Easter Weekend Adventures

Hey everyone! We had a great Easter weekend with several egg hunts, a nice dinner on Sunday with friends, and since Jared had Monday off, we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park together.

Tomorrow we are going to Seattle to visit the families! It's pretty late at night right now and I'm not quite done packing, so this is a short entry. It helps that the pictures speak for themselves.

Life in Rural San Clemente

Who knew that we lived in rural San Clemente? Yes we can walk to Starbucks, Trader Joe's and the movie theater in less than 5 minutes, but we also have ourselves some livestock to feed and a tiny loquat orchard (ok, so it's only one tree) in our yard.
I finally remembered to bring the camera when we visited the sheep, the donkey and the pony the other day so that you can all see what I'm talking about. The animals got lots of great carrot and radish tops this week from our basket. Einar loves visiting the animals, but won't take part in the actual feeding. That's fine by me since I like the feeding part a lot.

A week or so ago I saw lots of yellow fruit on the tree in our yard. I've never seen fruit like that before, but I asked a friend of mine who has live in Southern California forever and also has a horticulture background and she said without a thought that the tree was a loquat tree. After some online research I found out that they are edible and related to apples and peaches. We don't see them in the grocery stores because they are so fragile. The world's largest producer of loquats is the Japanese (I didn't see any while I was there) and they can also be found in the warmer climates of North America. I harvested ours tonight and added them to the salad as well as made a strawberry-loquat sauce for our pork tenderloin. They are quite good, but require a lot of effort. I might make a small batch of jam with the rest of them or maybe just eat them for breakfast.

The Camera is Not Broken!

Honestly, the my camera isn't broken. It is however a bit on the big side and since my hands have been pretty full these past weeks, I've not been taking it out even when there are oportune moments. I apologize for my laziness.

Let's see, what have we been up to...lots of coloring and use of the marking pens that Einar got for his birthday (thankfully they are washable). We went with Kathleen and Nathan to pick up their new adopted dog, Si Si (as in Spanish for "yes") at the pound and as Kathleen was filling out the paperwork, Einar and Nathan wrestled in the wet grass. The sun has been out lately so we've been walking to the nearby parks. And of course since it's been so long that I've written I'll get more sympathy from all of you if I mention that Einar and I are also getting over a cold.

Einar has finished his first Good Behavior Chart and I made him another this morning after breakfast. He's doing really well with the mealtimes and has shown progress when it comes time for clean-up. He loves putting up his stickers, I'm just not sure if he understands yet what the X's mean. We haven't had to clean up as much food off of the floor since the chart was posted so in my mind it's been a great success. Jared has been having fun giving out stickers after dinner.

This past weekend, we took care of Nathan and Hailey so that Kathleen and Justin could go to San Diego and celebrate their 9th wedding anniversary. We had a good time taking them to IKEA on Saturday morning and the kids were on their best behavior for me. I did realize though that the jump from one kid to three is HUGE! Thank goodness twins don't run in our family.

Einar has also been talking a lot more than ever before. He repeats most of what we say and also pulls random vocabulary words out and surprises me on a daily business. The other day I gave him a piece of dried mango for a snack and he said "Mango" before I could even tell him what it was! We hadn't had dried mangos in about a month. Last week he even had a real telephone conversation with Grandma and Grandpa.

Warm Spring Breezes

Tonight it feels like spring again here in San Clemente. We have all of the windows open and there is a sweetness in the air that is wonderful. Even though there is a big fire burning up north in Annaheim Hills, it's been very clear here and in the upper 70's all day.

We've been pretty low key this weekend. Jared has been whipping up some yummy meals for us and we've been taking advantage of Einar's afternoon nap by taking some naps of our own and reading. Last night we went to Oceanside to have dinner with some of the guys from Jared's old company and their families. We had a good time and they gave the three guys that have left (including Jared) a nice presentation of their plaques.

Einar's table manners have improved this week since the implementation of the Einar's Great Behavior Chart. The chart was created after another morning of having to clean a bowl of oatmeal off of the floor. He can earn stickers for his chart by having great behavior at meals and for cleaning up his toys every night. He has a few x's on the chart, but he's had 10 meals in a row that no food has been flung to the floor on purpose! The stickers are exciting for him and he's very proud to show off his chart, especially to Dad the first night the chart was in service.

Overcoming Fears

Yesterday, we took Einar to the Irvine Spectrum Shopping Center to do some shopping and just walk around outside in the beautiful weather. Jared wanted to look at jeans and I wanted to go to Target to get a new package of the birdseye flat fold diapers that Einar uses as his blankies or "Burpy" as he calls them. Einar was along for the ride.

