Girls???? SERIOUSLY????!!!!

My son is four. FOUR YEARS OLD!!!! Remember that as I tell you my story.

A few days ago, I was up at the crack of dawn, as I normally am (a HUGE feat for anyone who knows me as I am NOT a morning person by ANY stretch of the imagination). I was stumbling around getting ready and franctically trying to get the kids ready as well, when Caiden comes up to me and declares that he wants to wear long pants.

Now it is still hot out by us, and we have had this discussion SO many times. He prefers to wear long pants, but it is HOT, and I want him to wear shorts so that he doesn't get overwhelmed by the heat. I am about to embark on my well rehearsed monologue on WHY we wear shorts when it is hot, when he stops me in my tracks with this very mysterious smile.

I look at him, sigh and say. "Ok, Caiden WHY do you want to wear long pants?"

He looks at me all seriously and says. "I want to wear long pants because I need to look good for the girls".

GIRLS!!!! Seriously!!!! He is FOUR YEARS OLD!!!!
Sigh. Since this was so out of the blue, I did not have a good come back for it, so Caiden went proudly to school in long pants. After school I asked him if the girls noticed and were they impressed with his long pants. He gave me a dejected look and said "No".

I asked him if he were hot today in his long pants. He said "A little". And low and behold the next morning, he put on shorts!!! So I guess the moral of the story is. Let your kids dress for the girls and when they don't notice BECAUSE THEY ARE ALSO FOUR, they will wear what you want them to wear the next day :)

Need a Kiya Fix?

Katie posted some pictures of her day with Kiya on her blog. Just follow the link that says Katie from my blog.

There is also an interesting movie that she posted on her blog. I watched the trailer...frankly I will wait until other people watch it first. If the firefighter husband dies in the movie...I am SOOO not watching it.

Let me know :)

Houston, We Have Plants!!

This past weekend, Dave and I worked our butts off...and of course I have the bruises and marks to prove it. *I will spare you the visual on those though*.

We moved one step closer to having a completely finished backyard. Remember, we just got the concrete and pool done. Then we moved onto some pool furniture and canopy. We now have the child safety fence up (I did not help with that, but Dave's dad came over for a day and helped install that, and a lot of other projects).

This past Saturday was FINALLY the day that we were able to go out and purchase some plants!! Now of course, we differed on our "vision" for the backyard, but let's just say (and pay CLOSE attention because you will not see it again) Dave's was more realistic and practical (did you catch it?). Yep that's right.

I wanted a tranquil, Japanese style garden feel without the tropical, and Dave was partial to the tropical plants. Well, he kindly allowed me to see the error of my ways, with the help of Juan, the ever friendly plant man down at Thompson's Building Materials. He patiently spent a day with us (about a month ago) walking through their vast nursery, kindly telling me why each plant and tree that I chose would not work for the pool. Bamboo...too messy, Pepper tree, will stain your pool, other trees will try to root where the water is and destroy the pool. This needs shade or a different environment, or that is just plain ugly (according to Dave). Regardless, he humored me all day, until I decided to declare defeat...of course with some conditions. I wanted to try to pick unique plants...as much as we could. Something that you don't see all the time.

Some of the plants we bought lined up by height (Dave's idea)

Anyway, we FINALLY were able to pick out plants and trees, and worked all day to put them in. We had quite a day ahead of us as we also had to install a drip system as well. Of course we went back to Juan to pick out our plants. After all, he did devote a day to me, politely crushing my vision. :) This is where the bruise part of the story came...I was viciously and senselessly attacked by plants. The cart we were using had a plastic bottom and broke and the BIG plants we had picked out came barreling out at my left leg, taking the skin with it. I have this huge bruise and big welt on it now. It hurt SO bad. Dave, of course, a pillar of empathy and compassion just told me to "stop whining and shake it off". Lord! Give me a moment!


The Queen Palm that attacked both myself and Dave

Later on that day, as we were installing the Queen Palm, he let go and the Palm went STRAIGHT into my shoulder, spiky leaves and all. It was like 10 needles going straight at my arm. Of course that area is quite tender as well and I have welts. Dave's response: "Sorry". Don't worry, faithful blog readers. Karma has a funny way of rearing it's ugly head. That vicious Palm got him back. Hard too! Right in the noggin. TWICE!!! I'm sure he has the welts to prove that too :) Of course I gave him PLENTY of sympathy :)

Here are some pictures of the final product. I noticed that I did not take any pictures of the plants and trees in the ground from the right (if you scan our yard facing the pool from left to right), so you will have to use your imagination.

