Four Things that Never Made the Blog.

I saw Sarah do this the other day and thought it was THE perfect way to catch up. So, thank you, Sarah, for letting me steal your idea. ;)

ONE.
Easter.

I shared about our Egg Hunt at California Adventure, but I never actually shared Easter. The day.

I know this was over two months ago, but for my sake, I wanted to make sure I shared. I won't get too detailed, because really everyone knows what happens on Easter, but I will say this. Easter morning, I wanted to make it special for Mason. I filled a basket with some goodies that he opened right in the morning and then I also filled a bunch of eggs for him and did a little egg hunt outside our house after breakfast. It was nothing fancy, but he loved opening all the eggs to find his favorite treats of fruit snacks and gold fish as well as some coins and some toys.

Later that afternoon, we went over to Seth's mom's house for dinner and another egg hunt with all the cousins. Seth's sister and her family were on vacation, but all the other kids were there.

It was a simple, yet wonderful day. Just how I like to spend my holidays :)


TWO.
My niece's birthday.

I actually think I shared a little bit about it here, but I didn't really get to share the pictures of the party like I wanted.

The Nail Truck

My oldest niece turned ten back in the middle of May, but she had a birthday party the weekend that we went to Palm Springs. So we left early that Sunday morning and headed back home to attend the party. It was THE cutest spa themed party where my sister in law had a nail truck come give manicures and pedicures, the girls made their own foot scrub, and Seth's mom's best friend's daughter, who is a hair stylist, came down from Northern California and was giving up-dos to all the girls. It seriously was a dream party for a little girl (and an adult I might add, but sadly I did not get to partake in the activities so I was just insanely jealous of twelve 10 year olds). I wish I was ten and could have participated!


THREE.
We moved!

If you follow me on any sort of social media, you know we moved. I also think I mentioned it on the blog a time or two. Well, it's official. We are officially in our new place. We are settling in well and things are getting better. I do plan to do a more comprehensive moving post at some point, but for now, the long story short on why we moved (more the short, fact only version for the internet) is that when we moved in to our old place, we didn't really check in to the school around there before we moved. Mason was nine months old and kindergarten and elementary school was not at all on our radar. Fast forward to Mason getting older and we found out that the school wasn't the greatest, but we didn't really think anything of it. We figured we would move (hopefully because of buying a house) or we could just put in a transfer and we'd be fine. Fast forward again and it's this year and we haven't moved or bought a house and it's almost time to think about kindergarten registration, so I put in a transfer. And we waited. And we waited. And we waited some more. I got nervous. Everyone told me things would be fine.

And we were denied. Cue me freaking out.

Long story, still cut short, we decided we didn't want to send him to the home school in our area, so we moved to a better area (not that we lived in a bad area before) with a better school. And I enrolled him. And he's all set for elementary school next year!

Moral of the story. Mama gets what mama wants ;)
(even if it means making some sacrifices)


FOUR.
Mason finished speech class.

Well, there's actually not really that much to that statement besides the fact that Mason finished speech for this school year. Since we transitioned him to getting speech services through the school district in December, they follow the regular school year and since the school year is over in some places and almost over in others, Thursday the 8th was his last speech class for this school year. I must admit that I was a little more sad than I thought I would be, mainly because these boys in this picture have been so wonderful the past six months. While we only saw each other every Tuesday and Thursday, Mason would talk about them constantly and was genuinely excited to go to speech class to see his friends. They all got along so well, and I truly wish we all lived in the same area so the kids could all go to kindergarten together next year. These boys will truly be missed, but hopefully we have have some play dates in the future to fill the void.

Speech is not over for this little dude though and he will continue to get speech help in kindergarten in the fall. He won't be going to a separate school for it though, the speech teacher will just take him out of class twice a week for 30 minutes. It will still be in a group setting but smaller (if you can imagine smaller than four kids). I'm excited to see the progress he continues to make next year!

More on moving, Mother's Day, and Father's Day to come soon!

Long Weekending.

And yes, it will include Easter. #sorrynotsorry

I know, I know. I'm sure you're all Easter-ed out, BUT since this blog serves as my memory book, I'm going to write about Easter. But never fear, this recap will be more weekend driven than Easter.