This is a huge shopping center that is all outdoors and has a ferris wheel as well as a carousel. When we've been there before, Einar would point out the horses on the carousel, but have absolutely nothing to do with riding on them. Yesterday we all sat down on the bench and watched the carousel go around and all of the kids having fun riding. Then Einar wanted to ride so Jared got him a ticket and they went on and had a great time. Way to overcome your fears Einar!

Hanging with the Big Kids and our Oscar party

Last weekend Einar got to hang out with the big kids when we helped as sponsors for our church's high school ski retreat in Big Bear. We accompanied 6 great high school students and the youth leader to Big Bear where we stayed in a cabin, played games, ate pizza, checked out the town, and Jared even got a day of skiing in with the one girl who wanted to ski. Einar had a great time and learned how to "pound fists" as a form of greeting and say "Oh, ya!" They tried to teach him how to say "gross" but it didn't stick. They hadn't had any fresh snow up there for a couple of weeks, but on the morning of our departure, we woke up to about 4 inches! As we were packing up and cleaning the cabin, I assigned one of the girls the task of taking Einar outside to play in the snow before we hit the road.

Last night we used the Oscars as an excuse to dress up and have some friends over for a party. Einar wore his James Bond Tux and looked quite dapper for the evening, but chose not to wear shoes. Jared made an awesome cheese fondue and ceasar salad and I made the brownies, some bread and some yummy cranberry cosmopolitans. With five families and 8 kids, it was a bit challenging to catch the show, but we all had fun. Also, how many other hosts had everyone leave their Oscar party before 8 PM? If you want an early night, just invite lots of families with preschoolers!

It's a good thing that we didn't have a late night since Einar and I got to go to Jared's promotion ceremony this morning on base. I had to drag Rip-Van-Einar's tush out of bed to get there by 9:30, but we were able to witness his promotion to First Sergeant. We're very proud of him!

In other news, we discovered last week that we have a donkey, horse, a half dozen sheep, and 7 or 8 llamas living in our neighborhood. Just on the other side of the block, our neighborhood borders the city's water department station where they use these animals to control the brush and protect against wildfires. All of the animals, except for the llamas, come right up to the fence where we can feed them our yummy veggie scraps. Einar is thrilled, as am I, and even though he hasn't gotten up the nerve to give them the food through the fence yet, he calls out for the donkey, sheep and horsey when we get there and loves to watch the action. It's lots of fun!

Trip to Bend, Birthday Boy, and the Sickies

We're off again for the weekend, this time to Big Bear, CA with the church high school kids. Jared is going to fit another day of skiing into the season and Einar and I will be playing in the snow and hanging out with the non-skiing youth.

We've been up to many adventures since the last posting. We traveled to Bend, OR to spend a week with Jared's family. We got some good skiing in with his sister Jennifer while the kids spent time with their grandparents. On one of the days we took Einar and Sammy with us on a x-country jaunt (more of a photo-op and outdoor picnic than x-country workout since we were so close to naptime and Einar was teething and not having fun being so bundled up). We also discovered that he isn't going to be moving into a big boy bed anytime soon. Sleeping was really a challenge for us because he didn't want to go down for his naps and bedtime since the blow-up Thomas The Tank Engine Toddler bed was so easy to get up off of. Once he got home and went to bed in the Einar Containment Device (a.k.a. the crib), he knew what he was supposed to do and went down easily again. Einar also celebrated his second birthday on our last night there. It was a great week and so good to see everyone!

Once we got home, both Einar and Jared got sick with severe sore throats and fevers. Thankfully I had his 2-year well baby check-up scheduled for Valentine's day so I was able to take him in to make sure that his ears were ok and that his lungs were clear. They've improved a lot in the past few days and we're ready for our next adventure.

Gotta go pack while the guys are out doing an errand so that I don't have my extra set of hands helping out--it's much easier that way!

Friday Night Update

The Aquadoodle, Einar has determined, is great for more than just drawing pictures--tonight he started to use it as a parking lot for all of his vehicles. While I was making dinner, he was in the living room with Jared and he just started to move all of the busses and trucks and cars onto the aquadoodle mat. It was really quite funny.

After dinner we bundled him up in the ski coat borrowed from Nathan and we drove to Mission Viejo to the grand opening of the new Starbucks drive-thru. They opened today and we just drove-thru for some after dinner coffee and entertainment. The drinks were good and the folks inside were excited. Thank goodness there is a drive-thru around here now!