JULY 12

Today should be a good day. It is the day before Spencer's brother and bff Stephen Foster comes for a week. (Still waiting on Ben) It is also the day before one of Maddie's bffs comes for the same week. I am so excited! I can't wait to gear our week around playing with them.

Maddie and Spencer are hiking to the Hollywood sign with a friend today. I wish I could go.

We are all starting the 5-Day Inferno Plan with a workout and diet every day through Turbo Fire. We decided we want to look like the people in the "after" pictures.

I just officially finished the little girls' room. I just put little stars all over their ceiling so that when dark hits tonight and Kate wakes up.....voila! A starry sky of wonders for her to look at. I want to move my bed in there. (btw, Kate is now sleeping through the night again. yeah! It took two nights of crying and super Brett, and we're good again. Just in time to go to Utah and port-a-crib it. Great.

Today is the day after I got to enjoy Tara Bingham, husband Colton and Chase Bingham here for dinner. Honestly, it made me so happy to have those faces from home at my dinner table. I made Si's Challah braided bread which is always so good and Laurie Cutler's chicken white chili which is kind of getting to be our Sunday dinner more often than not. Easy and good. Finally, we had a peach pecan salad and watermelon. We laughed as we talked about our new home, California. We were talking about which freeways are faster. It sounded something ( I emphasize something for those of you who actually know these freeways) like this:

I just take the 101 to the 134 to the 2.

Yeah, the 134 to the 405 is a bottleneck

Yeah I avoid that.

Did you know you can get off on blah blah and then side street it to blah blah and save 10 minutes?

So, what if you did the 210 to the 2 to the 5 to the 110?

The 110?! I never do that. Way too congested.

Actually, the 10 is more congested than the 110, especially at LaBrea.

Hm. True. It's because of Century City people getting off.

Yeah.

Oh and here was the funniest part of the conversation.

Chase: If you like ice cream, we need to take you to the best ice cream place ever.

Brett: Where is it?

Chase: Right in L.A.

Tara: Yeah, it is SO good.

Colton: I got a nutmeg almond and it was the best ice cream I've ever had.

Brett: We went to the scariest place with my sister Darcy. It was in this scary part of town and when we got there, there was only one flavor left. The whole place was ravaged but one little flavor. It was on this street with tattoo shops, biker shops. We thought we were going to get mugged. It's called SCOOPS.

Chase: Yeah, that's it! That's a block away from my house.

Brett: Well, it wasn't THAT scary. Maybe it was just late at night, uh uh..

Chase knows everything about everything no one else has a clue about. Really. I can't even begin to write what he is up to. Let's just say it involves Fried Chicken and trucks and Twitter and DJing and celebrities. Colton's about to graduate from the Art Center in Pasadena which is about ten minutes from our house. Every Saturday they have classes for high schoolers called Saturday High. We are getting Maddie involved in that. How cool will that be for her? Finally, Tara is two months away from having their first baby, Heidi's first grandchild. I'm so glad we are by them.

I love hearing things from home and I hate hearing things from home. I can't explain it really. Sometimes when I am doing well, which is most of the time, I just think-oh that sounds fun! I miss everyone. Sometimes, though, usually at night, I hear of something I missed and it makes me really really sad. I just want to go to bed after that.

Well, Ali just called me on my cell phone from her cell phone out in the guest house, or the girls' apartment, or the casita, or the teenage hang out pad, and wants me to go hang pictures in her room. I'm tackling that house today.

Brett got his car last weekend. I am so jealous, mostly because the surround sound in that car ROCKS. It's not fair. He bought a James Taylor in concert DVD which is recorded in surround sound and there are speakers by your ears and when the car is in park, it plays the DVD so we can watch James play. When the car is driving, you just hear this amazing sound all around you. It's making me very excited for his concert next week in Anaheim.

Oh, today will be good as well, because Crowded House's new CD comes out. I'm going to go to Penny Lane records in Pasadena to buy it. Finally, I am swimming in our pool today. I haven't even been in it yet. Today I am baby! Crowded House, Hollywood Sign, swim, finish girls' house. That's pretty much it. Have a good one, e.