This past weekend, I had a long weekend. And it was AMAZING. My dad and step mom came down from Northern California for a visit. They drove down on Thursday and we met up with them first thing Friday morning. Since they don't wake as early as we do (read : don't have a Mason alarm clock), we decided to get some breakfast on our way to meeting them. I've been dying to try Sidecar Doughnuts and thought this was the perfect opportunity. And they DID NOT DISAPPOINT.

The maple bacon was my absolute favorite. Though I loved the other kinds we got too. Thankfully Sidecar isn't THAT close to my house or I would be going there every week. Or every day.

Also, you know the donuts are good when your kid who hates donuts (I KNOW!) actually scarfs some down. We always offer and he usually declines, but this time, when we offered (no matter what kind), he couldn't get it in his mouth fast enough.

When I posted about Mason hating donuts on Instagram, I had a lot of shocked people. Believe me, I was shocked too. I mean, is he my son?? But Seth is not an overly sweet guy (meaning into sweets, not personality wise) so that must be where he gets it from. There's no bribing Mason with Skittles or M&Ms, but you can bribe him with pretzels and goldfish!

After breakfast, we met Grandma and Grandpa and then headed to Newport Beach. We had a plan to be tourists and ride the ferry across to Balboa Island, walk around the Fun Zone, and walk down to the beach. Believe it or not, we barely go to the beach even though we live like 20 minutes away so this was a special treat for us too.

Mason loved the beach, although he wouldn't get too close to the water. There was a playground that he loved, he loved walking on the pier and looking into the ocean, and of course, he loved getting ice cream with Grandpa.

Saturday was Marcus' birthday party at Pump It Up. We were so excited to be able to join them in celebrating his fourth birthday! Mason isn't overly into bounce houses, so we were interested to see how he did. To our surprise, he actually initiated going on the bounce obstacle course, down the small slide, and into the bounce basketball court. But the big slides and the big bounce houses he avoided. Regardless, we had the best time and were so happy we could be there for the birthday boy. Clearly Mason thought it was his birthday (not quite buddy!) and tried to blow out Marcus' candle for him... We need to work on taking turns a little more apparently. Marcus' turn in March and Mason's turn in July.

While we were at the birthday party, Grandma and Grandpa met up with some of their old neighbors who moved down to San Diego and then we all met up for a picnic at the park for dinner.

Sunday morning we had brunch together, took some funny glasses selfies, and played a little soccer before heading over to Seth's mom's house for Easter with the cousins.

Once at Nanny's house, we took more funny glasses selfies, played with new bubble guns, and enjoyed being around tons of family. After everyone arrived, we made a little egg hunt for the kids and then ate way too much dinner and dessert. It was a crazy, hectic, amazing Easter.

I feel like Mason really 'got' Easter this year, which made it egg-stra special!

Hope you all had a great Easter as well! Hoppy Wednesday!

Hippity Hoppity, Easter's on it's Way! [Mason's Easter Basket]

With Easter only a few days away, I'm excited to share Mason's Easter basket with you today! Even though I might be a scrooge when it comes to Valentine's Day and not really celebrate or do any gifts, Easter is a holiday that I love to put together a little something for Mason.

A couple weeks ago, I shared my Easter gift guide. And for Easter I pretty much got Mason everything off that gift guide... and then some.

As I mentioned previously, I like to give Mason gifts based on the gift guide that I found a long time ago on Pinterest (of course! ha) of : want, read, wear, need. For Easter, I feel like want and need are pretty similar though so I grouped them together.

WANT/NEED

For want/need, I'll start out with the food items. Mason doesn't really like candy (I know! Who's kid is he anyway??) so I opted for some more savory snacks. He LOVES goldfish and loves popcorn, and when I found these in the Easter dollar section, I scooped them up.

Mason has been really into cars and things with wheels lately. He's been loving the hot wheels cars that we got him in the past as well as the Blaze and the Monster Machines monster trucks. I got him four new hot wheels and... a lot of new monster trucks. Our collection started off with just Blaze and then was going to grow into Crusher for Easter. But then I started finding more and more and I just couldn't say no! #sucker. Shortly after we got Blaze and Crusher, I found Stripes and ended up giving it to him for doing so well potty training. Then I found the big horn truck, Gus, and Joe and of course I had to (had to!) get them as well. And Seth found Pickle, Zeg, and camo Blaze at Walmart yesterday (more on these good deals on Friday!) so... needless to say, we will have a small army of monster trucks once we give all of them to Mason. I only pulled out camo Blaze, Crusher, Pickle, and Zeg for Easter and plan to use the others as prizes for more good potty training days in the future.

