Author Archives: Heather Shoberg

About Heather Shoberg

I'm many things... I'm a wife, a mother, a book lover, a movie lover, a photography lover, a music lover, a coffee lover, and a chocolate lover. I have cute aggression and I'm an introvert. I love mangoes and my favorite flower is the sunflower. I got married in Converse sneakers and love fairy lights. I love the mountains and when I was little I wanted to be an astronaut.

Photo Dump… with Cats

I was originally going to just title this Cat Dump, but that obviously doesn’t sound like something anyone would want to click on.  I have a lot of cat photos, though, and not a lot of cat updates.  Ziggy is getting up there in years and we’ve got her taking a joint supplement. She’s only been on it for about a week, but hopefully we’ll see improvement in her mobility soon.  In the meantime, she can most often be found in the kid’s book corner when upstairs or on the couch… or really anywhere comfy for sleeping.

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Uzi is still active and shows no signs of aging, except perhaps for his grumpy old man routine where Vega is concerned and he gives me the evil eye if I give her too much attention.  He’s been fairly needy lately and I swear at times he and Vega are just jealous siblings both vying for my love and affection on a constant basis.

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It’s funny how different the relationship is between Vega and Ziggy vs. Vega and Uzi. Vega has slightly more respect for Ziggy (doesn’t pounce on her too often) and likes to snuggle her and give her a bath, whereas with Uzi, she just wants to play and fight and annoy him and has zero respect for him.

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Look at how cute and innocent I am!!

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Get off my lawn!  Hooligans!

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We have an absurd amount of blankets and places for cats and kids to snuggle, so you really always have to be careful when you pick a pile up because one or the other could be hiding.

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See?!  Sometimes everybody plays nice!  I love how much more the cats have grown to tolerate the kids. One night Both Ziggy and Uzi hopped up on Enzo’s bed when it was time to go to sleep. They still have a love/hate relationship with Vega though, since she’s ornery and they can’t tell when she’s actually going to attack them or not.

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Just a boy and a kitty hanging out.  I’m glad that Uzi has been such a good cat to have with the kids. He’s always gentle and so very patient with them, even when his ears and tail have been pulled.

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Cats are good for the soul.

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Every year on my birthday I prep the house for Halloween. The kids get a kick out of the decorations, which I try to add to each year and there’s just something about this time of year in general when it comes to feel in the air and the lights and just overall fun.  Next year, I have big plans.

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Not at all Halloween related, but it was a treat for myself for my birthday. Ha ha!

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I have more stuff scattered throughout the house, but didn’t get to taking pictures of everything.  Part of my plan this winter is to declutter a lot, so that way when I do decide to decorate there’s more room to do so and just less clutter in general.  I’ve always been the type of person who sort of collects, but I’d like to find some balance between minimalism and what we’ve got going on now. :p

Get Outside

The past week was a busy one, and the weekend ended up being no different.  The kids were up bright and early and were ready to GO.  Our original plans changed, so we pulled out Plan B – when in doubt, go to the zoo!  We invited Josh’s dad Mike to come along with us and away we went!  Despite it being overcast, the temps were surprisingly nice and it was the emptiest the zoo has ever been when we’ve visited.  It was AMAZING!

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Finding a table to eat at was a breeze and the kids were able to wiggle and move around as much as they wanted!

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I didn’t pet the sharks, but everyone else got to, which was awesome. It’s usually really hard to find a spot for the kids when we’re here so they were thrilled.

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It might seem weird to document your kids using a hand dryer, but this is the first time EVER that they have agreed to use one. They usually are afraid of the hand dryers.  More winning!

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Onward, ho!

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Also, my husband was winning because I was able to take a few photos with my big camera and I’m actually in more than 1 or 2 photos and don’t have totally weird face!

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It was so nice for the kids to be able to run around and actually get up close to see everything without any crowds.  We don’t often get to do that and it was especially exciting at Grizzly Coast (the boys were in the water up against the glass rough-housing) and it’s awesome to get to see the bears up close.

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You’re also more able to get away with putting your kids on the fence to give them a better look at critters. Don’t worry, the Takin’s looked fairly harmless. 😉

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She’s a tree in the wind. Seriously, though… no crowds!!  We even managed to walk past the carousel and the kids didn’t even argue when we said we weren’t going to ride it that day.  Say what?!?

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Telling Grandpa all of the things and enjoying the fall leaves on our walk.  We’re already at that point where so many more trees are beyond peek and heading into the dying yellow color than are at the glorious red and orange point.  Such is life.

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My favorite.  I love mountain lions so much… bobcats too.

