Our family has suffered a devastating loss today.  That’s right, Jack got his curls cut off today.  Actually, today both kiddos went in for their first haircuts.  They did such a great job.  I spent most of my time with Jack because he tends to be a little crybaby when I leave his side.  Since he doesn’t handle change too well, I figured he would be crying, but he did great!  Not a peep out of him until the stylist brought out the buzzers.  Jacks hates loud noise, so he didn’t like it very much.  I ended up having to hold him so she could trim his neck.

Ella did really well too.  Pat stayed with her while she got her bangs trimmed and straightened.  The stylist basically fixed what I did to her hair a few months ago.  Since Ella didn’t have much that needed cut, the stylist put some pretty little twisty things with bows in her hair.  She looked very pretty.  When she was done, she came over and watched brother finish up.  When Jack started crying because of the buzzers, she started crying too.  It was kinda sweet.

Here are some pictures of the new haircuts.

My friend Anna has come up with a list of 50 things she wants to do before turning 30.  I think this is a great idea and have decided to come up with my own list.  Since my 30th birthday is in January, I am giving myself some extra time and hopefully I can have everything accomplished before I turn 31.

I have until January 28, 2011 to finish my list.

In Progress
Finished

1. Get back down to wedding weight
2. Go on a family vacation that does not involve meeting up with our parents (no offense parents)
3. Finish my painting
4. Finish 2nd edition of the family cookbook
5. Do honeymoon scrapbook
6. Finish Captain Adorable
7. Enter photos into Del Mar Fair
8. Try a new recipe every week
9. Drink more water
10. Re-do the front yard landscaping
11. Have the kitchen redone!
12. Paint the baseboards in our bathroom
13. Put a door on the master bathroom
14. Have photos of the kiddos framed
15. Read a book, not listen to it.
16. Learn to crochet
17. Take the twins camping
18. Geocache more.
19. Make enough money for a new camera.
20. Stick with Fly Lady for at least a year.
21. Get a new computer
22. Finish childproofing our house
23. Read to the twins every night
24. Clean out the office
25. Clean out the sun room
26. Finish painting the floor in the girl room
27. Have a plan for the patio
28. Replant my jade plant
29. Paint the hall closet doors
30. Paint the hallway
31. Replace Bedroom fan
32. Re-paint the buffet
33. Have game night once a month
34. Set up a home photo studio in the sunroom.
35. Remove the shower door
36. Make and sell a table
37. Finish Pat’s quilt
38. Start the twin’s quilts
39. Have my car detailed
40. Make another mirror
41. Have my ring re-sized
42. Finish decorating the living/dining room
43. Have the Bob tire fixed
44. Do a load of laundry every 2 days
45. Make stepping stones with the twins
46. Plan 1 year birthday party
47. Take LB on a walk every other day… At least
48. Make Ella’s knitted dress
49. Do a family portrait
50. Clean the man room

Well, we’re finally moved over to our new host. Hopefully things will go smoother now. We should have some 4th of July pics up in the next day or two.

Well, another weekend, another two days of site downtime. We’re moving off of our host as soon as I can get everything transferred.  Our 4th of July recap will have to wait until we move because I don’t feel like spending the time to write everything up and have it lost again the next time my hosting provider screws up.

As a teaser, we have babies and Mr. Box at the beach, crawling, sitting, and lots of other fun stuff to report from our travels.

Oh, and if anyone is ever looking for a web host do not use JustHost.com. Learn from my mistake, use anyone else. Hopefully we’ll be fully up and running in a couple of days.

Well, if you’re reading this I guess that means you found your way over to our new site. Good work.

There’s not a lot new to report. The babies are still doing the whole baby thing. Ella is getting better at crawling, and is even starting to work on sitting up on her own. She can get pretty close, but then she gets bored and decides she’d rather crawl around. Jack can crawl, but he still prefers to just hang out. Every so often he crawls a few feet just to prove he can, but then he sits there and waits for us to bring him stuff.

It’s time for bed so I can rest up for my first Father’s Day. Hopefully tomorrow I can have another post, until then here are a few new photos.

Well, after about a week of prep it’s finally time to move to our new site. All of our posts, comments, and pictures have been moved over to our new server and Shae put together a few images for our page headers. If you bookmarked our blog or subscribe to the RSS feed (or follow us on Blogger), make sure you update your bookmark or feed with our new URL .

Our new site is at http://thelorigans.com.

Head on over and enjoy.

Ok, so I read a lot of blogs. One of the blogs I have been following since it’s beginning is Prop Insanity. It is just a great place to get ideas for photos and stuff like that. Well, every Monday they do a giveaway and I actually won this weeks giveaway! I never win these sorts of things. I get to pick an outfit of my choice from K Bella Bambino Designs. All of her items are handmade and absolutely adorable! I can’t wait until Ella is big enough to fit into her pretty new dress.

