lucky number 13.

Today this guy and I have been married for 13 years.

We'll celebrate tonight at a romantic soccer meeting at Round Table Pizza,

and then I'll head to a Pioneer Woman dinner party a friend is throwing.

And after 13 years...he's okay with that.

Because we'll celebrate this weekend...

probably with sushi and chocolate chip cookies.

They're his favorite.

He's my favorite.

And I just had to share this picture we recently found of him and his grandpa,
circa 1981.  He was nine.

Clearly my kids are not products of the mailman.

:)

I know thirteen will be a good year for us.
Happy anniversary, GP!

camping.

We just got back from our annual camping trip to Fallen Leaf Lake.
I'm taking a break from the ungodly amount of camping laundry I'm in the middle of
to come say hi.

If you're familiar with the Tahoe area, Fallen Leaf Lake
is right across the street from Camp Richardson.
Gary's family has been camping there his entire life.
It's definitely one of our favorite things to do as a family.
{even if it is an unbelievable amount of work.  holy cow.}

I tell myself every summer that I'm going to create a camping bin
so I don't have to do this every year.
Yeah.  I never do.

But my dad does give me my grandpa's camping box to use every year.


He was a serious outdoorsman.
Only a serious outdoorsman would keep his camping supplies in a dynamite box.



And...his dishes in a poisoned grain bag.



He had everything in that box...



...including a salt shaker that I'm pretty sure contains 60 year old salt.
{i didn't use it.}

I guess this was monogrammed for him.
I love that my rough and gruff grandpa had a monogrammed camp kit!



So after the packing at home...
and the unpacking at the camp site...
the kids were ready for fun.
Camping is so much fun when you're a kid.
They just go and enjoy the ride...no work involved.
Being a kid is awesome.






{he's allergic to haircuts, can you tell?}

One of Gary's uncles brought along these really cool water bikes.



They were a huge hit with everyone.
They have pedals just like a bicycle,
and a lever that controls the rudder underneath.
The kids spent hours on them!
I think they were really liking the independence of being out on the water without any grown-ups.



So many cousins and second cousins and aunts and uncles...59 to be exact.
And every year there's a big volleyball game.



And speaking of volleyball...want to feel realllllly good about yourself?
Watch the Olympic women's beach volleyball.
Ughhhhh.

I bring very high quality literature to the beach and stay on the shore.

Tahoe is COLD water.
But I don't think kids have nerve endings, because they never seem to mind.

We stayed four nights this year.
And it turns out...four nights in a tent is definitely my limit.
I do love camping, but the dirt thing starts to get to me around day three.
The kids' feet are so disgusting.
Even though there are showers there and we do use them,
I just never feel clean.
And those showers give me major anxiety.
I'm a borderline germ-a-phobe and it's almost sends me over the edge trying to
shower the kids and make sure their feet never touch the floor
and that none of our clothes touch the floor
and that our bag doesn't touch the floor
and that the soap doesn't fall on the floor.
The floor = ewwwwww.
I'm getting tense just thinking about it.

I think this might be the only picture of me from this trip.
Which is probably a good thing.
Camping hair is scary.

Like my personalized socks?  I love how Costco monograms them especially for me.

:)

Avery spotted the raccoon at the camp store and "needed" a souvenir.
She's a stuffed animal type of girl.



So our Tahoe 2012 trip is in the books,
and 80% of our camping gear is still on the floor of our garage waiting to be put away.
That's where I'm headed now.

my fave craigslist score. {and a winner!}

We've lived in our house for almost two years.
And for almost two years I've been scouring Craigslist for something.

We had a big blank wall in our laundry room
that I knew needed lockers.
I love having some industrial elements throughout the house,
plus lockers are just the perfect place for the kids' c.r.a.p.

Finally, earlier this week, I hit the jackpot.
I've been wanting a bank of three lockers together
and I finally stumbled upon a high school that was re-doing their locker room.

I made Gary go with me, of course, because I've seen too many 48 Hours Mysteries.



Turns out it really was a high school, no ax murderer's lair.
Whew.

The football players needed larger lockers for their gear,
so the school is selling {for a steal!} these awesome three year old lockers.

They've been gently abused by football players just enough to have the right amount of character.
And they fit in the Suburban.
Score!



Hello, pretties.



That's a pretty bad representation of the color in my laundry room, by the way.
It's my favorite color in our whole house: acapulco aqua by Kelly Moore.
It's the perfect aqua.



I just like them a lot.



