[Summer Bucket List] Picnics and Planes

Before I share my post with you today, I wanted to thank each of you who linked up with us for our first day of the summer bucket list link up last Friday! I really enjoyed reading each of your posts and  was excited to gain some new ideas for more summer fun for my family!

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Last weekend we did something that I've been wanting to do for months. 

We went on a picnic by the airport and watched the airplanes come in for a landing at the airport!

Mason has been obsessed with airplanes recently. Whenever he hears or sees an airplane flying, he immediately points up and gets a huge smile on his face. His Gymboree class is somewhat close to the airport but must be in the direct flight path of landing at the airport because the airplanes are huge looking when they fly above the parking lot and Mason gets SO EXCITED to see them. So I knew my boy would love to go see them closer.

Our first stop was to pick up dinner. Seth was just talking the other day about the fact that he hadn't had In n Out in a while, so I knew that would be our picnic dinner of choice.

We swung by the drive thru and then headed to our picnic location. My main problem with choosing a picnic location was that there are mainly businesses by the airport, so I put Seth in charge of that portion of the evening. He was able to find a green belt in between the buildings so we headed there. It ended up being the perfect location.

We set up our picnic blanket and started to eat. Mason was in heaven - eating his hamburger, dipping his finger (instead of his fry) in the ketchup, and drinking out of a big boy cup.

After dinner, we ran around, played with the soccer ball, and waited for planes to fly by.

We all had such an amazing night picnic-ing and watching airplanes that we want to do it at least once a month. I'm so happy that we were able to find such a nice, quiet, secluded picnic area that had such great views of the planes landing!

#sethdidgood

Don't forget to link up with us again next week, sharing the fun activities that you've been up to this summer!

Stephanie at Wife Mommy Me | Desiree with Macke Monologues | Jenny from The Chronicles of We

Becky of bybmg | Courtney from Sweet Turtle Soup | Elizabeth at Chasin' Mason

[It's the Little Things] You Know You Live with a Toddler When... Part 3

... you get to work and open the back door to get your purse and find that your toddler really wasn't eating those Cheerios in the car... he was dropping them all over the ground...

... you put your toddler to bed and come back downstairs, wanting to change the channel from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse only to find that you can't find the remote control.... 20 minutes later, you find it hidden in one of the cubbies of your end table...

... you step away for a minute to talk to your husband about something and come back to see that your toddler has pulled the markers out of your purse and has written in blue marker all over the floor...and looks mighty happy about it and proud of himself too!

... you are unloading the dryer, start folding the clean clothes and find a train...

side note : apparently the train is washing machine proof?

... you luckily caught this block before it went through the wash... I don't think paper blocks are as washable as trains...

... you find an open bag of tortilla chips sitting on your couch...

...and you find that your toddler thinks its bath night for your eye lash curler...

He sure keeps me on my toes!

And boy do I love him so :)

In case you missed part 1 and/or 2, you can find them here : Part 1 // Part 2

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Linking up with Jess from Sadie Sky Boutique and Ashley from Words About Waverly.

The Liebster Award.

First of all, I want to thank Meghan at The Adventure Starts Here for nominating me for the Liebster Award. Thank you!

Second, I love the idea of the Liebster Award. It's an award given from a blogger to another blogger and is a great way to get to know some smaller, up and coming blogs and learn a little bit more about the bloggers themselves.

I love blogging about my life (and especially Mason!) and it's nice to know other people enjoy my blog enough to acknowledge me for it... thanks Meghan! I've seen this done a few ways, but these were the rules that were presented to me when nominated. 

The rules:
1. Thank the blogger that nominated you.
2. Answer the 11 questions given by the blogger who nominated you.
3. Nominate 5-11 bloggers with fewer than 200 followers and give them questions to answer.


Questions:

1. How did you come up with your blog name? The name of my blog is Chasin' Mason. To be totally honest, I didn't even come up with it! My friend, Vickie, did. She is really good with these type of things so when I wanted to re-vamp my blog a couple of months ago, I asked her for an idea and BAM. Chasin' Mason was born. The original name of my blog was "Now that the Birenbun is Out of the Oven..." but I thought the older Mason got, the less applicable that was. Guess I should have thought of that before I made it my official URL!

2. What's the first thing on your bucket list? Oh gosh. To be honest, I don't have anything written down, so I have no idea what would be first. If I had to pick something though, I would make it broad : travel. I've been to quite a few places inside the United States (though they are still TONS more I want to go to!), but I'm dying to travel abroad. On my husband's bucket list would be traveling to every baseball stadium in the United States (and Canada) so I guess by association, that would also be on my list. Before him, I would have never wanted to do that, but now, I definitely think it would be really awesome.

