country girl for the weekend

this past weekend i was lucky enough to be able to go to idaho falls to visit my bestie smellin a.k.a melinda and her cute family. it was a weekend of hanging out, talking, debating, eating fabulous food, playing with the boys, monster truck riding, shopping and gardening. our friendship is one of those that no matter how long it has been since we've seen each other we can just pick up right where we left off. as melinda likes to remind me we have been friends for 20 years and that number is just going to keep getting larger. i'm so lucky to be able to count her as my friend.

those who know melinda know she isn't shy. while we were driving home we drove past the ford dealership and melinda was telling her boys to look at the cool monster truck and then she was like wait a minute my boys would love to go for a ride on that thing. so she flips a brody and wouldn't you know it we get ourselves not one but two rides on the monster truck.

and of course a trip to idaho falls wouldn't be complete without some farming. lucky for me, melinda just so happens to have a very good sized garden of her very own. she put this city girl to work and i'm happy to report i got my hands dirty and i only pulled out one of her plants and ruined it. go me!!

and for old time sake we had to get our traditional chocolate blasts from baskin robbins. those puppies are way too good!!

smellin head, thank you so much for letting me come and thank you to my awesome husband who took off work to watch our boys so i could go.

holy smokes...

we have a 6 year old. this year for jack's birthday we went down to california to visit nanna and papa.

he scored some pretty good loot. batman tower, mario kart race track, trio blocks, mario sports and phineas and ferb the movie. he has the best nanna who made him an awesome mario cake to cap a wonderful birthday party bbq.

we went to disneyland on his actually birthday and i think it is safe to say that jack had a blast. he is now tall enough to go on ALL the rides. we took him on space mountain and john said jack seemed a little nervous during the ride but as soon as we got off jack screams, "space mountain rocks!!" his all time favorite ride was star tours. i'm embarrassed to admit this but i totally freaked out on that ride. i'm a little claustrophobic and as soon as they closed those doors and i realized there wasn't any air blowing on me i lost it, started sweating and almost started to pound on the door to get me off. i managed to keep it somewhat together (so as to not freak jack out), by keeping my eyes closed and taking deep breaths. i'm a total loser i know. after that things were just fine but needless to say i did not go on that ride again.

jack even got to be a participant in the jedi training academy show. he was of course doing his own thing but he was in heaven and so excited he got to beat up on darth vader. sammy was an angel at disneyland but the same cannot be said for the rest of the trip.


the rest of the time was spent hanging out with family, going for night swims, the griffith park observatory, thai food, bike ride at balboa lake park and of course the beach. the weather was pretty chilly at the beach and i actually got to wear a sweatshirt. sammy did not like the sand at all at first but he eventually warmed up to it a little. jack had a blast building a sand castle and making a tunnel.

it is always so nice to be able to go back home to good old north hollywood!! until next time.