Turleys

Very happy half birthday!

2012-02-05T20:53:00.001-08:00

Londyn is 6 months old as of 2/3/12, so to celebrate we took a trip to Newport Beach with our friends the Dowells and Broadbents. We rented a little motor boat and went for a late afternoon cruise. Londyn drowned in her life jacket, it was so big and I couldn't help but be reminded of the little boy from A Christmas Story in his snowsuit. Once she got used to it she had a good time. The celebration wouldn't have been complete without a sweet treat, so we thought half cupcakes were appropriate. It was a fun trip with great friends!

One of Those Days

2012-01-23T14:11:00.001-08:00

So it's a rainy day, perfect for staying in pjs, drinking hot cocoa and relaxing. Well maybe if I didn't have a soon to be 6 month old, manage an apartment complex and try to work from home. Londyn has taken on an "I'm always cranky" persona, to which I try to smile, read, play and sing, but I still get frowny faces and tears in return. I finally managed to get ready and out of the door to head to the grocery store and I find dog pee in the elevator for the THIRD time this week! Mind you we manage a "pet free" residence. I text Laron my list of frustrations (did I mention he is the best?) and head to the store. As I'm leaving with my full grocery cart I see redbox and think I can salvage some of the rainy, relaxing day I had in mind this morning. I couldn't have found a more perfect movie...maybe I'll learn something useful!

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish....

2012-01-19T09:08:00.001-08:00

I had no idea that being a mom would include being able to recite an entire Dr. Seuss book. Londyn loves reading, often the only thing that calms her crankiness is story time. Sometimes I wish I could throw one of my own books in the mix, but young adult novels don't read with the same cutesy voice, so I guess we will stick with The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Very Fairy Princess Takes the Stage. Hopefully all this reading is an indication that we have a smart little girl on our hands!

This is where we live...

2011-04-12T21:59:00.000-07:00

We have lived in California for 8 months now and I had yet to really experience downtown Los Angeles, so Laron and I took a little self-guided tour on Saturday. Of course Laron, being the urban planner that he is had seen most of downtown, but humored me in my touristic spirit and served as an excellent tour guide. Some of the points of interest along the way were:

The Bradbury Building- Built in 1893 as an office building, it can be seen in many movies including Blade Runner, also home to Ross Cutlery where OJ Simpson bought the knife that was part of his murder trial...dun dun dun

Grand Central Market- Open air market since 1917, home to many food vendors

The yummy! We partook

The not so yummy...we did not partake

Angels Flight- For 25 cents hop on the short railroad to the top of Bunker hill that used to be home to a posh residential neighborhood. Don't mind if we do :) For those of you have seen 500 Days on Summer the park seen in the movie is just off to the left.

Disney Hall- Built by Frank Gehry, who according to Laron enjoys sailing and watching live musical performances. What a great tour guide I have!

Los Angeles Garment District- Over 100 blocks and 1,000 stores of retail and wholesale apparel and accessories. Not quite what we expected...it took us back to shopping at the flea market in Rocky Point.

Our only purchse ($2) I guess it was worth it

LA Live- Home to the Staples center, a sports and entertainment complex where most see an action packed event or for some tired and hungry "tourists" aka Laron and I a nice resting spot.

And that's our city! Come visit us anytime!

Daddy Daughter Bonding

2011-04-04T09:34:00.000-07:00

I have to share a quick story that I wish I had a picture or even better a video to go along with. Laron and I were in bed last night and I had been feeling some strong baby kicks, so I told him to put his hand on my tummy. I held it pretty firm against my stomach hoping that he would be able to feel and she must have wanted to show off for daddy because she gave a good strong kick and Laron pretty much freaked out. He jumped and quickly rolled away from my belly. I couldn't stop laughing because his reaction was not at all what I had envisioned in my mind of him feeling the baby for the first time. I thought it would me more magical than scary, but either way it was memorable. I think it made things much more real for him, like I really have a little girl growing in my belly and I think the thought gives him the heebie-geebies a little...haha. Pregnancy definitely brings about new and unusual experiences for both of us some fun and others not so fun, but the end result will be amazing!

2011-03-28T20:57:00.000-07:00

Laron arrived home from Argentina this past week and he knew better than to come home empty handed. I will say that I was surprised with just how many goodies he brought home. My favorite thing he brought were little shoes for his little girl...he bought three pairs so she can wear them throughout her whole first year. So cute! Thanks babe!

Speaking of little feet, I felt my first baby flutters yesterday. I wasn't sure what I was feeling at first, but it was definitely not a feeling I had experienced before. I told Laron it feels like a little bouncy ball in my belly. It's amazing that there is really a little girl moving around in there. I can't wait until Laron can feel her too!

