Lazy Sunday - Jul 29

A few weeks back I was over at my parents house helping my dad with something in the garage. We came across a box full of stuff that I hoped existed but hadn't seen in years and just wasn't sure.

Lost treasure, if you will.

This box contained many of my favorite books that I used to read and re-read as a kid and I wanted so badly to have them for Chloe once she became old enough to appreciate them. Wonderful and complex novels you may ask? Nope. Comics. Go figure my favorite books were basically comics. I mean, not your typical like Batman or Spiderman comics, but my two favorites were "Garfield" and "Calvin & Hobbes".

Now, I know for sure I was older than 6 years old when I was most interested in these books(partially because I think a lot of the humor is well above the head of a 6 year old)but I decided to show them to Chloe and see what happened. Now, when I tell you she has been GLUED to these books, I mean it. She has a spot on the couch that she sits and just pours over the pages. She has spent literally hours reading the books cover to cover.

It's a start!


Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

Rockstar Chloe! - Jul 22

It's funny when life reminds you in strange ways that your daughter is actually...yours.

I can't sing. Like, I will sing something but I know I can't. Heather, I don't think I've ever heard her sing but by her evaluation, she can't either. LOL. Chloe..well she hasn't learned how to sing yet in a technical sense but that doesn't stop her from singing along to stuff. She's a kid, that's the beauty of being a kid. I think people can be taught how to sing but in general I think for the most part you are born with the "gift" and it's just a matter of tapping into it. I'm going somewhere with all of this.

Last weekend was our friend's daughter's birthday, Hailey, who turned 9. We found out a few weeks ago it was going to be a "rock-star" party and there would be karaoke and to start planning an outfit and thinking of songs to sing. Chloe, for 2-3 weeks all she would talk about is this rock-star party. Finally the day arrived and we all decided to have a go at the theme. I was excited to do some Karaoke but I probably should have realized that it was for the kids. LOL. Anyway, I remember vividly at my high school senior "overnighter" which was this big event they held at the school where literally all night long we played games, sang karaoke, goofed around, etc. That was the first time I ever performed a karaoke song and it was such a blast. It wasn't, however, the first time I had been on a microphone in front of a lot of people, that came earlier that same year in high school as well and I found out that I FREAKING LOVED IT. I think Chloe might have had this experience last weekend at just 6.5 years old because when I tell you she got on this karaoke machine and almost never walked away from it I am not exaggerating. She LOVED it. The best part about the whole thing was that the setup was a specific karaoke system that actually had an auto-tune feature built in and for those of you not familiar, auto-tune basically takes an out of pitch note and attempts to "correct" it so even if you are not a great singer, you sound like you are! If you are a good singer, then it doesn't "correct" as much (because it wouldn't need to) so in the end, you feel like a superhero when you are singing and it kind of sounds like you know what you are doing. =)

Anyway, we had a blast and Chloe got her first taste of super-stardom..long road ahead of us if she plans to be a singer but still plenty of fun nonetheless.

Have a great weekend, folks~
-B

(Super) Hot Danville Nights! - Jul 15

I would like to personally welcome back SUMMER to our lives. This week has been hot as...well..pretty darn hot in the upper 80s and 90s. Sweating has been one of my past times this week. LOL

We have had a busy week that essentially started last Friday and through the weekend right up until today. Last Friday we drove up to Sacramento for my brothers Graduation from the fire academy. It was really hot. Over the weekend, I photographed a wedding on Saturday and it was hot but Chloe would attend 3 separate birthday parties over the weekend, ALL HOT. So to continue our trend in all things hot, Thursday night we attended the annual "Hot Danville Nights" car show. My dad has always brought his Triumph but this year 2 of his friends both purchased some old hot rod/muscle cars to join in with the reliving of their youth. Thursday night was particularly hot as it has been all week however for the first time in however many years, they were able to park on the opposite side of the street and we were in the shade so that helped in slowing down the melting of our skulls.

Always nice to check out some cool cars and Chloe gets her annual photo with Grandpa and Grandpa's car.

Have a great weekend, folks~

-B

California Screamin! - Jul 8

Annnnd we're back ladies and gentlefolks.

Last week I found myself a little but stuck without a computer or device capable of acting like an actual computer to make even a simple blog post. Once again my photo hosting site let me down for basically blocking me from accessing the buttons I need in order to get the links to paste into this blog software. Oh well!

So as you may have guessed, last week we found ourselves once again making a trip down to Disneyland. This trip would be quite different from basically all the other trips we have taken due to the fact that we would be traveling down mid week and hitting the park at the end of the week. Heather was not able to get off work Wednesday until mid day so we had planned to drive down and just go all day Thursday & Friday but we had no idea what would be in store for us on the way down! I still have not been able to find out exactly what happened, but it seemed as if the very moment we started to ascend the grapevine, traffic came to a 100% stop. Our original arrival time was supposed to be somewhere around 9 or 930pm, we did not arrive to the hotel until 11:45pm. We were in 1mph stop and go traffic in 100 degree temperature for like an hour and a half. It was basically the most miserable traffic I have ever been stuck in...ever. We woke up bright and early the next day(lol) and hit the parks.

I personally only had 2 things on my agenda that I wanted to see or do. In the California park they updated the "Soarin' over California" ride to now "Soarin'"over the world so I wanted to do that and they have been running the new "Frozen" live show in the big theater(also in the Ca park) so I wanted to see that. I know what you are thinking, YOU WANTED TO SEE THE FROZEN SHOW? YES. YES I DID. Let me tell you, IT WAS FREAKING AWESOME. I'm pretty sure anyone reading this has seen the movie Frozen no less than 2 times(and if you had kids probably 10 times at least) and you are probably sick to death of it. Well, I am here to tell you, the live show was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. The live performances were so good...the music...and singing...and choreography...it was Disney magic like I have not seen in a long time. If you go to Disney California Adventure, GO SEE IT. Thank me later.

Chloe had been telling us the whole trip down that she fully planned on going on Splash Mountain. Our last trip I tried to get Chloe to go on the big "upside down" roller coaster "California Screamin" and she really did not want to. This time, I knew she would be ready. So for Chloe, the two new attractions that she tried (AND LOVED) were both "California Screamin" and "Splash Mountain". If you ask her now what her favorite ride is..she will tell you "California Screamin". She definitely screamed and laughed the whole time. We did it twice (not back to back) and Heather and I were done. Chloe wanted to go again. lol.

After a few days in the park we actually continued on down to San Diego on Saturday to spend some time with our friends that live down there. We spent half the day at the beach, went to dinner and just hung out at their house after. All in all, a great little getaway(aside from all the unnecessary time in the car). We'll be back, I'm sure of it.

Have a great weekend, folks~

-b

Oops, out of town! Jul - 1

Well, technology is failing me. We are traveling this week and all I have is my phone. No laptop, no tablet, just my phone. The site I host photos on, won't give me the proper links I need from the images to post them here via the mobile app and their website won't give me the regular site as a workaround. It's 2016 folks, can we please have some support for our phones? Lol.

So I Can't post photos, it is what it is. If you're bored, scroll back and find a Disneyland post and look at those pictures and just pretend you're seeing what we did. Oh, Also, pretend it's 900 degrees outside in those pictures. Nailed it.

Have a great weekend and a safe 4th of July~
-B