You Just Can't Beat a Monley Wedding!

Well, Tia Lina went and got married last weekend. Wooo hoo! So, now there's a new uncle in town...Tio Mark, and we love him. The Monley clan (and the Bornsteins) really know how to celebrate. Family members flew in from all over (Honduras, the East Coast, Iowa, Italy I think...) and most folks made the long drive from Northern CA. Orange County didn't know what hit it. As is a tradition in the Monley family, the wedding day kicked off with an early morning tennis tournament, the First Fourth Annual Nuptial Classic. The sweatbands and short shorts were in abundance. Here are a few pics that capture that morning.


Nate and Dominic laying down the tournament bracket and showing off their tennis outfits. Dominic looks a little too comfortable, I think.


The bride and groom celebrating a win over me and Dominic. I stink at tennis. Sorry Domo.


Just hamming it up with Lina.


Lookin good.




Best shorts of the day goes to.....cousin Jason. (This photo may have to be removed, for I did NOT ask Jason's permission)

Nate and his brothers played beautiful music during the ceremony and I was a bridesmaid, so we had our hands full most of the time running around with the kids and doing our wedding duties. Besides one incident (you may ask me personally....not gonna blog about it) staying at the Embassy Suites with a ton of family was a blast. Some of the best times of the weekend were spent just hanging with everyone over breakfast. The kids loved getting to know the extended family....and all the attention.

The wedding was beautiful and everything went so smoothly. Lina and Mark are adorable together and we are so happy for their union.


The beautiful bride and groom.


Proud parents




Lina and her loving brothers.



Finnegan loved hangin with Uncle Josh. They are two peas in a pod...both into percussion instruments and seeing how things work, like this big oil pump they found.



The ladies.

Family, Friends, Fevers and Fires

Wow. The past few days has been a whirl-wind of events. With the recent Tea Fire here in Santa Barbara and Montecito, friends have been temporarily displaced and some have even lost their homes, including my recent boss at Westmont and his family along with 13 other Westmont faculty. The fires were pretty amazing and came on so quickly. It was scary to watch (we could see much of it from our house at times). The air quality was so bad that night and the next morning that we decided to get outta dodge early and head to Tustin, Orange County to visit Tia Lina for her bachelorette festivities. Apparently we brought the fires with us, as 3 different fires blazed through their county. Yikes. Finn woke up feverish and vomiting in the middle of the night and spent the next 24 hours in and out of bed. But our visit with Tia Lina and friends was good, especially considering we were there in the wake of the recent passing of her soon-to-be father in law. It was good to be together I think, to share some meals, some hugs and even some laughter. We are really looking forward to a Monley wedding next weekend as Lina and Mark get hitched!



Poor sick little Finn.


Lina's roommate and maid of honor, Robin was a God-send! She took care of our family as we took care of sick Finn.....and took over her bedroom.


Krista, Lina and Jenny...enjoying some low-key bachelorette fun.


Lina got all the bridesmaids these sweatbands to wear for the traditional tennis tournament that takes place the morning of all the Monley weddings.

AND NOW......Some recent pics of our easy-going Selahbob.

So Cal Vacation

We took a long weekend and headed down south to do some touristy stuff. Along the way we stayed with friends in Newport who have three kids. Little Mary, Aubrey and James were adorable. Aubrey and Finn connected right away. Here are some cute pics of the two of them. Aubrey is so cute here. It looks like Finn never quite got it together...

After visiting some more friends in the Newport area we headed to San Diego to spend time with the Jeremiah and Joanna Heath. Their kids Owen and Elizabeth took to our kids right away....expecially to Selah. They LOVED Selah! I think she enjoyed the attention, since Finn doesn't really give her much. :-)

The Heaths came with us on our day at Sea World. It was a blast. We were there for 7 hours.....we closed the place down. I've never seen Finn so tired in my life.

I can't wait until I can put pigtails in Selahs hair like Elizabeth "Bugs" has here. I think it's so cute. She reminded me of the little girl in Monsters Inc.

Our timid little boy was pretty adventurous and went all all the kiddy rides and wasn't scared of any of the animals. (He is kind of scared of little dogs so I wasn't sure how Sea World would go.)




Finn probably spent an hour just running and thrashing around in this soft kid area made for toddlers.


We got some funny looks from people when we took our infant and toddler and sat down in the "Soak Zone" for the dolphin show. We were pretty far away. We didn't get wet.

Selah was a trooper. She just hung out all day with no complaint and slept a lot.

Halloween...the second installment.

If you carry a camera around with you long enough, you're bound to capture a toddler tantrum sooner or later. This one was mild....more of a pout.





It's funny what the promise of a lollipop will do! I guess I won the battle......or maybe the artificially flavored high fructose corn syrup on a stick did.



I just LOVE to bake. Lately I've been dusting off the Deceptively Delicious cookbook I got for Christmas. Here's Finn helping me with the brownies (with a 1/2 cup of carrots and 1/2 cup of spinach pureed in the batter!)



And now some cute shots of Selahbob, who is officially 4 months old now. She's such a joy. I get the biggest smiles from her as soon as she opens her eyes in the morning. She IS starting to lose her hair, like Finn did around this time. She still has plenty now, but they seem to be a series of comb-overs hiding bald spots. Oh well. She still so darn cute I think.



Does she look a bit cross-eyed to you?




I love the tongue sticking out.

Halloween Fun!

First of all, I love pumpkin patches as much as the next Nor Cal girl, but 4 trips in one season is about 2 or 3 too many I think. I'm feeling a little pumpkin patched out. Here are some cute pics though.





I love the beautiful organic vegetable garden they have there.




Finn stepped out of his timid shell to pet this big ol' goat.





I love scare-crows. This one was is peeking over the corn maze. It's a pretty difficult corn maze. Last year Nate and I split up in the maze and even though my dad and other family members tease me about being directionally challenged, I emerged from the maze before Nate. He and Finn were stuck in there for a good half hour. Needless to say, we didn't tackle it with two kids this year.



Finn is absolutely fascinated with tractors.


Our 4th and final trip to the pumpkin patch was with our Spanish group that we go to once a week. Here, buddie Taj decided to pull Finn, Daniella, Alleshandra and Solei in the pumpkin wagon.



Finn was stoked to be a fireman this year. (Good! Because this costume is about 2 sizes too big. I've got the next few Halloweens covered!)



Selah was our little fire hydrant. (poor thing).
I'm proud of the originality of this costume, but I only give it a 5.7 in execution. I always seem to make costumes that only last about an hour before they fall apart. Do you think she'll resent me for this one when she's older?


Nate was "fire" and I was "water". Nate's and my (lame) costume took about 30 seconds to put together. As you can tell, we were going for a theme here. We wanted to make it interesting for Nate's school parade on Halloween morning.