TROUBLE

when it's too quiet upstairs... cousins are up to no good! #yesthatseyeshadow

PLAY 2.0!

We gave PLAY a little make-over last month to reopen with our entrance in the back to make way for the new Red Racer Hobby Shop on the corner of State and Third Street! We put in beautiful new organic wool carpet, spruced up our natural toy selection, expanded the science hands-on-discovery area and added a giant foam pit for jumping!

makeover-in-the-works... we painted the entire walkway entrance white then picked colors from teh new logo to color up the tile floor 

- crazy but I love the way it turned out!

boring white mirror... needed a little spray paint

coming together! 

the girls favorite part was filling the foam pit (after we sewed the vinyl foam wall coverings right next door in The Makery!) 

#ilovecolor

more spray paint - my BFF

Ready for business!!! Come check us out!

Catch Up!

Where oh where do I start! I have been delinquent in blogging - we've just been so busy (that and Instagram takes over my good camera) but things are good at the Heff Household!

I will catch up a bit on the last few weeks of preschool festivities, swim lessons, business happenings, National Rebuilding Day, work photo shoots, a Dadventure trip and travels in Europe... once I get over my jet lag and get back into the swing of things!

Red Bluff Round Up

One of my favorite weekends in Red Bluff! We brought a whole house full of guests up to invade Oma's house - she was a very good sport about it and feed us all weekend :) It was like a revolving door - we had friends come up with us, a whole bunch come up the next day (some we didn't even know were en route!) and our Bumble server Tracy Hinson who is this years Miss California Rodeo Queen! She and her mom and her horse stayed with us too. SO MUCH FUN!!!

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL POST!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAISIE!

Happy Birthday Maisie Moo!! I can't believe you are FOUR. You are such a sweet little girl and a light in our family.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL POST!!

Cousin Campout

Last weekend we all got together with the Heff siblings for the "1st Annual 36-hour Pizza Oven Party Campout Bash!" Sarah had suggested we celebrate all the spring birthdays together so we rounded the troops and gathered at our house for the weekend April 5-7. It's not easy to move this group so we decided to stay put, cook three meals a day in the piza oven and camp on the island in the backyard. We split up meal duties and cocktaiul duties (equally important) and let the kids run wild! 

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL POST!!

Happy Easter!

How am I so lucky to have these four little girlies?! They even agreed to put on pretty Easter dresses for me - and a few of them smiled for a sisters photo on the front porch before we left for Easter at Jannie and Grampa's (some ladies walking by the sidewalked stopped to watch the picture taking spectacle as Heff was trying to make them smile and look behind me - when I called it "I think I got ONE" he said "Thank God - let's not do that again til next year." The ladies laughed at us :)

This is how a lot of them looked ;)

and of course many many like this

but we sure love them!

Red Bluff Weekend

We were in Red Bluff last weekend to hang out with family, eats lots of food, drink lots of beer and watch lots of children. My favorite activities! :)

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Tiny Tess taking her photo-of-the-week on her 6 month birthday, and her signature JanKnit

morning swinging in PJs

Tiny Tess

Look who's sitting up! (kind of :) Tess is a happy, happy six month old. She sits up for about a minute before slowly tipping over face first but doesn't seem bothered by it! She loves real food, loves her sisters making dinosaur noises in her face - which she imitates that has given him the nickname "Tessasaurus." She takes random naps during the day - usually 2-3 sometimes short sometimes long and still wakes up 2-3 times a night to nurse (little stinker :) We love you Tiny T!

me and my Tiny

Little Elvis moves Tess!

Canada Ice Fishing!

We had an awesome adventure to Banff Canada the first week in March! We had some airline miles to burn and a free week so we scouted around and picked Banff (ok I admit I it wasn't the poolside pina colada trip I was imagining - but my husband won) We invited Oma, Jannie and Grampa to join us - four kids, ten adults hands = real vacation! I have so many pictures so breaking it up - here are the photos from our full day of ice fishing out on a frozen lake in Calgary - quite the adventure!

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Back to Blogging!

Hi friends and anyone who reads my little blog here! I took a blogging break to figure out a better way to keep SOME of our girls' lives private as they are getting older and might not want me to share every detail of their lives on the big ole world wide web. But I miss it! I kept a written journel everyday (well alllmost ;) from when I was 14-23 and for me blogging is a way to record the day to day activities and memories - from the very boring day to day to the exciting family adventures. SO I am keeping the "private login TMI" blog to record everything BUT I will be back to blogging some of our daily adventures between business happenings and family fun HERE without a login now too! (since I print up the family blog in books - some posts will be both places) SO can't wait to get back to the over-sharing!

Banff Baby!

taken me forever to go through all the Banff adventure pictures but post coming soon!

Tess Loves Big Dipper Baby Food!

