28!

How lucky are we to call Southern California home? It's the gosh dang BEST thing in the world to be raising little SoCal babes. Bah!

Leading up to the 28th birthday, we had been sick as dogs. The weekend was to be played by ear: if we all felt a teensy bit better then we would celebrate in whatever way possible. On Friday evening we were still a sad bunch, swimming in germs and grossness, causing me to re-RSVP to a party that we wouldn't be able to make it (we were so bummed!). Then, by some miracle, we woke up on Saturday morning, my actual birthday (and the day we were supposed to attend the party!), feeling just a bit better, but still not well enough to go out spreading germs to other birthday guests. So we heave ho'd up the mountain to Big Bear!!!!! The 4 of us, 3 of which feeling pretty blah but so excited that we didn't care, stopped off at Snow Drift, grabbed ourselves 4 tubes and took to tubin' down the ol' hills! SO MUCH FUN. We are now all obsessed. Kota and I flew down first, then Carter (apparently) kept telling Chad that he "DIDN'T WANT TO DO THIS!" but once Chad threw him down, the guy was hooked. He left us all in the dust the rest of the hour that we were there, hardly even stopping for the rest of us! Truly, it was a great way to get out of the house and to celebrate a birthday!

When we got home, all I wanted to do was curl up in sweats and read my book. I kept looking around myself thinking, "Wow, 28! This is what brings me the most joy: laying around, everyone in jammies, watching movies and reading books." My mind was blown several times in the best way.

Around 4:00 pm, I wanted to go to the beach, but was met by much resistance from Chadly. So I called it quits on that, then couldn't decide on what to eat for dinner, finally picking NYPD. I was SOOOOOOOOO tired after my carb filled meal, the thought of celebrating further with a glass of wine sounded like a straight bullet train to bed time for the birthday girl. So for the first birthday since.... 21... anyone believe me?!.... I soberly went to sleep around 10:00! It was another mind-blowingly-wonderful thing! Hahaha!

Sunday, I was still "the birthday girl," according to Carter and Kota. All I wanted to do was go to get doughnuts (another decision that took me a very long time to make - "should we get doughnuts, or something healthier? Doughnuts? Or healthy? Okay, doughnuts"), then go to church. After that, I told Chad with extreme certainty that my eye balls needed to see the beach so that's where we were going. He was still all resistant, which made me be like, "Listen... Not to be a pushy birthday girl Queen of the World, but everyone keeps telling me that we get to do whatever I want but once I say what I want to do no one wants to do it...." I was having a diva moment! But hey, we got to go to the beach ;)

And so it was! It was a great birthday weekend, if not an indecisive one. Love these people!!!!! And so glad that we at least felt a smidgen better than we had been.

 ^^^This picture!!! Hahaha obviously not Kota's best moment, but THAT LIGHTING. I was SOOOOO OBSESSED with all of the golden light!

 ^^^"Yes dawling, it's MY birthday weekend!"

And then, of course, the TUBING TIME!!!

Sooooooo fun! I loved every second of my birthday weekend, especially because most of it was marveling at California and how happy I was that we decided not to move away from the best state on earth. We were THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS close to moving to TX, which would have been fab because hey, TX, but the snow one day, then the beach the other???? Toooooooo amazing. 28 and feeling great!

The cold season bound to take us down!

This year's cold and flu season is out to get us! Never have we ever been sick for so many weeks. I'm soooooooo tired of the germiness. It seemed like during the entire month of November and into early December, a minimum of one human in the house was sick. We were out of school, it seemed, at least one day per week! The whole ordeal was made even worse by the fact that if either Carter or Kota stayed home on a Thursday, I would have to duck out of my once-per-week volunteer time in Carter's classroom. I swear, it made me feel like I was missing school myself! Like my parents were going to catch me ditching class or something! "Nicole Cisneros, please report to the attendance office to discuss your truancy." The ditching-paranoia was real!

Now that we're into January, we're all sick AGAIN! 

It started with Carter's eye puffing up a little bit, leading us to believe he had pink eye. I emailed his teacher immediately to warn her of our possible germ-spreading ways, then we headed to the doctors first thing the next morning. Turns out it was a sinus infection that got into his eye, so that was good news? Not being pink eye? Still crappy though because the doctor said to keep him out for the rest of the week because the bacteria involved with the infection could lead to pink eye for other kids - more school missed by us Cisneros's! Then I bit the dust... as Wednesday rolled on, the world's WORST cold returned full force! There was ZERO breathing for me, but I wanted to try to beat the damn thing holistically instead of running out for medication (that didn't work in November). So every two hours I took a tablespoon shot of apple cider vinegar, chased it with honey, boiled ginger for ginger water (good thing my taste buds were out of commission - I've heard it tastes horrid!), and steeped enough tea to support all of the UK for a month. Next, poor Kota went to sleep last night crying like the dickens - a tell tale sign she would wake up in a world of cold-pain - and with the same symptoms Carter had with his infected eye (I also woke up with the same darn eye infection!!!!!! Grrrrrrrraaaaaahhhhhh!!!!). So now Carter, Kota and I are doing the prescribed eye drops every 4 hours. Oh yeah, and Carter's ONE eye infection turned into a TWO eye infection yesterday morning. REALLY?!

