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.
