I love having season passes to the Safari Park (and San Diego Zoo) because we don’t feel the rush to see everything in one day and we just go at our own leisurely pace. We wanted to see the butterfly exhibit, and it was on it’s last day, but the line was 2 hours to get in (insane!), so we all agreed we didn’t want to wait two hours and just headed to Freebirds for dinner. The L.A. Natural History Museum currently has a similar butterfly exhibit going on, with a much shorter wait time based on past experiences, so we will plan to take the girls to that instead.

I’m thankful it’s Friday and while I wanted to share Mother’s Day projects here, I just never got around to it. We were able to shower my mom with something last weekend and we mailed off a little something to Ben’s mom during the week, so we got the moms in our lives covered. All my Mother’s Day request have to do with food and I can’t wait to fill my stomach with waffles, sopes, and pie. Calories don’t count on special days, right?!

Tomorrow we will be working in the garden. We finally have all our Cor-ten steel garden beds in, they are all filled with dirt, and now it’s time to get planting. I will have to show you the latest transformation, and it feels like we are always changing something back there, but I think we’re getting closet to where we want the garden to be. Well, hopefully.

My brain has been all over the place this week, so you get me talking about the zoo, then Mother’s Day, then the garden. Anyone else have a scatterbrained week?

P.S. Giraffe and Lion are wearing goodies from Misha Lulu’s spring/summer line. Snow Leopard’s dress is handmade, see here.

Ben took the girls to WonderCon a couple weekends ago and it was their first time going to something like that. My girls are really into comics, especially Spider-Man, so they were so excited to be able to go. Of course, they dug up their costumes to get dressed up and they came home with plenty of pictures of other characters they took pictures with, and two people even asked Soul even they could take pictures with her!

Ben got each girl a little treat to commemorate their adventure that day, and each treat represented each character they were dressed as. Soul got this cute little Pinkie Pie by Funko, and True and Brave got these two little prints from the artist Christopher Lee. After they came home, Ben wished he picked up one he saw for me, so he called his cousin, who was still there, and he picked up the print for us. It’s this Kids on Modern Classics print by Christopher Lee. I love midcentury modern chairs (and have a few), so how funny (and sort of true) is this illustration.  This Master of the Universe Compendium poster is pretty great too, and I know the kids would love it because they love He-Man and She-Ra. We had fun looking Christopher Lee’s site and loving all his work (check it out here); his illustrations are just so cool and fun.  We love finding new artists to love and follow!

The two big girls went and had their first kid sleepover with some kids from our church family, so after church one Sunday, we bid them farewell, and it was just Ben, me, and the two littlest. I know it’s hard when you have your first kid, and it’s hard to figure out the juggling when you add your second one, but after being a mom to 4 for a couple of years now, when it’s just two (no matter the combo), it is so much easier! Since our car load was lighter, Ben and I took the girls to a local nursery to pick out more plants (yes, more!). Ben was in search of a peach tree and I was looking for more indoor plants.

Glow and Soul were all about exploring up and down the aisles, and fighting about who gets to push/pull the wagon. It is so interesting when True and Brave aren’t around because you really see the big sister come out of Soul. She’s the one showing Glow the ropes and doing all the bossy-ing around. Soul also desperately misses Brave and True when they aren’t here, and will constantly inquire about their return. I think it’s so ironic because when they’re here, she is always fighting with them, especially with Brave. As much as they were missed, I’m glad my biggest girls were able to go on their first sleepover, and they came home with stories about how much fun they had!

on me: dress, handmade (see here). shoes, lotta from stockholm. bag, humble hilo. on true: dress and shoes, old navy. scarf, made by her friend. on brave: shirt, misha lulu. pants, frankie and sue. shoes, gap kids. scarf, made by her friend. on soul: dress, vintage. shirt, c/o panache box. leggings, aa. shoes, totally hand me downs. on glow: dress, vintage. shoes, c/o old navy.

These were taken on my phone from our shoot at Modern Props for the fall/winter Misha Lulu lookbook? Some of these made it to my instagram (like this one), in case they look familiar. Modern Props is the biggest prop house in Southern California  and there were chairs of every kind (be still my chair loving heart!) and props that I totally recognized from Austin Powers, Superman movies, and Michael Jackson things. Besides chairs from all eras, there were tables, office furniture, space ship stuff and just lots and lots of random artifacts. It was this ginormous warehouse filled with amazing things!

The kids were busy being models and us moms were sitting around. It was so strange not doing anything. I got really tired just sitting there! Also, us moms sat around talking about our “mom guilt” and how even though we all stay home, at the end of the day we all still look back at the day and feel bad thinking we didn’t spend enough time with our kids. It’s cause we’re busy doing this and that for them, but we still feel we’re lacking. I think know matter what your situation is… working mom, working at home mom, stay home mom, we all get a bit of “mom guilt,” don’t we?!

Our plans for Joshua Tree this weekend had to change due to the rain. The girls had been wanting to do a treasure hunt in Joshua Tree, but Ben and I made slight tweaks to do it at home instead. Honestly, though they had been asking for weeks, it was a last minute thing and I made a run to a party store on Saturday to pick up some little trinkets, threw in some hair goodies I had from Mane Message, and just wrapped those up with crepe paper. I dumped the contents of an old box out, and used that to put all the “treasures” in.

I originally thought we were going to do it Easter egg hunt style, but Ben was thinking we’d make clues, so then I switched to making clues. That was definitely a better idea! As a kid, my cousin and I loved writing riddles and turning that into a treasure hunt of sorts when we were at our grandparents’ house, so I tapped into those memories to make the riddles for my girls. I came up with 8, and then Ben and I set off to hide those in their designated spots. I wish I had done more planning and made it all cutesy for the kids, but I’m sure there will be more treasure hunts in our future, so I say this was a good start.

We let the girls know we were ready, and handed them their first clue. They opened it up, read it, and said, “Huh?!” We explained that they were riddles and they had to think about it to figure it out. They got the gist after the first two, and they were zooming here and there to the next ones after. Soul didn’t know how to read, so she was just there for the zooming to and fro, but despite her lack of reading skills, she is the one who unearthed the treasure after True and Brave read the last clue out loud.

The girls were excited to have found their “treasure,” and they sat their exploring the contents of the box. They divided up the goods in a peaceful manner (thankfully!) and spent the rest of the afternoon playing together with their new little trinkets. They were most excited about the little crowns and the hair clips. Glow was napping during the treasure hunting, but they made sure to save her some, and she was most excited about the bear. That little girl is obsessed with bears! The prizes were really simple, but I think what they loved the most was the fun of the hunt! So if you’re stuck indoors for a rainy day (or a snow day), I’d say gathering up some little goodies, writing some riddles for the kids, and having a treasure hunt, is a good way to make memories and have fun together!

We have passes to the San Diego zoos, so we took the girls to the Safari Park for the first time a couple weeks ago. Ben had never been there before, and it’s been way over a decade since I had last been there, so it was totally new to us too. The park is just gorgeous because you can see all the wide open spaces they have for the animals to roam. We had a marvelous afternoon together, and then we ate at one of our favorite burrito place, Freebirds, on the way home. I’m thankful for family days like this that break us away from our never ending to-do list, and allows us to just hang out and enjoy something together.