Something Pretty Clever

Halloween

2011-11-01T20:58:00.000-07:00

Best Cabin Ever

2011-10-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, we took a family adventure to a cabin over in the hills near Winthrop. The Rendezvous Huts are somewhat well known as the ultimate cross country skiing experience in the winter - 5 huts with miles of ski trails between them. Just last year they decided to open them up for rental during the spring & fall. During the winter you have to ski to even reach them and your gear is carted up on a snowmobile. Lucky for us, everything is connected by forest service roads in the summer.

When we got to the last turn off to our cabin, it was not marked in any way ("take the first right after the cattle guard") and the very primitive road seemed to go on forever to who knows where. Finally we spotted the hut, perched on a hill overlooking the Methow valley. No civilization in sight (the nearest cabin is aprox 1 mile away and hills hide winthrop, mazama, etc)

It was awesome. Ok, a little panicky at first because it was getting dark quickly and we had to figure out how to turn on the propane lights & stove so we could cook our dinner. Did I mention the hut has no running water, no refrigeration - but does have an outhouse, a wood stove stocked with firewood and a huge propane tank for a couple lights & the stove? Awesome. After dinner we sat outside and marveled at the stars & full moon. When we woke up the next morning, we were greeted with snow dusted peaks out the whole wall of windows opposite our beds.

So pretty. After a hearty breakfast we hiked from our hut down into the valley. Supposedly there are "miles of singletrack" bike trails, but the one near us was sort of steep, so me & the kids left the bikes behind. There was also supposed to be a lot of wildlife in the area (bears, cougars, deer) but all we saw were lots of cows. The cabin is on leased DNR land and apparently they also lease the land to cattle farmers. We met some who were rounding up the cattle to bring them in for the winter (wearing cowboy hats & riding horses) and had a good chat about what happens to the meat. The cows are out there for about 6 months of their lives - spring till fall, then the calves get shipped to feed lots where they live for about a year before they are harvested. Sometimes the owners sell to Painted Hills - a high end producer in Idaho, but this year the cows were headed to a mega (dare I say "factory farm"?) place in Oklahoma. Crazy that it makes more (financial) sense to ship them that far then have them stay nearby. And crazy that these pasture raised cows were just going to a mega packhouse instead of being "high end". Anyways, I digress.

We spent our two days hiking, riding bikes and just hanging out. It was so relaxing & amazing. Winthrop was about 15 -20 minutes away, so we went their for lunch & ice cream one day too.

This adorable girl kept telling me all weekend that "I don't look pretty!" because I refused to pack her any skirts or dresses and she had to wear ugly purple velour sweat pants for riding her bike & hiking. Sigh. (did I mention she said it in tears, many times, often while screaming and kicking her legs on the floor every time I had her get dressed?)

My favorite time was when Saben & I went off together to try and reach the top of this big hill behind our hut (seen below...kyle climbed & biked down it a few times). He has finally reached the age where he can do some real hiking. We went up and up the steep slope for 20 minutes, stopping for views and with me yelling silly things constantly to scare the bears away. I couldn't believe how far up he went and we never did reach the top since we hadn't really told kyle where we were going and I didn't want him to worry.

We had great weather - cold & crisp at night, which made the fireplace oh so cozy. Then sunny during the day and our last night a gorgeous rainstorm moved through right at sunset. I could have stared at the clouds & changing light for hours, but played a round of Uno with the family instead. I don't think you'd actually want to go in the heat of summer, much cozier in the fall or spring.

I also wouldn't take kids much younger than ours. It would be easy for a little one to roll down the hill outside next to the deck, plus you have the hot wood stove and lots of ladders to worry about. Our kid's ages were ideal - 4 & 6. There is also a sleeping loft that had some pads in it, so theoretically you could fit 7-10 people. But that is with people getting pretty cozy on some of the larger sleeping mats. And in the loft, there is no rail around the "stair hole" so youngsters could maybe slip through in their sleep. And its super hot up there when the fire is going.

Basically the cabin is like camping without having to pack so much. And it is more isolated than any campground and even than a lot of backpacking locations. Its clean - but not spotless. Dead bugs were around, even in some of the dishes that hadn't been used in a while. But if you can handle that, the view & isolation more than make up for it.

Annika in the Morning

2011-10-26T10:15:00.000-07:00

I have been living in the dark ages and just now finally taught myself how to use picasa. You don't even want to know the tedious things I was doing prior in order to publish pictures. For some reason I just didn't have it in me to learn new technology until now. I would open picasa, stare at it and then close it again. Then a couple nights ago I figured it out in just 5 minutes and felt like an idiot for wasting so much time.

But...it works now and it is so much easier to post pictures on my blog. Hopefully this means I'll be writing here more!

Very very true story

2011-06-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Mommy: Annika, tell daddy about the horsey you saw that you want for your birthday!

Annika: You mean the beautiful horsey with shiny wings and a horn and a button you push that makes it talk?

Daddy: It talks! What does it say?

Annika: I don't know!

Daddy: Well that's silly! You should push the button, what if it says something silly?

