Category: Us

Hello!

The one thing I wanted to do while in LA, was to take a bus tour of Hollywood Hills. So today was the day we got on our little van for a 2hour tour! Here are a “few” highlights!

This is Charlie Hunnam’s House. He was in Sons of Anarchy, Pacific Rim and King Arthur.

The house doesn’t look like much from the front…

But check out the back!

Johnny Galecki from the Big Bang, bought this house from Ben Stiller

Katy Perry’s House. She bought the one next door for her sister.

Bruno Mars

The back of his house.

Richard Simmons.

Check out his mailbox!

Keanu Reeves.
The guide told us those aren’t his cars because he doesn’t drive one. He ha a motorcycle and a helicopter.

His house from above. All we can see is the little walk way on the right.

Leonard DiCaprio
This is what we see from the street. There was a house built in his view to the city, so he bought it and tore it down.

This is what his house looks like now.

Jennifer Aniston bought this one and is remodeling it.

View from above.

Quinten Taritinos House.

Sometimes you will see the famous “P**** Wagon” from the movie Kill BIll in the driveway. Not today.

Johnny Depp’s house. There was a gal walking up to his house. Wonder who it was!??!? He actually has 5 houses in this one area! I learned that stars DO NOT like their view taken away from them!

Al Pacino’s House. 3 of the last 5 times the tour guide passed by his house, he was sitting in the chair right inside the gate. Not today, though.

Now, this was the highlight of the tour.

Justin Timberlake’s house!
We started with the security cameras and large trees. The tour guide shared that as they get more popular, the trees get higher as do the fences. He pointed out many fences and gates that had welded pieces on top of the original piece! Justin has very tall trees…must be popular!

Here’s a view of the entire house. All we can see is the little area on the far right.

And here is his garbage! I wonder what wonderful things I cold have found if I was allowed to exit the tour van. I have been know to dumpster dive and find a few treasures!

Wow! An that was from 10-12pm!
After the tour, we headed to lunch at the In and Our Burger! Yummy!! Then it was off to the Hollywood Walk of Stars and Madam Tussauds Wax Museum. Stop by Friday to see all the “Stars” we met at the museum!!

 

Welcome Back!

Last week, we took off for Spring Break and headed to sunny Beverly Hills, California! What a week!! We did A LOT, but didn’t even make a crack in all that you can do out there.

Our first full day in California, I woke up to texts sharing how it was snowing here. Honestly, there’s nothing better than waking up to the sunshine knowing it is icky back at home. Makes getting away even better!

Before we headed on our first adventure, a Starbucks was in order.

There is a Starbucks on every corner. In Santa Monica alone, there are 22 Starbucks in their 8.4 miles. There are over 150 Starbucks in the LA area. Even with those options, we still seemed to be on the wrong side of the road when we would find a store. Why not just turn around? It’s definitely not that easy to do in LA traffic. Finding the next one is much easier!

As soon as we had some energy, it was off to Santa Monica. About a 20 minute drive due to it being a Sunday morning! The next time we went it took over an hour to get there because of traffic!

We arrived to Santa Monica and it was fogged in…which lasted all day. Not a good hair day for this mama. This place was packed and I mean packed with people.

We needed to get a few pictures of the boys “seeing” the Pacific Ocean for the first time! They were pretty excited.

Then the shoes were off and into the water to wade. It was super duper cold BUT, there were lots of people swimming in it! Brrrrrr!!!!

It’s amazing how two boys can entertain themselves by running in and out of the water for 30 minutes. :O

After the impossible task of trying to get the sand off the feet…we walked on the pier and check out some rides, views and souvenirs.

I must admit I did not realize the Route 66 ended at the Santa Monica Pier!

This is the view of the ocean looking from the pier. A bit foggy!! Jason looked at me and said, “Don’t those swimmers know there are sharks out there!” He was serious.

A look at the amusement park at the pier. We didn’t ride anything that day. Lines were long.

We did walk to the end of the pier and looked out onto…fog. There were a lot of people fog watching.

We stopped for a few quick games at the arcade.

Zoltar did not tell Jacks fortune because he was out of order…of course!

After the pier, we walked up to the beach area. Let me share there are many interesting people in this area. Very free spirit.

These 5 boys were running around and joining in on the street performers and dancing. This little girl is on the dolphin statue. The 5 boys were all “worshiping” her. Her dad, whose hand can be see on the left side of the picture, had absolutely no idea..he was focused so much on his phone! Soon, they were off to their next “performance.”

This is the Santa Monica Beach. It’s like Venice beach without all the muscle. There’s all these little work out areas, like a huge jungle gym. (This isn’t my picture)

The boys loved these rings!

Click on the link below to see Jack working the links!

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This entire area was filled with people doing yoga stunts! I decided it would be a good thing just to watch and not participate.

What was amazing, is that we left Santa Monica, drove about 10 minutes and the sun was shining! Who knew!!

Side Note: The homeless population is very high in LA. It raises about 10% every year, which was very apparent in this area and quite an eye opener to the boys. Substance abuse and mental illness is also high in this area Obviously many of the homeless are dealing with these issues.

 

Welcome Back!

Did you know today was National Napping Day!! I can’t believe it. This is better than Christmas! I have permission to nap on and off all day today! I need to wear my new comfy napping tee I just purchased!

And when I wake up, I will change into my old comfy napping tee.

I am so excited! And who doesn’t need a nap after losing an hour this weekend! Permission to nap…what could be better? INTERNATIONAL napping day?

Hello

I can’t believe that our beloved Moose has been gone for two years already. I still miss her everyday. My heart was heavy when writing this post because I miss her so much, but light because I have such good memories of her in our life.

She was never very far away from me…

Loved her boys!!
Though she took up most of the bed!!

