So You Think You Can Dance is BACK!

Set those Tivos!

Twittering

I've been experimenting with Twitter. Don't know about Twitter? There is a great YouTube video explaining Twitter in plain English here. I've been learning about it for work, and have found it strangely addictive. You can see my Twitter feed here: http://twitter.com/laurelh. Looks like a lot of companies are starting to use Twitter and I have someone on my team who is looking at ways we can use it at Intuit. So I figured I'd better get up to speed! If you are a twitter user, let me know so I can follow you!

Those goofs!

It must be a sign of a good marriage when you can pick each other's teeth!

Dinner party for Andrea and Craig

Once again I find myself a bit behind in my blogging. Two weeks ago, on Sunday May 4th, we threw a dinner party for Andrea and Craig, in honor of the upcoming arrival of baby #3, Maggie. If I do say so myself, it was a huge success! I know I had fun, at least!

Here are Andrea and Craig, our honorees:

I cleared out the living room so that I could fit two big round rented tables for dinner. I had the party catered, my first experiment with catering (it was heavenly!) Here we are at dinner:

Our special project during the evening was to compile a special Book of Wishes for Maggie. Each guest selected something they wanted to give Maggie (mine was Common Sense, as an example), and wrote up a little card with an explanation. Jeff took portraits of each of the guests which I will include next to their wish in a special book. In a future post I'll put a few of the portraits of our illustrious guests.

Mother's Day

I awoke this morning to a wonderful array of gifts and cards! Julia made that flower covered frame on the left at preschool, and the card right next to it. The mug in the middle has an absolutely adorable picture of the kids on it, taken and created by Wendy. It will be my new favorite mug forever! She also put together a very special card created with all kinds of adorable pictures of my kids that she took. The hydrangias are from Jeff, along with the artwork worthy card at the far end which was georgous and so sweet. Wowser, I'm so blessed!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there!

Nana visiIts

I am a bit behind in my blogging! Last Friday and Saturday, Nana came for a visit, and we had a ball hanging out with her for the weekend. These pictures are from our trip to the park where we had a picnic by the duck pond. The kids ended up taking a wade in the stream. It was so much fun and we just loved having Nana here. The kids were so excited, and absolutely exhausted by the end of her visit.

Brunch at Moms

Retirement is treating me nicely. My Mom's retirement, that is! She invited us over to brunch to celebrate Jeff's birthday and prepared an amazing spread. Everything was homemade, and delicious. My two favorites were the Monkeybread, a wonderful concoction of cinnamon, sugar, pecans and biscuts, and an old family recipe for Banana Bread. Yum! She also prepared an elaborate easter egg hunt for the kids. I managed to catch them all in one shot in the picture below. So much fun! Thank you, Mom!

Garden inspiration

This is the season of pretty flowers, and I've found some pretty ones lately. The first two pictures are from my Mom's garden. She does wonders with pots! The last two are from our trip to Calistoga a couple of weeks ago.

Daddy's Birthday

Jeff celebrated a birthday last Friday, on April 18th. We had a quiet little celebration with the kids, complete with cupcakes. See Jeff, below, blowing out the candle with Julia's help, and Andrew looking on.

Then we left the kids with Adela, our wonderful housekeeper/backup-nanny (shown in the pic below), and I took Jeff out for dinner at a place that has live jazz on Friday nights. (Jazz is a new passion of Jeff's.)

Julia LOVES cupcakes!

Nothing better than a big box to play in!

Calistoga Getaway

Ahhhh, a getaway! Just what we needed, and we sure picked a great spot for it. We spent two nights at the Calistoga Ranch. We missed the kids, but it was nice to have a break from the constant caregiving.

Here I am enjoying what was perhaps the best feature of our room: an indoor-outdoor fireplace. This was taken just this morning as I was enjoying my coffee in the morning sun.

Many many thanks to Mom & Dad and Wendy for staying with the kids and allowing us to have this precious getaway!