COME ON COLD AND SINUS INFECTIONS! LEAVE US ALONE!!!!

I went into "what the heck is going on with these weak immune systems of ours?" mode and decided that more prevention needed to be implemented. I'm going to get more on top of clean diets for the 4 of us. There has to be some solution to this craziness! Fruits and veggies need to be increased up in here. I think I'm going to try to get the kids to enjoy a nice cup of tea laced with honey and lemon in the mornings? Anything to fight germs on a regular basis! I legitimately do not want to miss any more school for the rest of the year. This is not okay!

But anyhoo, tomorrow is my birthday! I've been very intense with the back-to-wellness journey in the midst of these horrible colds because I want us all to feel freakin' great for the weekend. WE'RE GOING TO FEEL GOOD AND HAVE SOME GOSH DARN FUN OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, OKAAAAAAAAAAY, UNIVERSE?!" This morning I bleached the whole darn house, cleaned the couches and rug and swiffered the floors, all in an attempt to rid us of germs, so let's hope that will pay off. Pleeeeeeeeease let it pay off!!!! 28 shall not start off in frustration!!!!!!!!!!!

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But hey, aren't those pictures cute? They're from this last week. Bubble baths, ice hockey and roller. At least we haven't had to miss any sports! We love them so much!

Not to be forgotten when they're old as heck

I pretty much have nothing of importance to write down, but hey, "nothing of importance" ends up becoming VERY important later on.

So, per usual, I was creeping through the past years of ol' Three's 4 Me the other day, and I came across a post where Kota's first steps were talked about along with thoughts on the kids' new shared room situation. We were living in Lake Forest where we were renting a 3 bedroom condo - to this day, the largest place we've ever lived in! I was in the beginning stages of Stroller Strides, so I moved the kiddos into a small bedroom together and placed the computer and toys in the third room. 

After re-regaling myself with how adorable her first few steps were, I went on to read about how, when the two of them were supposed to be trying to get to sleep, Carter would open the door for his tiny sister, then she would bolt out, full crawling speed, into the hallway right next to where I was answering emails for Stroller Strides! Carter and Kota would be laughing hysterically while this was going on, and when I would catch up to the crawling speed demon, place my hands around her teensy body, she would literally disintegrate into a fit of laughter. It was like her small-but-fierce little frame of a body couldn't handle the giggles! I've been thinking about that memory a lot over the past few days and about how I probably wouldn't have remembered it had it not been written down up in here!

One of the reasons I've been thinking about that particular thought bubble over the last few days more than I would a regular ol' post, was because the other night Kota refused - and I mean REFUSED - to sleep alone in her own bedroom, so she BEGGED Carter to let her have a sleep over with him. He really didn't want to, but ended up folding. It was 8:00 when we put them into bed, but it was 11:15 when those two actually fell asleep! Chad and I were fully aware of Carter's light being on and them playing in there, but they were having so much fun together we just couldn't break up the awesomeness in the name of "following the rules!" About once every hour Chad or I would pop our heads in, pretend to have a stern voice and say "okay you two, time for bed," but we honestly didn't care if they fell asleep or not. Then we would look at each other and silently laugh because it was all so hilarious. 

One of the times, Chad opened the door dramatically in an alright-it's-10:00-time-for-bed type of way, and they were sitting side by side on Carter's bed reading books. Kota looked up and said matter-of-factly, "we're reading books." So Chad was like, "okay... Carry on." and that was that! Hahahaha!

Then the next morning (when they woke up at 6:30 am - why?!), we were saying our breakfast prayer, and both of them said something along the lines of "thank you, God, for letting me have a sleep over in Carter's room because it was so fun." Bah! Siblings!

So yes, good times. I've also been very impressed with the few weeks where I've been living with the idea of "YES!" and literally cannot believe I never held the resolution of reading 12 books in a year's span before. Books are so GREAT! I'm on book #3 for the year and sheet, man, it's a great one. So far I've read Wild (freakin' fabulous), Love Letters to the Dead (very depressing, probably because it's about a bunch of teenagers who are up to no good most of the time because they're dealing with their problems - too much for my mom brain to think about because I would die one thousand emotional deaths if those were my kids. I had to read for about 20+ minutes each sit-down before I would get into it and kind of was forcing my way through. It was well written and pretty cool, but after reading it, I told Chad that my next book would be fetched from the "BOOKS THAT WILL MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD" section of Barnes and Noble. That's a real section! Haha!), and now I'm on The Kite Runner (oh em freakin' gee, so great. So, so great. I think next I'm going to read this guy's other two novels, I've enjoyed it so much). What a great start to 2016 it has been!

