A Little bit of Holidays in San Clemente

Before we headed home to Seattle for the holidays, Einar and I made some "gingerbread" houses for our holiday decorations. He had a bunch of fun glueing on the graham crackers and candies onto the milk cartons and even waited to eat the candy until his house was fully decorated. We had fun making it snow with powdered sugar after they were done too. Once they were complete, so was our holiday decorating in San Clemente--only one string of lights in the dining room and the houses on the table.
Last week we also spent an afternoon and evening at Disneyland soaking up the holidays Disney-style. Everything was decorated and Sleeping Beauty's Castle had snow and white lights all over it. Of course Einar had to see the princesses and tell about what he'd been up to. We left the park before the fire works, but managed to see them from the parking structure. That turned out to be a great decision so that we didn't have to be a part of the mass exodus from the park when it closed 5 minutes after the fireworks were over. Einar was asleep within 5 minutes of getting on the southbound freeway that night.

The other pictures are of him "ringing" the bells for a church program that the Wednesday night music classes did last Sunday. We were a few minutes late since we were to show up an hour early and Einar missed his part of the program, but he did stand around like he was doing something. He didn't seem to notice that he'd missed the opportunity and I'm not sure exactly how much more singing and ringing we would have gotten out of him to begin with. He sure does like his 15 minutes of music class on Wednesdays at church and has been practicing Jingle Bells for several weeks now.

Check out his Disneyland outfit too. He is so proud of his "new to him" Princess shirt and that he put on his green fleece shirt all by himself (so what if it is upside down!).

Miraculous Christmas Celebration in SJC

Tonight after our naps, Einar and I went to San Juan Capistrano to see all of the festivities of their tree-lighting and Christmas at the Mission Celebration. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and Einar had several "firsts" as well.

He rode his first real pony. Every time that I've taken him before near a pony he has given me a definitive "NO THANKS!" But tonight he was into it. His horse's name was Charro.

I am also the proud owner of a picture of him smiling and sitting on Santa and Mrs. Claus' lap! It only took three years for that to happen, but now he seems to like the jolly fellow. He told him that he'd been a good boy this year and he asked for candy and animals for Christmas.

The Mission was beautifully decorated and crowded, but I was able to snap a picture of the nativity scene they had in the old church. Then it was off again to watch all of the different musical groups around town and to share a potato, bean and cheese Burrito at Pedros tacos.

This morning we went to the birthday party of his friends, Nathan and Anya. They turned 3 today and their families threw a great party at a nearby park. It was pretty chilly for a San Clemente Saturday, but at least the rain was gone. Yesterday it rained hard ALL DAY. There was so much water that we had a leak and it was raining in our bedroom downstairs because the water was pooling on the patio.

P.S. I was just notified that Einar has indeed been on a horse before when he and Jared spent a day in SJC before Mother's Day this past spring. Jared was on-hand for that first!

Lunch with the Princesses--Lots of Pictures!

Princess Pictures and photos of fire engines--a little boy's dreams have come true! On Monday, we went to Disneyland and had a special lunch with the Princesses. We went with my friend Christina and her daughter Sarah, who is Einar's age. They sat us at our table and then announced that we were the "Honorary Royal Family" and we had to get up and announce the arrival of Princess and Belle. After that, all of the Princesses stopped at our table right after they came into the room. Belle, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Princess Minnie Mouse, and Ariel all visited with us! Their dresses were absolutely amazing and looked just like they had walked out of our story books at home. My little princess admirer did come home with a princess mug and a place mat from the gift shop. At every meal now he tells me which princesses he saw and he's been very proud that he's drinking his water out of a mug like a big kid now.

It was the first time that Einar wasn't just awestruck in the presence of royalty. He smiled, talked, and even gave them hugs. Neither he nor Sarah ended up eating much lunch that afternoon since they were both so excited. After lunch we went on more rides at Disneyland--teacups (2X), Alice in Wonderland, It's a Small World, the carousel, the double decker bus, and then we rode the monorail out of the park and into Downtown Disney before going home.

Last Friday was Putting on the Glitz in downtown San Clemente. They close down the street, decorate the place all pretty for Christmas, have caroling groups all over, and even have the fire department out with the truck. I think that the fire truck had brought Santa into town for pictures, but we missed that part of the evening. I think it started Einar's big interest in Christmas lights as well. He keeps his eyes peeled in the car for all of the decorated places as we drive around at night. Tonight we took a 10-minute detour on the way home just to look at lights and we had a blast. When we got home I put up a string of lights in the dining room for our own festive atmosphere. Since we'll be travelling over the holidays, I won't be decorating our home much, just packing and trying to get our cold-weather gear together and to make sure that it still fits the growing boy and the expanding pregnant body too.

Day After Thanksgiving

We might not be out shopping at the mall on this gorgeous day after Thanksgiving, but we are bright- eyed and bushy-tailed after sleeping in till 9! We've even showered and I'm dressed, but Einar decided that he wanted to put his pajamas on again after getting all clean. He is now watching a new show called Word World--more animals building words, but not as "Scary" as Super Why. Super Why had an episode about Hansel and Gretel several weeks ago and it really freaked him out and now he won't watch the show at all.

