Einar turned 4 on the 11th! I still catch him singing the "I'm Four, I'm Four, I'm Four" song. It has been a very exciting time in our household. Since he is enamored with trains (and has been since he was 16 months old) he wanted to celebrate his birthday at the train station. The Metrolink commuter train schedule worked in our favor and we were able to plan his party to happen on a Metrolink ride from San Juan Capistrano to Oceanside and back.
In the picture above, Einar is enjoying one of his Daddy engineered train tracks. Jared has now figured out the "tricks" for making some pretty complicated track lay-outs in just a little bit of time. They still take up most of our living room, but we are all getting pretty adept at stepping or crawling over the tracks. I even managed to build a pretty cool track with Einar yesterday afternoon with the help of his new round house and turntable.
The four of us took another train trip last Saturday to Los Angeles to visit Olvera Street, Chinatown and Little Tokyo. Jared had not gone with us on this adventure before and we had a nice day exploring a little bit of LA as a family. One of the best things we found was a bag of fresh fortune cookie flubs for $1. They were all flat, crunchy and delicious. Einar bought a pink guitar with some of his birthday money and has been serenading us ever since.
Einar still likes horses and he wanted a green horse cake that he saw in one of my cookbooks for his birthday. Since we held his party on the Metrolink train cupcakes made more sense in that situation so I made cupcakes for the party and this cake for his real birthday. You will never see pictures of the cupcakes. I went through so much with those "blue" cupcakes that the camera never came out and I was just happy to have something to have for the party. The green horse pasture cake was a better success. The grass is colored coconut and I flavored the buttercream frosting with coconut as well. It ended up tasting kind of like a Hostess Snowball, something that I'll keep in mind for St. Patrick's Day.
His birthday dinner request was chicken with bones, rice, salad, corn on the cob, and horse pasture cake. Our friend Helen was able to come over and join us on Thursday night (on his actual birthday Jared had to work late and the kids and I were at Disneyland) for our family celebration. We ate the cake first since the chicken was still cooking and we were all getting hungry. Then it was time for presents and finally dinner. Why not mix up the order once in awhile? It's good to keep people on their toes.
This is the MONORAIL! Thank you Disneyland for this fabulous monorail that you gave to Einar for his birthday. (Since he is an annual pass member instead of a free ticket, they gave him a gift card for the amount of a one-day ticket!) It has a voice announcement just like in the real thing. It doesn't go as fast as the real Disneyland one, it's kind of slow like the Seattle monorail, but it makes up for speed in all of the teeny-tiny pieces that it has. Definitely a cool thing for a four-year old. Soren has even learned how to use his tiny index finger to push the button on top of the car to make it talk just like Einar does.
It's big enough to set up over the train tracks and have a massive transportation bonanza.
Reed and Einar meeting their favorite Pixar characters at California adventure on Einar's actual birthday. Reed's family came down from Seattle for a week of Disney and other Orange County vacation fun and were able to come to Einar's train party too. Reed and Einar were still inside when we met at our childbirth classes in Ballard. Reed and Thea also were in our Seattle PEPS group and it's great to be able to catch up with them once in awhile.
All of these parties and outings really wear out baby boys. Here Soren is falling asleep in the middle of a bottle on Jared's lap. As I recall, he got the bottle after nursing and chewing on me too long without falling asleep one evening. He's starting to realize that things keep happening after he goes to sleep and he's been trying not to miss anything.
Reed and Einar in the hammock on our patio after dinner.
Metrolink party festivities. This is Jared directing a game of pin the caboose on the train. We forgot the blindfold, but strategically positioned each kid's new train hat down over the eyes instead. We also colored Thomas pictures, played with stickers, ate cupcakes, drank lemonade, and opened packages on the train. I do apologize to the Metrolink clean-up crew for the green cupcake crumbs on the floor. We wiped down the tables, but next time a dirt devil would be a good thing to bring along. Green cake crumbs really stand out on that industrial flooring!
