My 30th birthday!!!!!

Isn't it weird how in your early twenties you think that turning 30 was the equivalent of aging beyond 80? What a load of crap! The thirties are where it's at, man. I feel like you're young enough to have a wonderful time in life but old enough to not be such an idiot with your decisions - it's truly the best of both worlds!

This being such a big birthday, I've got to document it up in here. So what the heck did I do for the big 3-0! True to form, I didn't feel like planning a dang thing until about 2 weeks beforehand. Why am I like that? Chad plans things like years in advance, I'm more like "hey our wedding is in 3 weeks, maybe I should buy a dress..." hahaha!

Anyhoo, after wracking my brain about what to do, I decided to go out for a girls morning out at Fashion Island. Due to my new "work out person" status at the time (a description I only had for about 2 weeks at that point bahaha!), I thought it would be fun to be really trendy chicks and try out a Soul Cycle class with a few of my girlfriends! My thought was, "hey, the rest of America goes to Soul Cycle and gets through the classes feeling like super heroes, surely we can handle a little ol' 45 minute spin extravaganza and then be okay to go to brunch after."

THAT. CLASS. WAS. SO. DANG. HARD. I. ALMOST. DIED! How, HOW, do people look so casual on social media after taking that death class?!?!? After 45 minutes of DYING upon my bike, flabbergasted by the droves of people around me who were keeping up with my unicorn of an instructor who I couldn't take my eyes off of (was she real?), I stumbled off, barely able to see straight hahahahaha! PEOPLE, THOSE CLASSES ARE SO HARD!!!!!! The hilarious thing was that because my birthday is in January, they were having a special going on where you could buy one class and then get two as long as you use the second one within 30 days - none of us redeemed the second class hahahaha - I REPEAT, WE DIED.

Anyhoo! After class, we all tried to decide if we were going to take advantage of the studio's showers before heading off to brunch at Fig and Olive. I decided that I wouldn't shower - this is 30. Bahaha! I just changed into some cute boots and a top and we headed out. The majority of the group drove over to the restaurant while my friend Kristy and I walked over - we were in this hilarious daze!

Anyway, we all sat down at brunch (I repeat, with shaky vision), red-faced and ready to chow down! My sister joined us at that point (she was very pregnant so no Soul Cycle for her). She looked fresh as a daisy, we were all still sweating baha!

It was my first time going to that lovely restaurant, it took me by surprise how nice it was!!! GORGEOUS. There were two bridal showers happening while we were there - each chick looked like they had planned their get-ups for months beforehand. So yes it was very wonderful!!!!! I want to go back when I'm not in the throes of almost puking hahaha!

Honestly it was a great birthday celebration and exactly what I wanted: something that was out of the house, adult, and during the day (as opposed to late at night. I was still needing extreme amounts of sleep after the 15 months of waking up with Gracie). Chad was a little weirded out that my plans for such a big birthday didn't include him (sorry my love!), but it was mainly because I really never go out with just the girls, so I figured I would start off my new decade of life doing just that. I think at one point I even said to Chad, "wait so the entire universe gets to have all of these 'girl days' except for me?" He was like, "chill out, I'm just asking if you want me to go, that's all," hahaha! Clearly I was still very sleep deprived and in need of some fresh, beachy air!

On my actual birthday night, which was a Tuesday, we loaded the kids up in the car, headed to Huntington Beach so Chad's mom could watch them, and then the two of us went to Pac City for a little dinner. Although it was all good, the effort was so strenuous that we could have just stayed home and I would have been just fine. The service at the restaurant we went to was HORRIBLE, so that made me question why we even made it happen at all. Oh well though!!! Still cool!

Anyhoo, 30 it is! What a great time in life!

When you need an outlet other than spending thousands on your home

Well shoot, it costs a whole lotta dough to fulfill my "creative needs" at the moment, especially because those "needs" happen to be redoing every inch of our home! Bahaha - what an expensive "hobby" that is. Then I remembered that this here little space used to fill up any creative empty spots in my soul, so chap, here we are! The ol' blog is free and useful. FREE being the operative word in that there sentence! :D

Anyhoo!!!!!! What's been going on up in here?

- WE GOT SOME FURNITURE! Yes! It's happened. We can now SIT DOWN in ALL OF OUR ROOMS - woah. I know, try not to lose your mind over this fact. Oh wait, not every room. There's nothing in the dining room still :)

- Carter completed his first year of competitive hockey! He made the A team, something he was stoked about. I've got to say, he's the bomb. Next season he'll age out of the level he's at right now and will begin practicing as a squirt. From experienced parents I keep gathering that this is a very big deal - is it weird that I'm nervous about the whole thing????? I know he'll find his footing and be just fine but BAH!!!!

- Kota got asked to jump up to her gymnastic's pre-team - she loves it! I can't believe we drop off our little kindergartener at a sport for a total of 4 hours per week - it's mind blowing when I think about it like that. She's a fierce little beast though, so I know she can handle it!

