Two-day Adventure to Port Huenume and Soren's First Birthday Bash

Happy Birthday Soren! Here is the little guy being put back into his high chair after he tried an alternate method for blowing out his candle--the touch method. It was quite successful at extinguishing the flame, but it surprised him and definitely brought on some tears. No burn resulted, thankfully.

Yum-ba! Banana cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. He even got to use a fork to use and you can see how proud he is of this new implement.

Soren seems to be spell-bound by cameras much of the time so we get a lot of pictures of this stare.

Here it is, the banana cake with the chocolate cream cheese frosting shaped like a number one. It is very delicious and we enjoyed some more of it last night with our dinner. Einar picked the flowers from our yard to decorate the cake tray. If you like corner pieces with frosting, this is a good shape for a cake to be. It was also really easy to slice.

Dinner was a success too with beef tri-tip, broccoli, mashed potatoes and green salad.

On Sunday while I went to a baby shower in Encinitas with a friend of ours, Jared stayed home with the FOUR kids. After making pizza for lunch they spent much of their time outside in the garage and along the side of the house riding bikes, playing with sidewalk chalk and playing t-ball.

"I see you Mom." How many pictures do you need of me eating this dinner?"

Jared, Molly (age 3), Einar (age 4), Jacob (age 6). Hey, where is Soren?

Here we are all together with someone else available to take our picture.

Look, a little bit of a belly (although it might just be muscle) and those curls are too cute to cut quite yet. I think we'll have to wait until his hair starts to interfere with his sight until his first haircut. Besides, didn't Einar already get the honors in February?

He is on the move.

Soren likes to be tossed up in the air and I think Jared likes doing it for him.

Jacob and Einar enjoying balloons from the baby shower. Einar's balloon sailed off into the sunset about 30 seconds after this shot was taken and He fell apart.

Oops, I didn't turn this picture around, but this is of the kids eating yummy Jared pizza for lunch.

Soren makes a good outfielder for a t-ball game. Watch out Ichiro!

Playing in the sand at Point Mugu on Saturday morning. He also tried to eat a bunch of this sand.


This is Reeder and Einar in the back of the Mazda 5 for our road trip to Port Huenume. They had a video player strung up in front of them for a princess movie and continuous showings of CARS. The middle seats were where Soren and his buddy Hayes were planted and all the available space in the car was taken up with the rest of the stuff. It's a good thing that none of the kids have super long legs yet!

Marianne catching some rays after doing a masterful job repacking the car.

Please don't call CPS. The little boys enjoyed a raisin snack in the parking lot while we were packing up the car to leave on Saturday. This wasn't your average hotel parking lot with lots of cars moving around though. We stayed at the Navy lodge on base and on Saturday morning, most of the Navy guys were sound asleep.

Soren was drawn to the industrial toilet with the black seat in our room. I'm not sure why the alarm clock was in the bathroom.

Finally sleep for both of the boys. Soren slept with me and Einar on the "nest" that we made for him in the corner of the room from two chair cushions.

Einar's nest. He pointed out that it is not round like Big Bird's nest, but rectangular.

Crabs in the Santa Barbara Harbor.

Getting off of Lil'Toot after our water taxi ride in Santa Barbara.

Check out his pony-tail. This was one happy kid while on Lil' Toot.

Pelicans in the harbor.

Toot Toot!
Reeder and Einar got to drive Lil' Toot while we were going around the pier and until we got into the harbor. I think Einar did it 3 times.

Our whole lively crew on Lil' Toot.

Here comes Lil' Toot.

The Santa Barbara Aquarium is perfect for the age children that we had along with us. This is the puppet show corner that we spent some time putting on shows. Reeder was the announcer and Einar had the whales eating the octopus and the crab.

"Look Mom, cheese crackers!"

That is a shark that we all got to touch. It took Einar a while to warm up to the idea of touching a shark (or anything in the touch tanks), but he gave me a high five and did a dance after he touched this one.

Looking through cool sliding magnifying glasses into a tidal pool tank.

Ear protection is now needed at our breakfast table since Soren is screeching like an Eaglet. Check out Einar's oatmeal. He puts sprinkles on it and it turns his milk pink.