Important Update

2011-03-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

The Turleys have a bun in the oven! That's right, we are PREGNANT!!! Most of you are probably already aware of this, but since I have made a resolution to blog more, this is definitely worthy of a post. I am approaching 5 months, or 20 weeks as we say in pregnancy talk. I had a fairly typical 1st trimester, at least I think from everything I have read. I learned that the term morning sickness is very misleading and that unlike having the stomach flu vomiting does not make the nausea go away. I struggled with morning, afternoon and evening sickness until about 15 weeks and I am so glad that it's over. The 2nd trimester has not exactly been smooth sailing...the nausea might be gone, but it has been replaced with new things like heart burn, indigestion and muscle cramps, not to mention the loss of the bottom half of my wardrobe. At first my regular pants fit just fine and slowly I have learned tricks like using a rubber band to fasten them closed since the botton no longer reaches the hole. More recently I have noticed that I can no longer zip much less button any of my regular pants. I have tried the "belly band" which is basically a large elastic waist band that you are supposed to be able to wear over your pants that no longer fit, but the couple times I have tried I find myself nearly exposing my open fly because the band won't stay in place. Needless to say I have started to expand my maternity wardrobe and I must confess that I love maternity pants! The kind that have the full belly panel are the best, though Laron may tell you they are not the most attractive. I definitely want to be a cute, stylish mommy to be, but not at the expense of comfort. I am still working to find the balance.

Well enough about me, I'm sure you want to hear about our little baby. We have been calling it Warhol because Laron seriously likes the name, but of course there is no possibility of me actually letting him name our child that. Especially since we found out last week that we are having a girl!!! We will soon be replacing the name Warhol with something much cuter and more feminine much to Laron's dismay.

It is going to be a challenge for me to control my spending habits now that we are having a baby girl. There are SO many adorable things for little girls! My family was in town this past week and my mom made the first purchase for the wardrobe of baby Turley.

Isn't it the most precious thing you have ever seen? Things are so much cuter when they are tiny!

Let me try again

2011-03-13T14:12:00.000-07:00

I just counted the months, not weeks, but months since my last blog post and I came up with the number 6. What? That is half a year! I am disappointed in myself to say the least. If you remember reading a post from August I said I was going to try to blog more since we are in California away from friends and family....obviously I haven't done so well, so I'm going to try again.

Laron and I do not have dull lives, we are actually quite busy and I have plenty to blog about, so no more excuses. To me it doesn't make since to try and make up for lost time by blogging about the past because you will never catch up to the present, so I am just going to start with our lives right now.

As we speak Laron is living it up in Argentina and I am sitting on our couch contemplating what to clean next...sounds amazing I know. Laron is in Argentina with a group of 30 students from USC who are working on a proposal for the redevelopment of an area in Buenos Aires. Although it doesn't seem fair it will be a great experience for him and I am happy that he has the opportunity to travel and learn. I must say that I have never appreciated my computer (skype and gmail chat) so much. I think I would go crazy having no way to communicate for almost two weeks. I still might go crazy coming home to an empty house everyday; I need a project, any suggestions??

Glowing

2010-09-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

This weekend was one of new experiences for sure. Santa Monica hosts an event every other year called Glow. Laron, being the adventuresome one somehow heard about it and told me to look it up, so I went to their website to find a very vague description of what sounded like some type of art walk. The festivities were to start at 7pm on Saturday and extend until 3am and were along the Santa Monica Pier and the boardwalk. It sounded like something fun and different so we invited some friends and decided to make a night of it.

We began our adventure of course by picking up a map of the exhibits from the information booth and Laron designated himself as the tour guide. Our first stop was called something like "the underbelly" it was a large cluster of helium filled balloons with silver tinsel hanging down, surrounded by black lights. There was a huge crowd forming in the middle so we made our way into "the underbelly" and found a tub of glowing body paint. Right away we knew this was no ordinary art walk, it was going to be a night full of surprises and some very interesting people. Of course we each took our turn dabbing face paint on so that we too could be glowing.

We continued the night going from station to station, each identified by a huge glowing balloon of course, with a number corresponding to our map. Some of the displays included karaoke singing to moon themed songs while your face was projected onto a large ball suspended in the sky made to look like you were the singing face of the moon (see picture of the old woman below), a group full of gymnasts dressed in glowing attire performing in black lights on ropes, a tunnel made of glowing rope that lead to the ocean, two men on the carousel echoing one another as they recited a strange poem, and a number of other odd displays of the creative mind.

It was without a doubt a night to remember.