- Gracie baby is just a happy little thing. Chad and I tried our hand at some at-home-bang-cutting to get her hair out of her eyes and let me TELL YOU, we won't be doing that again hahaha. She's giving off Frier Tuck vibes. It's actually very cute, but only because she's a 1 year old and anything on her is cute. Hahaha!

- I STARTED WORKING OUT ON A REGULAR BASIS!!!!! I was kind of in this weird funk for a couple weeks during the end of December/early January. I just kept thinking about how every single day was Groundhog Day-ish - everything was always the same, nothing crazy to look forward to, pity party this, pity party that. And then! Chad told me that his mom emailed him an idea for my 30th birthday. She had found this pilates retreat for me to go to in order to get out of the house, breathe in some fresh air and rejuvenate myself - she was right about me needing to get the heck out of the house and have a goal! I took her email as a sign from God as a way to kick my funky ways, so the very next day I called the local Orangetheory, signed up for a class, and then signed up for the unlimited package two days later!!!!! It was so cool! I JUST DID IT. I had this feeling that it was NEEDED, to hell with logistics! And let me tell you, it's BEEN AWESOME!

- Chad has just been being his usual bomb diggity self! I'm trying to think of what he's been up to... hmmm.... HE'S TURNING 30 IN LESS THAN TWO MONTHS!!!!! I'm so excited for his rad birthday party plans: a Downtown Disney pub crawl where we're all going as EIGHTIES THEMED Disney characters!!! I'M SO EXCITED! C3PO coming in hotttttttttt ova here!

Well sheesh, this was refreshing!!!! And like I said earlier, a FREE way to be creative for a bit bahahaha. Okay! Gots to go get Gracie up from her nap so we can go pick up Kota and her little buddy! It's Open House tonight!!! How is kindergarten and first grade almost over?!

Halloween 2017!

Harry Potter, Professor McGonagall and Tinkerbell in da house!

Oh man, well, our new neighborhood did not disappoint (unlike our last neighborhood on Halloween night bahaha). We've found it: a 'hood where the residents go all out with their decor and love every second of it. We just adore these original owners!!! They're all so sweet, each of them telling us how they've added one cool skeleton or zombie at a time to their decorating collections for the last 20 years - how cool is that?! They all also told us how much they just love the neighborhood - THANK YOU, LORD, FOR SURROUNDING US WITH HUMANS WHO ENJOY WHERE THEY LIVE!!!!

Also! While trick-or-treating, we found out that one of the kindergarten teachers at the kids' school is one of our neighbors!! How fun is that?! It totally is even cooler because her house was the MOST decked out in Halloween creepiness, so we would drive by it slowly every day. Come to find out it was Mrs Schneider's house the whole time!

What a wonderful time we had for our first year on Sundown Lane! So fun!!!

Gracie's 1st birthday party!

Our sweet girl is ONE!!! My goodness, talk about a FAST YEAR! Her content little soul has just been the perfect edition to our family. We are just the luckiest!!!!!

So one very cool fact about celebrating the sweet third child of the family: we've discovered the best way to throw a party - do nothing! Bahaha! This was by far the easiest shindig we've ever thrown - got to love the third baby for showing you that there's no need for pinterest perfection (as opposed to my strives toward that idea with the older two!) as long as you've got some cool people to hang out with. I mean, what's life all about? It was by far our favorite way to celebrate a good ol' fashioned birthday: invite people over, eat some food, have fun, and that's it! Don't worry guys, we're only 7+ years into this parenting thing and we're just now figuring it all out hahaha!

Funny fact: see that table up there with the "G" on top of it? That is literally the most "decorated" the whole affair got!!! The night before I had these lofty plans to create a really cool backdrop and a table skirt to go along it all to hide the ugly coolers... but I just REALLY didn't want to make those TWO SIMPLE THINGS! It was the strangest thing but also one of the coolest - both Chad and I were like "why kill ourselves? Let's just have people over and have fun!"

So anyway, when we were setting up, I realized that maybe I should put a little something out that signified that this party was for Grace... so I went into the playroom and plucked that "G" right off the wall and placed it there - I mean!!!!!

There was a tiny voice inside my head that was making me feel a bit guilty about my over-the-top laid back ways with this party. After all, it WAS Gracie's first birthday party - a big deal!!!! But after the event has come and gone, I can say I'm glad that the scant route was the one we took (even though typing that out really does still makes me feel a bit guilty bahaha).

Speaking of the scant route... our empty room is a serious hit with people! More often than not folks will tell us to just leave it empty until Grace is like 5 years old and I have to say, I'm slowly starting to agree. It definitely won't be empty until G baby is 5, but I'm slowly morphing into a human who will probably be sad when we fill it up. Crazy!

The best party accessory: cake frosting from the big one year old's hands!!! She really didn't want anything to do with her smash cake, but hey, she got a little bit on those chubby sweet fingers of hers which transferred over to Chad and I. Got to love it!

