WE'RE BACK!

No...

My house is STILL not done...

BUT...

The contractors that are working on my house couldn't find a perfect match for our hardwood floors that they pulled up, so they are replacing our ENTIRE house's floor.

The BEST part is that the hardwood that they found that was a close resemblence to what we had is actually a better quality floor, AND we don't have to pay for ANY OF IT!

There is always a silver lining.

Praise Jesus!

Hopefully, everything will be 100% complete by Tuesday!

Keep our family in your prayers!

I also started work again after a glorious month of leave.

I was sad to go back after spending all the time that I did with Dannika, but it's been nice.

I forgot how much I love being around junior Marines (since we really didn't have them on recruiting duty...except for the occasional boot camp graduate). 

Like always, I have my complaints about work, but I'll try and be positive and keep them to myself!

LASTLY...

We took Dannika to see the Easter Bunny last weekend.

She was scared of him...

I guess last year, she really didn't know what was going on so we ended with a decent pic...

Easter 2010 / Dannika 9 months old

ANNND....

Easter 2011 / 21 months old

They make for fabulous memories :-)

House Under Construction

My house is under construction...

PRO:

I got to take even MORE time off work

CON:

I took MORE time off work to deal with insaneness

PRO:

I get to spend EXTRA quality time with Nick and Dannika

CON:

We don't have a comfortable place in our house to spend it.

Dannika's room is currently demolished.

My living room will be completely demolished tomorrow.

Since we can't do ANYTHING in our house.

It's not even safe to be inside of it due to mold and asbestos...

yes...

MOLD

AND 

ASBESTOS!!!!!!!!!

While the plumbers were pouring concrete in Dannika's room today, Nick took her outside to play.

I got this fancy camera lens for Christmas along with my fancy DSLR.

I have never used it because I was still learning the ins and outs of shooting on manual.

I decided to experiment with it today while they played.

I must say, the pictures turned out waaay nicer!

27 Feels So Great

Can ya believe, I am 27 already?!?!

My birthday was Friday (the 25th)

I was extremely blessed that my husband got back from mountain warfare training on Thursday evening!

I was so excited to get to spend my birthday with him.

I feel pretty fabulous at 27, but I've decided that next year, I will be turning 25 again.

Just getting on a treadmill at the gym and having to type in "2-7" for my age is weird to me.

As for making my birthday special...

Nick always comes through :-)

We dropped Dannika off with our neighbors, Joanne and Mike for the evening, and Nick took me out to a romantic night out in downtown San Juan Capistrano.

We are SO LUCKY to live in such a cool city.

Our house is literally walking distance to downtown.

He took me out to eat at the Vintage Steakhouse.

The restaurant is so cool cause it's actually an antique train that they turned into a restaurant. 

Even cooler...

A really nice family that was having dinner right next to us bought our dinner for us because I'm assuming they saw Nick's Marine Corps tattoo on his arm.

So nice to know that there are such nice people out there in a world full of chaos.

The rest of the evening, we went "bar hopping" in San Juan Capistrano.

I put quotation marks around the word bar hopping, cause we only went to two bars that were actually restaurants that had bars in them, and we didn't get all crazy. 

We were responsible adults...I mean, we had a child to take care of after the night was over.

It was crazy busy because it was the day before the Swallows Day Parade in San Juan Capistrano.

It was lots of fun though.

Thank you Nick for making my birthday so special.

OOOHHH...

And for my birthday, I got a Fendi watch and an IPad 2....

I am one lucky gal!!!

Before leaving the house.

In the parking garage in downtown San Juan Capistrano. The camera battery died right after this picture. I'm so mad that I didn't get better birthday pictures!!!!

ANNND NEXT...

THE SWALLOWS DAY PARADE!!!!

Last year, it was just Dannika and I at the Swallows Day Parade since Nick was in Afghanistan.

I remember thinking the whole day how I couldn't wait till next year when we could all go as a family.

I had so much fun just alone with Dannika last year, that I knew it would be 10 times more fun this year with our whole family.

You can read about my experience LAST year here.

This year, we invited the Yubeta family to join us.

It was so much fun...

exhausting...

but fun.

The kids loved it and so did the grown ups! 

Since we live so close to downtown San Juan Capistrano, we all walked from our house.

On the way back, we stopped at the park to let the kids run around and to wear them out.

I got to be a MOMTOG for the day since Kim didn't bring her camera. 

I had so much fun taking pictures of the kids.

Friends <3

Man...I can't remember the last time we had a family photo

I want a mini horse!

playing at the park

Kanoa and Dannika

Dannika, Devon, and Kanoa.

Kim and Sunny

The "Doctor" Is In!

My brother in law Aaron is a doctor.

He went to medical school at SUNY Upstate.

Before he left NY to do his internship in San Francisco, he got Dannika these adorable scrubs.

She was just an infant when he bought them for her, and almost a year and a half later...

THEY FINALLY FIT!!

Look how cute she is!

First Bow

I've spent well over few HUNDRED dollars on hair accessories for my daughter since the day she was born.

Yeah...

All those adorable little flowers and bows you see on her head...

they ain't cheap honey!

On average I spend anywhere from 15 to 40 dollars per bow depending on size, quality, etc. etc. etc.

I took some leftover ribbon I had in my craft box and decided to take a hand at making one of my own for Dannika.

Not only was it so much fun, but man...

I coulda saved us a lot of money!