A Rainbow and a Shake

We aren't ones to really celebrate St. Patrick's Day, like I don't decorate for it or anything, but I do like to make sure we wear our green (I actually love to wear green b/c I have hazel eyes that change depending on what I'm wearing, and when I wear green my eyes look more green :)).  Today Aiden and I also made a rainbow craft, and this evening we made a St. Patty's Day shake, like we've done the last few years :)

Aiden's rainbow :)

I had pinned the craft on my Pinterest - here's the link.

It was fun to make!  Aiden really wanted to help me cut the strips of paper, which was a little tricky since you have to be pretty precise about making each color an inch shorter than the next.  Luckily he was content to help glue on the cotton balls :)

Shoving his rainbow into his bus ;)

I can't help it, he'll always be my beauty boy ;)

In our green :)  Mine almost looks light blue next to Aiden!

Angled a little more to show off baby sister.  I'll be 33 weeks on Wednesday!

Blowing bubbles when Daddy got home :)

Trent surprised me with these tulips when he got home!  We went on our first date 7 years ago today!

For our FHE treat we made our traditional St. Patty's Day shake, although this year we tried a new recipe (you can find it HERE). This one is supposed to be like the McDonald's shamrock shake.

We all enjoyed it ;)

I was trying to get a picture of my shake and Aiden kept jumping in..haha.

Hope you had all had a fun day!  Oh and here's my St. Patty's post from last year.  It's crazy to see how Aiden changes over a year!

Such Tourists in LA :)

January 18th

Saturday we spent the morning and early afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard doing some touristy things.  We walked along the Hollywood Walk of Fame and checked out the Chinese Theatre with the famous handprints, footprints, and signatures of many celebrities in the concrete.  Apparently there are almost 200 - it didn't seem like that many to me when we were there!  I only got pictures of a handful of them.

Gotta love Will Smith.

John Travolta.

Meryl Streep - had to get her since we'd just seen her on Ellen :)

Matt Damon.

Some of the Twilight cast.

Tom Hanks.

Jennifer Aniston - she was wearing heels :)

Adam Sandler.

There was a fun mall next door with a huge candy boutique that we checked out.  These steps were piano keys and would actually play as you walked up and down them :)

We got tickets to tour the Dolby Theatre, but had some time to use up, so we did a little shopping.

The Dolby Theatre is where the Academy Awards take place and Ellen actually hosted this year just the other week on March 2nd. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside during the tour.

Stairway up to the entrance of the Dolby Theatre.

It was interesting to see and hear how they get all set up for the Academy Awards because the theatre is literally inside a mall, so they were explaining how they cover all of the store fronts with curtains and roll out the red carpet.  We got to go up on the stage and they kept telling us that we were just kind of seeing the bones and framework and that it would look a lot nicer for the Awards..haha.

We got to see an Oscar and learned that celebrities are absolutely prohibited from giving away or selling an Oscar they've won.  If for some reason they don't want it, they can give it back to the Academy and they'll receive a dollar in return.  ONE dollar..haha.  Also, they're names aren't engraved on the Oscar until the after party.  So it really is a complete surprise for the announcers (and everyone else) as to who the winner is.

Picture after our tour.

It was fun to watch the Academy Awards the other week and see how they had dolled up the whole place since when we had seen it :)

Jimmy Kimmel airs across the street.

After that we headed to lunch at The Ivy.  Jordan got us reservations there.  It's kind of a celebrity hotspot so we were hoping to see someone, but no such luck.  Oh well, it was still fun to be there :)  We were a little surprised to find out that sharing is not allowed (it's a little pricey there), but we just kind of laughed and decided it was part of the experience ;)

Such a cute group, if I say so myself :) 

Just a shot of it from across the street.

There was lots of high end boutique shopping around there, so we did a little "window shopping."  I loved the ivy all over Stella McCartney's storefront.

The girls were excited to check out DASH, founded by the Kardashian sisters.  I actually didn't know anything about it because I don't watch Keeping Up with the Kardashians..ha.