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We headed home a little before 4:00 and Phoebe of course crashed on the way, which also meant she didn’t want to fall asleep at bedtime, but we could also hear someone with some thumping bass, so that didn’t help.  Sunday I woke up to this glorious tree outside our bedroom window:

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Then at some point I realized I need to go grab groceries, so I loaded up Phoebe and away we went!  She managed to pinch her finger in the shopping cart wheel when we got back to the car, and was quite upset the whole ride home and most of the afternoon.  I kind of wanted to punch the old man in the parking lot who looked over at me and shook his head in that way that clearly meant I was an awful parent.  She has a blood blister, but no long-lasting damage and I have a feeling she isn’t scarred for life.

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Happy Monday… oh… errr… Tuesday. How is it Tuesday?

 

Day in the Life – Fall

It’s time for another Day in the Life post!

Stats:

Josh – 37
Heather – 34
Enzo – 4.5
Phoebe – 2 (almost 3)
Ziggy – 14
Uzi – 12
Vega – 1
🙂

As usual, I took photos on a weekend (this past Sunday to be precise) since it’s easier and usually more interesting than following me on a day at work.  Let’s do this!

Phoebe and I slept in until 6:30ish then I stayed in bed a little longer. I had a restless night, but after about 15 minutes made my way to the living room.  Everyone was on their various screens already, so I went and flopped on the couch.

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Soon, though, I was hungry and I decided to make muffins, but they really aren’t the same from a box.  Next time I’ll make them from scratch.  Typically Enzo and Phoebe have zero patience when it comes to breakfast in the morning and want to eat right away, so it was kind of amazing they agreed to wait for these to bake.

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There’s nothing better than that first cup of coffee.

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We didn’t have any plans, so it was a nice stay-at-home sort of day with some cleaning and laundry and randomness.  I (as usual) didn’t take notes of any kind, so I can’t remember the exact events of the day.

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At some point I remembered that I was going to use the crock pot for dinner and thankfully it was just a 5 hour recipe.  I decided to browse pinterest a bit and drink more coffee because coffee makes everything better.

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The kids decided to show off their hula hooping skills at one point, but I had to go and show them up. Sorry, no pictures of that glorious moment. 😉

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Huzzah and other things you say at a Ren Fest…

Fall for me isn’t really fall unless we go to the Renaissance Festival. It doesn’t really change ever, but I do so love it and even though we didn’t dress up this year, next year it’s happening because it doesn’t feel right not to!  This year we ended up going on the last weekend, but ended up working out quite well… the only thing we had going against us was the weather ended up being much nicer than we had planned. Yep. We overdressed thanks to our weather app being completely wrong.  Overcast and 60 degrees ended up being sunny and in the lower 70’s so we ended up roasting, which is better than freezing… you win some you lose some.

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The kids were excited… sort of. We started things off by walking to the joust and a nice lady gave the kids some little things she had won.  Alas, the actual joust wasn’t actually taking place at this time and the kids started whining for food.  The second we leave the house all they can talk about is food and plow through any snacks I bring.  Enzo saw someone with pizza, so off we went to find pizza, hoping that afterward they’d be more thrilled about aimlessly wandering and exploring.

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Josh got the kids settled with pizza while I made my way to find mead because where else are you encouraged to start drinking  before noon?  What’s not to love about having a beer at 10am and being cheered on to do so?

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The pizza was really good (I had their leftovers) and Josh found me a massive chocolate cupcake that I didn’t take a picture of, but must have weighed 2 pounds and was glorious.  GLORIOUS!

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Oh, I lied, the first thing we did was walk by the elephants and the kids immediately wanted a ride. I felt kind of bad for the elephants, but let the kids go anyway. I made Josh go with them because I didn’t really want to smell like elephant and also I don’t like heights. The kids were so excited, which made it totally worth it… I think. Okay, I really want to free the elephants.

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We wandered and the kids got souvenirs and we snacked.  Enzo was getting a tad cranky, however, and Phoebe was getting ornery. She also kept dropping her wand out of the wagon so it’s really amazing it made it home in one piece.  Enzo decided against a wand when I told him that unfortunately it didn’t actually do real magic like Harry Potter.  Instead I had to watch his poor little face fall as he was introduced to the disappointment we all have to face as we grow older and realize that life isn’t nearly as cool as it is in books and movies.  Trust me, Kid, I KNOW.

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So, we went to find some fairies… more disappointment there since it was just girls dressed up as fairies. We wandered a bit more, listened to some Stary Olsa and bought their CDs and then decided to head out before we had full on mutiny on our hands from our wagon pirates who Josh was towing around all day.  Huzzah! Until next year when we will probably leave the party poopers at home! 😉