3. If you could travel anywhere, where would it be? Europe. Hands down. Or...Australia. (Haha, so indecisive). But seriously, either of those places. I'm DYING to travel to Europe. If I had the money and it weren't so far away, I would go next week. I'd love, love, love to see Spain, England, Germany, Italy, and France. I'd probably need to be gone for a month in order to see all I want to see. My friend actually just went on a cruise and went to all these amazing places. I'm not sure if that's the way I'd want to go since I don't think it would leave very much time for exploring, but it would sure be fun!

4. Describe your perfect day. As a working mom, my perfect day is spent with my family. Actually, just the other weekend, we had a pretty close to amazing weekend. We had no plans going in to the weekend, which was perfect. Finally a weekend to relax. Friday night I made plans with a friend to go to dinner and a movie. Saturday we had a make up Gymboree class for Mason and went to Target (and got Starbucks!) and Costco (and they had beer tasting!). And Sunday we met some friends for donuts. A weekend that ends with donuts? How could that not be perfect? But in all seriousness, I don't get to see my husband or son enough during the week, so just spending time with them on the weekend is perfect for me.

5. How did you meet your husband? I was born and raised in Northern California, in the San Francisco Bay Area and moved down to Southern California after I graduated college in 2006. I met my husband in 2006 when we worked together at Barnes and Noble. He was a part time bookseller (he had a different full time job, this was just his job for extra money) and I was a Merchandise Manager. We began dating in 2008 secretly since we weren't technically supposed to be dating since I was his manager {oops!}. We got engaged in September 2009 at Angels Stadium (I thought we were celebrating my birthday! I had no idea!)...

...and got married in November 2010.

6. What's your favorite food? Chocolate. Hands down.

7. What's the last book you read? Oh gosh. It's been A WHILE. I want to say the last book I read was Emily Giffin's Where We Belong.

8. What's your favorite TV show? Scandal!

9. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grow up? A teacher. But then I realized I am horrible at explaining and teaching things to people so that dream ended quickly. And now... I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up!

10. If you could live anywhere, where would it be? Honestly, I think I would pick where I live. Maybe it's just because I haven't been very many places, but I truly love living in Southern California. I love the weather. I love that it's sunny 99% of the time. I love that there are lots of things to do in a close vicinity. I love that all of Seth's immediate family lives within 20 minutes of us and the rest of his family lives within driving distance. I don't love how expensive it is. I do wish that my family lived closer (they are within like a 6-7 hour driving distance). And I do wish we had more of actual seasons than just one season all year round, but overall, I have no complaints.

11. What's your favorite season? Like I mentioned, living in Southern California, we really only have one season. Summer. (I know, I'm sorry, please don't hate me). Spring is a little cooler, Fall is about the same as Spring, and Winter we get 2 days of rain. It's actually kind of pathetic. So if I had to pick a season, I'd say I like Fall. I like Fall mainly because of the outfits I get to wear. Love love love scarves and sweaters!

Now that you know a little bit more about me, it's now my turn to nominate some of my favorite bloggers! I'm nominating :

Tara from A Tale of Four Maples

Laureen from Chateau Deveau

Jenny from The Chronicles of We

Kary from Always Painted, Usually Chipped

Katie from Little Man in Mittens

Jamie Lynn from Cocktails and Carseats

Caden from The Randomosity of Southern Fried Domestication

And my questions are :

1. How did you come up with your blog name?

2. How did you and your husband meet?

3. What is your favorite month of the year? And why?

4. What is your favorite recipe?

5. If you could plan your dream vacation right now (with money not being an issue), where would you go?

6. As a mom, I'm sure you watch more than your fair share of cartoons. What is one you just can't stand?

7. What is your favorite place to shop?

8. How do you find a work/home/family balance?

9. What is in your purse right now?

10. If you could have one super power, what would it be?

11. What is your favorite blog post?

Can't wait to read your responses!

Even if you weren't nominated, feel free to answer one, a few, or all the questions in the comments below. Just for fun :) I'd love to learn more about you!

[BOY MOMS] Danielle from The Girlfriend Letters

Hi! I'm Danielle and I blog over at The Girlfriend Letters. When Elizabeth asked me to write about being a boy mom, I was SO excited. I love this life. Being a boy mom is the best thing there is, I'm sure of it.

I had a feeling my baby was a girl. No good reason, but if I had to guess before 20 weeks, I would have guessed girl.

I'll never forget the moment I found out my little Milo was a boy. I was in the ultrasound room, and the tech said, "there's the scrotum." And my husband and I both kind of crinkled our eyebrows and realized that obviously this was her doing a gender reveal in the most anticlimactic way possible.

