My Crazy, Birthday Saturday

I posted on Saturday about my love/hate of my birthday. I was in a pretty cranky mood Friday night. I knew that Saturday would be crazy so I had to do some prepping. Since I work weekends, it's very hard to get the Angry Family all in one place at one time. Angry Husband promised me over two years ago, that we could take a family photo. Angry Husband hates photos, so we don't have any family photos. Angry Toddler is four and a half. I think it's time.

We met up with Jen Johnson, a fellow blogger, friend, and photographer. She is now the "Official Angry Julie Photographer". She's taken all my awesome profile photos for my blog. I had coordinated outfits for the photo shoot, that matched, but were no matchy-matchy. I decided against something seasonal since we might not get another family picture for a few years. Angry Toddler had mud all over his pants and shoes by the time it was all over. Jen took the photographs at this beautiful location in Orange County. It's the same place that had the Pumpkin Patch that we visited in October.

After running around like crazy people, the Angry Family headed to a birthday party. Not my party, but one of Angry Toddler's friends. His friend's mom told us that it was a "dress up party" and that Angry Toddler should wear his Halloween costume, Jango Fett. I looked all over the house for that costume Saturday morning, and I could not find it. I should have known better, because it was in the rear cargo area of my Tahoe. Angry Toddler put on/removed that costume at least five times during the party. He is a sweaty kid. I knew all that bouncing around would make him hot. The big surprise at the birthday party was a "guest appearance" by Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Seriously the kids went crazy. These guys were truly awesome. The kids all received light sabers and battled with Darth Vader.

I hung out in the background, took 200 or 300 photographs and talked with the other moms. Yea, we all decided, we are screwed. How can we top this? I mean Obi-Wan and Darth Vader don't come to hang out every day? Angry Toddler was hilarious though. He came and whispered to me, "that is not the real Darth Vader. He is wearing a costume. Ok mama." I can only imagine what he will say when it's time for Santa this year.

After leaving the party and napping for umm, about 30 minutes, I headed to Disneyland with The BFF, Stacey. Stacey's birthday was last week, and she didn't get a chance to take advantage of her free birthday ticket. Since I'm a annual passholder, I used my birthday gift aka ticket to get her in. I was pretty excited because it was the second day of their Holiday decorations. Amazing, and we weren't disappointed at all. Our first stop was the parade, we watched in amazement. We then headed to the "big kid" rides. Angry Husband had taken Angry Toddler to my mom's house for the night. He wasn't feeling well earlier, but he decided to make a detour and head to Disneyland. He enjoyed a few rides with us, fireworks, and Fantasmic.

Stacey jumped for joy, a tiny bit in the parking structure. She had realized how nice it was, to be going to Disneyland without a stroller, and kid. We love the kids, but sometimes, we "adults" need to have some fun at Disneyland too. It was fun to run around, careless, and not worry about whining and/or jackets, and/or hunger, and/or whining.

Yes, we had to get these beautiful headbands. We were festive like that. I have serious issues with flash pictures. My eyes also close, and Stacey, well she was bright eyed. Angry Husband took the photo for us.

As for the rest of the Disney photos...you will see them throughout the next two months in my Disney Wordless Wednesdays, and other posts. I took, umm, a few hundred or so.

I think I got over my birthday blues, once the sparkly headband made it onto my head!

I Didn't Order This

Today is my last day working the night shift aka swing shift until May. It's been a pretty sucky four months. On Saturdays, I'm usually woken up by Angry Toddler stating, "It's daylight time, time for clothes, and get me some chocolate milk". Aww good times, when you've had three to four hours of sleep.

Luckily, my BFF, Stacey, was able to help me entertain Angry Toddler for a few hours every Saturday morning for most of the four months. If I get Angry Toddler out of the house for a few hours in the morning, he's a better kid, and he will also take a long nap.

