what i did this summer

people keep asking me, "so what did you DO all summer?" and since there's not just an easy answer like "an internship" or "working," it's tempting to for me to say, "i just hung out!" and while that's partially true, especially compared to my former grad student life and tommy's busy internship, i could NEVER just "hang out" for three months without wanting to die. i need to have projects and to-do lists or else my self-esteem crumbles and i feel like a slob.

so, lest i forget what i did all summer (other than our day trips and activities that tommy and i did together), i thought i would record it here.

project #1: make a quilt (with AMPLE support and guidance from my mom). this was truly a summer-long project, because i worked on it only about one day a week when i would drive down from santa monica to my family's house. i never spent more than a few hours at a time on it, which i think was the perfect way to be introduced to quilting--i never felt burnt out or tired of it. 

we started with this:

and ended with this masterpiece:

there were plenty of steps in the middle of those two pictures, of course. what? you want some action shots? okay, fine.

check me out! sewing machine master!

 i pretty much laughed at myself all summer long because my mom always used to try and get me to do sewing projects when i was younger and i HATED it. i'd get so frustrated so easily. but i guess i am growing up, because now i'm the one asking my mom if i can sew and voluntarily picking out messed-up stitches. it was an excellent project for this summer, and i'm oh so proud of it.

project #2: make photobooks for each year we've been married. i used the blurb book program, and it took weeks and WEEKS to go through all our photos, decide which ones deserved preserving, and organize them all into the books. i was pretty burnt out on this project by the end . . . but they just came TODAY and i'm so pleased to have done it!

project #3: exercise. i spent the first month of our time there jogging around the park we lived by, but my knees started killing me again, so i switched to swimming. and i worked up to swimming a mile (almost) every day. i would walk the mile to the pool, swim a mile, and walk back. it was so fun, because i'd never swum for exercise before, and it was the perfect pregnancy activity.

project #4: watch all of downton abbey. tommy and i got hooked, and dedicated several full evenings to marathon viewing sessions. (okay, this wasn't really a project, but we did it.)

project #5: hang out with siblings.

project #6: grow a baby. this is what i looked like when we got to california in may:

and this is what i looked like when we got back to north carolina:

and i did a lot of other things too, that weren't recorded in picture form: i read a good number of books, about babies and about other things; we took a childbirth class; we bought a fancy new camera and my mom and i took a photography class to learn how to use it more appropriately; i got into family history indexing; i went to costco and the santa monica farmer's market weekly to get as much fresh peaches and nectarines as were humanly possible; i checked out guidebooks from the library to help tommy and i be the best LA live-in tourists possible. 

okay, okay, and just so this post isn't ENTIRELY about me, this is what tommy was doing most of the summer, one block from the beach and working hard:

what a gem! and WHAT a summer.

3rd anniversary celebration

last week, on wednesday, we celebrated our THIRD wedding anniversary. 

and by celebrated, i mean that tommy drove from mobile, alabama to durham with dallin, and i flew from LAX to RDU with a several-hour long delay that meant i didn't get in until 1:30 am the next day. 

so we didn't really celebrate on the actual day. or even see each other. 

but tommy did buy me some beautiful flowers. (and i didn't get him anything... as usual, i am the worst.)

okay, but knowing that our actual anniversary was going to be spent apart, we DID celebrate a few weeks ago before leaving california. we spent our last free weekend in solvang and santa barbara, just 1-2 hours north of santa monica. we booked a night at a cute little bed and breakfast in solvang (not two nights--we were too cheap!) on friday and spent saturday wandering around the two cities. 

solvang is inland a ways, back in the santa inez valley (which is BEAUTIFUL) and is a cute little danish town in the middle of spanish country. tommy was very pleased to get a good danish meal of flaeskesteg (pronounced fleskastie) and meatballs, and we visited several bakeries to stock up on danish pastries all morning long. 

