Manic Monday

I often rate how good of a mom I am based upon how much fun my children have on any particular day, especially by the amount of dirt left in the bathtub after bath time. This past Monday was definitely one of the best mom days I've had.
I usually run to the gym, but I thought I would run on the bike path to the park this day. We live next to El Dorado Park. It's amazing. It costs money to drive in, but since I ran, it was FREE!!! I love free activities! We ran (I ran, Hannah and Gavin rode) to the playground, the kids played for awhile, then we had our picnic lunch.

We walked to one of the lakes to feed the ducks. I use the term "duck" loosely. There are ducks, but mostly these huge, hissing geese. They are scary. The rule is, the kids have to stay by the stroller. It's stressful watching two kids, giving the kids bread, and smacking any goose that gets too close to MY babies!!!
Our "duck" feeding started out calm and safe.

Hannah is good to go if I give her a whole piece of bread, she will tear it into appropriately sized pieces.

I have to give Gavin pre-torn pieces because I don't like chasing after the whole piece of bread he throws.

See how close those geese get... scary!

They hiss and nip at us. This is the part when I start having to smack them with my big bag of frozen bread.

We even saw baby geese. They were so cute.

I love being home with my kids!

When we got back from our trip Daddy was home so we went swimming together. Our pool is still a little too cold, but the kids love it. After naps we headed down to Seal Beach to meet our friends for Family Home Evening. While sitting on the sand watching my kids play, I finally had my first "Long Beach is my home" moment. I have been waiting over six months to have that feeling. I love being 10 minutes from the beach. I think we have gone to the beach more times in one month than we did all last summer.

After the kids got cleaned up we walked down the pier to Ruby's for dinner. I love little girls, look how carefree they are walking, holding hands down the pier.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to give my kids a bath that night because they passed out once they sat in their car seats to go home, but the next day I got to give them a bath AND wash their sandy sheets.