Just a quick walk through :)

More ivy love - Diane von Furstenberg.

We headed back to the hotel for naps (haha) and later that evening we got a little more dressed up and headed to The Grove, an outdoor shopping mall.  It was a nice night and fun to just take it easy.

A nice backdrop for us sisters in Anthropologie..haha.

On this night baby girl was really active and the girls all got to feel her moving around :)  Amy was a little shocked that she "high kicked" her..haha.

We shopped and picked up some cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory, the best!

Not the best pictures, but we needed to document :)

We drove down Rodeo Drive and headed back to the hotel to get packed up.  The next day we flew home.  I was a little sad that all of the girls got to fly together.  And it stunk because their flight was like 5 hours before mine..ha.  I was so early they wouldn't even let me check in for like another hour!

Anyway, it was such a fun trip!  It freaked me out though, while giving hugs and saying goodbye, that the next time I'd be seeing them I'd have a new baby!!  Little did we know that I'd be seeing my sisters and Bryn just a few weeks later (with my Dad's accident and all).  I'm so glad to have my sisters and cousins as my very best friends :) Hopefully we can keep up the girl's trips!

Santa Monica Pier

January 17th

Well I said I'd finish posting about our LA Girl's Trip and here I am finally doing it ;)  So far I've only posted about our first day, January 16th, on the Ellen Show HERE.  The next day, Friday, the 17th, we spent much of the day at the Santa Monica Pier.  It was a beautiful day and we decided to rent bikes and ride along for a little bit.  Seems like a popular/touristy thing to do ;)

The classic ferris wheel shot.

Jill, Jen, myself, Meg, and Jordan.

And Amy and Bryn.

There were some fun homes!

We decided to just rent the bikes for an hour and I think we all agreed that that was just perfect.  That's really all we needed.  Then we grabbed some lunch at a food court.  Afterward we headed back down to the beach for a little bit.

The water was cold!  Notice Jen and Jordan's faces when the tide came in ;)

Sissies ;)

Candid :)

Jordan is due at the beginning of April with a baby boy, so we are almost exactly a month apart!  At this point Jordan was 28 weeks and I was 24.  Now she's 36 and I'm 32!!

Someone lost their balloons.

Don't know what we were thinking when we didn't bring our suits :/

Twinners.

That evening we had a reservation at Pizzeria Mozza.  I had an old article ripped out with good pizza places in the U.S. and this was on there, so we thought we'd try it out.

Jen and I shared the Bianca (white pizza).  I had been reading reviews a few weeks prior and people raved about the Fried Squash Blossoms w/ Ricotta for an appetizer and the Butterscotch Budino, Sea Salt & Rosemary Pine Nut Cookies for dessert, so I knew I wanted to try both of those, along with our pizza that night.  It was all very tasty :)

Jordan and I shared the Butterscotch Budino.  I know, totally dorky to take a picture with our food ;)  And clearly we got some sun ;)

We headed back to our hotel to get comfy, but were feeling a little lame, especially since the night before we called it a night around 7. So we decided to hop back in the van (ha!) and try to find a lookout point for the Hollywood sign.  We were using someone's phone to navigate, but there was some private party going on and the street was blocked off, so we ended up taking a twisty, turny detour up, up, up. We had no idea where we were going, but we kept driving and were noticing tons of cars and people headed somewhere.  We pulled into a parking spot, that just happened to be the very closest to the entrance, but we still didn't know where we were..haha.  Turns out we ended up at the Griffith Observatory and admission is free!! We were cracking up!  So we totally took advantage!  We felt a little silly because most of us were in pajamas/sweats and it seemed like a lot of people were there for date night.  Nonetheless we enjoyed the view!

The best shot I could get of the Hollywood sign - it was dark!

Amy and Bryn looking out.

As we drove back down the slope we happened upon a pack of wolves roaming - it was really creepy!  Anyway, it was a fun little adventure and then we were back to the hotel :)