California Love

Sisters. Forever. When I'm with my sisters, I am comfortable. The stresses of entertaining, pleasing and remaining politically correct are usurped by relaxing, refreshing and light hearted feelings. The hours in my day are filled with menial activities, yet those activities become entertaining, exciting and silly when spent with my sisters; as was the case when Colleenie came to visit! I went about my normal routine and was delighted to have Bean there to keep me company!

In true CA style, we tried our hand at "smokey eyes, " which is a savvy way of saying we put on a ton of dark eyeshadow. Our hopes of looking 'just like Hayden Panettiere' (according to our ipod app.) began to dissolve after step 2--that's when our instructor began using numbers to describe which brush we should be using to apply each eyeshadow. "Now, take your 254 brush....I like the 147 also, but the 254 really blends the shadow better. You're gonna want to lightly swirl the brush in your cement eggplant shadow, which is better than the granite haze shadow for this layer. We'll use that later...." Riiiiiight, I can't seem to find any numbers on these Max Factor brushes....After spending a solid hour in beauty tutorial, we got as close to pretty as we'd ever get. Considering the amount of time our eyelid painting took, we opted to not shower or swim in the ocean for two days afterward--geez, being pretty is a lot of work!

Like usual, Kavella loved frolicking on the beach. She offered Colleen a little spa treatment by giving her an exfoliating sand back massage--it also came with SPF 50 application! Up next, the two cutest pictures of a baby flying a kite I've ever seen! Subsequently, a dash of playing with Daddy and swim time with Mom and Auntie Colleenie!

I always seem to have a challenging time locating tankinis that are both cute and fairly priced, so when I went to Target and found a bundle of them, I was very pleased to shell out the cash to make them my own! The most delightful part of my new swimsuits is how long the tops are--that way, I don't have to tuck my stomach in and check if my booty crack is peeking all the time!

"Ooooooooohhh!" That's what Kavella would say when a wave was approaching!

Face plant.

Like I've mentioned before, Kavella has to earn her keep in this family, so she is used to carrying her own beach toys to and from the ocean. One night, we went down to Newport to fly her kite. On our way back to the car, Dustin decided to snap a few shots of our one and only snubbly. Suddenly, this dude on his bike showed up and just chilled there. Dustin was clearly taking pictures ("Kavella, look over here!"), but this guy didn't seem to mind one bit if he was in them or ruining them! He was really quite friendly, actually....perhaps he just wanted to hang out with us!

Dolphins!

K likes to try her hand at anything she sees her parents doing. One of her favorite things to do is walk Choco, which is one of his LEAST favorite things for her to do. He spends a goodly amount of time squinting his eyes and flinching in anticipation of being stepped on, but he is a good sport about the whole thing and likes being outside no matter what the cost!

Our neighbor's cat. Meow.