santa barbara isn't too far away, and we just walked around the downtown area for a while. then we rode on the harbor's little water taxi for about half an hour and spent some time relaxing on the beach. it was so nice!

other than the horrendous traffic we got stuck on both going there and back, it was a perfect little getaway to celebrate three years of happily married bliss. because of course, it has been that.

and it was also kind of a baby-moon (within a summer that was basically just a long baby-moon) to celebrate the end of our child-free existence. no more bed and breakfasts or solitary weekend trips for us for quite a while...

because ready or not, here he comes! 

summer, baby, and cupcakes

today, we move out of our nice little apartment here in santa monica. we'll spend a few days down in irvine (with tommy commuting back up here for two more days of work) and then tommy and dallin start the drive across the country. and i fly back to NC on wednesday. there is so much to do once we get back there, but i feel like we're stuck in limbo until then. i could (and maybe should) be feeling panicky about the upcoming month(s), but i'm not. just yet.

i am totally in denial that baby boy is almost here (the due date is just 5 weeks away) (! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ahhhhh!). i feel MUCH more prepared than i did at the beginning of this summer, thanks to the ample free time i've had to read and learn everything i could about childbirth, etc., but it still doesn't feel like he's really coming. also, i've forgotten what it's like to NOT be pregnant . . . it seems like it would be weird to have a flat stomach now. i wonder if i'll miss being pregnant, miss feeling him moving around inside me all the time. because i sure do like that part of pregnancy, as uncomfortable as it can be at times.

this morning was the first time i've ever been woken up by his movements. at about 5 in the morning (i'm guessing by the little bit of light coming through the window), i woke up because he was digging his heels into my ribs. that only started happening this week, so i guess he really IS getting bigger to be able to reach all the way up there. i had a doctor's appointment and ultrasound last week, and she said that he was measuring two weeks big and has a ton of hair. taking after his mama, that boy.

in other news, we've done a ton lately: a trip up to utah to visit the leiningers and go to the murphy family reunion at aspen grove, more sightseeing around LA, a concert at the hollywood bowl, and a pre-anniversary celebration weekend up in solvang and santa barbara, but i'm too lazy and tired to upload the pictures from all of these things right now. here's one of tommy at the famous sprinkles cupcakes ATM in beverly hills (we just bought them from inside, but had to pose with the machine). their raspberry cupcake was probably THE BEST THING I'VE EVER HAD. aloha, sprinkles.

also, the sprinkles is only a block away from rodeo drive. we were standing under the rodeo drive sign and the guy taking our picture didn't include it in the picture . . . so you'll just have to take my word for it that we were there. tommy said, "i only recognize about 1/4 of the stores on this street", haha. we're definitely not the rodeo drive type.

and, that's all folks. stay tuned for more exciting news on the leininger front!

FUN weekend FUN

we were eating dinner with my cousin andrew on thursday when he mentioned that this friday was a first friday celebration in venice. i know they have those in raleigh, a sort of art walk thing, but apparently here in venice they're all about the food trucks that line up along the street--there were probably 20 or 30 options to choose from. so we decided to go and see what it was all about. we were looking for the ever-popular grilled cheese truck (which always has an hour-long line and is beloved by many), but it apparently wasn't there, so we settled for some other food. 

the sidewalks were CRAZY crowded. you could tell which trucks were the most popular by how bad the crowds were around the truck.

we got the pota-tornado, with a giant sausage in the middle. there was an entire food truck dedicated JUST to these tornado potatoes. definitely seemed like such a boy thing.

andrew insisted that we needed a picture in front of the medical marijuana dispensary. please ignore my swollen face--i am six months pregnant.

we also bought some giant nachos and we were pretty much filled up. we ended the night by visiting diddy riese and getting some more ice cream sandwiches. all in all a VERY successful night, i would say.

and then today, saturday, we were determined to hit up some other la sites. first up was the original LA farmer's market, which has apparently been going since 1934. it did not seem like a farmer's market to me, since it had BUILDINGS instead of just canopies and clearly the people working there were not farmers selling their produce, but i'm not complaining. it was still great. AND we broke out our fancy new DSLR for this trip, so admire the quality of these pictures! TA-DA!