Fooling around with photoshop

So I've learned a few things.

#1, I'm not the gal to pay for a subscription to photoshop. I had no clue it was an actual subscription - I thought it was a one time $19.99 price for "beginners and hobbyists" like myself. So no - doesn't make sense for a human being who's sole subjects are her very own children who wouldn't be reimbursing her the $19.99 per month, regardless of how flawless (ie. blemish-less!)  their childhoods would appear when looking back in 20 years (haha!). Additionally, I shall not be paying the almost $4,000 for the whole shebang in order to avoid a monthly fee.

#2. My eyeballs hurt! I've been having all this fun doing.... well I have no idea what I've been doing. Fooling around with things like curves? Photoshop is extremely legit for human beings who will be buying copies of "Photoshop for Dummies," but I'm not sure if it's a good sign that my corneas feel like they're going to burn out of my skull when barely doing more than what I've done on free online sites. ALTHOUGH, with my barely-scratched-the-surface playings arounds, I do like how with the 'shop you can define the backgrounds of photos more. That really is beautiful, and unless I just haven't figured out how to do that on other sites, that's a great feature.

^^^I think I like the original better, but I got so far down the rabbit hole of fooling around with this picture, this is where I stopped!

#3. So here's the deal. Unless I took the time to educate myself with the wild ins and outs of the 'shop and then proceeded to save up the cash to put out for thousands of dollars worth of a full program, I'll just have fun being a goof ball on sites like fotor.

In the meantime, though, I shall experiment with the rest of my 30 day preview! Maybe I'll start to sing a different tune over the next few weeks, but no matter what, there's just no way I'll be stepping up my game. But photoshop IS appreciated by my visual self.... just through other people's work!

Photoshop = great!
Photoshop + Nicole = a sore-eyeballin', my-kids-don't-pay-for-photos, further-computer-obsessed, non-patient mama combination! (Okay, a little weird, but true!)

So yes! But I'm sure as heck-ety-heck going to have fun with it in the meantime!

1st of January and photoshop stuff, oh my!

Pictures from the 1st day of the year right here! This all took place before the sun set and after we had an amazing breakfast with the Fitch's post NYE celebrations the night before, Daddy made chili we kept dipping into, movies up the wazoo and tons of cuddling on multiple couches within our tent of a home (another Wild reference... One day I'll stop comparing our lives to situations from the book). What a cozy beginning it was to what is bound to be a great year.

At the moment, our backyard is legitimately flooded. El Nino doesn't agree with the slow draining system installed into every backyard of the neighborhood. There are real deal pools back there! It's torture to watch Snow walk around from mud puddle to mud puddle, dirtying his white paws and ankles. As soon as he re-enters, I have to wipe off every toe in order to avoid white-rug-turned-mousy-rug's further soiling. But hey, what can ya do? At least we've experienced RAIN!

I'm downloading a free trial of photoshop as we speak! I'm so excited! Now I'll be able to install nicely formed six-packs on myself, Chad, Carter and Kota. YASSSSS.

Oh! It's finished downloading! My next post will be all like...

But not as basic and with less ugly bright white slider windows casting not-what-I-want WHITE light in the back because I'm not sure how to make the white light GOLDEN light jusssst yet, ya know? Woo!

The effects of the book Wild

1. Reese Witherspoon is my spirit animal. I'm reading the book Wild right now, which led me to find my bff R on Instagram, which caused me to view one of her recent posts: a picture of a book by Shonda (Scandal's creator), The Year of Yes. That picture sang the same tune I've been secretly wanting 2016 to be, the year of YES! She's my girl. I love her. We are spirit animals.

2. Said book has made me think wild thoughts (see what I did there?). Like last night for example, Chad and I were being total weirdos - he was playing video games in the family room while I was watching the 10,000 shows I was really excited about on the DVR in the living room, so we were talking to each other from separate rooms while busy doing separate things - I announced that I wanted to get the kids horses for next Christmas. HORSES! In Wild, the mom buys herself a 12 year old thoroughbred for $300 and it "saved her life after she left 'Reese's' father." So I thought, hey, I want the kids to be horse people. When I blurted it out while knee deep in my wine, rolo's, milk duds and popcorn, Chad let out a hoot and was like "yeah.... I don't even like horses." Bah!

3. I then woke up this morning and announced my horse dreams to my two best friends, one of which is from TEXAS and was an actual barrel racer when she was young! I thought I would get unbounded support from those two. Less than 30 seconds later I was bombarded with "ARE YOU CRAZY" texts, letting me know that by buying horses that does not make us "horse people." Alright, jerks!