Pretty much every teenager dreams of turning 16 so they can get their driver’s license. Of course, these days I think you have to be almost 52 before the state of California will let you actually drive a car without some restriction or another. Luckily for me, the only problem I had getting my license was that I turned 16 during wrestling season. It’s hard to get down to the DMV when you have practice after school every weekday and tournaments every Saturday. Well, the first Monday after the end of wrestling season (sometime in April, three months after my birthday), I got myself and my ’85 LeBaron down to the King City DMV right after school, took my driving test, and got my license. I was so happy to have my license that I didn’t even notice that they somehow turned “green” into “brown” for my eye color. I get those words confused a lot too. Very similar.

Unlike some people I know (and am married to), I haven’t “misplaced” my license 4 or 5 times over the past 14 years and since I haven’t had any tickets that affect my driving record I’ve been able to renew online whenever my license expired. So for 14 years my license has featured my 16-year-old face on it, along with my wrestling season weight and the wrong eye color. I’m not sure how I ever got into a bar with that license. What is the point of checking IDs if you’re going to let 225 pound guy with green eyes in using a license that says he weighs 135 and has brown eyes? I guess they figured if I were going to get a fake ID it would look more like me than the pic on my license so I never had any issues other than a few raised eyebrows.

In fact, until last Friday I hadn’t set foot inside a DMV office since that April afternoon in 1995. I guess the state of California has decided that 14 years is the most you can go without going back in for an eye test and a new picture because I finally had to pay the DMV another visit. I want to know who the genius was that decided you can go from 16 to 30 without ever getting a new picture or an eye test. I’m not complaining about avoiding trips to the DMV, but it seems kind of ridiculous that I’ve been using the same ID since 1995.

Since appointments were booked at all of the local offices until the end of January (after my license would expire) there I was at 7:45 AM Friday morning standing at the end of the line in the cold (well, cold for San Diego). It was definitely an odd mix of people in line, but my favorite group was the mom, daughter, and son/daughter’s boyfriend standing about three places in front of me in line. They were there to get the daughter her license and both mom and daughter must have been nervous because they were smoking like crazy. Something about the mom and 16-year-old daughter smoking together before the daughter’s driving test just seemed funny to me. I wonder if the daughter smoked in the car during the test.

Anyway, eventually the line started moving and I got inside and took a number for the CA DMV lottery. After a short (by DMV standards) 30-minute wait, the system finally called out “G024” (BINGO!) and I headed off in search of window 24. I’m not sure who numbered this office, but windows 1-20 were in an order that kind of made sense and “windows” 21-25 were random rooms all over the place. I finally found window 24 and sat down to renew my license. I get by without glasses, but my eyes are definitely not what they used to be so I was a little nervous about the eye test. Luckily for me the vision standard is somewhere just above “totally blind” because I passed without any problems and headed over to the camera window to get my new license picture taken. I guess in a couple of weeks I’ll get a license that actually looks like me, but I’m going to miss the reaction to my 16-year-old mug shot every time I get asked for my license. Oh well, hopefully I’m good for another 14 years. Say goodbye to my old license:

The end of 2008 was also the end of The Learning Garden. Between the babies taking up all of Shae’s time and the crappy economy taking all of our customers we decided it was time to close up shop. We spent most of the week between Christmas and New Year’s eve trying to get everything cleared out of the office by the end of the month. We sold everything we could, brought home tons of stuff we couldn’t sell, and threw away about a dumpster worth of old crap. It was a ton of work, but the babies helped and we got everything done just in time.

When Shae and I bought The Learning Garden a year ago, we had all kinds of ideas on how to get the business back on track. Shae did a great job, and for the first couple of months things were pretty good and she brought in quite a few new students. Then Shae found out she was pregnant and her focus shifted more towards growing babies than TLG. She still taught and put in tons of work running everything, but after a few months of baby-carrying she just didn’t have the energy to get up early every morning and go in to do all the extra work/marketing that was needed to stir up more business. Of course, then the gas prices skyrocketed and all of the longtime customers who had to drive down from North County stopped coming. As the economy has taken a giant dump parents have decided they just don’t have the extra money to spend on tutoring, and over the past few months business has trickled to almost nothing. We finally decided that it was time to just throw in the towel.

My feelings about closing down TLG are mixed. Part of me is sad to see it shut down. A year ago Shae and I were very excited about running our own business and were very optimistic we were going to be successful. It’s disappointing that it didn’t work. However, a larger part of me is OK with everything. Shae is happy she gets to spend more time with the babies without worrying about how we’re going to pay The Learning Garden’s rent the next month, and she’ll probably do some tutoring out of the house for some of her students. It would have been nice to have a wildly successful business, but I guess we’ll just be happy with two babies.