15 Years!

Such passion, such romance. Look at the beautiful couple on their wedding day...

Oh, who am I kidding...this is more like it:

Happy Anniversary to the man who has put up with all my crap! Of course, I've put up with his crap too! 15 years down...forever to go...oh my, that's a long time!

Happy Memorial Day

One thing we love to do is hang out flag in honor of our great country. Happy Memorial Day!

Let's Get It Straight!

 I just love advice people spout out. I'm guilty of spouting my fair share of remarks to those around me too. It's funny to me when the advice is something we hear over and over and over again. Like for instance to new mothers, the whole "sleep when baby is sleeping" one. Well, duh! If you have a normal newborn, chances are, you're a walking zombie and as soon as that kid falls asleep, your eyes complete what your body is already doing... they sleep! Since I am out of the newborn stage, this advice no longer applies to me and there is no way that I would ever give that advice to new mothers ever again. It's the most annoying advice EVER and chances are Aunt Bertha or Grandma Maude will fill them in on this no brainer advice. I, on the other hand, prefer to give them the more "expect the unexpected" type advice, like..."One day, you will be cleaning up puke and watery poop out of a carseat, or highchair, or your hair so invest in some Oxyclean because that stuff just rocks!"

There are obvious advices that are handed down from generation to generation depending on what stage of life you are in. My favorite laughable one right now is "the dishes can wait". I am not disagreeing that dishes or the laundry or whatever it is that I don't really want to do at that moment can wait. It certainly can. Trampoline jumping, fingernail painting, book reading, light saber wars, dress up, baking, art work and the like are all very important happenings here in the Durling home. All these activities come with a mess of their own and before you know it, the house has been completely destroyed. Eventually, the dishes have to get done and so does the laundry and the bathrooms will need to be scrubbed and so will the kids. It's just a fact of life. So I ponder this advice..."The dishes can wait"... I have a hard time taking this advice literally because really, the dishes need to be done like twice a day or we will be in a world of hurt if there are no sippy cups come bedtime, but as my kids grow older and time passes, I really truly understand the meaning behind this regularly given advice...I really do, but right now, I'm going to go and watch my favorite TV show and eat some bon bons. The kids are finally in bed and the house is a mess, but hey...the dishes can wait, right?

Birthday Girl!

Malia's birthday was filled with sporadic happenings. She had a birthday party the weekend before (which I will blog later), but I still tried to make her day a little more special than just any other day. I brought ice cream to her school class where I presented her with a candy lei necklace. They sang happy birthday to her. I got it on video (I love having a phone that records videos).



Later that day, we sang happy birthday at home and had cake.







Then Malia and I went to see my nephew's Shakespeare play (He played Hamlet). It was pretty cool, but since it was full on Shakespeare, I think Malia had no idea what was going on...I say this because I didn't either.

We went and got ice cream at Baskin Robbins before we headed home. It wasn't totally awesome, but it was special none the less.

Happy 10th Birthday

A decade old already! We were driving in the car today discussing that unless Malia lives to be 100 years old, she will always be two digits old from now on. Then she piped in and said "Unless I live to be 1,000 years old." HA! Where does the time go? Happy 10th birthday to my Malia bug!

Malia's Birthday Interview

1. What is your favorite color?
Purple

2. What is your favorite toy?
small swimming pool

3. What is your favorite fruit?
apple

4. What is your favorite TV show?
Good Luck Charlie

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?
pizza

6. What is your favorite outfit?
denim jeggings and peach and gray striped shirt

7. What is your favorite game?
Monopoly

8. What is your favorite snack?
Goldfish crackers

9. What is your favorite animal?
dolphin

10. What is your favorite song?
adele

11. What is your favorite book?
Animorphes

12. Who is your best friend?
Caitlin and Pricilla

13. What is your favorite cereal?
Trix

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside?
swim

15. What is your favorite drink?
milk

16. What is your favorite holiday?
Halloween

17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night?
my stuffed animals

18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?
donuts

19. What is your favorite thing to eat for dinner?
Taco Bell

20. What do you want to be when you grow up?
"I'll just put a doctor cause I don't know"

21. What is your favorite place to be?
Sunsplash

22. Who are some of your favorite people?
Selena Gomez

23. What famous person would you like to meet and what would you say to them?
Selena Gomez "Hi".

Annular Solar Eclipse

It isn't every day that we get the opportunity to see an Annular Solar Eclipse up in our neck of the woods. The next one that will be visible for us here in Northern California isn't forecasted for another 35 or so years! Technically, we had to drive like 10 hours 3 hours to be able to view the "Ring of Fire". We traveled to a beautiful place past Redding called Whiskytown. Yes, there is such a name for a place and it was gorgeous! It was up in the mountains and it had an old looking town that I would love to do a photo shoot at and it also had a beautiful lake!



We made it a Durling thing. Patrick's parents, his niece Shella, Dennis and Anna and their kids joined us as we enjoyed watching the eclipse. We didn't plan exactly where we were going to go before hand. We just knew we needed to be in the Redding area. We found a public park with lake access that wasn't too crowded and ended up being the perfect spot. If I would have known that it was going to be like 100 degrees out and we would be hanging out by an awesome lake, I would have packed swim suites or at least a change of clothes for the kids. Not having those things didn't keep the kids out of the water and I finally let go of the fact that the kids were going to be wet and dirty and miserable the entire way home and let them enjoy their time in the lake. Little by little, clothes started coming off. Yes, I was "THAT" parent that let my four year old run around in public in her underwear. It's actually nothing new, no matter how hard I try, the girl is always running outside in her underwear!


















Eventually, we made the kids get out of the water so that they could be somewhat dry for the ride home. By then, the Eclipse was well under way. Raya and I made some pinhole camera boxes to view the Eclipse. Dennis made a larger version that a group of people could see, but Patrick's dad had bought some welding glass that was absolutely perfect to be able to look directly at the sun with. I was also able to use that glass to cover my camera lens and capture the photos I got of the actual Eclipse. We all enjoyed watching this amazing event:














The kids were able to play and explore too. They had a lot of fun!






I have come to accept the fact that there are no pictures of the sky and its happenings that do the justice it deserves. What we see out of the human eye can never be reproduced to its perfection on camera. Of course, there is Photoshop, but that isn't real. Anyway, I took some pictures periodically throughout the event through the welding glass. They turned out pretty good. If you didn't know any better, you would think that what you are about to view was the moon in the night sky, but alas, the yellow is the sun and the black is the moon during the day. It didn't get very dark out side once the moon was fully inside the sun. There was a noticeable difference in the lighting for sure, but it was more like when a cloud makes its way in front of the sun. I'm pretty sure that if you didn't know that there was an eclipse happening, you wouldn't have noticed a difference.














On our way out, I took this picture of Mount Shasta:



We had a blast hanging with the family. It was kind of a spontaneous trip and I don't usually do spontaneous, but it definitely was fun! Who knows, maybe the next time around, Patrick and I will be sharing this opportunity with our grandkids!