Stratford Family

well you’ve probably never hear me refer to PLou as that before! but she is napping like a little angel right now without her paci! it took some insistence from mom – but she is doing it!

yesterday started with a trip to the dentist the girls did great, but Dr. Susan (who is absolutely amazing) was adamant that PLou gets rid of the paci’s, we knew this day was coming and it should have happened quite awhile ago. it is hard to disrupt the pace of things when everybody sleeps, but we’ve decided to be strong and pack up all the paci’s to send to cousin Ava who will be arriving shortly. we took a trip to downtown LA to meet a friend for lunch and the girls got some pretty amazing treats for being such troopers at the dentist – yes i get the irony of a sugar treat after the dentist office.

these girls love sweets just like their mama, the Nickel Diner did not disappoint!

The first night sans paci was less than ideal with a post 9 fall asleep, up for an hour from 12:30-1:30 and then up for good at 6, wish us luck for more zzz’s in our future.

Last week went spent a fun day at the Pirate Park (not its official name) in Stanton. These little splash parks are soooo great! I wish the budget was such that we could even hope for one in the LBC, maybe someday. The kiddos had great fun splashing and climbing on the pirate ship structure. It was one of the first of our HOT days so it was nice to get wet, although I could have used a bit of splashing myself as the heat was really getting to me by the early afternoon.
Here ares some photos of the adventure:

Look at the cute curl in PLou’s hair – I hope it stays and doesn’t get frizzy like her mama!

My sister Amber is prego with her second little girl set to arrive in just a months time, so of course we needed to celebrate! I decided a tea would be a fun theme and it was a success! I made 4 types of tea sandwiches: ina’s egg salad, chicken salad, veggie pesto & cucumber mint. I enlisted the help of a friend and fab baker Gerry to make the scones and then of course we had lots of yummy treats! The tea was tasty; made better by vintage demitasse tea cups. I was busy being the hostess and didn’t get to take to many photos – but here are a few:

a baby shower is always more fun with a tiny baby in attendance to coo at

I love to make these Madeline’s

Stacey brought these gorgeous french macaroons from Paulette’s in Bev Hills

HUGE congratulations to this growing family – can’t wait to meet the newest addition!

Now it’s time to share our photos from the second part of our trip in Idaho. The 6 hour drive from Seattle was pretty easy as we were all exhausted from touring the city. Although Pfeiffer didn’t sleep and had a few emergency running to the bathroom trips on the way we made it to Hope just in time for dinner. Our last trip to Idaho was three years ago when C was 18 months and I was prego with P. On that trip we had a lot of fun, but we tried to do too much, driving all around seeking out fun destinations. This trip was the opposite, we stayed at the house and played on the dock and just relaxed – it was so fantastic! We spent lots of time on and enjoying the view of Lake Pend Oreille.

I did a lot of this:

and the most relaxing activity – paddling out and then laying in the little boat letting the current bring me back to the dock

the girls did a lot of rock collecting, driftwood collecting, moss collecting…..more fun than noisy plastic toys!

we said hello to so many cute deer, there are certainly more deer than people who reside in Hope, they came to say hello

the girls had lots of fun drawing and playing with Uncle Jeff, and I thoroughly enjoyed his cooking, which meant I didn’t even have to cook one dinner!

the neighbor let us borrow his canoe and we had some fun adventures paddling around to the little rock beaches – I’m happy to report my shoulder held up to its first real physical test post surgery, I was a little sore, but just muscle sore, no shoulder pain!

and the most fun part for all of us was playing in the water off the dock

we had such a wonderful trip – most of all thanks to GiGi for sharing her gorgeous home with us so we could share in the beauty and relaxation.

thanks for the fun Idaho, we’ll be back!

And now for the slideshow:

The first leg of our adventures was a quick and easy flight from Long Beach to Seattle – PLou’s first airplane trip and she did great. We took a taxi to the hotel and were off adventuring by noon. We stayed at the Ace – a small boutique minimalist hotel with a really nice staff who seemed amused by our noisy children rather than annoyed (which is more than we could have hoped for!) Our first day took us to the Sculpture garden where Charlotte took her notepad and pencil around drawing all the sculptures.

After some lunch and a rest at the hotel we headed out to Pike’s Place Market and a walk to meet Jeff who had arrived on a later flight.

That evening we went to the pizza spot across from our hotel, which was pretty tasty and then headed down to the space needle to check things out. They had little carnival rides awaiting us tourists and the girls and I took a carousel ride. Then we walked down to the Frank Gehry designed music museum, it was closed but provided a great backdrop to a song and dance number by the girls.

And then walked the maze painted on the ground for about 10 minutes.

A busy but very fun first day!