And these pictures don't even really capture the party in all it's awesomeness! We were all having so much fun I completely forgot to grab my phone and/or the ol' DSLR until nearly the end after a few great families had already left! I'd say that's a great problem to have :)

After all was said and done with the big partay, the birthday girl (IT WAS HER ACTUAL FIRST BIRTHDAY ON PARTY DAY!!!) went and hung out on the front porch for a bit - it was such sweet time with her! We are truly the luckiest in the whole wide world!!!

"Ladera Days" and other random thoughts

We love our "Ladera Days" with the sister's family - I mean, how could we not? That place is one giant movie set of perfectness, it's so dang lovely. Every time we make the trek down there to hang with the ol' Fitch crew, I spend the first half of the visit wondering why the HELL we moved away from it's wonderfulness. Then during the second half I think, "hey it's all good, at least we get to visit Gina here. She better not ever move away!" And then by the end I'm always ready to head back home to Corona - the cycle happens EVERY time! It's so funny!

If we lived there though, we wouldn't be able to hang out with our babies while re-doing our closet like what's going on down here. The bath tub is honestly the best thing ever. Grace is corralled in there while the older two use the whole thing as a type of jungle gym. So great!

Anyhoo! That's all! G babe is crying up there so I've got to go grab her. Also! Chad and I have an out-of-town wedding this weekend!!!! We are so dang excited to get out of dodge and MOST IMPORTANTLY to celebrate our amazing friends - they've been together longer than Chad and I have and we've all just LOVED watching the two of them walk through their journey together!!!! Truly an honor! So yes, we are very excited. Cheers to love!!!!

Fall time!

Fall, fall, wonderful fall!!!! We are so into it this year. I've made a goal to buy one seasonal thing each time I go into a store and I've got to say - best idea ever. I'm beefin' up on the pumpkins but will soon switch to permanent decor to last through the years! It must be the house that's doing this to us. Just the thought of it possibly being a forever home type of situation makes us all want to cozy up and nest. THE BEST.

In other news, Grace will be ONE in 18 days!!! Isn't that just freakin' incredible? The fastest year of our lives, that's for sure. We've decided she will be our forever baby (closin' down shop, over here), so any challenges she presents us with is sort of viewed in a this-isn't-so-bad type of way. It's really a lovely way to live (in opposition to how we were with Carter - poor oldest child and all the insanity parents load on them! Baha!). 

And that is all! Woohoo! Back to consuming carrot cake!!

A summer corral of life updates

Now that it's feeling a bit like fall, I've got to corral a summer update from the House Cisneros! We've been plowing through projects like crazy, all documented here at the ol' DIY blog that I love so much. Up there, Chad and Carter were installing a legit baby gate for Gracie. That child sure does love to crawl like a speed-demon over to the stairs, dog food area, any and all bathrooms, as well as dart toward the bed in the playroom that she's now able to climb onto - it's nuts!! I love it so much.

Here was THE LARGEST PROJECT WE'VE EVER DONE AND THOUGHT SEVERAL TIMES WOAH HOLY CRAP, WE HAVE SO MUCH RESPECT FOR ACTUAL FURNITURE MAKERS OUT THERE - that stuff was HARD!!!!!! Our wonderful friend connected us with a woman in the community who was in the process of opening a shop here in Corona (and who goes to our church - bonus!). We ended up falling into an agreement where we made a TON (well, a ton for us), of furniture for the store!!!! How cool is that?! All in all we made 2 10' tables, 4 10' benches, those two arbors you see hanging over the tables (1 was 7' tall, the other was 9'), then a kids table with two little kids' sized benches. I mean - IT WAS AN UNDERTAKING! (And awesome undertaking!)

While we project, Gracie hangs out!!!

I mean, I guess these two have to get older in life, despite my "stay young forever" vibes I've been sending into the universe since the day they were both born. Speaking of these two and getting older, we recently measured them - they both have grown FOUR INCHES IN 10 MONTHS!!!! How is that even possible?! Chad and I were like "woah." Up there on the left is Carter showing off his handy work when we were re-doing our pantry.

My men!!!! There Chad is on the right constructing a table for a friend of ours (it came out so freaking great I want him to build another one just for our house). Y'ALL WE'VE HAD THE BEST LUCK LATELY WITH WOODWORKING! It's been so fun!

What else has been going on? Chad and my lives have been even more ruled by Game of Thrones than it was previously, so there's that. Hmmmmm. I don't know what else is going on but I've got to get off of here! The minutes are ticking down until Gracie wakes up baha.

So there's a mini wrap on a summer of awesomeness! Now I'm going to go out into the garage and see if I can continue this awesome streak we've had going in terms of our projects out there. We've got a TON of scrap wood so I'm hoping to create something cool out of it all. Yesterday I made a scrap wood tray on a whim and HOLY CRAP I LOVE IT SO MUCH I CAN'T BELIEVE I MADE THAT! So dang fun! Okay, over and out!