Stacey was available this morning, so we met up for breakfast with the kiddos. It only took me an hour to get out of the house, because Angry Toddler refused to take off an USC (University of Southern California) jersey that he had been wearing for THREE days. Seriously kid, yes, I know they won the Rose Bowl, but take off the shirt. I told him that he clothes smelled bad, he immediately ripped off the shirt and willingly put on a new one. Of course, I was barely awake, so I was sporting my jeans, Converse, a shirt from a running event, and the non-optional baseball hat.

I met them at Ruby's Diner, a local restaurant. Stacey and Stella were already sitting in a booth waiting for us. Of course, I'm Ms. Residence People Watcher, so I'm looking around with my usual annoyed look. I see a family sitting behind us, they had just sat down and were looking at their menu's. The Dad walks in after Angry Toddler and I order some drinks. The dad is carrying two Starbucks cups. Seriously, couldn't you wait until after your breakfast to get your fix? Is the Starbucks coffee that much better? I just rolled my eyes, and Stacey laughed. I even make a joke about it to our waiter, but he didn't get it. Well really, I don't even think the waiter spoke English.

We had another waiter take our food order, the previous waiter only took our drink order. Seriously, the second waiter was just as dumb. We ordered off the kid's menu and he kept asking suggestions for the combo, Stacey and I got very confused. We were like, "Umm, there are no combos on the kid's menu." The waiter checked and sure enough, he came back "oh, ya, I guess there is no combos for the kid's." Ya, umm duh...

So approximately 20 minutes later our food arrives, and this is what I see:



Why are there French fries with my eggs? I gave the waiter a look, Stacey giggled..and then I said, "Why are there fries with my eggs, I didn't order this?" The waiter says, "Didn't they tell you, we are out of Ruby's Spuds, so they are serving fries." I respond with, "Umm, no. They didn't tell us that." I would have ordered something else.

This was how my last morning of our fun Saturdays went. I seriously couldn't stop laughing and this all my made up for the fact that, Angry Toddler was being a total pain in the ass and I needed a very large Margarita at 9am.

Yep, We got on the cupcake bandwagon!

We hopped up on the cupcake bandwagon this past weekend. Saturday, is Operation Entertain Angry Toddler so I can sleep day. Stacey, my BFF, and I took the kids out to breakfast at IHOP (nasty, will never ever set foot in that establishment again!) and then went to a little mini-mall area in Newport Beach.

While we were leaving breakfast, Stacey asked where Sprinkles Cupcakes was? I said, ohh, the land of the almost $4.00 cupcake. Well I gave her the directions and we went on our way. We did some walking around when we got there.

I found all kinds of lovely things that I wanted at Tommy Bahama. I wish everything wasn't $100+. Me and my expensive-ass taste. It always gets me in trouble.

So we finally arrived at Sprinkles. Stacey got (3) cupcakes for her family and I got two. Angry Toddler picked out the vanilla one and I picked out the coconut flavor.

I made Angry Toddler wait until we got home to eat the cupcake. For $3.25, he was going to ENJOY IT. Ok, well maybe I wanted to enjoy mine. Angry Toddler ate (2) bites of his when we got home. Angry Husband ate most of mine, as I only ate one bite. I've brought Sprinkles home before, and Angry Husband was not very impressed. It seemed like he liked their stuff this time.

Saturday Morning with the Kiddos

In my previous post about Fashion Island, I stated that I would add in some photos of the kiddos. Stella is Angry Toddler's BFF. He's known her since birth. Well she is 2 months older.

Stacey and I love watching them grow up together. It's soo damn cute. I really love our Saturday morning tradition that we've started. Even though, I'm half awake, and my hair usually looks like a rooster.

They really tire each other out. Usually on Saturdays, Angry Toddler takes a 4-5 hour nap. Seriously, I don't know why, but Stella really tires him out.

Just getting to the mall, they were very excited. We told them to hold hands and they obliged us.

We told them to hug each other. Can't you just feel the love in this picture?

Angry Toddler's version of a hug. I think he will be an outstanding football player.


