My husband’s parent’s visited for almost two weeks, it was their second visit since we moved to LA and we had such a wonderful time! Last year we took them to Disneyland, some of our favorite parks, Hollywood and a few of our favorite local places. After another year of homeschooling (and another year of living here) we took them to a totally different set of places. We went to Santa Monica because it’s the kid’s favorite place and we showed off the Heal the Bay Aquarium, Venice Beach, Aquarium of the Pacific, Crafted at the Port of LA, The California Science Center, The La Brea Tar Pits and The LA Zoo. We touched moon jellyfish, starfish, anemones, urchins, hammerhead sharks, and sting rays! The kids used a pulley system to lift a truck and we all saw the space shuttle Endevour! We also of course watched Wee One #1 do his jiujitsu classes and Wee One #2 do her dance lessons and Wee One #3 was more than happy to show them around one of her favorite places, the Aquarium of the Pacific. I’m still recovering from it all, but it was so great. There was a lot of barbecuing together, late nights full of laughter and lazy mornings full of sleeping in. My husband and I even managed to get out one night with our friends to a fair. We fit school in around all the adventuring and the kids got to bring their grandparents to homeschool check in day!

Megan, over at Brassy Apple mentioned on Facebook last week that there are 15 Saturdays until Christmas. I? Exploded. I’m just starting to get hyped about Halloween! It does remind me that there is a lot of knitting and cross stitching to be done so maybe I should stop drooling over patterns on Ravelry and get knitting!

Learning about seahorses at Heal the Bay Aquarium, Venice Beach, Touching moon jellyfish, starfish, a sea cucumber and a sting ray at Aquarium of the Pacific, 2 Market Street cookie cutter shop at Crafted at the Port of LA, the LA Zoo, Lomita fair, (not so) Wee One #1 training at jiujitsu, and Wee One #2 mastering her middle splits!

The short week after a holiday weekend is usually pretty laid back, but I’m hyped for Friday anyway. This week started off really slow, spending Monday with my husband and our littles in our new backyard plotting what we want to plant and what else we want to do with the space. Tuesday my homie Jillian and I packed up our littles and hit the thrift shop. I swear on a stack of Teen Vogues that when we got in her car, this song was playing. Obvy, the universe wanted us to go thrifting. It was an excellent trip! Wee One #2 got 3 dresses and a pair of pink camo pj pants and Wee One #3 found 4 adorable dresses (2 even had sparkles). We also ended up with a hysterical purple piggy bank that I hope we keep forever (read: Dear Wee One #3, please don’t break this epic find), some cute glasses and a crazy noisy car toy they both love. Of course they love it. Why wouldn’t they? I was a little bummed to not find any sweet ironic tshirts for Wee One #1 and though I did find some really silly sleepwear to scare my husband with, in the end closet space for clothes I will actually wear won and I didn’t buy it – though I did get a photie of it! It’s a pink zebra adult sized onesie! There are even little hearts on it! Look!! Now that I see it on the blog, it looks like the girl version of the Batman onesie in the Macklemore / Ryan Lewis video and I regret not buying it, if not for me then for my girl Vanessa. If you’re reading this Nessa, I’m going back for it! <3

Wednesday we ditched our plans to go out in favor of hanging out at the pool and making these ice pops (and a few other recipes we froze and ate in record time thanks to my Fastpop Popsicle Maker). It’s so rad. I just store it in my freezer, so when I want to use it, it’s ready for me. Usually, ice pops are ready in less than 10 minutes with this, but dairy-based ice pops take a bit longer, which is kind of a no brainer if you’ve ever made ice pops before.

This recipe isn’t even a recipe really. It was just 1 cup of milk and 1/3 cup Nutella. Blend till totally combined and pour into your ice pop molds. Or you can even use Dixie cups and just peel the paper off when they’re frozen and ready to serve.

Another variation we had luck with was 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup Cool Whip and 1/3 cup Nutella. Equally amazing.

After we devoured these, we made a bunch of fruity ones! I will post last day of school pictures of all of them next week even though technically today was Wee One #1’s last day. Today was also officially the last dance class for the Tiny Tots team for their month-long summer break and my girls were pretty hyped about it. I mean Wee One #3 was rocking 3 ponytails and one stemmed from a french braid. During class today, she was hilariously distracted and really highlighted her kitten-like attention span. I found myself saying things like ‘you have to listen to Miss Alex, come on point your toes / spin / open your arms’ etc. So I asked her if she wanted to come back to the class and she said she just wanted to watch her sister or go home and be with Daddy. Ok so, this is when I step back and remember that no matter how adorable she is in a tutu, she’s 4 years old and that if she isn’t into it, she isn’t into it and I will not push her to do something just because it’s cute. Truthfully, she’s into dancing around in her outfit and she likes the studio because the music is loud and there is so much more space – she’s just not big on the whole ‘class’ aspect of it. 😉 I think we’ll take a break for six months and see what happens.