We decided to take a Duck Tour on our second day to see all the sights. Unfortunately the sun comes out in Seattle around 2pm, which we didn’t really prepare for but we had a fun and frigid tour of the downtown area and Lake Washington.

After our tour we searched for a warm spot to have lunch and ended up at Bambino’s a super yummy wood fired pizza spot. I’m still dreaming of the white pizza with olive oil ricotta and mozzarella – simple and delicious! Speaking of food I should mention that our hotel was across the street from an amazing bakery with the best cookies, scones, and treats – Macrina. My souvenir from the trip is their cookbook so I hope to re-create some of the yumminess.

We recharged with a nap and ventured to the Downtown Library designed by Rem Koolhaas. If you haven’t noticed we love modern architecture and this building lived up to the hype! I could have wandered in this library for hours, expect for my two noisy children who no doubt disturbed all 10 floors of people studying. The children’s area was vibrant and fun to explore. The rest of the floors have a slightly inclined ramp that you can follow up to the top – love this!

We took a bus to the Capitol Hill area to visit a park and pretend we were locals on the playground. The park just happened to be across the street from Molly Moons for ice cream – the flavor options were fantastic!  Charlotte’s Raspberry Hibiscus sorbet was the best, but I enjoyed my Salted Carmel with chocolate sauce as well!  After our treat and took a taxi back to the hotel.

Greg and I got to leave the girls with Uncle Jeff and have a mini date night down the street from our hotel at Black Bottle for a nice bottle of wine with a view and good people watching. It would have been perfect if those little monkeys would have gone to sleep, but we did get to finish our wine just in time for Jeff to call us in for re-enforements.

Our last full day in Seattle began with a trip to the Children’s Museum, where we took in story time, the cultural exhibit and an arts and crafts time.  We met up with Jeff at the Ferry station and headed over to Bainbridge Island for some exploring. Pfeiffer was disappointed to discover the Ferry Boat did not actually have any any Fairies on it – sweet little girl! The island was quaint and we enjoyed the time on the water to and from Seattle. Jeff picked us some blackberries, we walked through the little town, got some candy from the candy shop and enjoyed the sights of the island.

The girls had a great time watering some plants with these watering cans.

On the trip back to Seattle I decided we must enjoy some fish ‘n chips before departing the next day, so Greg put his iphone to good use and found us the perfect pub just off the ferry landing. We discovered that a pub is a great place to take the kids to dinner nice and noisy  - just like us. We enjoyed the tunes, fish ‘n chips, and cold beer at the Owl and Thistle.

Below is a slide show including the above and the rest of our adventures in Seattle – thanks for stopping by to share in the fun of part 1 of our trip. Adventures in Idaho coming soon…

I’ve got a lot of photos to sort through and share with you our over documented trip to the Northwest. We spent 3 days touring Seattle and we were tourists for sure, zooming around the city to lots of fun destinations. We LOVED Seattle! More to share on that in a couple of days.

For now I will simply share our view from Greg’s Grandma’s house on Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho:

So gorgeous to wake up and spend all day looking at the Lake – it was relaxing, peaceful, and restoring. Now I’m not one to get to super hokey about such things, but I do feel like this trip was good for my Soul. Living in the hustle and bustle is fun, but it sure felt good to take in some of nature’s beauty (with all the luxuries of home)! I am already planning to take the girls and spend a month there next summer.

and now for the LAUGH:

I asked Greg to take a cute pic of me and the girls, well – we got a cute one,  I just didn’t plan on getting peed on in the process! Ah the joys of motherhood! Thankfully we were inches from the lake for a good rinse.

Enjoy!

The girls both completed a 2 week swim program at Long Beach State where they had a lesson everyday for 2 weeks. I was hoping for great break throughs in their skills, but no major improvements to report. They both love the water and can’t get enough of jumping in or being tossed around in the pool, the girls did great and had loads of fun. That’s the point ..right? I sometimes get anxious as the competitive swimmer in me wants them to be doing their strokes and making forward progress, but I kept my toosh in my chair and let them have their fun without me interrupting (well maybe I did just once, but I was very tactful!). I don’t even want my girls to be serious swimmers unless it is what they REALLY want to, swimming is such a demanding sport – on the kid and the parents! Any other swimmers out there have that feeling?

Splish Splash!

I used a fast shutter speed to try to capture all the detail and splash of the water, I think they came out pretty fun.

I got to spend a lovely weekend with some friends at Gigi’s desert house. We did a lot of relaxing, talking, eating, drinking and even mixed in a little dancing. It was a wonderful little break despite the blazing temps. I was even a bit too relaxed to take many photos – thankfully my friend Andrea did a great post about it on her blog with lots of fun photos capturing the weekend.
This one pretty much sums it up for me:

The multi-colored print is my fab new swimsuit!