You can really see Angry Toddler's military-style haircut in these pics. His jeans are rolled up cause they were way too big. They were a size 4T, and he's definately a 3T. The poor child has extremely short legs like my side of the family. I only have a 26 inch inseam. We were at the mall to buy him some jeans. I didn't have any clean ones for him to wear.

Fashion Island

I had to devote a post just to talk about a local mall. We have several malls around here in Orange County. My BFF, Stacey and I, decided we needed to take a trip to Fashion Island, here in Newport Beach. Both of our kiddos needed jeans. We were being cheapskates, and headed to Fashion Island to go visit the local, The Chilren's Place. Seriously $11.00 for a pair of jeans is a good deal. Angry Toddler has been wearing jeans almost every day for the past week. I love babyGap's jeans, but at $24.50, they get quite expensive.

Stacey drove us all to the mall. She knows that I'm barely awake on Saturdays. She put her extra carsear in her Volvo, so Angry Toddler can have somewhere to sit. He loves that pink Britax Regent. She parked on the top level of the parking structure. It was a beautiful day in Newport Beach. I usually have a camera in my purse, so I had to pull it out to take the pictures below. Seriously, this was the view from the parking structure.



As I was taking pictures of our view, I looked down. I saw a huge dirt lot. There used to be a Macy's Women's store at the place of the dirt lot. I got a little tear in the corner of my eye. I used to work loss prevention at this paarticular Macy's. I would actually call it the start of my law enforcement career. Anyway, I looked further, and got the most fantastic feeling in my chest. YESSSS!!! They are building a brand new Nordstrom. It will be finished in 2010. Yes, that' over a year away. But all my favorite stores will pretty much be at this mall. I love walking around here. There is some awesome people watching.



I'm going to do a seperate post to show some photos of the kiddos while we were shopping.

A Saturday Afternoon with Angry Toddler

I was really stumped the past few weeks on how to entertain Angry Toddler on Saturdays. I usually only get a few hours of sleep right before he gets up in the morning.

My gal pal, Stacey, surprised me this week and wanted to bond with us. Her daughter, Stella, is Angry Toddler's bestest friend. They've known each other since birth. I love watching them interact because they are soo funny together.

Stacey and I rarely get to meet up anymore, since she opened up a new business last March. She's been really busy getting it up and started.

We took the kiddos to breakfast and then for some shopping. Angry Toddler even picked out his outfit for the day. He is hilarious. He's got quite the fashion sense now. He's leaning towards a "skater" look.

Today was not so bad after all

After finally waking up from my morning coma, I decided that I COULD NOT stand watching Noggin for five hours until my mom came over. I put a plan into action. I would take Angry Toddler to the park. This is a feat in itself right now. We are still in the midst of the potty training and I don't like taking Angry Toddler in public, in unfamiliar places right now. I really don't want to clean up his accidents.

I ended up taking Angry Toddler to Angels Playground in Costa Mesa. It's the first ever playground in Costa Mesa to allow children with disabilities to play side by side with their peers. I thought AT would really like it. I forgot that my parents took him there last month, mommy brain, oops.

Well he played on the playground umm, literally 10 minutes. I was more excited than him. And then he spied the most fabulous thing in the world, a bounce house. There were some guys setting up one for a birthday party that was gonna happen later. Luckily they were really nice. They let AT play in it for 20 minutes. The kid hated bounce houses at 2 and now at age 3, they are the best thing ever.

After bouncing, Angry Toddler moved onto the trails surrounding the park. He had me climbing up dirt and rocks. His real mission was to chase the ducks though. Those poor ducks. I chased him around the park for over an hour. I even took some pictures with my Blackberry. If anyone knows me, I always have it with me. I even sent some pictures to Angry Husband. He was actually shocked that I took AT to the park without him.

Unfortunately, AT did not want to leave the park when it was time to leave. So I had to do the "grab him by the waist and put him under my armpit while kicking and screaming" walk to the car. Good times. He was ok once we got to the car though.

I'm going to have to figure out some early Saturday morning excursions for the next couple of months. I will have him all to myself on those days and won't be able to handle sitting in front of the TV for all that time.