Partying with Tinkerbell

Lucky little fairy girl HeaBug had the best time at her gal pals birthday party!

Tinkerbell showed up and HeaBug was as excited as could be!

Lady date with my best gal

I had the best girls day with my favorite daughter, HeaBug.

After soccer this morning, we went to the Penelope Lane Boutique in Seal Beach where the little miss very carefully spent her $10. She came up on a little ring, Hello Kitty hair clip, Hello Kitty earrings, a sugar cookie and a new pink flower clip.

After the Boutique we went to PREP kitchen essentials for a Parents and Kids cooking class. It's the same place that I took the 6 week pro chef series this summer, love it!

We made Sweet Potato Gnocchi with butter sage sauce, spinach salad with a warm bacon dressing, and an apple tart.

She is a serious "taster". HeaBug likes trying everything at every stage.

Of all the things we made, her favorite was the spinach salad! She asked to come back tomorrow. Because she is bright and a little precocious, often times Adults are initially charmed... interested at least in holding conversations with her. I'm always riding that line between proud and nervous what she's going to say lol...

We wrapped up an awesome day by watching The Parent Trap on HBOgo. Weeks ago I had her watch the original with Haley Mills and she loved it! I saw the newer version with the adorable and pre cray cray Lindsay Lohan, she loved this one too.

I am so grateful we can spend amazing time with our kids. While us chicks were doing our thing, Mr B and JT ran errands and then took a bike ride to Seal Beach and back.

Love our Ohana.

-mrs. b

Shannon's cute baby (and shower)

My sweet friend Shannon and her Husband just added this handsome bundle of radness to their family and now they are Three.

They are just the cutest and this shower was lots of fun! I was originally going to go alone and when HeaBug saw me dressed up to go, she asks if it's a grown up party. I told her there would be mostly ladies but it was for Baby Mason and his mom. She says, "I LOVE lady parties! Wait for me! I'll put on a dress!" 

She is just too fun! 

All of the LoVELy and DEElicious desserts (including white cake with lemon filling, frosted Texas sheet cake, chocolate covered pretzels and adorable elephant sugar cookies that said "thanks a ton") were done by my amazingly talented friend and cake ninja, Cakestina.

Welcome Home Sister Imbach

Welcoming home Sister Mara Anne Imbach! She has just returned from serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the Frankfurt, Germany mission for the last 18 months!!

So excited to see her and have her home and so proud of her service while building her faith and testimony! Way to Return With Honor Mari Bug!!

The Penelope Lane Spring Boutique

This place is just too much fun. It's like Etsy come to life. Vendors (crazy, amazing, talented, smart, funny) come together once a season to this rad boutique at the Seal Beach Country Club put on by my girlfriend Sarah of Little Penelope Lane. HeaBug LOVES to go with me to go "shopping"... She's a dangerous one, always putting pretty things in the bag.

We browse, we sample, we chat and of course we buy. It's great because there is a centralized checkout so you just pay once. I scored on some SUPER cute things. My favorites are a vintage window with vinyl graphics from Inspired Window and a large B from Little Ms. Berry. These were the icing on the cake that is my dining room wall vignette.

Gratitude turns what we have into enough.

Such a fun girls afternoon. 2nd best part was the snagging the 1/2 off baked goods at the end of the day. Oh my the yumminess.

Emerson Olympics

Each year at JT’s school, they hold a fitness day fundraiser. The purpose is obviously twofold. To raise money and to teach the importance of fitness. You may have heard of, donated to or attended something similar… think jog-a-thon, trike-a-thon etc. 

One of my gals decided she wanted to chair the even this year and early on, health and fitness being high on my importance list, volunteered to assist. She had an amazing theme picked out, the Emerson Olympics. With the summer games just having passed in London, Olympics were still fresh on everyone’s mind so it really gave the kids something to relate to. We have a few olympian parents and members in our community. She was able to reach out to them and they agreed to speak to our students about the importance of fitness and working hard in school. We had an opening ceremony, a lighting of the torch, and olympians speak to our kids. Each class was assigned a country, given a flag and their donation packets. They were pumped.

It was a great day and it was such a treat hearing the kids talk to their parents after school and tell them what a good experience it was. We ended up raising $17,000 for our school! Isn’t that crazy awesome?!

A month of collecting pledges and donations went by and before we knew it, our games were upon us. Thursday morning, bright and early at 6am, there we were to decorate and transform our playground for the kids.

The lunch benches became the olympic village, banners and streamers hung and floated on wind. Flags dotted the rooftop. The grassy area was strung with banners and flags and the eight 8’ balance beams our Rock Steady Guys built for me were placed in the center. The whole playground was divided into 9 stations. #1 Cardio Warmup, #2 100 yard dash, #3 arm ropes and jump ropes, #4 hula hoops, #5 shot put, #6 kick a goal, #7 centipede run, #8 monkey bars, #9 balance beam. Then they ran around the front of the school to the finish line where they received medals and took a class picture with the rest of their country at our awesomely decorated backdrop/handball medal podium. 

