pick by myself.   I really missed having her out there with me.

Her favorite thing to talk about while she is picking is the kind of soup she is going to make with all the veggies she is picking.

Next I worked on waterproofing our outdoor furniture while Sunshine played in the sprinkler and at her water table.  It was about 85-90 this morning...summer is here!

Here are the benches to our picnic table I worked on this morning.  I still have to do the picnic table and a bench my sister gave us for a wedding gift.

Sunshine finished up our time outside doing sidewalk chalk.  Recently she has been drawing a lot of people.  She draws a lot of pictures for Daddy to take with him to work.

After I finished the benches we loaded up the trash to take to the dump.  We stopped by the post office and picked up the mail and then walked across the street to get some chips and a soda.  I was ready to go, but she asked if we could sit by each other and eat our chips rather than riding and eating.  So we did.  She talked, I listened.  She had a cheesy-chip face topped off with sticky Sprite and gave me a kiss on the cheek anyway.  I treasure the time I have with her and I am so thankful I can be at home with her!

Scrappy Nine-Patch Quilt

I've been planning to make a quilt for our bed.  The first quilt I made just isn't quite big enough for our California King.  So, I found a pattern and pulled out my fabric scraps to see what I had to use and what I needed to buy.  As I started going through them, I realized most of the scraps I have are from dresses I've made for Sunshine...scraps I just can't seem to part with, but haven't known what to do with.   So now I am making a quilt for her room and then I'll make one for T and I.  The goal- Christmas.  I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I real enjoy it so I shouldn't term it "work".  I've cut all the squares and rectangles for her quilt (720 to be exact!) and now I am sorting them into blocks so that I can start sewing.  Here's what the quilt looks like so far....

I am hoping to post a completed quilt top by August!!

Wildflowers

 We have been blessed by all the wildflowers this spring!  We've had fun picking and arranging.

 Sunshine is quite the little florist.  I guess I didn't realize how much she was paying attention when I was working for Bobbi and arranging flowers on a regular basis.

Flowers make dish duty so much more pleasant!

One Last Time

A few weekends ago T washed and waxed his 1996 Ford pickup for the last time.  Yep, it's time for it to go.  We have lots of great memories in this truck including: driving around the Kansas Flinthills, going to Sonic for lunch while we were in grad school, moving our possessions around {multiple times}, hooking up the trailer and moving to Texas, & bringing home Sunshine from the hospital.

"That's how it is Mom"

Monday's consist of cleaning and laundry around here.  I was working away on laundry and cleaning the bathroom this morning and didn't make it out the door until late morning to get my work-out done.  Well things have heated up here in Texas- though I'm not complaining.  I'll take being hot over being cold any day.  After rescuing a turtle from our dog Honey, we were off.  I decided to stick to walking over running today and still managed to work up a good sweat.  When we got close to home I told Sunshine "I don't want to push the stroller up this hill, it's too hot."  I was hoping for a "You can do it!" or something encouraging.  Rather, without missing a beat, she replied "That's how it is Mom."  Hmm...maybe I say this?  Maybe I am the one that needs to work on encouraging her:).

She has been working on her "to-do" list today.  So far she has checked off play in the garden and play in the mud (I watered the garden last night).   She found several ripe cherry tomatoes while she was in the garden....time to start planning what I am going to do with all of them!

To-do

Tonight Sunshine had T write out her "to-do" for the week.  Here it is...

     - have fun
     - play in garden
     - pick flowers
     - play in mud
     - look at trees
     - play with dogs


I love it.  She appreciates the little things...I am going to try to do more of that this week!