Pictures were kind of hard to take successfully on the train since the light from the outside was so bright. It kind of looks like we are all glowing or something. Kathleen held Soren for awhile (even the babies got railroad hat's, although not personalized). All the big kids were also given wooden train whistles. The cars that we rode on cleared out pretty quickly after we got on as other passengers fled to other parts of the train.
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Hayes ditched his hat early and sat with his dad, Clint. He doesn't like wearing hats much.
All-Aboard! Einar thoroughly enjoying the party with his friend Hailey.
Here are the kids waiting for the train to come in San Juan Capistrano. We are missing Maddox and Zachary from this picture because they joined us in Oceanside and did the reverse trip with Rosellen. Everyone had to stay behind the yellow line as you can see.
This is the first train that came in to the station, but we didn't get on since it wasn't our Metrolink, it was the Amtrak. Einar really has a thing for Amtrak trains now, but not only was the Amtrak schedule inconvenient for our outing it is also more expensive to ride. I did however find Amtrak paper plates and napkins for the cupcakes. Did you know that there is an online store called Trainparty.com that only carries things that one might need for a train party? You can get pinatas (wouldn't Metrolink have liked that?), bandanas, paper products with everything from Thomas to the little engine that could, hats and our whistles. The internet is the only place that such a specialized store could exist!
I think that the birthday celebration is finally over now.
A couple of weeks ago Jared remembered that we have a bread machine hiding out in the garage. I guess that remember isn't really the right word since he more "found" it again when he was sorting through the garage and reorganizing our belongings a.k.a. stuff. We've had it since we got married and used it a bunch of times in Gardnerville, but since we were living at 4300 ft above sea level the results were lacking. Now however we decided that Einar might have some fun making bread in the "Breadman." All he has to do is add the ingredients and wait about 3 1/2 hours and out pops the bread. He made a really delicious whole wheat and flax bread on Thursday night that we ate for dinner with garlic spaghetti, salad and a pear-cranberry crisp--delicious things coming out of our kitchen all night! This is him with his first slice of the warm bread straight out of the machine.
Close-up shot of the delicious bread. We ate it in sandwiches last night when we went to California Adventure. I had mine with salmon salad and lettuce, yum!
"Look, Mom! Dad is slicing the bread that I made!"
Track construction is getting mega complicated around here. Jared made this one before I woke up the other morning.
Last Sunday after church we went on an adventure down to LaJolla with the Fenell family. It involved lunch at the Carlsbad In-N-Out and time on the gorgeous beach once we had made it to La Jolla. The boys loved running around on the softest sand I've seen and we all enjoyed the view and the slightly overcast day. We parked by the Scripps Oceanography Institute (sorry we didn't get a picture, Uncle Tor) and just walked down to the beach. Once we had worn the boys out we looked for children's beach where the seals are, but alas parking just wasn't available on Sunday afternoon to check it out. We figured that the upscale shopping boutiques downtown weren't up for our four sandy boys so we headed back north and everyone fell asleep in the car once we were on the freeway. In less than 90 days the Fenells will be moving to Burlingame CA and we're trying to spend as much time with them while they are nearby.
These are the infamous baked donuts, Grandma. See, they don't look too bad and they are really yummy. I didn't take a picture of the spinach pancakes, but those were good too. The pancakes are an actual appetizer recipe from Finland and not some sneaky-get-your-kids-to-eat -veggies pancake recipe. I ate mine with sour cream, Einar chose maple syrup, and Soren likes his pancakes plain.
You can often find Soren in a box of some sort these days. Here he is checking out the inside of the train basket. Like Einar he can entertain himself quite easily with all of the toys that we have in the living room. Whenever Einar is around Soren will of course want to play with what ever Einar is playing with and that causes some noisy situations especially before breakfast. I'm sure that Soren thinks that his name is "NO Soren" according to Einar.
This last picture was taken by Einar of one of his most favorite things in the world, his burpy.
