Please help by sponsoring this little girl.....

Meet Olive.

She is a darling two year old girl. She would love for some generous person to read her books and play with her. You see, she currently resides with her father who is always at work and her mother who struggles with a terrible addiction: blogging. Although her mother is always at home with her, she is far too busy jumping from blog to blog to even wipe the crusted remains of her oatmeal breakfast from her rosy cheeks.
While "unattended", Olive is forced to find fun wherever she can. She jumps in the piles of dirty laundry scattered throughout the house, plays dress-up with mutant cockroaches found in the back yard, and climbs furniture in hopes to catch a glimpse of photographs taken of her and her parents in happier times.
Because she is never clothed, Olive does what she can to be resourceful. She is pictured here wearing a soiled diaper and a Peter Pan DVD sleeve on her ankle for warmth.
Anything you can do for this sweet spirit would be greatly appreciated.
Operators are standing by.....

Move over Thomas and Lightning McQueen.......

She's finally discovered her dolls.

"Bob", Ariel, Olive, and "Baby Uncle Ryan"

The uninvited guest

For the past two weeks or so Olive and I have been either away on vacation or out cavorting all over town. I decided some long overdue, one-on-one time between the two of us was needed. I had the perfect plan: after her nap, we would throw on our grubbies, grab our gardening tools and spend the afternoon in our backyard digging, planting and watering. We would have a ball and I could actually get some work done. With the light-bulb of ingenious ideas still glowing above my head, I scurried into the garage, quickly devised a mental checklist for our outdoor adventure and gathered the supplies:

* our gardening gloves...... CHECK!
* my small shovel.............. CHECK!
* Olive's Hello Kitty tools... CHECK!
* empty pots..................... CHECK!
* dried out potting soil...... CHECK!
* the hose covered in sparrow poop...CHECK!

We were in business!
I laid everything out on the grass in an organized fashion and anxiously awaited the end of her nap. She soon awoke refreshed and recharged. In an overly enthusiastic tone, I unveiled the plan to her.
She loved it!
We got dressed, filled our Shamu souvenir cups to the rim with ice water, buried a paper plate with goldfish crackers, apple slices and string cheese and headed out the backdoor, into the yard.
We plopped ourselves down at our makeshift workstation and began the fun. About 30 seconds later, I realized I had forgotten the best part... I hadn't turned on the hose!
I excitedly shot up, walked across the yard, and carefully turned on the hose to a slight drip (knowing it would be on for at least an hour). While I adjusted it to the right setting, I heard Olive say, "Uh-oh! I looked up from where I was and didn't see anything worthy of an "Uh-oh!". She was standing still at a careful distance directly in front of a medium sized clay pot. However, I did notice that she had ditched her coveted pink Hello Kitty shovel.

Something was up.

With my eyes on her, I casually walked back to our work space and noticed her eyes were fixated on that pot. I changed my gaze in the same direction as hers and was HORRIFIED by what MY eyes were now focused on.....



NO FREAKIN WAY!!!

HOW did this happen????
WHEN did this happen????
WHY did this happen????

This was seriously one of the biggest bugs I have ever seen in my 31 years of bug encounters.

Although my gut reaction was to scream, I knew I needed to stay calm for my little gal. I didn't want to this nasty run-in permanently imprinted in her brain (as it would be in mine). I forced out a shaky "o-o-o-h!", trying to make it sound more like I was impressed rather than repulsed.
It worked.
She looked at me, smiled, and replied, "big bug, mommy. Nice?"
(Pause for 3 seconds)
"Yes, it's nice........ do you want to go inside and have some ice cream?"

The rest is history.

I don't know what happened to the bug, but I do know that all of our tools and supplies are still outside, six hours after the fact, being watered by our sprinklers.

Inseparable

As I was looking through all of our Carlsbad photos, I couldn't help but notice numerous heart-warming pictures of Riley and Olive. None of them were posed. I just happened to be there observing the love. They were attached at the hip; when one went one way, the other would soon follow. This is so very special to me because Kasey and her boys are my world. Although Riley and Olive are only 5 weeks apart in age, geographically they are more than 400 miles apart. I have secretly worried that maybe they wouldn't be " best cousins" because of the distance factor, but boy was I wrong (thank God). It melts my heart to see these two together.

A helping hand




Wagon warriors

Lookin' for trouble

Boogie buddies

Watching the "wabes"

"Rye-yee" and "Aavv"

Bringing up the rear

I love my babies. And it's clear they love each-other.

We came, we saw, we boogie-boarded!

So, roughly 13 of us traveled to beautiful Carlsbad State Beach where for a week, the ocean and all its splendor was our home. We camped in tents, bathed in coin operated showers, shared restrooms with about 100 different campers, and lived off of turkey sandwiches and whatever grub that could be prepared on our portable Coleman grill. Most of our sand covered days were spent at the beach swimming, boogie-boarding, "boating", making sand castles, lathering ourselves in sunscreen, playing Smash Ball, throwing the Frisbee, eating all of the M&M's out of the Costco trail mix, and chasing toddlers. A good time was had by all. I can't wait for next year!
The castaways: Riley, Olive, Eli, and Jackson

Fishing with grandpa

Olive's 1st catch: a shoe.
I'm selling it on ebay.

Everyone building sand castles and trenches

Olive's 1st drip castle (lessons courtesy of Kasey)

"Flamingo"


Dancing to the Surf Gods

Me and my Sue

Professional surfers-in-training

Kasey and Jackson back from their boating trip to Tijuana

Christmas card alert!
Riley, Ryan, Kasey, and Jackson
I gave the cue to "smile".
It looks as though Jackson misinterpreted what I said to be, " lay down on the boat and bury your face until I tell you it's o.k. to get up".

Eli, Derek, and Jennica
The sane ones on the trip

I'm being held captive by anti-bloggers!

Once I escape from the evils of my non-blogging captors, I will update everyone on all my vacations, fun times, housework, book reading, ice cream devouring, girls-night-outs, etc.