If I HAVE to have a palm tree I want something different. This is my fox fur palm

The view from behind the slide

View from the left of the yard
View from the right by the spa towards the grotto

Plants by the spa
Plants by the spa with the palm tree Dave picked out

The Bonney Flood

We had our own little flood going on in the Bonney household...well at least not INSIDE the house, but surely outside in the front yard.

First, something happened to the sprinkler system that came with the house. It stopped working, and our grass started dying. Poor Dave had to work on his day off to install a new one, while I tried to breathe life into our lawn.

If you look closely you can see spots in the grass where it started dying

THEN we had a water line break in the front yard, destroying all of our plants. Ugh! This caused us more work and money than anticipated as he had to take out the WHOLE sprinkler system (except the piping in the ground in the lawn) and start over. We then had to buy all new plants, mulch and everything.

After days of working, it is finally done. Frankly it was done a few weeks ago, but I was tired and didn't feel like posting. Sorry :(

Our plants that we bought from a very overpriced nursery that we will not go to again.

Plant positioning

Caiden is such the big helper that he earned himself his very own big boy shovel. OH MY GOSH! He was SOOO excited. He was beaming!!! The problem is he keeps trying to put it on his fire jeep, but it doesn't fit. We told him, he could stand his shovel alongside Daddy's shovel. That did the trick :)

Caiden and his new shovel

And I Thought I Could Escape...

So as you all know I was whisked away to beautiful San Diego for my birthday. To do so, I took a day off work, and thankfully the following Monday was a Holiday. I thought I had done it. I had escaped the work birthdays...after all they celebrated on Friday and I wasn't there :)

Little did I know how wonderfully loyal and mischievous two of my employees are. Just get a load of what I walked into on Tuesday morning...

My cube...filled to the brim with balloons
Seriously...they blew each balloon up by hand...or mouth rather :)

That's right over 400 balloons all saran wrapped in my cube. It was BRILLIANT! And a lot of work. Shannon and her whole family (kids, fiance and all came and blew up balloons) and Josh all came in on the holiday to make my birthday bright.

Now of course I had to work! Let me tell you...getting in and out of my desk was quite the challenge. Adventurous and fun, but challenging nonetheless. I do have to say though, the balloons make wonderful back rests, but if you take conference calls....you should make sure you are muted, so if you move unexpectedly and pop a balloon, people don't make assumptions about what is going on in the office :P

I was SO surprised, and very touched. I am used to my birthday being forgotten and they made it both memorable and special. Thank you so much! :) I LOVED IT!!!

My Birthday!! :)

Dave and I arrived home on my actual birthday. I arrived home to a train cake that Caiden, Kiya and Gigi (my mom) had made for me.

Piling on the candles...

It was wonderful! They lit the cake on fire and then sang Happy Birthday. The best part: we ate a cake especially made and decorated for me by my kids. It almost made me forget that I just turned 32. :(

I SOO needed this Day 2!!

The next morning we woke up bright and early for our kayak adventure through the 7 caves. We were not really sure what to expect, but we were anxious for the adventure. Parking was fun with Dave's big truck. It was like parking in LA, where you are meant to have a VW bug or something small...NOT a giant truck. There was NO way I would have been able to park...I'm not good with spatial distances and this includes parallel parking.

We got to the Bike and Kayak shop where we were going to take the tour. They made us wear helmets because we were going into the caves. They thought Dave and I were funny...probably because we talked about how unlucky I am in general and how lucky he is in general. He even told the people that he used to have great luck, and then he met me. They thought that was funny. I don't think they believe us, but it's true. Less than 5 minutes later, Dave was animatedly talking to one of the guides (we had two), and clocked me pretty hard in the head with the paddle (ouch! That was BEFORE I put on the helmet).

Dave ready to go
And here I am...

