Hearst Castle

One of the pools

The entrance to one of the guest cottages.
The main house
A little pond outside
The outside of one of the guest cottages
Part of the gardens (the pathway to the main house)
A view looking down on the pool
The Front of a guest cottage
Looking down on the ocean

While on our vacation to Pismo beach, we went to visit Hearst Castle. It is a pretty impressive building. It has some really cool pools (one of them is lined with gold tiles in the pool, and on the ground that we walked on), a ton of antiques (we are talking 1800 year old antiques), wood carved ceilings, wood carved walls, ancient artifacts and beautiful gardens. It was an interesting tour. The kids enjoyed it, but did not LOVE it. The main castle has 118 bedrooms, there are a couple of guest "cottages", one has 54 rooms and the other one has... I can't remember how many, but a lot. There is a caretakers "ranch house" and a few other impressive buildings on the site. It was fun to look at and see some things that we would otherwise not have the opportunity to see. There are FIVE different tours, and we went on the "beginners" tour which lasted approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes. We only saw a very limited amount of the buildings, and even less of the gardens, but it was still pretty cool. Travis and I had a talk with our kids on the way back from the castle about how cool the building was, but where would they rather live? Our house, or the castle? We talked about why our home was better than the castle and how worldliness could consume us. We talked about how wherever our family was, that is where our home was and that is where we wanted to be... it did not matter if we had to live in a tent, or if we were in a castle, as long as we were together- that was the important thing. The kids thought the buildings were pretty cool, but before Travis and I even started asking questions, they all said that they would not want to live there. It was a fun discussion and we enjoyed our time at Hearst Castle.

Pismo Beach- A ton of pictures

One of the caves
A wall, holding up the rocks?
Another cave
Family picture... the only one of the trip
One of the many huge rocks that were all over the beach

Looking up at our hotel, it is high!
The hotel stairs coming down to the beach
Looking down at the beach
This past weekend we went on a little mini-vacation to Pismo Beach. It was a super duper fun get-away. We all had a great time and did a lot of fun things. We were gone for just 2 nights, but it was well worth it. We left on Thursday night and drove to our hotel. It was a nice hotel, and when we got there (around 9:00pm) the kids were asleep, so we put them in their bedroom and shut the door, then Travis and I turned on a movie in our room and, well, we fell asleep before the show was over. I guess we were all pretty tired!!

The next morning the 2 youngest kids woke up nice and early, so I took them down to get breakfast and then to a walk on the beach. We searched for sea shells and played in the sand. We had a great time. About an hour later, Travis and the other 2 kids arrived at the beach- and then the fun really started!! The beach had a lot of cliffs and steep rocks, I took a picture of us looking down at the ocean from our hotel, the steep stairs going down to the beach, and a look up at our hotel from the beach. There were a lot of rocks and caves. The kids loved it. We looked for, and found, a ton of sea shells and sand dollars. The kids and Travis loved chasing the waves, and then running from the waves. Everyone ended up wet, of course! There were not a lot of people on the beach, but we did come across a few people, so we asked one to snap a picture of us as a family. We all really enjoyed the beach, even though the kids have been reading a lot about the ocean and the creatures that live in the ocean- so they were all a little nervous about running into a shark, or jelly fish, or some other creature- even Livee would ask before she got into the water if there were sharks this time. The water was way to cold to swim in, so most of our swim time was spent in the hotel pool, which, if you look closely, you can see was right on the edge of the cliffs, overlooking the ocean while we swam in the pool. It was really cool. The kids loved the heated pool and preferred swimming there, but they loved playing in the waves and playing in the sand, looking for sea shells. There is nothing like the ocean.

The most wonderful time of the year

I love this time of year!! The weather has been AMAZING for the past month... beautiful, sunny, not-too-hot days. We have been spending most of our time out doors. My kids have been loving it also. We have spent a lot of our time in the pool. I am thankful my kids are almost done with school for the Summer, they are not getting much homework sent home, so when they come home, we play hard! I enjoy just hanging out with the kids, relaxing, playing games, sleeping outside (with their dad), vacationing, sleeping in past 6:30am-all the good things that come with Summer. We had a hard winter this year... never ending. But now we are moving on to better things!! Here's to Summer!! :)

Rough Day

Some days can be a little overwhelming. Today is one of those days. When the kids got home from school I sat in the back and let them swim while I read. In the book I am reading "5 Spiritual Solutions for Everyday Parenting Challenges", I read a quote that helped me feel more OK with the parental slump I am in today.

"Parenting was God's role once, only His. We get to do it so we can become a little more like Him. It makes our life hard and deep. It drives us nuts, but it also makes us strong and good."

-Amen to that :)

Lost

Last week we had a scary experience at our house!! I think that this type of experience has now happened with all 3 of our girls.

