Thanks to People Magazine....

The nap skipper has been tamed! Yesterday he refused to nap, which was extremely annoying to me. This afternoon was turning out to be a similar situation. I had read his stories and sung his songs and when I came back a bit later, he'd thrown out all of the blankets, pillow, and burpy and he was jumping around in his crib and vocalizing joyfully. He looked really happy, but the dark circles under his eyes gave him away. So, I gave him back his bedding and burpy and told him that I would read him another story. Then I got the People magazine that I just got in a stack from a friend who has a subscription and read Einar the article on Patrick Dempsey and his twin boys. By the time I got to the middle of the second page, he was out! Thanks People!

I'm Back!

No worries, I didn't run off to Mexico. It was only a day trip that I took last Saturday and I was home by dinner time. However, when I got back, Einar was having a bit of an intestinal bug going on and those take a bit of time to clear out of a little guy's system. We've been homebodies most of the week. You'd think that would make me more likely to keep up on the blog, but it seems that the opposite usually happens in that situation.

I've included a picture of my kitchen helper in his apron and "Elmo Foot" as he calls his slippers. Jared also got some good ones of their trip to the strawberry fields last Saturday. The fields at our farm look nothing like the strawberry fields of my childhood where the berries were all dirty and since it was the northwest, there was always a bit of mud around as well. They picked about a pound and a half. I think Einar picked 3 berrries.

My trip to Mexico was great. It turns out that it wasn't an orphanage we visited but a home that this couple has built on an olive grove to house boys that can't be with their families for lots of reasons that the Mexican CPS determines. They house about 20 kids right now and are building more houses and a chapel so that they can provide a home for up to 72 kids in the coming years. It is called Miracle Ranch and you can check it out on MiracleRanch.org. We painted their main building on the outside, made a bar-b-que lunch and then had a short bible study and craft project.

Yesterday we threw a surprise birthday breakfast for Myrna, my mom's cousin. My mom's cousins were down visiting Disneyland and we enjoyed having them all over for waffles.

TRIP TO SEATTLE

Gee, is the computer on CAPS LOCK again? Einar likes to push that button on the keyboard all of the time. What I really like is when he's pushing the button while I'm typing and then he shoves the keyboard back into the desk with my hands still on it.

Thankfully, Einar is becoming very helpful in other ways as well. He puts his dirty clothes in the hamper, is getting pretty quick when cleaning up his toys, carries my tea out to the car in the morning if we are going to the park, pushes the buttons on the blender to blend our smoothies, and today he even "helped" me to bake a chocolate cake.

Last week we returned from a great trip to Seattle to see the whole family. We celebrated Jared's birthday on the first night we were there at Soup Night at Tor and Jess'. Other big family events were the wedding of Kendall and Brian (Kendall is Jared's cousin) and the baby shower for Dominic (the son of David and Anna [David is another cousin of Jared]). We also took a bus ride downtown to see trains and have dim sum lunch with Poppa, Mary, and Sammy. One highlight of the trip downtown for me was a new store that is in Westlake Center called Daiso that is a Japanese $1.50 store that had the greatest variety of Japanese stuff that I've seen in a long time! One day we went to Bothell to feed Sherm and Mary's chickens and Sherm even let Einar drive his new tractor around the yard. Einar is still talking about both the tractor and the bus ride. Einar also got to go to the Woodland Park Zoo with Poppa and FarMor one morning and I hear that he ate a lot of hummus at lunch. Not only does he like hummus now, but we also brought back a carnivore from Seattle. We've caught him eating combo pizza, meatballs, and turkey sandwiches this week.

We had a great visit, but realize that since we have so much family and so many friends in the area that we really need more than a week to spend in Seattle! Next time we might even plan a few rest days in the trip to give both the little guy and the grandparents a break. My apologies to those people that we didn't have a chance to see on our trip. No doubt we'll be back!

This week we've just been working on getting back to normal a bit. It's back to cooking three meals a day for me and playgrounds and sunscreen for Einar. Jared's been hard at work, but is off for the weekend.

Tomorrow I do have a bit of an adventure planned for me. I'm going to go with a church group to Tecate, Mexico to visit and work in a boys' orphanage for the day. I've not been to any of the border towns yet and it should be a very eye-opening day for me. We leave at 7:30 tomorrow, so I should probably get to bed soon and rest up.

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!