city hall.

do you watch the tv show parks and rec?

we had heard that the pasadena city hall was a must see, but it wasn't until we found out that it is also where they film parks and rec that we decided that it was a must MUST see.

it did not disappoint - seriously so gorgeous!

there were lots of people there getting pictures (engagement, wedding, beauty shots!..) and i enjoyed being creepy and watching them.

pasadena is pretty.

free food? sure.

there was this night where you could get free food at chick-fil-a, if you showed up dressed like an action hero. so, naturally, we whipped out the boys halloween costumes from a couple years back and squeezed them into them! since tad wasn't alive when the costumes were made, we had to be gather a few random things together for him - holden's batman shirt, chet's belt, a mask. in the end, i thought the boys looked cute! 

tad spilled our drinks almost immediately (thank goodness we were outside, and they have free refills!), he was absolutely terrified of the cow (like screaming at the top of his lungs scared!), and it didn't end up being totally free because the children were still hungry after the free food was gone... but i still say it was worth it. it was a fun little outing! chet and holden especially liked doing dorky action hero poses to the the cars driving by.

(i love how short chet's pants are!)

a hike.. without matt. ahh!

i rarely leave my little bubble here in pasadena without matt because.. well.. i am no super mom. i watch other moms take on crazy outings and trips with their large posse of children, and i can't help but feel out of their league! how do they do it! that's just not me. i don't handle chaos well and, even though i have the loveliest little bunch of boys, i often feel completely overwhelmed by motherhood. always have.. probably always will! oh well.

but the beach is always so tempting to me! i swear, every weekend (even when it is a terrible idea) i suggest we go to the beach!

so this past friday, when chet had a day off school, i decided to be crazy and head to the beach. i packed up the boys, and all the things we would need for an afternoon of hiking, and headed west. we were about 10 minutes up the freeway when i realized i had forgotten my purse (which has my wallet, obviously) and diapers and wipes. ugh. so we turned around.. and tried again.

when we finally got to the trailhead, it was so much hotter then i anticipated it to be. and i knew that would be a problem! not only would the boys get tuckered out faster, but i was relying on them to carry all of our supplies in their dinky little backpacks (because i was carrying tad on my back) and i couldn't really load them up with oodles of heavy water bottles! so i carried a couple bottles in my hands, and had them each carry one, aaannd we definitely ran out of fluids on the hike! aaannd the boys definitely complained about being hot. aaannd i definitely threatened them that if they didn't stop whinning i would make them do the hike twice! so, basically, it wasn't a completely perfect afternoon. but once we reached the summit, and got to take in the gorgeous view and have a fun rest, things turned around. i was so proud of us! and i was so happy to be where we were. the walk down was great. we enjoyed chasing lizards, smashing giant beetles, and playing guessing games. the boys were excited to tell matt what they had done. and i was so proud that i didn't get us lost in the crazy LA rush hour traffic!

spring break with haden and grandparents!

chet has been so excited for his birthday. literally, he has been making lists of things he would like to do, and eat, and get for months! he had come up with lots of over-the-top ideas but, when he found out that his grandma and grandpa leavitt were going to be in town for his birthday, all he wanted to do was hang out with them! i kid you not. and i thought that was pretty sweet :)

buuuut, despite his simple wishes, we actually did end up having a crazy special birthday week for chet after all. matt's parents flew into LA the night before chet's birthday and then stayed for the whole next week, which just so happened to be chetty's spring break! perfect timing. aannnnd larry and maralyn showed up with the best surprise EVER - haden!! - one of chet and holden's best cousin friends! it was seriously so fun to have him here to spend our fun-filled week with us.

we kept it a secret from the boys that haden was coming, just because we thought it would fun to surprise them. but it probably would have been just as good either way. we made a video of their reunion (chet and holden blindfolded, trying to figure out what their surprise was) but it was fairly anticlimactic. haha the boys were all clearly thrilled to see each other, but weren't exactly sure how to express that! 

the highlight of the week was our 2 day getaway to carlsbad to go to legoland (at least for the kiddos!), but we did a ton of other fun things too.

we celebrated chet's birthday, matt set up the tent in our backyard so the boys could have a fire and campout one night, we went to swamis beach, balboa island, little corona del mar to play in tide pools, the kidspace museum, lots of parks, matt's jobsite, and ate out at some tasty places. it was such a fun week. we couldn't believe how fast it went by!

these are pictures from our week...

(there are a lot of pictures because i wanted to be a really good aunt/sister-in-law and document haven's visit super good.)

(..but there aren't a lot of pictures from legoland because i chose to take more videos of that place instead.)

this is a video from legoland.

day one:

day two:

day three:

day four:

day five:

day six:

day six:

day seven: