Hello and Happy December,
I wish I could say that I was logging in here to say hello, wish you a happy holiday and send you our November/December blog, however as many of you have pointed out, I am REALLY behind!!! Eeeks, I thought I was just a few months behind but I just looked and found out that I am 8 months behind!! Okay, that must be the record, since we first started doing the blog 4 years ago.
How did life get so busy or maybe I am just getting older and slowing down??!!! The pace of life is a fast and full one but a fun one :)
So I guess I will begin to fill you in starting 8 months ago. It is a good thing that I take A LOT of photos because I don't have the greatest long term memory.
At the start of April, I took the girls to Universal Studios. It was during their spring break and Patrick was away. I have added in a few photos of Jaeda with some actors on tv shows/movies that were in a performance at Universal. She was very excited about having her photo taken with them (her idea) and then wanted me to send them to Jen Nussey (our celebrity follower friend).
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| memories of our time in the UK |
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| with Lon Gowan (CSI and Arrested Development) |
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| Hawk Walts (Revolution and Enlisted) |
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| Brittany Servidio (Bunheads) |
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| with Nick Hanneman (Bones and Parenthood) |
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| Samuel Jaye Paul (Lincoln and The Wedding Ringer) |
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| Nathan Hedrick (CSI-NY and I Love You Man) and Seth Duhame (Twilight, Battle Los Angeles and The Amazing Spider Man) |
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| we were so lucky to be there on the first day of the opening of the Despicable Me ride |
My very dear friend, Kerrie came to visit with her daughter Allie. Kerrie was one of my first friends at Central High School (along with Shari and Joanne). We were all 14 when we first met. Kerrie and Allie stayed with us for a week and we had an amazing time together (as you can see from the photos).
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| our "immunity please" shots (cayenne, garlic, ginger and a whole bunch of yummy stuff) |
One night when Kerrie and Allie were visiting, we took them to San Ysidro Ranch for dinner. As we were driving to dinner, we were talking about celebrities and how they come to Santa Barbara, because people aren't all over them. I was telling them that I don't really get star struck and Kerrie asked me, "is there anyone that you would like to see or meet?" I said, "I would like to see George Clooney". At the end of dinner, Patrick and I saw some friends from school on the patio, so we walked over and said hello. We then drove home and I got into my pj's about 30 minutes after leaving the restaurant. I sat in bed and looked at my Blackberry. The friend that we had talked to on the patio emailed to say that 5 minutes after we left, that George Clooney, his fiancé of 2 days, Cindy Crawford and her husband sat down at the table next to them. I debated getting out of bed and going back to the restaurant but it seemed like a lot of work. I knew I would regret it in the morning and I did. My friend said for the 2 hours that they were there at San Ysidro, not one person tried to talk to them, take photos or anything......and this is why they come to SB :)
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| Jaeda's first school volleyball game (at Laguna) Below are a few photos from the Santa Barbara Fair. As always, the girls had a ton of fun. Even Mommy got to have some fun.....we were about ready to leave and out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone and turned to the girls and said "quickly sit on the bench over there". They looked at me quite bewildered but did comply. We sat down and I got my camera out. The girls were still confused about what was going on and I kept saying, I will tell you in the car. Anyways, the person at the other end of my camera was Josh Holloway (Sawyer from the show "Lost"). I am not a big celeb follower but there are some people that I get a little excited about and he was one of them, mostly because Patrick and I had watched the whole "Lost" series and loved his character and after watching a show for that long, you start to feel like you know them. I was very excited when I got into the car with the girls and Sienna said in a real quiet voice "you do know you are married to Daddy right?" and that was without me making any comments about him at all, except for that he was in this show that we had watched :). It turns out that I didn't need to get that excited about seeing him that one time because as it turns out, his daughter started in Kindergarten at the girls' school this September, so I get to see him every day but the novelty has worn off :) |
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| Josh |
Easter morning
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| high up hidden eggs |
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| these girls love their dog |
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| artichoke plant that I found growing in our backyard |
Track and Field Day
Pacific Pride Royal Ball at the beautiful Bacara. This was our second year attending this event and it is out of this world, in terms of the entertainment, the decorations and the people watching. You would think you were in a big city, not a town of 90, 000.
We stayed over and went to the brunch the following morning. Check out this bar and the drinks.
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| view of the coastline from the Bacara |
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| Sienna with friends at the Milkshake concert at UCSB |
Below are some photos of Sienna's 1st grade class doing a play about rainforest animals. She was the narrator.