Last week my husband had a day "off" from work. However, he had scheduled a phone conference from home on the morning that he had "off". His phone meeting was scheduled right during our morning school rush. That was fine. I have gotten the kids ready and out the door for school on my own many times. So, I was in the kitchen preparing lunches, getting breakfast made, and getting kids homework packed, spelling test review for my son, doing hair... all the usual stuff. Now, when I had started all of our morning business, Livee had been with us. She had started eating breakfast, but at some point she had gotten off her stool and headed out of the kitchen. She headed in the direction of our computer/tv room, where Travis was having a phone conference. I figured that she had went in with Travis and so I continued getting the kids ready for school. About 15-20 minutes later, I had all of the kids getting in the car for school and I asked the older kids to go and get Livee from the computer room. They came back and said she wasn't there. What?! Hmmmm, it's been really quiet and I haven't seen her. I called out her name a few times. No answer. I asked Gloria and Gray to run upstairs and look, while I looked downstairs . I ran straight to the pool (always a major worry), and then ran around the downstairs. No Livee. Not upstairs, not downstairs. At this point I interrupt Travis and tell him that Livee has been missing for 15-20 minutes. Has he seen her? He says no, drops the phone and runs outside. The big kids run outside and I stay inside, looking in cupboards and closets,under couches and under beds, yelling her name the whole time. About 10 minutes have passed, by now. Travis and the kids have run to the end of the property and I have searched everywhere. I had said a prayer at the beginning of this experience, asking for Livee to be safe- but now I am starting to freak out! I am crying and my body is shaking so hard and I am envisioning all sorts of bad things. I am upstairs in the attic (yes, looking in the attic) and thinking that I need to come downstairs and call the police. I am terrified, but I took a moment while I was in the attic to kneel down and say another prayer. In this prayer I ask Heavenly Father to help us find her immediately, I have looked every where that I can think too, I begged Him to help us find her quickly. I asked for her to be safe. Then I got up and ran to the door and when I got to the stairs, she was standing there, right in the middle, looking up at me. She smiled and said "hi mommy". I grabbed her and held her on the stairs, I practically collapsed and just held her and rocked her while I was crying. I was shaking so badly. I then thought of Travis and the kids out running around the property and up and down the street. I gathered my strength and ran outside with Liv and started yelling for Travis. We ran part way down the driveway (it's a really, really long driveway, you can't see the end of it from our house, and you can't see our house from the start of the driveway). I was yelling for Travis. When he finally heard me, he yelled "did you find her?", I yelled "yes" and in about 20 seconds the whole family was huddled around me and Livee, hugging and loving her.

Where was she, you ask? Well, she was hidden behind our lovely yellow drapes in our family room, coloring on a coloring book, because she was GROUNDED from crayons (for coloring on walls). She had taken a coloring book and crayons behind the drapes and was coloring. I am so thankful that she is OK. It was one of the worst moments of life!!

Brag page for Gloria

This is just a little bragging about Gloria, these kind of things need to be documented, so if you are not in the mood to read about how amazing and awesome my daughter is, stop reading now! But come on, who doesn't already know how amazing she is? :)

This past week Gloria was able to compete in the school spelling bee, again. I did not take a camera to the event, being the awesome mom that I am, but I thought that I should take a minute to document her great accomplishment.

Gloria has always been naturally good at spelling and reading. She has always enjoyed sitting down and reading for an hour, or more, at a time. We have never had crying and frustration over her spelling words. She always gets %100 on her spelling tests, and we don't ever waste time studying for her tests, because she doesn't need to study. When she was in the 2nd grade the teacher had her tested and said that she was reading at a high 4th grade level. We have not had her tested this year, but the school did some testing and put her into the GATE program here (Gifted And Talented Education). She is a bright girl.

This year in her class there are 2 girls that she has become great friends with, & they are just as smart as Gloria, when it comes to spelling (I could go on and on about how her math skills are top 10% in the nation and how she is even better at math and science than at spelling, but I won't :). So, Gloria has these 2 friends and they do everything together. They can get a little competitive when it comes to class work. So, when the class held the competition to see who would get to go to the school spelling bee (only 3 from each class), we went into it with our eyes wide open, knowing that she may not make it into the finals this year. That day Gloria got off of the bus and she was jumping up and down and smiling...... "Mom!! Mom!! Guess what?! I did it! I did it! I made it into the school spelling bee. I can't believe that I made it mom!"- Now, Gloria has made it into the school spelling bee every year, so I couldn't believe that she was SO SURPRISED. I asked why she couldn't believe it and she said (I will use fake names so anyone reading this won't know who we are talking about) "Amy and Ally are so much smarter than me, I thought that for sure they would be the ones to make it, but I did it. I made it in". (Amy and Ally were the alternates, but my little girl made it in. I was laughing inside that Gloria thinks her friends are smarter than her... maybe they are, but I really doubt it. Did Gloria study for her class spelling bee? No. Should she have? Yes. A girl can always be improving and learning. But she does get a little snotty, telling me that she KNOWS the words, she doesn't want to study. So, I think that it is good that she believes there are people smarter than her, AND that she hangs out with them, because I hope it pushes her to try harder. To not just let things come naturally and not push herself. We love Gloria. She is a smart girl. She came in 3rd place in the 3-4 grade school spelling bee, and so did not get to comete in the finals... but maybe this will push her into studying next year? We can hope!!

We love our girl!!!

The cutest things, ever!!

I know, aren't they so sweet. I love them. They are just so fun. On this particular day, everywhere we went people stopped us to say how darling they are. I replied to each and everyone one "I know. They are so stinking sweet". Their attitudes were also so sweet, as they curtsied and twirled repeatedly throughout the day for everyone who called them "Pretty Ballerina's". I love these girls. I hope they always stay friends, and that they always want to dress up for mommy!

Pig-tails

A few days ago, Cami asked me to put her hair into two pig tails. I said "sure". Then it was Liv's turn to have her hair done (she sat almost patiently watching Cami and waiting for her turn). She told me that she wanted to have "Pig-tails, too! Just like Sissy!". I told her that I did not think her hair was long enough. But she kept insisting on pig tails. So I told her we could TRY. And, BAM! We did it. We have been doing it every day since. It is so stinking cute! I love pig tails :)