Gary wasn't sure about the whole locker thing,
but he likes them too.
Thankfully he trusts me and just goes with the flow
when I tell him we're going into the Oakland hills to pick up some lockers.
:)

{and...local friends...they have more lockers available, if you're interested.
email me and i can send you details.}

I'm almost done with a fun gallery wall upstairs.
I'll show you that very soon.
I love summer.
I'm actually getting projects done.

************************


And finally...a winner!
Congrats to Courtney @ Shamrock Smiles!
Email me at foreverfoldinglaundry at hotmail dot com.

And thanks, everyone, for the kind words and entering the giveaway.
It was fun to see where you all were four years ago.
Crazy how things change, isn't it?

a whitewater adventure.

Back in June, right before Gary was about to turn 40,
I had already spent several weeks wracking my brain
thinking of something to get him.

He loves the outdoors and adventurous-type things,
so I wanted to do something along those lines.
I just figured we'd all head to Santa Cruz together
and he could surf.
There has since been a shark attack there.  YIKES.

But a couple of days before his birthday a Groupon came up
{i love groupon}
for a rafting trip on the American River.
Yes!  Perfect.

Saturday morning we headed up the cute little town of Coloma.
It's so pretty there.



I think forty looks good on him.
:)



After a safety talk from the raft guide about how to NEVER stand up in the river
and if you fall out of the raft DO NOT PANIC,
I decided that I would probably immediately panic and stand up in the river
if I fell out of the raft.

I was nervous.

My only goal for the day was to stay in the raft.

And I did.  Booyah.

This was the scariest part of the trip.
We saw two rafts flip over here.
And please note that in the following picture I am clearly saving Gary's life.



We were soaked to the core.



It was so much fun.
I would do it again in a heartbeat.

After rafting we headed to a bed & breakfast not too far away.
I'm usually not a huge fan of the whole B&B thing.
I don't really like to eat with strangers and just want my own space.
But this one was amazing.
We almost never saw another soul.

And the view from the pool was the bomb.



It's hard to see but the American River is right down there.
We just sat by the pool for a couple of hours.
Turns out...rafting is exhausting.
But boy would you have great arms & a strong core if you did that all the time.

That evening my favorite 40 year old and I went to dinner and
shared some peach pie for dessert.
We figured we had earned those calories.



The next morning
my fear of the B&B was put to rest
when our breakfast was delivered to our private balcony.
I think I could get used to the breakfast part of the bed & breakfast.
Oh...good morning again, beautiful view.



We also did a little exploring.
Coloma is where gold was first discovered in California
and was the birth place of the gold rush.







We saw a guy jump off of that bridge the day before.
Cra-zay!



On our way back home we stopped in Folsom to walk around.
I love Folsom.  It has a very cute downtown.
{remember johnny cash?  folsom prison blues?  i guess that's its other claim to fame.}
I did my student teaching there 14 years ago.
{i'm feeling old.}
There was a huge antique store.
Gary was a trouper and walked the whole thing with me.
{that's true love.  he hates antique stores.}



I have almost all of these Nancy Drews.





I kind of loved this chair.



And then Gary had a chance to showcase one of his very favorite
talents in the entire world:
taking the back roads to avoid Sunday Tahoe traffic.



I cannot tell you what a kick he gets out of beating the folks on the freeway.
It's a little scary.

He loved his 40th birthday rafting adventure.
I have a few more years until my 40th,
but I've already got a few plans.
Mine involves a Big Apple,
a Central Park, and a frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity.
Yep.


*************************
And don't forget!
Enter my giveaway here.
There are goodies to be had.
:)

a four year giveaway!

July 12 was my little old blog's anniversary.

Four years.

Crazy!

Four years ago I had a one year old, a four year old, and a six year old.

{it makes me so sad that I can't easily remember them being that little!}

I had just started reading blogs and thought it would be fun

to start my own.

So I did.

And I'm so glad I did.

It's my scrapbook.

I guess I should put all of my dusty scrapbook stuff

on freecycle, because it's never going to be used again.

And, as crazy as it seems to some people, I've met great people through this blog.

And not one of them is an ax murderer.

So...to celebrate...I got a few of my favorite things for you!

First, the GOOD MORNING mug.
I love this mug.
I bring it to swim team every morning because it's huge and holds a ton of coffee.
And I need a ton of coffee at swim team.


I also love those little rainbow mixing bowls from World Market.
They'd be so perfect for letting the kids decorate cupcakes
with a bunch of different sprinkles!


And then...the hagelslag.  
It's my husband and kids' favorite treat.
They eat it like the picture on the box: on bread and butter.
I eat it like sprinkles on ice cream.  Mmmm.


And finally,
remember back in June I told you how I needed this print?