I was stationed to take photos all day which was tons of fun. Mr. B and HeaBug came and helped all day long. Like all day. Love them so much. He spent this time after spending the majority of February traveling for work. I was so glad to have his company and he was just the best. He went and got us John’s for lunch (Our favorite local burger spot) and just spent the whole day being amazingly supportive. (And handsome, he’s so good at that!).

Happy Birthday Cakestina

My gal Cakestina is having a birthday. Our school is having a fundraiser. We celebrated Cakestina at our school’s dinner night at STACKED. STACKED is so much fun. We love eating there (and it’s super close to our work so being the big fans that we are, we go often). 

You order your completely customizable food from an ipad. It’s good fun and they have an awesome menu of burgers, salads, pizzas, mac and cheese, sausages, shakes, and cookie ice cream sandwiches. YUM! The concierges that take care of your table all work together. At the end of you visit, you can easily split a check, chose if your method of payment and even chose if you want to tip (if you do, and you should people, just saying… you can chose a percentage, flat dollar amount or other). The menu has so many options, gluten free, curry ketchup, pretzel bun, siracha mayo… oh man I could go on for days. Love that place and LOVE my girl Cakestina… if you’d like to know how much, I wrote about that here. We made a reservation for 25, fancied things up with some balloons and all got together to celebrate. It really was a fun night. And of course we had to sing… LOUD. Considering that STACKED has not interior walls separating diners, our lovely voices really carried through the restaurant. Lucky folks.
Happy Birthday Cakestina. Hope you feel loved beyond measure.

Happy Birthday Naima

When we met she was a small fry. A tiny fry. A cutie fry. She was quite the center of Mr. B’s whole world. Only daughter of his only brother, his love for her has be more than fierce from the very beginning. As I came into their lives she became important to me too and I easily fell for her precocious nature and sparkly eyes too. How we love Naima. She’s gotten older and more beautiful and graceful and smart and kind. We feel so lucky to be a part of her life. For her 15^th birthday we wanted to do something special and appropriate for such a young woman. We decided on a year long subscription to Birchbox. It’s a fabulous site that sends a goodie box filled with samples of perfumes, creams, makeup, fashion tid bits and more. It’s a monthly surprise! of the best kind. We couldn’t ask to be Auntie and Uncle to anyone sweeter than she. Happy 15^th Birthday Nai-nai. Love you.

HeaBug turns 4!

The time is going by faster than I'd like it too. But I feel like we are getting to enjoy our children at every age and really savor them.
Our Hea Bug is truly sunshine. The is sass, she is sweetness, she is opinionated and she calls it exactly how it is.
We are so happy to be her family. We couldn't have asked for better icing on our cake. Love you girl bug. To the moon.

HeaBug LOVES going to gymnastics, she had a party at her gym. Lots of friends, lots of fun! And thank goodness for the wonderful Coaches, Ms. Whitney and Ms. Taylor for handling our 18 little ones for two hours! (And the few big ones that jumped in on the fun near the end).

Seriously, they should have gymnastics parties for adults. This would be fun.

Games and exercise and fun. That's what I'm talking about. After hosting JT's birthday with every imaginable sweet, tasty, tummy aching indulgence... We decided to go the opposite for HeaBug's party. We had two giant trays of fruit (Strawberries, Mangos and Pineapple in one and Strawberries, Pineapple, Oranges and Watermelon in the other). We had bionico toppings, crema de leche, granola, coconut and raisins -eh on the raisins. (If you've never had one, I have just the place for you to go.)
Two trays of veggies (Broccoli, carrots, tomatoes and peas) dip, hummus and this amazing herb popcorn from Trader Joes. Seriously, it's the bomb. We had only waters and then the best part was the 108 mini cupcakes from Sweet Embellishments! Tasty, tiny and adorable. They were perfect!

Always a fan of the birthday song, it was extra special that we were singing to her.

On the morning of her actual birthday, she woke up to a decorated hallway and breakfast table! The balloons had qualities that we love about her written on them. Intelligent, Clever, Sweet, Witty... Brother was awesome in helping read them to her.

I picked girfren up from school to a Surprise Car Party. Thank you dollar tree and being 10 minutes early. I popped in there for some balloons, party hats, blow horns and necklaces. Pack all that in our mini cooper and we had a downright shindig goin' on. She was so surprised and just loved it!

Kids get to choose birthday dinner. She picked Sashimi from Tokyo Hibachi. It's our favorite sushi spot. Very traditional and not jazzed up with too many sauces. Mr. B has been going there since he was smaller than HeaBug. He took me for the first time when I was 15 years old! And Yuki still makes the very best spicy tuna salad!
For the kids, we generally go to Fusion Sushi. It's close to the house, they have happy hour specials and  they're cheaper lol. Which matters when they eat sushi like grown folks! But she wanted to go to the Buddah Place. I knew exactly what she meant and we were happy to oblige. They were excited to see her in her crown and with her balloons so Auntie Meg and the ladies were sure to bring her out a candle and some ice cream. They sang to her in English and Japanese and our HeaBug was beaming ear to ear!

We sure are blessed to have this girl in our lives. She makes me laugh out loud, literally, many times a day. She also makes me want to pull my hair out at times, as  a daughter should. We love her more than she'll know and we will embrace each day of her being 4 years old the same way we did when she was three and two and one... With patience, gratitude and adoration.