We had to get a brief lesson on how to use a kayak and the paddles (protocol) before we launched off the beach. That was interesting. Dave and I were the ONLY people (other than the guides) who were in single Kayaks. Everyone else was in tandems. I have to admit when I saw the waves I was a little nervous. Also this is where everyone comes and swims, and NO ONE WATCHES OUT FOR THE KAYAKS. On the way back in, I nearly took out a little girl. I couldn't help it...a wave hit me sideways and off I was going. The mom was laughing...don't think I would have been. I was yelling..."I'm sorry, I'm sorry". The mom just wanted to know if I had fun. I think it was pretty comical, as some of the guides on shore started laughing. Not to be outdone, Dave had to make his own entrance...of course I told him he was a dork and the guides agreed.

The guy to the right is Pete...he is one of our guides

Dave and I...no one told me my helmet was crooked.

The kayak adventure was SOO worth it. It was amazing. We were only allowed to go in two of the caves, but that is because a kayak could not fit in the other ones (plus the lifeguards would fine you if you did). I didn't expect to see so much ocean life RIGHT next to us. There were 6-foot leopard sharks all around us. You could jump off the kayaks and swim with any of them too. We were chilling out in the ocean and all of a sudden to our left about 5 dolphins were breaching. The guides said that there were probably like 10 or so. Then there was this crazy Sea Lion, but he jumped in the water when we got too close. Dave wanted to touch him. I would have had the PERFECT picture, but Pete (the guide) put his oar in my picture right when I was going to snap it.

Once the Sea Lion got in the water...darn Pete :(
Here is A sea Lion, not sure if it is the same one...he returned, so Dave snapped this picture for me

Now I didn't get LOADS of pictures because I was holding the camera (believe it or not I was more stable, Dave nearly ate it on his way into the ocean). I brought a zip lock bag to hold it in, but of course I ripped a hole in the bag in my haste to take out the camera. From then on, I was paranoid. Remember the hiking incident?

One of the caves...these rocks are sandstone...there are houses built up there too...they said if San Diego got LOADS of rain, down the houses would go. Hmm...doesn't sound like a smart investment to me, especially as the average price for the hillside property was $15-25 million.

Dave chillin' in the kayak
Me in the kayak - helmet still on crooked
The birds with Dave
The birds take off

The caves were really cool, and there were birds everywhere. They would take off in flight, and you would want to look up because it was so pretty to watch. We were cautioned NOT to look up as the birds would let little bombs of their own drop down if you know what I mean. :P

Inside one of the caves
The view from inside the cave
Me in the cave, the guy in the water is Adam (the other guide) He was perched inside the cave and was supposed to assist us in turning around
He took our picture from the water...
Me paddling out of the cave
Me Still paddling...
Dave decided to go for a swim...of course getting out was much easier than getting back in. :) Good thing I had the camera *hehe*

After we went Kayaking, we decided to go to the Cave Store. Basically, it is a store that has a tunnel carved out of it by picks and chisels in the early 1900s. People now pay $4 to go down and look at it. There are 145 steps down into the sandstone and rock. There is an interesting view once inside. Apparently it is called "Sunny Jim Cave" as it resembles a character that from the early 1900s that Britain used in wheat advertisements or something.

The sign as you descend into the Cave Store
Dave walking down
Me standing
A large view of the Sunny Jim Profile - we were those kayakers earlier in the day
Dave inside the mouth of the cave
Me
Dave being silly and pretending to hold up the sandstone
me holding it up my own way :P
A broader view of the profile

After visiting the caves, we puttered around the museums and stores. This area is known for being very artistic, so we took in the sights until we were tired. We then decided to go in the spa back at the hotel, then take another nap (yep, you know it) and then go out to dinner at Jake's again. After dinner we walked on the beach. It was beautiful. The sand was so soft and was a dark grey and black. Instead of sea shells there were they really smooth stones and pebbles. The views were breathtaking, and the rocks were really smooth (it's sandstone). It was very relaxing. Again just what I needed :)

I thought this view was peaceful
With the guy surfing
Dave walking around, looking for sea life...
Smooth pebbles
they were everywhere
Dave and I with my new sunglasses
beautiful sunset
Dave and I
People walking around on the beach
And just a beautiful sunset to end the posting :) Don't you just want to be here...I DO! :)