Where has the month of March gone?

It's already the 22nd of March! Winter , St. Patty's Day, and over half of Lent are already over! Where has the time gone? I'm surprised my blog hounders haven't been on my case for not keeping up on my updates. March has gone by in a blur with trips to the zoo, birthday parties, cooking, another trip to Disneyland, a garage sale, and another cold that got us all for awhile.

Way back on the 4th of March we went to the San Diego zoo with our friends Marianne, Reeder and Hayes. They now live on Camp Pendleton down by the Naval Hospital about 50 minutes away from our house, but we've been able to see them about once a week since they moved which is really cool. Here Marianne is showing off her Next Top Model moves while waiting to see the Pandas. The pandas were noshing on bamboo while we were there. I guess all of the pandas in the US are actually Chinese nationals with "green cards." They are on loan from the
Chinese.

We made the trek out to see the polar bears and happened to time it right to see them feed on salad and a huge old meaty bone. Here they are just tumbling around. They didn't get in the water while we were watching, but still worth the trek with heavy strollers up an enormous hill.

Yum, bamboo. I wonder how their teeth are after gnawing on all of those sticks.
This one also was sporting a shaved patch of tummy where they had just checked out all of her female parts for her annual physical. I'm giving the panda a bit of privacy and only showing you her head.

We almost got lost at one point, but Reeder and Einar helped us navigate our way to the polar bears.

Right before St. Patricks Day we went down to one of the community centers on base and went to a kids in the kitchen class with Reeder and Hayes. While the bigger kids were making chef hats and "cooking" a magical St. Patricks day treat, Soren and Hayes were having fun playing with the musical instruments in the room. This concoction that they made had colored pudding, crushed up blond Oreo cookies, Lucky Charm marshmallows, and green Peeps bunnies. Einar ( I don't think he takes after me in this department) only ate the bunnies and about 3 spoonfuls of the pudding. The teacher also served Hawaiian punch with the treat. Einar asked for water.

Chef Einar. Doesn't he look more and more like Jared every day? He colored his hat purple which is now up there with pink as his favorite color.

After the cooking class we met up with Jared for horseback riding (or technically pony) and the silent drill team that was visiting base and had a performance. The drill team is in the black tops and the Commandant's Own Bugle corps is in red.

Nothing like swinging around rifles with bayonets attached without any commands and in complete synchronicity! They were silent except for the sounds that the guns would make.

Einar and Jared watching the performance on the drill field.



Einar and Reeder checking out the performance. Reeder's dad also met us down on the field to see the drill team. Watching the two big kids and the babies and trying to keep them all quiet was a bit of a trick.

Here is Einar riding a pony on base called Bobby Socks. He took Einar around the circuit once with Jared. Soren was sleeping in his carseat so I stayed in the car and read the newspaper. Thankfully Jared took some pictures. There are stables on base down by Jared's new office and for only $2 you can lead a pony around quite a long trail. Einar only went once since the hill seemed a bit too scary for him. Next time he'll wear his cowboy boots.


Hayes turned one on the 7th of this month (he's three weeks older than Soren). At his party, Soren drank his first juice box. He got a hold of that thing and wouldn't let it out of his hands until he'd sucked it dry. He ended up wearing a good portion of it, but he sure thought that was cool. He also enjoyed the cake, but he ate that with more self control than the birthday boy:

Hayes really enjoyed his first birthday cake!

Last week I got a haircut and snapped a couple of pictures of it. I now have some bangs/fringe again.

Einar waiting for the monorail to come into the station at Disneyland this afternoon. We rode the train, the monorail, the river boat, the rocket ships, Buzz Light Year's astroblasters, the jungle cruise boats, and saw one of the Tiki room shows. I also got to ride Space Mountain while the boys all shared a slice of pizza.

Soren has now inherited Einar's Mickey Mouse hat and not only likes the hat, but also likes checking everything out at the Magic Kingdom. He waves at everything!


We rode in the tail cone of the monorail on the way out of the park. It was the first time that we'd been on the new monorail. Today the red one was in operation.

This picture, however beautiful it is, does not do justice to the gorgeous sunset that we enjoyed at Disneyland tonight. No rain and a fabulous sunset--perfect.