Yesterday we had a nice relaxing Turkey Day here in San Clemente. My friend Betsy drove down from Yucca Valley with her two kids to spend the day and eat turkey. Her husband Frank is deployed in Iraq right now. I cooked an 11lb turkey that turned out really well and now have a stock pot of soup in the fridge too =). Einar and Jacob played trains most of the day and the two little kids and the moms even got a little bit of a nap in after our noon meal. Betsy took the pictures yesterday, so when I get some of those I'll post them.

Today is a blank slate. I just know that we're not up for a day of shopping!

PICTURES! PICTURES! PICTURES!

Blog Catch-up Time

Well, I've been remiss in updating the blog these past two weeks. A lot has happened, I just haven't been keeping you updated--sorry.

Einar and I spent a day at Disneyland with Nathan, Hailey and Kathleen. We saw princesses, rode the Jungle Cruise and were completely terrified by Storm Troopers and Darth Vader.

The next day, Jared took us to Knott's Berry Farm. All sorts of fun rides for Einar to enjoy there! His favorite was a semi-truck course where the kids rode in the cab with the parents sitting on top. Each truck was outfitted with four bulb horns that made a tremendous racket. He rode it twice and even though he threw a fit when we tried to walk away, Jared told him that he could ride it again when they got rid of the horns. We also went on the log chute ride which was fun.

On the morning that Jared left on his deployment, Einar finally figured out how to put his shoes on by himself. Jared had been working with him on this skill for awhile and now he's very proud that he can do it himself. He was even able to tell Dad about it when we saw him off on the ship. We're still working on figuring out which shoe goes on which foot.

Jared left two weeks ago on his ship. They are headed West and have now crossed the International Date Line. I get emails from him fairly frequently since he has his own desk and computer and since his job requires him to be on the computer a fair amount. We've sent a couple of letters, but according to Jared they have only received one mail drop so far and he doesn't expect them to come with any more frequency as the deployment progresses. I guess this is when we start numbering our letters so that he knows in which order we wrote them.

Before he left, Einar and I did get a brief tour of his ship including his bedroom that he shares with at least 50 other guys, his dining room, and his office and exercise room. He can't sit up quickly in his bunk because I think there is less than 2 feet of clearance from the mattress to the ceiling. They stack the bunks four height! He does have a curtain that he can draw and a reading light in there too since I guess it's dark in the room most of the time so that the people who work during the night can sleep too. We weren't able to stay and wave the ship off when it departed, but we did get to say our good-byes.

Let's see. Since then we've been adjusting to how dark it gets in the late afternoon (sometimes before we even wake up from naps!) and eating by ourselves all of the time. We were pretty busy the first week with meetings, Church on Wednesday night, and cousins visiting on Wednesday and a trip with them to Legoland on Thursday. However, this past week we've been in quarantine with nasty colds.

Einar had a fever from Monday afternoon till Friday night and we've both had the congestion and yucky cough. He's been a really good sickey taking care of himself by sleeping, drinking fluids, and being pretty quiet. I've been doing the same, but have been itching to get out of the house!

Today we finally left and drove to Perris for a Day out With Thomas the Tank Engine. Since we had already purchased the tickets it was worth the trip, but now we are both tiggered out. We met up with our friends Betsy and her two kids Jacob and Molly. They live in Yucca CA now and so the train museum was about halfway for both of us (they'll be driving down to San Clemente on Thursday to have Thanksgiving with us too). Jacob and Einar were thrilled to ride on the Thomas train. It's about a 25 minute. The Orange Empire Railroad Museum does an awesome job putting on the event each year and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Thankfully it was about 10 degrees cooler this year than last. I do much better in 80 degrees than in the mid 90s! When we returned home over the mountain we found out that it had been cool, overcast and foggy all day here on the coast

I had some trouble with pictures on this post so I'll do a picture only post as well to get you updated on the growing boy.

Happy Halloweenie!

We had a really nice Halloween today with our Railroad Engineer. After Einar helped me make some pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, he settled down on the couch to catch up on his reading. I took the quiet opportunity to spend some time updating my roster of wives for the upcoming deployment and to make some phone calls. Then we finally got dressed and made a trip to the commissary since we didn't have any candy in the house for the evening on the off chance that we'd see a trick-or-treater.

Einar wore his cowboy suit to go grocery shopping and was one of several costumed kids helping their moms shop. Then it was home for lunch and a nap for the little guy.

I stayed up to make some rolls and start dinner. I'd invited a friend and her two kids over for dinner and to hang out at our house so that she could escape the crazy trick-or-treaters in her neighborhood on base. After dinner, Jared and I took Einar out for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. We met up with the Cobbs and had a good time. Both Einar and Nathan were ready to head home as we hit the last house. Einar wouldn't say "trick-or-treat" but he did blow his train whistle for people and on occasion said "Happy Halloween!" Our group included a pirate, a witch, a goldfish, a horse, Belle from Beauty and the beast, me as a cowgirl, and Einar the Engineer.

Tomorrow we'll probably binge on candy!