Well it's on its way to my house as we speak.
AND...the super awesome Lindsay from Pen and Paint is offering 
up an 8x10 from her shop to you!
Go to her etsy shop and look at all of her amazing art.
Seriously...I want to paint like her,
but I can't.
So instead I'll shop. 
:)


Want to win?
Leave a comment and tell me what you were doing four years ago.
Or what you'd like to be doing in four years.
Or what you'll be doing at four o'clock tomorrow.  I'm easy. :)
And if you want another entry follow Lindsay's blog.
And mine, if you want yet another entry.


I'll pick a winner Thursday.
And now I'm off to drink, like, a gallon of coffee in my GOOD MORNING mug.
Seriously, it's huge.

why do i find this so funny?

I don't know.
Maybe it's because we have a yellow lab
who was born with a guilty conscience.



Ha ha ha!
Oh, Denver.  You kill me every time.
{i'm easily entertained, i know!}

Do you have any fun planned for the weekend?
We have a little adventure ahead of us,
just Gary and me.

It involves life jackets,
some sunscreen, and a raft.
And...fingers crossed...remaining in the raft.

Come back Monday...I have some fun stuff for you. :)

this week, from the iphone.

It was a slow week for me on instagram.
I wasn't very trigger happy with the camera.
But it was a busy week in real life.

I had a too-quick breakfast Sunday morning with a dear friend
that I hadn't seen in 12 years.
I drove into San Francisco and we ate
and tried to catch up on a decade+ worth of happenings
before I had to take her to catch her flight back to Houston.
Back in 1999, Gary and I got married
and moved to Texas two days after our wedding
so he could go to grad school at Texas A&M.
I did NOT want to go.  At all.
I was a California girl, and wanted it to stay that way.
I was going to be teaching there and supporting us on my teaching salary.
{ha!}
So...two days after our wedding we moved from California to Texas.
We were excited, but there were lots of tears.  {by me}
Three days after our wedding I was sitting in a new teachers in-service training
in a brand new state wondering what we had got ourselves into.
And this California girl was going to be teaching 4th grade {bilingual - si, yo hablo español} students.
Umm...4th grade?  That's the year you teach state history.
Texas history?  Not a clue.

Thankfully, God was very kind to me and sent me a friend.
This cute girl sitting next to me at the training, who would be teaching at the same school as I would,
had also just got married three days earlier.
It was her first teaching job,
and her husband was getting his masters at A&M as well.

We became instant friends.
She was the reason I loved Texas.
Her family became our Texas family.
We had such fun that year.

So it was such a treat to see her in SF this weekend,
even for just a couple of short hours.
Love you Mari.

The rest of the week?
Just popsicles and cleaning out rooms and lazy dogs and the most perfect nail color ever.

Happy almost Friday.

some random stuff on a wednesday.

Hey there.
I'm feeling kind of random
on this Wednesday.
Be forewarned.

We had dinner at the pool tonight with friends.
Check that one off the summer list.
The kids swam until the pool closed.
Ain't no sleep like an exhausted post-swim sleep.
Holla for that.

I love a good pasta salad in the summer.



This one was just pasta with homemade pesto, asparagus, and cherry tomatoes.
The kids even liked it.
Except for the tomatoes.
There are no circumstances known to man in which they would like tomatoes.

We have four nests full of baby birds in our yard right now.
It's crazy.
Our backyard is like the bird romance capital of our neighborhood.
But one baby fell out of his nest this week.
He didn't have eyes...so sad.
The kids felt so bad for him and tried to give him water and food.



It didn't work.
Let's just say...he's in a better place now.
Poor baby.  Sometimes nature seems cruel.

Our neighbors dropped off some apricot jam the other day.
Oh my GOSH it's good.
I've been having some on toast in the morning,
but I could really eat it out of the jar by the spoonful.
So yum.



I got a haircut yesterday.
It may be the shortest I've ever had it.
I think I like it?...
just not sure yet.



Avery hates it.
She said it doesn't look like me.
This morning when we woke up she said, "did it get longer yet?"
Aw.
:(

And even though I still have another year before Riley's in middle school,
I bought this book yesterday.

It's about helping your kids make the right choices

during those tough middle school years.

The title is so scary, isn't it?
Actually the whole thought of middle school and that age is pretty frightening.
I'll let you know how it is.



I also bought a book about changing bodies for
boys ages 10-14 and how to talk to your kids about sex.
{this one, i think.}
Ughhhh.
I don't remember reading about any of this in
What to Expect When You're Expecting.

While we were at the pool tonight we figured out there were only
six weeks until school starts.
Noooo!  It's too soon!
We still have a lot of summer to do.