The song writer

Olivia made up a song today, to the tune of I Love Trash by Oscar the Grouch, but she used her own lyrics...

Oh, we love Noah
Anything cutie and fussy and needs his mommy
Oh, we love Noah
He can't be spread out from his mommy
unless there's trouble
he needs to get in it
Oh, we love Noah

How cute is that? She sang it to me and then asked if I wanted her to teach me, so of course I said yes. Then we sang it together. Very fun!

Noah likes pancakes

Can you tell?

Saturday at the zoo with friends

With my friends! I was fortunate enough to meet my friends at the zoo saturday.

This might sound weird to some of you, but we all met through an on-line message board when we were pregnant with our babies (toddlers?!) due in October of 2004. We probably know more about each other than some of our real life friends! But we still like each other, so that says something. We all live in the bay area, although fairly spread out, so we get to get together rarely and hang. My friend in the middle is moving soon, and she was nice enough to come play at the zoo with us although the movers are coming tomorrow! And my other friend on the end not only has a little boy Noah's age, but also a 5-month-old! She brought them both along to the zoo with us by herself, how brave is that? And she does it all with a smile and such confidence, wow!

The best thing is that my friend has a little girl named Olivia too, they both refer to the other one as "the other Olivia." They spent the morning holding hands through the zoo checking out the animals.




I was the only one fortunate enough to have my husband along to help, so I had a great time while he was chasing around Noah.



And finally here are the October 2004 babies! (Ok, mine came a few days early in Sept...) I thought this picture was funny because they all seem to be smiling at something completely different.

About me

Thanks Katherine, for tagging me! :->

I AM: a child of God.

I WANT: Noah to sleep through the night so I can.

I WISH: I had more time to sew.

I HATE: weeds.

I MISS: my dear friends who moved in the past few months.

I FEAR: Travis biking with Olivia in the bike trailer.

I HEAR: lots of music from my musical family and I love it. (Although I wouldn't mind a little less jazz sometimes, Travis.)

I WONDER: if I'll ever get to sit in a classroom again.

I REGRET: that we didn't sell more of Travis' company stock at its high.

I AM NOT: a singer either, you're not alone, Katherine!

I DANCE: the hokey pokey, with Olivia, Noah, and Elmo.

I SING: worship to God, because even with my voice, it's pleasing to Him.

I CRY: and then get paranoid I'm hormonal because I'm pregnant.

I AM NOT ALWAYS: as patient as I wish I was, but who is?

I MAKE WITH MY HANDS: quilts.

I WRITE: because sometimes my kids are so funny everyone just has to know.

I CONFUSE: street names.

I NEED: chocolate.

I SHOULD: dust.

I START: unloading the dishwasher with the utensils

I FINISH: this assignment with getting stuck on the last one, for goodness sake!

Big Trouble at Half Moon Bay

Today at the beach we found this spot where there was a small body of water a bit inland from the ocean that Olivia really enjoyed playing in. She called it "the river." It was only a few inches deep. Noah even had fun until he did a face plant into it. Ooops.

Anyway, I thought it was a good photo spot too.


Until Olivia decided to start climbing. Noah was eager to go too, "come on, mom!"


I thought my crazy climbing kids was worth documenting.


But they didn't tire of it any time soon, more climbing...


Noah turned back to check what mom's reaction was, "do you see how far up Olivia is, mom? Can I go too?"


Woah, look at that move from Olivia!


Ok, she needed to stop and take a rest after that!


Now she's really gone. If you click on the picture you can barely see her head in the red circle.


At this point I figured it would be wise to stop taking pictures, put away the camera, and make sure my kids don't suffer any major injuries. I wasn't sure Olivia was going to be able to find her way back down, so I scooped up Noah on my hip and we followed her right up to the top. I thought it would find us in the parking lot where we had come from a ways down the beach, but we were way up the road and had to walk back to get back down. Never again!

Beach Day

For the first day in a long time, we had nothing to do. Usually with Olivia's preschool monday, wednesday, and friday, playgroup tuesday, and bible study thursday, life is just the right amount of busy. But bible study is over for the summer. So, I decided to brave the beach with two kids.

