Random January Photos

Selfies with Lollipop

Turns out she was more interested in Thatcher's cracker than the camera. Shocking. 

Lego set from the Grandparents won out as Thatcher's favorite Christmas gift.

Coffee/Apple Juice date with this kid after registering him for kindergarten. 

Yep, KINDERGARTEN! 

What?! You don't like my shades?

Samantha's half-smile I get when I embarrass her by making her take pictures at school.  

Date night selfie.

The couple across from us insisted on taking our picture when in reality I truly was going for a selfie. 

I had like four hundred of these blurry images on my phone...

And another four hundred of these.

Loving Samantha's long, beach wave hair. 

Lunch

with 

these two!

Stretching with friends after the Panther Running Club. 

These never come out but we always take them. 

Fun having Holley in town for the night!

We are so red. 

"MOM! Take a picture of me in front of this monster truck!"

Cinnamon roll Friday with these three.

Dinner with the Sherman family. 

Luke will NEVER give me a smile ;) 

January beach days.

I'm going to go with the original "Annie" movie being better than the remake. 

Yum.

Just a couple of Costco shoppers

More beach days.

Yep, the kids found a lobster trap and pulled it in.

It was these guys lucky day.

Set free and saved from a future pot of boiling water! 

Fish bait!

Lolly is not amused with the scarf we gave her.

Playdate with Bailey. 

Field trip to explore tide pools at Hendry's Beach.

The sky on fire above our house. 

Skateboarding

I admit I am not a huge fan of skateboarding for the kids. The problem is I envision horrible accidents with broken bones and my kids sitting on the sidelines of all the sports they play. Todd would argue that skateboarding is a sport and that so far the only broken bone we've had is from Samantha falling in the sand at the beach, not anywhere near a skateboard. The argument has temporarily been put to rest as long as they are wearing helmets and all those pads, but still, it is not my favorite activity...

UCSB Women's Basketball Clinic

A few weeks ago the girls participated in a basketball clinic with the UCSB Women's Basketball team. 

We headed over to UCSB after the girls' Storm game to watch The Gauchos play Long Beach State. 

It's hard for me to admit when Long Beach State beats the Gauchos but they did. It's a friendly rivalry I have with my dad, an LBS alumni. By the way, did you know there is NO BEACH at that STATE SCHOOL in Long Beach? ;)

Ready to learn some new skills! 

Meeting the players. 

Quick stretch. 

The Gaucho girls are pretty gigantic. 

The players were so great with the kids. Super encouraging and positive even despite having to deal with all these kids after their loss. P.S. We went to a Men's Gaucho Basketball game last week and they blew Long Beach State away! 

The girls talking to the women's head coach. 

They invited her to one of their games. She said she was going to come. We haven't seen her yet ;)

Dinner later at Pizza Mizza

Which turned into a sleepover! 

And donuts in the morning! AND that is Thatcher's new smile. I kind of like it ;)

Piano Lessons

So, I've been sort of dragging my feet on putting Samantha in piano lessons. Partially due to there not being a time slot open to make this happen. She's playing two sports right now, taking flamenco lessons and she's in a running club so every single day there is something scheduled after school. And then there is the fact that we don't have a piano nor do we have room for one. Minor detail ;)

Our talented neighbors use Gus from Detar Music as their teacher and as luck would have it after my message to him inquiring about piano lessons got lost somewhere in space last year, HE reached out to us after the New Year and said he had a time slot open for Sam and we took it!

Now about that piano….. We have a keyboard that was mine growing up that we brought out of the garage to start with. 

We have literally five minutes to get downtown to Gus' studio from running class. Until running is over, Samantha will be looking quite sporty at piano lessons each week ;) 

As soon as we arrived, Gus got Samantha started with learning her way around the piano. 

I even brought my old piano books (yes, I saved them all) wondering if maybe the lessons were the same nowadays. Gus laughed at me and while my books were 30 or so years old, they were indeed the same thing taught now. The only thing is that he uses a different method for his students BUT has taught the Bastian method before and thought it would be fun for him to teach something different from his other students AND it would be cool for her to use my books, so that is the route we are going! 

My books ;)

We were short one piano book that I needed to order so Gus has been teaching Sam scales, chords and one of his songs he wrote for kids to have fun with and sound really fancy on the piano as a beginner. 

And check this out! We scored an awesome piano off of Craigslist for $75! 

Here's some video of her first month of playing piano. She can now play the "Arpeggio" song with her eyes closed and we are happy she is on to the next song ;)