California Living 101

2010-09-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

We are finally feeling like this is home. We have learned some new things and had to make some adjustments, for example:

*If you leave your car parked in the wrong place on a street sweeping day you will get a $61 ticket and when you try to appeal it you will loose, unfortunately Laron and I both learned that the hard way, so $122 later we know that Tuesdays we can't park in front of our house or across the street between the hours of 7am to noon.

*The yelling from across the street is just the homeless guys in the park who think that it is fun to argue and disturb each other while they are trying to sleep.

*Grocery shopping is at least an hour event even though the store is within walking distance because there is never parking when you need to unload so I park in the middle of the street with my hazards on and quickly make as few trips as possible because I don't want to risk leaving my trunk open and one of the homeless people take my food so between each load I close the trunk and lock the car. Then I usually drive around for the next 20min trying to find a parking space, then it takes about 5min to walk home and then I have to quickly put all of the groceries away that have been sitting on the floor for the last half an hour. I think I'm going to get one of those carts with wheels so that I can walk to the store and not have to worry about the hassle of parking.

*Nothing is cheap. When we were first getting furniture we thought it would be fun to find an old Victorian style chair and repaint and upholster it for a more modern design. We spent days going to thrift shops and antique marts to find out that nothing was in our price range even used and that upholstery alone would cost hundreds of dollars, so that idea quickly faded and we still are chairless.

Despite some of these difficulties we have made adjustments and have decided that there are way more pros than cons to living in southern California.

Our first of many USC football games. They played Virginia and won 14 to 17!
Go Trojans!

We took a quick trip to Venice, just 5min south of Santa Monica where we found some interesting architecture and people. Laron was amazed by the shipping container house being built and was inspired to buy land and build one of our own:) We were both slightly disturbed by the man (with nearly every inch of his face tattooed and pierced) trying to lure people into the freak show where for $5 you can see many two-headed creatures, the apeman, rubber girl and a variety of other oddities. We will definitely keep this place in mind for our next date night!

2010-09-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

I have decided since we are in a new place and far away from friends and family that I should keep up our blog, so here it goes....

We have been in California for 3 weeks now and despite some challenges we are loving it! We can walk to nearly everything; the mall, beach, park, grocery store and the weather always seems to be perfect. We have both been very lucky to have found jobs right away. I am working at a cosmetic surgery and aesthetic office and Laron works for a real estate agency. Laron is very much consumed with school, lots of projects and reading but he likes it and has a chance to showcase his design and photography skills.

When we have the chance to spend time together we like to walk to the 3rd St Promenade and people watch or take a blanket to the beach and enjoy the view!

Well this is a very general synopsis of our lives right now. I will try to share fun events and stories that we are sure to encounter as we explore our new surroundings.

the new Turley residence
1132 7th St #1 Santa Monica, CA

Our evenings out have consisted of the Santa Monica Pier and the 3rd St Promenade where you never know what kind of amazing performances or creepy costumes you will see. There is definitely lots of character in Santa Monica.

3rd St Promenade Performers and Characters

One Crazy Week

2009-01-27T09:37:00.001-08:00

Laron and I both started school last week and I don't think we have ever been so exhausted. We no longer know what free time is. I'm just taking three classes, chemistry, biology and psychology, but they will be a lot of work. Laron has a full shcedule of finance and urban planning, which he really enjoys and likes to share with me. I also accepted a new job that I will be starting this week. I am very excited about that, it's a mempership salon and spa that is brand new called frespa. You can see more about it at http://www.freespa.net/. Hopefully all goes well with my training and things progress for us to be open February 2nd.

Along with all that Janis and Chris (Laron's sister and huband) and their twin boys, Gavin and Gabriel got to come stay with us this past weekend. It was so much fun to see them and to meet the twins. They are even cuter than in the pictures. It was a little crowded in our one bedroom condo with the six of us, but it all worked out and we really enjoyed having them. We were sad to see them leave and asked if we could keep the boys and just mail them back later.....

We also go to see the Lion King at ASU this weekend. Part of my birthday present from Laron was tickets to several different shows including Wicked, Stomp, Cats and the Lion King. The show was great and we really enjoyed the singing and the amazing costumes.

2009-01-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

Well we have been married a year now! Living in Arizona has been a change, but we like it. Laron is busy with school majoring in finance and minoring in urban planning. He will graduate next spring and then go on to get his masters...Such a smarty! I have decided to go back to school which I am excited and nervous about. I start this semester with my pre-requisites for nursing. It will be a lot of studying, but hopefully I will survive. Other than that not much is new. We both stay busy working and Laron always has a project; I would say he's quite the entrepreneur. We are having fun!