california take two

we headed down to california again last weekend for jimmy and jamie's wedding. it was a quick trip but worth every bit of the long drive down! we all rented a beach house in huntington for the weekend and had waaaay too much fun for our own good!

we pretty much ate ourselves into a coma, played ultimate frisbee and cracked tons of jokes in between all the wedding events. oh and incase you haven't seen pictures or heard from others yet, the wedding was perfection!

as the buddies would say, "the jokes were ON". for a more thorough trip breakdown, check out emily's post.

crosby beach trip

we had such a blast at the beach with my family this year, as we do every year. adam and i got to stay down there for about 10 days, it was heaven. we also got to see chris and kimmy (who live in new york) and katie (who lives in san clemente).

we ate shrimp tacos at our favorite place, rode our beach cruisers to the wedge, hit up all the surf shops in town, played bocci ball and frisbeeon the sand, ran on the boardwalk, and pretty much just loved every second of it.

BIG thanks to mama debbie and papa greg for the trip and to grandma and grandpa alexander and crosby for lending their homes. we love you all!

i'm always a little depressed after getting home from the beach and this time is no different. the only thing giving me hope as fall weather quickly approaches is that we are headed back to sunny southern california next week for a wedding, hip hip hooray!

kitchen: before and afters

we bought our house about a year and a half ago. it was built in 1954 and had very little, if any, renovating done since, as you can tell from the before pictures...

these pictures were taken after we'd ripped up the yucky tile, before installing the wood flooring. 

after a lot of hard work we now love our kitchen!

we painted stripes on the wall entering into the kitchen

my favorite thing about the kitchen is it feels so light and airy, thanks to these giant windows opening to the front porch.

 we added more canned lights in the kitchen for added lighting

 the flooring we added matches the original wood flooring that we refinished throughout the rest of the house

 all the veggies are from our garden :)

we left all the cabinetry the same just painted it a fresh white, added new hardware and also added the beadboard (kind of hard to see in the photo) as a backsplash

more beadboard by the kitchen table. i knew i wanted a blue kitchen and we love the blue we chose although it is showing up different colors in all these photos. also, added some shelving for decorations, recovered the chair seats in a green apple color and painted the kitchen table gray.

 new sink and faucet

 our fridge and all appliances were replaced when we moved in, they were old and gross before.

one of our favorite places in the house, and not just because it's filled with food :)

gotta soak it up

i get nauseous when i think about summer coming to an end. not a fan of winter, in case you couldn't tell. we've been soaking up every last minute of summer golfing, hiking, running, biking, swimming, night walks...gotta get enough sunshine to last me through the year.

luckily our we've still got some summer coming our way including 2 more trips to my fav place on earth, newport beach. can't wait to meet up with the fam for 12 days o' fun! 

creamed carrots

the other day as we pulled into our driveway we saw our cute little neighbor girls calling us over to their sale. when we asked what they were selling they replied with "cweamed cawots" (creamed carrots) what the? um ok...i can deal with that, i used to sell rocks with my friends on the corner. how much? a dollar they said. kinda steep if you ask me since i can get lemonade for 25 cents on most corners.

 they handed us a dinner plate that was just raw baby carrots covered in mustard and ketchup. i've never had creamed carrots before but i'm guessing that's not how you make them. smelled disgusting!

since they gave the carrots to us on a plate they waited outside our front window while adam pretended to eat them and i slyly scooped them into the garbage and returned their plate. my theory is they had some leftovers from dinner and thought "hey, you think we can get some sucker to buy this?" turns out yes they can since they've got a couple of suckers for neighbors. the buck was worth the laugh!

pierre's hole

this weeked we headed up to wyoming for adam and his brother's race up in targhee. it was adam's first real mountain bike race, a 50 miler with some crazy steep climbs and he rocked it!

this was the night before the race we were scoping out the course, it was gorgeous up there!

here's my man right before the big start. i don't think he knew quite what the next 6 hours had in store for him... 

 he's the tiny little speck on the top of the hill

and here he is with his finishers beer mug (minus the beer)

 some dirt and scrapes and blood. so hard core.

sam started before adam did so when adam crossed the finish line sam was there to cheer him on. sam's a seasoned rider, he's responsible for adam signing up for these crazy races.

i should mention that his bike was a single speed meaning he couldn't change gears the entire race but he did it, all 50 miles and most impressive, he's still smiling!  

55 and still alive!

my dad turned 55 years young yesterday. when he was born my grandma thought he was the most beautiful baby so her whole life she's called him "beautiful greg". who can disagree? i mean really, check out those cheek bones and that tan! one of a kind. am i right?

 we gave my dad a meat smoker for his birthday hence the pretend smoke by adam and hence the posing by a big black bbq

happy birthday beautiful greg! one year older but still a big kid at heart.