And right in that second, I obviously cried and thought, of COURSE it's a boy! My mind immediately went into boy mode. Airplanes, trucks, swords, legos... I was so owning the boy mom thing. I loved knowing that I was having a boy from the get-go so I could be excited about it the whole time I was pregnant.

I remember knowing that Milo was going to be active even before he was born. He would have a party in my belly every morning at 4am and my stomach was doing the wave nonstop. He was just always on the go. And now, 15 months later, he hasn't stopped. When people say boys are active and busy, they are so not lying! If you're curious what I do all day, it's this: I follow Milo around or move him or save him from launching off the back of the recliner or leaping from the couch arm to his high chair (???). And he's QUICK! This little munch keeps me on my toes.

Sometimes I look around church at babies sitting happily on blankets and playing with their toys, or actually taking naps, while I'm doing laps around the halls and in and out of classrooms and up and down the stairs of the stage or playing the "squish Milo in half on my lap because he thinks it's funny and it keeps him in one place for like a whole minute!" game. It gets intense.

I was concerned about the stamina that people say motherhood requires. I've always been active, but chasing around a toddler is a different kind of active. I've been pleasantly surprised that I'm kinda just in it. I chase, I follow, I balance him on my hip, I take the face smacks and hair pulls in stride, I dodge the applesauce. 

And I can honestly, truthfully say that I would not have it any other way. I LOVE my curious, funny boy. I love that he's always looking out the window. I love that he jumps up and down in his crib like a trampoline. I love that he completely soaks the entire bathroom every time he takes a bath. I love that his favorite toy is his ball and his slide (on which he brings all new meaning to the phrase "falling with style"). 

He has such a boy sense of humor. He is hilarious and he knows it. He loves to ham it up and be funny. I love how silly he is. And he's messy you guys. He's always got something on his face and snot running down his nose and scruffy hair. And he always wants to be outside picking up sticks. It's kind of bliss.

And the best part? He's a total momma's boy. There's something about the bond of a mom and her boy. He loves head rubs, and he loves giving me a whole 1 minute hug (I know right?) every time he wakes up. I LIVE for those moments. He's my guy! We are inseparable! I put him to bed and want to get him to come play some more. I'm excited every morning when it's wake up time.  I am so in love with that boy! He is my everything.

Now that I have a boy, I am completely convinced I could be a boy mom forever. If I get all boys, that is just fine with me. I love that little Milo Karl, and he is definitely all gloriously boy.

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If you would like to share a post about you and your son, email me at chasinmasonblog@gmail.com .

I would love to feature you! You don't have to have a blog to participate!

[Summer Bucket List] Sweet Treats

Hello! And welcome to the first day of our Summer Bucket List Link Up. If you know me at all, my first topic will not surprise you.

Today I'm going to talk about the sweet treats that we've been enjoying this summer!

If you follow me on Instagram {@lizbir}, you might have already seen a sneak peak of what I'm going to share.

Donuts.

A couple weekends ago, Seth, Mason, and I met our friends Lauren and Seth and their son, Logan, for breakfast at a local donut shop. It's a newer donut shop, one of those specialty donut shops. Sure, the donuts might have cost a bit more than your typical donut, but they also tasted a hell of a lot better than your run of the mill, everyday donut.

(please ignore my reflection in the window)

They also have milk on tap. ON TAP. Yes, like beer. They have regular milk, chocolate milk, and strawberry milk and they pour it for you, straight from the tap. It's amazing. So genius.

We had the hardest time deciding which donuts we wanted to get. There were SO MANY choices and they all looked delicious. Eventually I decided on the maple bacon donut and Seth got the Boston creme donut. (Boston creme pie is his FAVORITE cake (pie?) so this was no surprise). We got Mason a cake batter donut and then went to pay and found out we got a free donut for him also since he is under 12. Mario or Luigi? We chose Mario. Score.

We took our donuts outside and enjoyed every second of eating them.

cake batter // Mario

maple bacon // Boston creme

He got his very own chocolate milk....and drank it down to the last drop.

After we sat down to eat our donuts, I noticed that Lauren had gotten a yummy looking coffee. I asked her what it was and she said she had gotten an iced coffee with chocolate milk. Half coffee, half chocolate milk, over ice. Sounded like a mocha to me so I went in and got myself one. It was a little pricey at $4.50 but no more than a Starbucks mocha and way more delicious!

If you have a Donut Bar near you, I highly recommend it. The donuts were pure deliciousness.

We will be back!

Don't forget to link up with us again next week, sharing the fun activities that you've been up to this summer!

Stephanie at Wife Mommy Me | Desiree with Macke Monologues | Jenny from The Chronicles of We

Becky of bybmg | Courtney from Sweet Turtle Soup | Elizabeth at Chasin' Mason