Morning on the Beach

Who doesn't love the beach? Whenever I visited the beach in the past, especially in southern California, I always wished I had some reason to live close. My parents left late Monday morning, but first we drove out to the beach! It was so cool to realize how close we live! Even with traffic (bad traffic) it only took us about half an hour to drive there.

(My dad was the only brave one who went in deeper than his knees)

Violet seemed a little nervous. I'm sure it was loud and smelled different to her, and she just stayed snuggled up to us and wrapped in a blanket the whole time. I have big plans to drive out to the beach some morning, just the two of us, once Glenn has left for school and the traffic has died down. I'll bring a book and a picnic!

Moved in!

(If just looking at these pictures is too boring for you, feel free to play a game of "where's Violet?". We think we're clever and put her in every picture.)

I lied. I just realized that Violet is not in that second picture of the hallway.

Well, there it is! We haven't done much more than move our stuff in. There are still a lot of pictures to hang and a couple of boxes to be unpacked, but we are getting there! It is nice to be living in a functional apartment again. The last couple of days in our old one and the first couple here felt crazy. Living out of boxes is no fun.

Some of my favorite things about this apartment are the giant windows (so much natural light!), the wood floors, and the moulding. Because it is so old, there is moulding everywhere! It is half a foot thick around every door frame, and knee high in Violet's bedroom. There is even crown moulding in every room, and I think you can see the random moulding about three feet below the ceiling in the living room and bedroom. Also, the ceilings are so high! Maybe 12 feet? I'm not good at estimating that kind of thing, but they are way higher than our last apartment.

You may have noticed that I didn't post pictures of Violet's room. Those will have to wait a few days, because her room isn't looking picture ready quite yet. Violet news: I think her hair is getting curly! She definitely gets that from her dad.

The New Apartment

We're here!

We got to LA on Friday afternoon, and saw our apartment for the first time! It is awesome. And kind of weird/old (built in the 1940s). Here's why:

1. There are three main rooms, not including the kitchen and bathroom. One is a normal bedroom, and is Violet's. One room has a china cabinet, a walk in closet, and no doors in the doorways. The other room has doors you can close, but also opens to the front door. So let me ask you, Which do you use for the master bedroom? If we chose the front room, when people come to our door they enter right into our bedroom, and we don't have a closet. So we chose the middle room, complete with china cabinet and incomplete with doors.

2. The light in the bathroom dims when I turn on my blow dryer.

3. No dishwasher or garbage disposal.

That last one is kind of hard to live with.

(front room)

(bedroom - and Violet and her Grandma! My parents and Glenn's came to help us get everything moved in! They were amazing.)

(Violet's bedroom)

In other news, Violet is still cute! Just look at that smile. Does she look proud of herself for going through three outfits yesterday? Courtney thinks I talk about Violet's poop too much, so I won't say how Violet rendered all those outfits unwearable.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of the apartment all moved in to! Besides being old and weird, our apartment is also so awesome. We are loving it!

Violet

Violet Hermione LeSueur

Born 7/9/11

Six

is the number of sticks of butter in just the frosting for this cake:




But boy was it delicious! Glenn saw the pictures of it in one of my cookbooks months ago, and decided he wanted it for his bithday! He still wanted it after I told him how much butter was in it! It was so fun celebrating his birthday! We had a yummy breakfast in the morning and he opened his present (and so we were late to school and forgot to make lunches)







I got him Blue Planet - the sequel to Planet Earth. Can you tell he loved it? That night, we went to his family's house for cake and ice cream. My cake was a big hit, and it was fun to see his family, especially our cute nieces and nephews!



Ruby!


and Audrey!


It was a good day! One Thursday (his birthday was Tuesday) we went to the Coyotes game with his family to further celebrate.

a good day

I was looking through all my wedding pictures the other day, and I found a lot that I didn't fully appreciate the first time I saw them. Some of them are funny, and some are just really cute. They remind me of how fun my wedding day was!

Cutest picture of my cutest friend. I love you Becky!


heh heh, isn't he funny?


Four funny people to look at in this picture:


I just like how Kali looks eager in this picture


GAaa, I Love this picture of Glenn!


???


I just think we look happy in this picture:


I love these two people quite a bit:


Everyone looks so funny in the background of this picture! Enlarge the picture for the full effect.


:)

Park City

I just got back from Park City with Glenn's family. It was so beautiful there! I had my birthday while I was there. Here is an interesting fact about me: I have been on family vacations for like 75% of my birthdays. We had such a good time. One thing I didn't get a picture of was our trip to provo. Glenn and I drove down to provo alone one night and ate at the most delicious restaurant! It was called Rooster Noodle and Dumpling Bar. Oh, it was so delicious. Afterwards, we went and saw Reed! He just got home from his mission, and it was so fun to see him.

One day we rented mountain bikes, took them up on the lift with us, and then rode them down the mountain. It was way scarier than I thought it would be, and I was really bad at it.



Cute Husband:


Alpine slide and coaster. This roller coaster was amazingly fun!



Cute husband at the end of the alpine slide:


And now...


For the Highlight of the Trip:

We won the Jigsaw Puzzle challenge!




Cool trophy huh? Glenn and Letitia and I were such a good team! Letitia is amazing at puzzles. We beat the other team so badly. They had only assembled like 25 peices of the 100 when we finished our puzzle.