Overall, I'm glad we went, even though it was an hour trip there and another hour back. That's about a quarter tank of gas. But the drive was beautiful. I love northern CA. We went to Half Moon Bay, where Travis and I were married on the beach, so I'm a little sentimental about it. We were there a little bit longer than we spent in the car, so I consider it a success.

Noah was scared of everything when we got there. I forget how much windier and chillier it is at the beach than back in the Valley. But he warmed up a bit to the whole place and loved watching the birds, he even got brave enough to chase them a bit. But I still spent most of the time carrying him on my hip. Nothing out of the ordinary. :->

Olivia loved it as always, until she decided she hated it for no apparent reason and wanted to go home. Nothing surprising here either. :->

Here are a few pictures. They don't do justice to the kids or the scenery!

According to Olivia

Olivia was talking to Grandma L. on the phone sunday to wish her Happy Birthday. (It was also Olivia's half-birthday, she's 4 and a half!)

Grandma L. asked Olivia what Noah was doing. Olivia responds, "probably getting into trouble somewhere."

Wow. She is smart!

Quite the production line

Today we made lemonade because we are hosting playgroup at our house. First I went out and picked the lemons from our neighbor's tree that hangs into our yard. Noah and Olivia helped me carry the lemons into the house. Then Olivia juiced the lemons for me and handed the empty skins to Noah who threw them in the trash. Basically all I had to do was cut the lemons in half and hand them to Olivia. These two are coming in handy!

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

My creativity has run dry. I have no new fun ideas of things to do with the kids in the house when it's raining outside. (I really should have reconsidered naming Noah what I did.)

So today Olivia and I recycled one of our old games with Noah.

Here is Olivia in January of 2004.



Here is Noah today. Isn't he cute?



Ok, tell me he isn't loving it. Look at this face.



Isn't is precious when they are sharing? They are happy with one earring each. It's moments like this I have to treasure, I have a feeling they won't be sharing earrings for the rest of their lives.

Spring cleaning

We were bored this afternoon so we decided to clean the house for spring cleaning. The doll house that is. And the horse stable to boot. Olivia was pretty good at the whole process. The spraying, the soaping, the sponging, and the spraying again. We killed about 15 whole minutes.

Still wavering

I still haven't decided where to put Olivia in school next year. My top two choices are kinda polar opposites, but both really stand out in their own way.

Choice #1 - Los Altos Christian Preschool

This is where she is now. She'd be in the pre-k class next year.

Pros: The class size is small, 12 kids max. And we love that she learns things that are in line with our faith.

Cons: It's far, really far. 20-25 minutes one way. That's over an hour and a half total in the car for Noah on school days. And it's relatively expensive, over $400/mo for 9 hours a week. (3 hours on 3 days.)

Choice #2 - Washington Open

This is a public school in our district, but it's an alternative school we are on the waiting list for. Their vision is teaching more by doing, activities and lots of field trips, rathar than sitting in a desk and doing paper and pencil work. She'd be attending kindergarten there. It would be 5 days a week for 4 hours each day. Half the time would be with 15 kids in the class, half the time with 30.

Pros: It's close and free. It's parent participation, so I'd be in the classroom once a week and see how she is doing. And that helps the child/adult ratio too. All the parents are require to be involved. I really like this philosophy of learning for young kids and think Olivia might really enjoy it.

Possible Cons: It's not a Christian school and I'm not sure Olivia is ready for kindergarten to being with, she's old enough by 9 days. Since I know a lot less about this school than the one she attends currently, I'm not really sure how much the cons would turn out to be cons, you know?

So on my to-do list is to go observe Washington Open one more time before school is out and hopefully talk to a kindergarten teacher about Olivia's young age to start kindergarten and do some serious praying about the whole thing. I lean a different direction each week. I really want to make the best choice for Olivia.

Ding dong the orange fence is gone!

Travis deemed the new grass ready to be tread upon yesterday and the orange plastic fence that had been gaurding it was removed! Noah thought it was a ball and was running around in circles on the new grass laughing his head off. Olivia laid in it. Travis even did a lap or two on it. I picked weeds from it. We worked so hard on it, I'm not going to let weeds take it over!

Here it is in all its glory. Someday I'm sure the line between the old grass and new grass will become less obvious.



Here is was before anything was done, concrete, agapanthas and all.