That’s why Sam had her sleep on the floor!

Always in the middle of the picture with a smile!!

Sleeping buddies.

When I would be upstairs in my craft room, so would she!

Smiling for the camera!

Giving a smile with Jack!

Having her friend Esther over for a visit. Esther and Moose are now together chasing tennis balls!!

Moose laughing..HAHHAHA I’m touching you!!

In the Spring, she would be outside with me while I planted flowers. The first spring she was gone, I didn’t pant many flowers. I just missed her being around too much.

Loved going with us where ever we went!!

Would even come prepared for the weather!

Telling us she loved us!

Miss you…

Love you…

Welcome Back!

I was helping Jack write a persuasive paper for school about why kids should be allowed to have chocolate milk at school. I didn’t know this was such a hot topic, but wow, it sure is! Anyway, he had a statistic to include that stated, “45% of kids.” He said, “I am going to write that as about half the kids.” I said, “Hmmm..do you think that is ok?”

He came back with, “Well, that’s not really a lie. Just an alternative fact.”

The kids are listening…and hearing.

Welcome Back!

Yesterday I shared with you how we took out the steps out and walled up my laundry room entry way. Today I am going to share with you how we have changed the opposite end of the room including a different way into the laundry room.

For this picture, I am standing by the steps  and taking a picture of the opposite end of the basement.

As you can see the wall is open to the laundry room and not at the other end, but now that is reversed.

There is a wall over the entry to the laundry room and it it open at the opposite end. The door in the picture leads to the basement on the addition side. If you look at the floor, you can see the outline of an “entryway” to the laundry/storage area.

A closer look at the “board” which is where the door to the laundry room will now be. The door to the addition in on the left.

When you walked through the original door into the laundry room, you would see this…On the other side of the wall contains a few shelves.

Standing by the wall, you can see the door that opens up to the other side of the basement. There are storage shelves on the left and more storage on the right.

The storage shelves looking so clean!! You can see how the door opens into the other room.

Here’s a view of the storage area looking back towards the laundry room from the door. Notice the shelves behind the wall that you could see in the previous pictures. Also, there isn’t much room between that wall and the furnace to walk into the laundry room.

As you can see, when you would open the door from the addition, you would walk right into the storage shelves. Not good.

We tore out the shelves and part of the wall and built an “entry way” that will lead to the new finished area of the basement and a door to the storage/laundry. This is the new view from the door…no more walking right into the shelves!

Stepping into the entry way, you can see that we tore out the other wall that separate the laundry and the storage. So much easier to move around in there. The big blue thing is for our well. If you look on the floor, you can see the original wall lines.

This is the view looking back from the laundry room. The shelves use to be on the left, but it is now an entry way.

Here is a view of the laundry room with the wall knocked out.

This is a view from the laundry room side of where the entry way once was and where the steps were. Now all walled up. The big covered item are our suitcases piled up! Dry wall makes everything sooooo dusty!!

So that is the end results of the first two weeks of remodeling the basement. By the end of this week, we hope to have the painting starting! Yea!!  That means the light is at the end of the tunnel!!

Hello!

Our house projects are coming along. The sunroom is on hold at this time due to pieces being built and painted. Meanwhile, the workers have moved to our unfinished basement to finish it! Here’s a little overview with a “few” pictures.

The largest change was we took out the original steps that lead to the basement. When we added on the addition, we included an additional way into the basement, so this wasn’t a big issue, just one that I need to get use to.

Here is the door leading to our basement. Kitchen is on the right and sunroom is on the left.

A look up the stairs from the basement.

You can see the stairs are pretty steep and there was a discussion at one point about tearing them out and rebuilding to make them less steep or changing the steps to have a landing at the bottom.

A look into my fancy laundry room!

Next we took out the railing. We were a bit apprehensive about knocking out the wood plank that the railing was attached to at the bottom. The workers took turns hitting the pole to see if it was a support beam. Glad to report, the beam was there to hold the railing and the pencil sharpener.

Shortly, I came home to this…

With good reason. When you opened up the door, the steps were gone! It was a very weird feeling opening a door to nowhere!

Never fear, in a few days, we had a wood floor, which will soon be turned into a pantry with shelves.

So this is a before picture of the steps area…

And this is how it looks as of last weekend!

As you can see, we have also put a wall up where the entry way to the laundry room and created a different way into that area. Stop by tomorrow to see that transformation!

 

Hello!

For those of you who have asked about how Jack is doing, thanks! Last week, the flu hit him hard. He got sick on Tuesday night…one moment he was good, then the next time he was sick and I mean sick! (Yuck!!)

(Laying close to the bathroom)

But, the bonus was that Jason was actually home! I think this is the first time he has been home when Jack got the flu, in years…seriously! Anyway, Jack slept all day on Wednesday due to a fever. He was up from 1:30-4:45 in the afternoon and then slept until Thursday morning!

Thursday he laid in bed and watched movies. Such as old Scooby Doo movies that sucked me in too! Who was the real abominable snowman?

Friday he actually got up and about in small bouts, but his fever came back on Friday night…so back to bed and he slept hard!! Saturday morning he woke up and said, “I fell like myslef again!” Phew!!

Right now I think it would be safe to come to our house…everything is sanitized, wiped down, essential oils out and being applied and we have lots of soap for hand-washing!!  Thank goodness for warm weather for airing out the house and in my world, opening windows kills all germs!

Welcome Back!

So this happened…

Yep. We have the stomach flu in our house. Jack got it. The dreaded and hated stomach flu which means throwing up. Yuck. Like Sam said, “No one likes to throw up,” as he was washing his hands for the 100th time (me too!) Yesterday, Jack spent the day in bed sleeping due to a fever. I have washed and disinfected as much as possible.

Cross fingers that it doesn’t spread to anyone else.