We are now serving yummy homemade baby food at Bumble! Big Dipper Baby Food - "fresh organic fuel for your little astronaut" :) It's delicious - I usually refuse to even try any kid/baby food (bad mom :) but this stuff is so good I'd eat the whole thing. On the menu:

Japanese Sweet Potatoes: Roasted Organic (for new eaters)
Baby Dahl: Roasted Banana, Pink Lentils, Stewed Blueberry & Coconut Oil
Beef Marrow Combo: Whipped Parsnips, Apple, Grass-fed Beef Marrow & Cardamom
Frozen Green Dream: Poached Pear, Blanched Spinach, Roasted Banana & a hint of Mint

Lots of Exciting News in DTLA

This week we've been excited to announce lots of new beginnings in DTLA! Bumble is finally at a good place and Brian and I kind of got that restaurant bug somehow (if you'd asked me a year ago I would have said you are a CRAZY person) and Bumble is limited in size so we are branching out and working on...

a new restaurant concept to open next fall or winter 2013 called "The Alley" - still working on logo design but this is the website for now!

Marty Cattaneo, an amazing chef and old friend is joining us as the Executive Chef! Brian and I feel so lucky to get to work with Marty- he is so talented and will help us create an innovative, farm-to-fork menu with off-the-hoof meats and in house dry aging. He was written up yesterday in the SF Chronicle here! (a little early to break this news since we still have LOTS of construction but since the Chronicle let the cat out of the bag so are we :)

we are also giving PLAY! a little makeover and jokingly calling it PLAY 2.0 :) we created a new fresh logo... and are moving to an all natural playspace with no plastics, all wooden creative toys for kids to explore and learn

The Makery is the DIY "craft store" and studio space I have been working on for the past year - which will open next month! It's really coming together and will be so much fun for Pinterest inspired projects, letterpress, screen printing, knitting, sewing, embroidery, ceramics and more. Come MAKE with us next month!

and this stuff is just way too much fun... OJannie doesn't have any fun with this one ;)

and hand-in-hand with The Makery - the tinkering part of the shop is Red Racer Hobby Shop which will take over the corner of State and Third in April as a fun place to build, tinker, explore and find all the old hobby shop favorites!

I am loving our little logo for this one :)

Instagram has been helping us show off our latest and greatest too - check out the new widgets on all of our pages with real time hashtags photos

I have an awesome team of girls over at "The H and H Company" helping brand the businesses as one - so we can have some cohesiveness besides being "the Bumble girl"! Area 151 and all of the websites are getting a little sprucing up. I love the new looks Ali and Sara!

here's to more fun stuff from "The H and H"! Come hang out in the DTLA with us, it's lots of fun ;)

JJ TURNS TWO

Francie and Maisie threw JJ a "Doggie" birthday party with family on Monday night for her 2nd birthday. Francie stayed up late setting up the scene... "SO. there will be a photo booth in that area, a doggie crawl game in that area, food and snacks in that area, adult stuff in that area..." Brian looked at me and goes "Get used to it!" (just like her mom ;) JJ loved her party and her sisters did a cute job making her feel special and TWO!

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Life with a TWO year old...

It's like her birthday gave her license to be TWO! Life with a two year old in the house again - is never dull!

these three - usually compliant...

not this one so much

and we'll give Tessa some credit for her never ending patience :)

well sometimes it ends!

this is life about now - no complaints :)

Happy Birthday JJ!

Janie is TWO today! Happy Birthday Crazy J. You sure keep us entertained round the clock!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEFF!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to OUR FAVORITE GUY - DADDY!! (let's just pretend we're still that young :) I won't say how old you are - just remind everybody last year you turned 40!

my the best truck-driving, boot-wearing, huntin' fool, baby girl loving guy I know!

We are "sooo lucky" to be the girls in your life. You take care of us everyday - I love this picture I woke up to when the Superbowl was on and you let me take a nap and had Tess in a Bjorn. what a dad :)

piled on with lots of love

These girls (especially this crazy one) are Daddy's girls through and through

you are SO good with them too! and brave to take them on the treks you do with nothing but a backpack of snacks and an extra diaper or two :)

and I love you more everyday

and somehow your favorite hobbies have morphed into "ways I can do them with my kids" which isn't the same when you have 4 girls 5 and under! they soak up their adventures with dad though :)

I'm not even sure how this happened so quickly but you're 41 and have FOUR girls - lucky little ladies!

You're the best Bri :) WE LOVE YOU AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

and If I were on top of things I would have made you a new cute video - but remembering last year's will have to do ;)

Create a birthday video at Animoto

Heart Day for Lindsey!

Please say some prayers for Lindsey Bingham today - our little buddy who has been waiting for a heart transplant at Packard Children's Hospital for 7 months. She is the middle of 5 kids from Eastern Oregon where our brother-in-law Donald is from. We crossed paths with them several times at the hospital having Tess, for her eye surgery (pictured here are Lindsey and Tess when Tessa's eye was REALLY bad a few days before surgery!) and around town.

I check their blog every night before I go to bed for an update and go to sleep most nights wondering how they do it with 4 other kids, with school and activities in a temporary situation here and staying in a tiny room at Ronald McDonald House and endless nights for one parent sleeping on a hospital cot. Lindsey has been on a Berlin Heart machine keeping her alive and hasn't left the confines of the hospital since JULY. They are such a strong family and we are SO THRILLED for them that they got the big call they have been waiting for. We will be praying hard today that this heart is the one for Lindsey and all goes smoothly - I hope that sweet little girl gets to wake up on Valentines Day with a new heart for a new life outside the hospital!

Working Away

Lots of exciting stuff doing on in the DTLA... Stay tuned for some updates on what we are doing, I hope you'll be as excited as we are! The girls are big helpers - testing stuff out for us after preschool as usual :)