California: Days 9, 10 and 11

First of all, I don't know which sisters look the most alike, but people often say Valerie and Kelly. That is funny to us, because Valerie looks so much like my dad and Kelly looks so much like Glenn. Neither one of them look like their common parent, but somehow they still resemble each other. Kristen and I look the most like my mom, but somehow fail to look like each other (too bad for me). Genetics are so bizarre. I personally think Me and Valerie look the most alike. I guess it is because I can see the common King features, and Renouf features. We looked nothing alike as kids, but we do now. We also sound exactly alike. Kristen and Kelly used to look more alike as kids, but now Kelly is all Richart, while Kristen is more of a Richart/Renouf blend. I don't know if any of that made sense to anyone, but that is my opinion on the matter. I have been told I look like like all of them at least once though, and it always makes my day.

Day 9: Saturday, the 20th

Saturday we decided to stay home since it was raining. At about lunch time we remembered that kids are easier to manage if you get them out of the house. Living in WI, that can be tricky sometimes. I have been known to go to Target for an hour or two in the winter. We get something from the snack bar and just walk around. Sometimes it just breaks up the crazy. Saturday was one of those days where we just needed to break up the crazy.

My mom really wanted to go to South Coast Plaza (rich people mall in OC) so we agreed. They had everything nice and pretty for Christmas, but I realized that I do not belong in the OC. Ladies were walking dogs in pink strollers, and there were shops with only 8 items in the whole store, all of which probably cost more than my house. The only things we came home with were cookies and a few cupcakes, and even that set us back $30. It was a fun day though, and the mall is bigger than Disneyland so it did give us plenty of time to let the kids get the crazy out.

How cute is this? The carousel is all reindeer!

There was a Claim Jumper in the mall (one of our favorites) so we went for a late lunch/early dinner.

They messed up everything and then had to start over to fix it. We sat there for over an hour waiting, so I started snapping pictures of Audrey playing in her blanket. Here are a few of my favorites.

FYI: I still love Claim Jumper. This was the first time they ever messed up and we have been there LOTS. They did give us over half off our bill AND offered us free dessert.

Day 10: Sunday, the 21st

This day we did....um...nothing, I think? I don't even remember if we got out of jammies? Alyssa had to journal her trip for school and I believe she wrote that she watched 4 movies that day, so that gives you an idea how LAZY we were. I do remember that Kelly went back to Utah that day. Bummer!

Day 11: Monday, the 22nd

Monday we had the bright idea to go to Kiddie Kandids to get a picture taken of the kids. Why is it that I always see the pictures displayed on the walls of studios and think I am going to actually get a picture that looks like that? Who takes those pictures? Is it even the people that work there? Because my studio experience is always a disaster, resulting in a bunch of bad pictures that I paid too much for. That is why I don't go anymore. I have learned my lesson, only that day I forgot it. But I am jumping ahead.

Before we could take pictures we needed to decide what the kids would wear. We went to the Citadel (huge outlet mall in LA). My mom decided she wanted white shirts and jeans (or jean skirts). We went looking for white shirts, which should be easy, but the kids were nuts. Not as bad as my kids were in Hobby Lobby yesterday, but that's another disaster for another day. By the time we found what we needed it was 2:00, so we stopped for lunch. We realized that maybe the kids were wild because they were starving. Oops! After lunch took the beast out of the kids, we decided to torture ourselves even further by getting jammies so that we could take a jammie picture after our more formal picture. We finally decided against buying anything else and bagged the jammie idea. Thank goodness, because if you could have seen how BAD our photo shoot went, you would know that a wardrobe change would have been catastrophic.

After an hour, the photographer gave up on getting a decent picture. Usually you preview the pictures right away, but the lady asked for an hour to work on them. They were a nightmare. Half of them had adults in them, trying to push kids back into place, or get them off the baby, or make them look at the camera. We left and went to Mimi's for dinner, which was probably another bad idea- dragging grouchy moms and hyper children to another restaurant-but Steven was working and we wanted to sit in his section. We talked about not even going back to Kiddie Kandids since we didn't think there was anything we would like to purchase. While we were eating, Seth and Glenn stopped by. They had been out with the missionaries. They had gone by the mall and picked out the best of the worst, because Glenn knew my mom would be disappointed if she didn't end up with a picture, even a bad one. Unfortunately, Kiddie Kandids no longer does same day printing so you will have to wait until next week to see what we got.

Those were our slow days. Thank goodness for a few slow days, because now I am almost all caught up!