GIMMME MY BARK BOX!

We're a pretty lucky family to have our scruffy lil' pup Maggie Mae. Well shoot, she's not a puppy anymore, but given the "fountain of canine youth" that is being half Chihuahua, she's already 10 but looking like a tween in dog years.  We got her before we had any our little dudes, and she couldn't have welcomed them any more properly. She has to keep pace with the stroller at all times... never ahead, and never behind. She's always game to clean faces from sloppy yogurt eating, or drippy ice cream cones. And no matter how many times one of the dudes lays down on her on the couch, she'll gladly take the attention.

I was even luckier to get hooked up with a Bark Box by my friends over at Swiffer. They're teaming up to get a free Bark Box Welcome Kit to anyone who adopts a pup from a partnering shelter through the month of December (you can find a list here)! Swiffer and Bark Box are making sure that cleaning woes aren't gonna stop you from bringing a new furry pal into your home. The Bark Box comes packed with goodies including a sweet Bark Toy and bag of treats, as well as a Swiffer Duster, a coupon for a free Swiffer Sweeper Starter Kit, and a sweet Welcome Home Guide to help ease the transition for a pup into a house of children!

It's cool to see Swiffer and Bark Box working to make adopting pets even more of a no brainer :)
Thanks for making my dog smile (I can tell, I swear) and for helping others find sweet new homes!!

WEEKENDZ TO THE MAX

we've been gettin a lot out of our weekends lately. between baseball games, birthday parties, and hangin out, we've had some good ones. here are a few recent highlights:
on our last weekend, we made a trip down to Zoomars Petting Zoo in San Juan Capistrano. It's a great little petting zoo with a hands on rabbit & guinea pig area, horse rides, a small train, some very hungry goats, and more! You can purchase a box of animal food (carrots & lettuce) for a couple of bucks when you enter, and that'll let you feed all the animals there. The carrots seem to be the most popular with the animals, but this guinea pig pictured here with the dudes seemed to really dig the lettuce. If you make it down to Zoomars, make sure to take a walk around the Los Rios district (which is where Zoomars is located). There are some VERY cool historic houses, a great park, and some amazing photo ops for the fam. 

This weekend, we made another trip down to Lowe's for some garage organizing projects, and we picked up another monster truck kit for Coop. Although this wasn't one of their official "Build & Grow" events, we were stoked to grab another monster truck to add to our collection. We had a hard time choosing between the truck and a good lookin' monster truck, but we decided the monster trucks would be able to race each other, total bonus! Cooper seems to be getting the hang of this hammering stuff, literally. He did most of the nails all by himself, until he had trouble with one of the wheels.. then I had trouble with it too, so we ended up using wood glue to get the thing on! We call it being resourceful!

 Charley and I ended the weekend up with a little jam session. He likes to pound on my guitars, one by one. I'd like him to grow up knowing the guitars are fun things to play, rather than me keeping them safe and out of reach from him. I definitely make sure he's not jumping on 'em, but some enthusiastic strumming is always good. We like to plug the electric guitars in with some fun fuzz distortion and weird delay effects, and make weird sounds. 

Good times!

GETTIN' WILD AT THE ZOO

ready to get wild

 The OC Zoo rules. Not only does it have a whole grip of awesome animals, but it's one of the cheapest zoos I have ever been too! It's located in Irvine Regional Park which is technically in the city of Orange. We were looking to get out of the house before a rain storm hit, so we decided to take a quick trip!

THE DOUGH
The Park charges 5 bucks a car to enter the park on the weekend... a couple dollars less during the week, and a few more on the holidays. The Zoo charges only TWO DOLLARS A PERSON! and they let the little ones 2 and under in for FREE. We're big fans of hittin up the San Diego Zoo from time to time, but the sometimes the size of that place can get overwhelming with the little dudes. The OC Zoo is just about the perfect size for a quick trip!  Here's a link to get a buy one get one free pass for trips during the week!

THE ANIMALS
The Zoo has a great range of animals from birds and snakes, to a mountain lion and black bears. The dudes enjoyed comparing wingspans to the Bald Eagle, and Charley was stoked to HOOT with the owls.  We felt a little sad for the bored coyotes that seemed like they wanted to run for the hills, but the dudes got real  excited to feed and pet the goats in the petting zoo area near the end. 
(HOT TIP: bring some quarters to pick up some goat feed) 

the mountain lion hangin at his pool

helping the goat get his hair
to look good

As I said, the place isn't huge but all of the animals areas are close enough so that you can get a good look at 'em. When we were leaving we were lucky enough to run into a family of the wild peacocks that roam the park! After hanging with the peacocks we ate our packed lunches at some picnic tables, and finished just in time to hop in the car before the rain started!

We will definitely explore deeper into the Irvine Regional Park in the future because there's a handful of rad stuff to get into there... from bike trails and hiking trails, to the train ride and lake activities. 

See ya next time you wild peacocks. 
Stay rad.