I also got a couple of hot wheels tracks so we could try to set up some sort of track for him to drive his hot wheels cars on.

READ
For the read category, I thought I'd get some new Pete the Cat books. Mason calls them "Pete Cat" and asks for them daily so I thought I'd add a couple to the rotation. I had planned to give him both books on Easter but caved (see, #sucker!) and gave him the Easter one - Pete the Cat : Big Easter Adventure - already. I gave it to him a couple weeks ago and he literally asks to read it every night. For actual Easter, he's getting one of the classics, Pete the Cat : Rocking in My School Shoes. Believe it or not, as a big Pete lover, we don't have Rocking in my School Shoes yet!

WEAR

For the wear category, I got Mason some new Natives. I know it's kind of a funny Easter present to get shoes, but Mason seriously LOVES these shoes. No matter the weather, anytime I ask him to grab some shoes, he grabs the Natives. He's going to be so excited to see these new ones!

Did you share your Easter baskets today? If so, link up with us below and show us! I'm so excited to see what everyone else puts in their Easter baskets! The link up is open from today until March 30th, so no worries if you didn't share today -- there's still time!

An InLinkz Link-up

Five on Friday!

Happy Friday!!! For some reason, all week I've been confused on what day it was. On Monday, I thought it was Tuesday. On Tuesday, I thought it was Wednesday. On Wednesday, I was just confused. But now, after consulting the calendar, I am positive that today is Friday and I couldn't be happier! A few hours of work, and it's officially the weekend! Let the countdown commence.

ONE.

Easter Basket Link Up.

I'm super excited to be co-hosting a super fun Easter basket link up, starting next week! The link up will be open from March 23rd all the way through March 30th. Feel free to link up and show us your child(ren)'s Easter baskets any time next week, or even after Easter. I know this may sound nosy, but I totally love seeing other kid's Easter baskets and getting ideas for Mason's for next year!

TWO.
Making a Murderer and Parenthood and the OJ Story.

Apparently I've been watching a lot of TV lately? A couple weeks ago, we seriously binge watched Making a Murderer. It was at the height of it's popularity and I had to see what everyone was talking about. I literally think Seth and I spent one weekend watching all of the episodes. Darn you Netflix for making it so easy to binge watch things!

We started watching the OJ Story a little late but have been catching the episodes online and have almost caught up. It's so interesting to me to watch and learn details and kind of re-watch it since I was so young when it all first happened.

We also watched the first episode of Parenthood and it hit CLOSE to home. I definitely almost cried in episode 1. We haven't watch anymore and Seth isn't sure he wants to keep watching, but I think I do... with a box of tissues.


THREE.
Non-Dairy Ben and Jerry's.

I came across the news that Ben and Jerry's just came out with a new non-dairy line of flavors a couple weeks ago and keep forgetting to share! You can find out more about it here and find out what flavors they came out with. I don't personally need non-dairy, but I know a lot of people who might so I didn't want to forget to share! Exciting news!!!


FOUR.
Bloglovin' Organization.

I follow blogs and read blogs on bloglovin. Wayyyyyy back when I never used to and I had all the blogs I followed bookmarked and I would just check back every couple of days to see if they posted a new post. And then I discovered bloglovin and my life was forever changed. Ok, that is a bit dramatic, but it saved me A LOT of time I'm sure. Now, the only way that I follow a blog is on bloglovin. You don't have bloglovin? I don't follow you. #sorrynotsorry . There is one exception to the rule, but I might try to convince her to get bloglovin too :) Anyways, I recently was getting so overwhelmed with posts that I hadn't read and the people who's posts I wanted to make sure I read were getting hidden. Then I remember this post from a long time ago that Jess posted about organizing her bloglovin feed. I FINALLY had time earlier this week and I hope this keeps me more organized and more on top of the posts that I want to make sure I read daily.


FIVE.
Champagne stopper.

I ordered this champagne stopper a couple months ago and finally tried it out last week and all I have to say is... that thing is amazing! It kept my champagne bubbly for a couple days, as if I had just opened it. I never knew stoppers specific to champagne existed, but now that I know, I'm never going back!

Happy Weekend!