4. So my horse dreams have been dashed. Maybe if we ever buy land in the Minnesota north woods and then build a house upon that land with our bare hands, we can buy the kids horses and become horse people, per Wild.

5. The book has also got me texting my sister, letting her know that I wish the two of us could hack a 3 month hiking trip up the Pacific Crest Trail, but acknowledged that we would be hot messes. She agreed, then we started hatching an Idaho road trip where we could see what the wilderness of Boise is all about (so they can buy a vacation home up there... for us Cisneros's to vacation at where I can fulfill my "open land" weird pipe dreams).

6. So yes, this book has got me all yesssssssss. So good!

Those pictures are the product of playing with Crazy Lens and her wonderfulness! The only funny thing about CL, is that in it's natural, zoomed out state, it reaches so far that our tiny home seriously is TOO tiny for it! I have to stand at the front door to get a room-sized picture of Carter and Kota on the GREY couch, two rooms away! I mean, it's fine, nice problem to have, but it's just funny! So close ups, be plentiful! The last picture was taken compliments of selfie stick, all of our bff. Carter made the CUTEST video on it. which I really want to add to this post but for some reason blogger isn't letting me do it. He is the best. And so is Kota. And so is Snow. And so is Chad!

AND it's raining cats and dogs outside right now! GAH!

2016 babay!

2016! 2016! 2016!

I just feel so gosh darn great about going into a new 365. Everything that were "big deals" last year were handled in such positive ways that I really felt like all of the ups and downs laid a solid foundation for 2016.

Entering 2015, I felt anything but great. Too many new things, lots of change and hey, the continual monologue in my head of "chin up! Stop being so critical of every little thing involving your new house, not being close to the beach, living off of the devil's highway - the 91 - and being a bit further from family! Smile!" didn't exactly help the situation. Then, while in the middle of futile optimistic conversations with myself, we experienced loss. The following weeks of deep sadness left no room for being bummed that the weather was 10 degrees warmer in Corona than in Ladera Ranch. I no longer cared if I had to sit in traffic to get home from my parents house - what trivial things to worry about in life. This sounds completely cliche, but walking through the saddest valley brought us to the highest mountain top, emotionally speaking. After realizing what is REAL in life, REAL things that were worth being sad about, I decided to fully embrace the aspects which before left me feeling low. What a turning point that was! Simply making a positive decision. So I now think of our great loss hand in hand with showing "Mama what really counts - baby being one of them, weather and location on a map in relation to Orange County or the beach not making the cut."

Thus brought about a wonderful rest of 2015! Loving on our sweet 4-legged baby, Snow, diving into the kids' school situations, ACTUALLY following up on a resolution made every year for the last 6 (PICTURE TAMING!!!!!), continuing badass-ness in our Dave Ramsey universe and so much more! What a pleasure it is to see a new year with my beautiful family.

And OH EM GEE, Chad got me an Erin Condren planner for 2016 and... goodness. I can't get enough of it! I've neatly written out my resolutions (I'm totally a resolution person! They're so fun!), and since this blogular is a magic space where when goals are written out here, they actually happen, they must be recorded!

1. Get Snow into training because he's a strong ol' boy who needs to actually listen when Mom says, "NO MORE PULLING, YA BIG BEAST!"

2. Organize the kids' school projects! Carter's closet is littered with his preschool, TK and now kindergarten work. There are three piles of unruliness. I've literally kept every little thing he's ever done, so that needs to be edited down. But because I did that with Carter, I've done the same thing with Kota. So I have all of her preschool work in a growing pile in HER closet. Eek.

3. Stay current on the infamous Budget Board I gifted Chad for Christmas! Bahahaha. Good thing he loves me.

4. Book the destination which said Budget Board shall transport us to!

5. Take the babies on a weekend getaway which is road trippish in nature.

6. Stay current on photo prints and picture books.

7. Continue to slay the Dave Ramsey life, of course!

8. Read 12 books this year (and not get lazy or indecisive about going out to buy a new one!). I've kicked the year off with Wild, started yesterday on the 31st - SOOOOOOO GREAT. Let's just say the Budget Board is being a bitch and not allowing me to drive to REI right now and buy myself some boots just like Cheryl Strayed's. I recorded the movie and watched it while Chad was at hockey, then was like "maybe I'll read the book, that was pretty good." When I went to Barnes and Noble to secure book 1 of the 12, there was a little fishing around, then I asked a sales girl if she had another book in stock. They didn't, so I asked if she knew of the book Wild. Immediately she rushed me over to where it was, told me that the movie didn't do it justice and regaled me with her experience of meeting Cheryl Strayed, crying during the entire encounter and how life changing the whole book was for her. So hey! I felt great about it and still do!

So woo! Goooooooooooo 2016!