Meet Oscar

Meet Oscar G. Booth. Newly adopted member of the BoothOhana.

#dadgavein

We love this new kitty boy.

Love these kids

 JT got a mohawk. Mr. B rocked a faux-hawk. It was cute. For a week. By the second week, I was determined that they both needed the rest of the haircut.
These guys. Love them.

 In our cleaning and organizing of the garage, HeaBug found her brother's old leapster. She was quite content to pull up a spot on the floor and play her new "game". Pexie, our almost 3 year old rottweiler, thought it looked like a good idea. They were camped here for almost and hour. Love these girls.

My sister-in-law sent me this pic of our Kalani Man. It's so hard when a part of your heart is growing up on the east coast but we love getting a steady stream of picture updates and thanks to Facebook and texting, we enjoy getting to watch him grow up. We are SO excited that he (and his mama and auntie) will be coming out to visit us for a week this Summer!! Love this boy.

The Autumn "Leaves"

 Living in Long Beach is perfect for us B's. Our kids are growing up in diversity. There are so many different neighborhoods and we love ours. We affectionately refer to it as the "Suburbs of the Ghetto". It can feel a little shady driving towards our neighborhood but this street, yeah, it is just two and a half blocks from our house.

 It's a regular on our running and bike routes. At one end, there is white vinyl fencing. This place, my kids call "the area". Little sillies I tell ya. Our dogs love to come down here to play. There are never cars parked so we did a family photo shoot here last year with  Mia Marisa Photography. Pexie is a big fan of playing here with the kids.

 Hubs and I enjoyed watching our boy play baseball this fall. He's growing so fast and it's great to see his love for the game and his skill level improve. He bats at the cages once a week. Had team practice and a game. He works with a Coach Buddy once a week and is now doing clinics with Dad and his Spring Coach. There is a theory that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert. So if he continues to practice 1-2 hours a day a few days a week... it should take JT about 23 years to become an expert in baseball. So I guess by 26, he'll have to pick a new goal. lol.

We've had a great sports year. Made a lot of friends and accomplished a lot. Being healthy and active are important to us B's. We like to know that we're going to be sticking around for a long time and chasing grandbabies one day. It's no accident that HeaBug calls any sneaker her "running shoes" or that they ask to do pull ups in the hallway before bed. We do a lot of yoga and stretching. JT knows how incredibly cool it is that he can do one armed push ups. It's awesome that they can do things that we want to learn how to do (A Handstand is on my list of things to do... it just is. Just cuz.) and that they want to do things that we can do. We inspire each other.

Apple and Pumpkin Picking

We had a brief day off from work in October and decided to take the kids to Willowbrook Apple Farm in Oak Glen. It's our 3rd year going, here's last year (you might remember my raving about seeing my couldabeen BFF Jennifer Garner the year i was preggo with HeaBug).

The crop was small this year and the trees are over a hundred years old so this year, we were given, um, fruit pickers (?) I don't really know what they are called and that's what came to mind. Whatevs.
We showed the kids how to use them and they still got to pick their own apples. We took pictures in the little grove. It's one of those places that we visit annually so I try to get a picture of them in the same or similar place to measure their growth. And to reminisce on how cutie patootie my bugs are.

There was a crazy line for apple cider so instead of making a gallon like we have in the past, we bought cups to drink and sat down on hay bales to enjoy our cider and caramel apples. We left Oak Glen with two large bags of Stayman Winesap Apples, lots of honey sticks, a piece of apple pie, apple butter and boysenberry jam.

On the way home, we decided to head to Tom's Farms in Temecula to visit their Pumpkin Patch. We've never been for pumpkins before and had only even visited the farm for the first time this summer (when we had Pexie with us). We knew that we were packed with work and might not have another weekend before Halloween to enjoy these "picking" activities.
We were actually pretty let down. The pumpkins were in rows on AstroTurf... Lame. We made the best of it and the kids had a lot of fun regardless. We always do when we are all together. Us B's know about having a good time! We ate at Tom's Farms and had strawberry shortcake for dessert. Another awesome Autumn day.

"Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole" -Roger Caras

After our week in Tuscon, we had 3 days before we flew out to Texas. We decided to take Pexie out in the boat for the first time. She is 1 year old now! We drove out to Lake Elsinore (aka Smelsinore... it really does stink) and launched the boat. It was my first time there although Mr B and JT had been before. It's a resevoir so when that heat is pouring down, it activates some crazy underwater sea monster that farts as it swims under the water. Not really, i don't think anyway. But that's a fair description of what it smells like. After letting the kids drive a few laps, yes, the kids, we were heading in and all of a sudden heard a clunking sound and the steering got tough. We pulled the boat out and decided to take it by the shop to get it checked out. On the way we stopped for lunch at Tom's Farms. Turkey Burgers for us, peanut butter sandwich for the pup. Although it turned out that the boat needed a few repairs, it was a really nice day. 

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. - Ben Williams

This is Pexie. She's our nine month old American/German Rottweiler. She's a sweetie peetie. We love her to pieces.