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| look at that cute pup :) |
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| Sienna with the chickens at school Mom/Nana came to visit in April. Every time she comes to visit, we try to do something new with her. This time we went to the Santa Ynez Valley and went to the towns of Solvang (a Danish Village) and Los Olivos (a small town with tons of wine tasting rooms).      Next up is the month of May. At the start of the month Sienna and her friend sang "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" from the movie "Frozen" at the school Spotlight performance.   In May we started more renovations. The bottom photo is one of the walkways that we chose not to do when we moved in, to save ourselves some money. Of course, it ended up costing us more to do after the fact. Ugh.  Some photos during and after volleyball at school     As the class historian for both classes, I started to scramble in May for enough photos of everyone to make the end of the year Shutterfly albums. I was grouping everyone as much as possible :)    |
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| Sienna's 1st grade teachers (Mrs. Smart and Mrs. Banko Fleming) |
love when the reading really takes off
The next big project was to remove all of the remaining wood siding from the bedroom area of the house and to start to prepare it for stucco.
Jaeda's class Gold Rush Culmination (the school does a lot of experiential/hands on learning, especially in 4th grade and this was one of them).
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| making pie crust |
Jaeda's 4th grade teachers (Ms. Bagish and Mrs. Willis)
Mollie from Mollie's Trattoria invited Sienna and some of the other children that are regulars at the restaurant for a tea party.
As I was leaving the restaurant, I saw Rob Lowe. There was no way I could ask him if I could take his photo, so this is the best I could do....a photo of the back of his head. I emailed it to my friend Erin right away, since I knew she would really appreciate it :)
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| Jaeda with braces on |
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| Jaeda with her braces off |
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| he is a lap dog :) |
Sienna's first spa birthday party
Crane puts on a huge gala/auction in the spring each year. This year they had it on the school grounds and the theme was "Crane Rocks", hence the attire. Unfortunately, Patrick was out of town for work.
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| the headmaster at the far left |
Some friends and I were asked to Skype into Oprah's Life Class show to discuss a book that we had read called, "Conscious Parenting" by Dr. Shefali Tsabary. I would definitely recommend the book! I recorded it at home but we had a power outage and it got erased :(
Mother's Day brunch (not sure what happened to the photo of me with the girls :) )
Some lovely and wonderful friends of ours, Sue and Dave came to visit us from Waterloo, while on their California trip. We had such a great time!!!
Grandma and Grandpa Spence came to visit. Like with my Mom, we try to take them on new adventures each time. This time we took them to Cold Spring Tavern which is on the way to Santa Ynez. While there, we go to see ChrisTina Schlieske from Tina and the B Sides.
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| Tina |
Something amazing happened not just once, but twice in May. 2 separate times I was out for a walk with 2 different friends and we saw whales swimming very close to the shore. It was absolutely incredible.
Jaeda and 3 of her classmates were chosen to represent the 4th grade team at the Math Superbowl competition (for 4th, 5th and 6th graders), where their school competed with 40 other schools and 500 students. The 4th grade team had 3 girls and 1 boy. Their team placed 5th overall. Out of the 12 kids (3 teams) from Crane..... 6 were girls, whereas the previous year, there had only been 1 girl.
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| go girls go!! |
Another huge highlight for us was meeting our close friends, the Nusseys in San Francisco. They were traveling from Canada to Hawaii and stopped in San Fran, so that our 2 families could get together. It is about a 5 hour drive from Santa Barbara. As always, we had an amazing time together. We shopped, we ate, we took a boat cruise under the Golden Gate Bridge, the Dads took the kids to the Exploratorium while Jen and I checked out the Ferry Building and enjoyed a cocktail. We walked and walked, we talked and laughed. Lots of fun!!
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| Alcatraz |
Jaeda's science tasting challenge (she did 2 different types of vanilla yogurt)
Then there was June. The girls signed up to do a few of the running races with Nite Moves.
Patrick went to a conference in LA and Gwenyth Paltrow was one of the keynote speakers.
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| Patrick and I went to see Sarah McLachlan at the Santa Barbara Bowl |
End of Year Field Day
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| Sienna's favorite teacher...Senora Calderon |
Hershey's first off leash hike
Girls at the Food Bank (we volunteer once a month)
Prince Hershey
Sienna's end of year party
The renos continued. We changed the 1950's bumpy stucco to a smooth stucco.
We must have looked at about 25-30 colors. One neighbor came by and said "if you are going for the patchwork look, it is working".
Some end of school beach fun with friends.
After Hawaii, the girls went to a basketball camp at Westmont College.
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