we were awestruck and amazed by the genius of these band-aid strips. mustache-shaped band-aids? SPAM BAND-AIDS!? there were about 10 other awesome kinds that we ogled and tried to think of reasons to buy. we ended up buying some as early christmas presents for siblings because they were so awesome.

and last but not least, we finally went on our bike ride down the bike path that goes for some-twenty-odd miles along the beaches up here. we went about seven miles each way, stopping to relax on the beach for a while in the middle. it was FUN and definitely something i wanted to do this summer--and probably a good thing we didn't wait any longer or else i would not have been enjoying it as much.

we walked our bikes a good ways on our way back down the venice boardwalk, which was INSANE, crowded, marijuana-smelling, and super classy. i couldn't believe how long it went AND how many cannabis dispensaries there were. go venice! stay classy.

  

and finally you all know what we've been up to all this time! and there are some great baby bump pictures in there to satisfy all you curious people. 

4th of july

we spent most of our 4th with our favorite other summer los angelenos: the busbys! we went to a traditional fourth of july parade down by tommy's work in the morning. we were kind of expecting it to be like the freedom parade in provo, where people camp out overnight to get a good spot on the road, so we were really worried about being able to find parking and a spot along the parade route. so we showed up an hour early, and we were the only people there until about 45 minutes later. but we did get some free flags, and kylie and emmy raked in the swag from the parade-goers.

we didn't actually SEE any celebrities at the parade (still one of my goals for the summer that is yet unfulfilled) but we pretty much became celebrities. we were filmed and interviewed by a local news girl (see her in the corner of the picture above!) and we had SUCH interesting things to say on camera! check it out. we are famous.

later in the day, we went over to the busbys' house and barbecued--steak, corn, and pineapple, a real feast--and then went down to the santa monica pier to enjoy the crowds and hopefully steal a glimpse of some far-away fireworks. we knew they didn't actually do any fireworks at the pier, but were too lazy to drive in crazy traffic to a city that did have them.

and there were the fireworks! that small red dot next to tommy's head in the picture below! (they were doing them in malibu, pretty far up the coast.) people were LINED UP along the pier and the beach to stare at these tiny specks in the sky. but we didn't feel totally obligated to stay for the whole fireworks show, really.

look at how patriotic we were--although you needed both of us together to complete the color scheme. (i don't have anything red that i fit into at this point in my life, and tommy insists that his gray shorts are blue, although they're not.) but anyways, happy independence day!

things we've done lately

SO MANY FUN THINGS.

i went to the la zoo with the busbys (while the husbands were busy working).

and also hung out with the younger busbys and got stickered up.

we drove up to fresno a few weeks ago to visit tommy's grandma. we left on saturday morning and made the trip in less than four hours, and then came back sunday night. we got to go to the temple with her and i got to meet an aunt and uncle and cousin of tommy's that i'd never met before. it was a really nice trip AND we got to appreciate the weather in santa monica even more (it was over 100 in fresno the whole time we were there).

we've had several picnic lunches on the beach. i go pick tommy up and we go down to the beach to eat together. i even bought pringles to celebrate eating together--and strawberries, our constant companion this summer.

we got diddy riese ice cream sandwiches--the original smart cookie, for all you provo-ites. we've now gone again, and plan on going many times more since they are only $1.75 (cheapest dessert around!) and delicious.

we were lucky enough to be visited by hermana chelsea williamson, visiting her old missionary stomping grounds in the la mission. i got to spend a lot of time with her, chatting and catching up and hearing all about the last several YEARS of her life since we've lived together. we even got to spend her BIRTHDAY with her--we ate at bj's, went to the temple with rique, and went to yogurtland. it was a grand old reunion. THANK YOU chelsea for hitting us up!

this summer is officially HALF OVER.