in santa cruz with jacob and faith

Jacob and Faith and I took a little trip to Santa Cruz. We needed to find an apartment for Jacob for the school year, but we also made a little vacation of it, going around town together and having fun. Santa Cruz is awesome but my kids are even more awesome. It was such a treat to get to spend time with them.

Some things we did:
visiting Natural Brides
walking along West Cliff drive
eating late breakfast at The Bagelry
seeing a movie at the Del Mar Theater (amazing, huge old theater)
Indian Buffet at the Sitar
late night burger run at Burger.
shopping at Bookshop Santa Cruz

What a fun and yummy trip.  Santa Cruz, we love you!

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impromtu sensory play

I had some dried beans that were way past their date and I wanted to get rid of them. I decided to pour them into a dish and make a temporary indoor sensory "table" for Rainer. He has definitely had some fun playing with the beans and burying the ladybug rocks the boys painted for my birthday. Now the beans have gotten a bit of extra use before I toss them.

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a tip for remembering your vitamins

When Carrie was here she passed along this great tip for remembering your vitamins: use a "med minder"! Med minders are those plastic "days of the week" containers that old people use to organize their medications. It had never occurred to me to use one of these for vitamins, but as soon as I saw Carrie's I became obsessed with the idea. I love having things neatly organized and I love structure and routine, so this is right up my alley. Currently I'm taking a multivitamin, two fish oils, an iron, and a vitamin D. I'd love to hear your recommendations for supplements too. What are you taking that you love??
Frankly, the only reason I chose this multivite is that the tablets are smaller (you have to take two, but I prefer that to taking one giant one). Do you have a multivitamin recommendation?

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a day in santa barbara

On Sunday Jacob, Faith, Dieter and Rainer set out for Santa Barbara* for a simple day trip. It's always so fun when I have my big kids and little kids all together. It makes me smile for sure.

We had a great time visiting the Ty Warner Sea Center (we get in free with our Natural History Museum membership--so we can go and stay as long or short as we want. It's always fun). It is small, but my kids are really into it. Right now there is a sea jelly display. We also went for lunch at Crushcakes (I had this) and to play at Kids World.  It's late summer and we are soaking up all the fun that we can get!


*(It's certainly our go-to place for a fun day trip.  Basically, Santa Barbara is just perfection).

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art activity

We were inspired by an old back issue of 3191 Quarterly to draw with Sharpies on cereal box cardboard. We tried drawing the flowers in our tabletop bouquet. It was fun. Rainer didn't want to do it, but he did end up painting something that I drew. It's fun to use Sharpies on cardboard!

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new clothes from tea

I decided to try some clothes from Tea for the boys. I really like their current catalog but mostly I decided to try Tea right now because Rainer has been going through a picky phase and I wanted to try their soft knit pants for him.  He doesn't like anything with big inside pockets or  flaps to annoy him.   I am happy with everything so far. In the photos he is wearing the denim-look knit pants and he loves them. I also got him the cargo knit pants.  I love all the shirts in the catalog right now.  The boys picked the designs they liked.

I can never convince the boys to pick clothes based on my taste alone--they always have their own taste and opinions so I let them pick what they like.  How about you?

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dinner white cloths

I made these "dinner white cloths" recently. They are a solution to the problem of Ken not liking any of our cloth napkins. Instead, he insists on using one of these ratty white cloths (it's not that they so ratty, exactly, but the way they are in constant use in our kitchen makes them dulled and grey in no time--not pretty for a dinner napkin).  I understand why Ken prefers this type of cloth as a napkin--they are really absorbent and practical.  I decided to designate a set just for use as dinner napkins.  I *hope* that they will stay white and pure for awhile, as they won't be used to wipe up spills and so forth.

I'm happy with how they turned out.  We haven't used paper napkins for several years, although I did use paper for many years before that.  What kind of napkins do you use??

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carpinteria day trip

I'm feeling the need to squeeze in as much summery goodness as possible right now. School and work are looming large on the horizon. Summer is SO hard to give up.

We went back to Carpinteria. This time we visited Crushcakes Capinteria, Curious Cup (a bookstore where we saw those fabulous finger narwhals) and Rincon Park again. It was chilly today and it even rained a bit (sprinkled). Dramatic weather for Southern California. Happy Friday and weekend to all!

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