If you missed the entire process, you can read all about it in my March archives, titled Franken-yard. :-)

Hydrangeas

We have 2 hydrangeas (sp?) plants in our yard. I didn't know last year that they went dormant for the winter, so when they started dying first I started watering them like crazy, then I pruned them to death. They are very odd looking now, but they are finally starting to bloom again. This year hopefully I'll do a better job with them.

One has pink flowers and one has purple flowers. Which is odd because I thought that the acidity of the soil affected the flower color, but they are right next to each other and you'd think it would be the same soil. Oh well, I don't mind, they are pretty to me!

Nice neighbors

They let a rose grown through the fence into our yard. I'm not complaining!

My sleepy babies

The only pictures of the kids I've managed to take this week is of them sleeping. Better than nothing, right? Usually Olivia doesn't sleep during the day, but she took a good nap yesterday due to being sick, despite the fact she didn't get up in the morning until 9am!

(Funny story about the teddy bear she is cuddling. That is MY teddy bear that Travis gave me when I went away to Stanford after graduating from Tech and he was still living in Florida, to remember him. I sleep with it every night. I named him Opie, that was my nickname for Travis, since he's like the little red-headed boy on the Andy Griffin show. You can probably tell by the bedding that Olivia is napping in our bed, the kids sleep more there than anywhere else it seems.)



On the other hand, Noah sleeping in the car while Olivia is in preschool is a pretty common event around here.

Huge dissappointment

Today was supposed to be the big Mother's Day Brunch at Olivia's preschool. They've been practicing a new song and everything. Travis was going to watch Noah so I could go and enjoy time with Olivia. It was from 10-12:30, so I'm sure they had a lot of fun things planned to fill that time.

Well, Olivia is right now in her pjs curled up under a blanket watching Sesame Street instead of at the Mother's Day Brunch because she is sick. She was in tears this morning when I told we weren't going to be able to go. And I've been too. Poor girl. I hate seeing her disappointed. She said, "But I HAVE to go. It's SPECIAL!" I tried to think of any way we could go, but her temperature is over 100 and it just wouldn't be right to get someone else sick.

So I'm thinking I'll try to take her to something fun this weekend. A local high school is having a presentation of Seussical, The Musical and maybe I'll take her to dinner and then the show tomorrow night just us girls if she feels better. It won't be the same, but hopefully it will be fun.

Bargins

Isn't this teapot cute? Goodwill $2. I didn't even know it was from PierOne until I got home and peeled off the Goodwill sticker.

I think Noah is getting a bit old for cutsie Noah's Ark themed pictures in his room, but I couldn't resist this one, also Goodwill $2.

Roses

I've never been a huge fan of roses, but I have to admit, this rose bush in our yard has won me over. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the color is amazing. You can spot it down the street. I had visions of totally avoiding red and pinks and going with white, purple, and yellow flowers; but this one is staying. And the number of roses on it is incredible. I love it.

Why I've been neglecting my blog... again

Now that it's stopped raining here in CA (which I'm happy about, don't get my wrong) I have to start sprinkling the lawn again. This might not sound like a big deal, but it's surprisingly time consuming. Needless to say, we don't have a sprinkler system. I have to move the sprinkler to at least 6 different places every 15 minutes to do a decent job. Two in the backyard, that's the easy part, but 4 in the front yard which is difficult finding a good time to do it without letting the kids run into the street.

Sure, I could delegate this job to Travis, but it's something I can actually do during the day while I'm at home with the kids so Travis will have more time to do other things that I cannot do by myself. Like shop for a new bike. Just kidding! I mean like stack the washer and drier which he is going to do for me! I can't wait! Thanks sweetie!

So, I promise to be more faithful about updating my blog inbetween moving the sprinkler around. I just took pictures to post. Of course, now I can't find my camera... Arg.

Also going on in my life... Just went to a baby shower for a friend on saturday. I am making the scrapbook for the event and I knitted her a baby blanket. We are also hosting a small group every sunday at our house. So, I can't let the house go as much as I usually do! :-)

But really, I'll be a better blogger, I promise, usually...

Not a very good Californian

Right now I'm running the dishwasher, the laundry machine (and drier) and sprinkling the lawn. So the complete transformation into California hippy has not taken place. :-)