Saben: I remember what it says! It says "Hey devil woman, I am going to cut your poop in half!"

brief update

2011-06-01T20:53:00.001-07:00

Saben:

Has his first loose tooth, bottom front left. We noticed it about 3 weeks after his sixth birthday.

SIXTH!!!!

Is reading like crazy. He can easily read those level two readers these days. It was slow at first, but once it clicked in his brain, he just took off.

Is turning into a pest like his daddy. He is always poking, hitting, & trying to play little jokes on me. I always say "why don't you try doing the dishes for attention instead?" just like I used to tell Kyle.

Wants to play the drums

Is still obsessed with a capital "O" with star wars and legos.

Loves collecting bugs outside

Is quite nervous about his choir concert tomorrow night. It is so cute.

Annika

Just graduated from her first year in preschool.

Has her first dance recital in three weeks. She LOVES dance class. We will have to wait and see whether she actually manages to dance in the recital.....

Loves to help me cook dinner. I need to do better at finding her jobs.

Has already ridden saben's big race bike. She got a flat on her little 12" beginner bike, so Kyle took her out on the big one. She prefers the handbrakes and got pretty good at it, but it scares mommy to death when she gets going fast, so she got the 12" bike fixed.

Still adores her buddy Riley, but has managed to make a couple other good friends this year too.

Still throws fits a lot for no apparent reason. : )

Loves to sing to herself and make songs up.

recipes

2011-06-01T20:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know its been forever and I have completely slacked off on my blog. We even passed my five year blogging anniversary without note. I have just been feeling so busy and completely fulfilled with not writing the blog. Its only those adorable amazing moments in my kids life that I worry about not jotting down. Maybe that post will come tomorrow night.....

But for today, I put some new recipes that I have been LOVING lately over on my blog - Rice Bowls. These have been revolutionary for me & the way we use leftovers in our family. I love them once a week for dinner and often have them for lunch now. And I have never been happier eating my raw veggies. Check it out!

http://karirecipes.blogspot.com/

p.s. All credit for the "rice bowls" idea goes to my friend Adriana. I have no idea why it never occurred to me to make something like these before, but I am so grateful she taught me such a simple idea.

Growing Edibles - What to grow, Early Spring

2011-03-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

I am going to go over the very first things you can stick in your garden each spring. These things all love the cool rainy weather and can handle early spring frosts. In a warmer year, you might be able to put seedlings of these in your garden by the first week of march.

The biggest thing I factor into my early spring garden is pests and how to avoid them.

First though, a caveat. Everyone's garden is different and every year is different. To some extent you have to just experiment to see what things you are able to grow in your own garden.

Just because I get horrible nasty aphids on my Kale, does not mean you will. I have LOTS of pests in my neighborhood & in my garden. Way more than I ever had in Seattle. So take all my advice with a grain of salt. If you love something, give it a try,and don't be discouraged if it doesn't work for you the first time. There are so many tricks that can overcome problems in your garden.

Spring planting - beat the offenders (eat it before they do)

Slugs, aphids, white fly, cabbage worm, carrot rust fly and beetle root maggots are my worst offenders. Right now, there are virtually no pests in my garden except slugs, because of the cold weather. In a month or so all the little buggers will get much more active and start to find my veggies.

I try to plant my pest vulnerable plants as early as possible so that I can harvest them early before pests get the upper hand and I am forced to toss them in the compost heap. The nice thing is that by the time pests get all crazy, it is time to plant your summer crops - tomatoes, basil, zucchini - so it is never too sad to get rid of the spring green goodies.

In general, pests do not bother strong flavored veggies as much as sweet tender ones. That is why herbs, arugula, mustard, garlic & onions are easier to grow. Everything on the following lists can be planted now (mid to late march) - either by starts or by seeds. Seeds are a bit riskier - if we get a stretch of cold rainy weather with no sunny days, they might not sprout, but you are pretty safe by April.

I am happy to report that my Mizuna sprouted last week, first seeds of the season!

Most of the things on these lists can take some light frost & cold nights. Our official "last day of frost" isn't until the beginning of May, but all these plants should do fine regardless.

Easiest (no pests, high yield)

Snap Peas (or any peas)

Garlic

Onions

Parsley

Cilantro*

Mizuna (salad green)

Arugula*

Medium (not too hard to grow, might get worms in them)

Carrots

Beets

Radish

Potatoes

Pesty (but still worth planting!)

Lettuce

Spinach

Kale

Other salad greens like radicchio, amaranth, corn salad (mache), etc.

Artichoke starts

Almost not worth bothering

Broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower (Along with Kale, they all belong to the "brassica" family and have the same pest problems - aphids, white fly, cabbage worms)

Things I have never grown

Collards

Chard

kohlrabi

celeriac

and TONS of other things

* These are a bit more difficult because they go to seed quickly and you have to replant them every 3-4 weeks to have a continuous yield

EASIEST

If you want the highest chance of success, start with herbs & snap peas.

Snap peas

These are the fat juicy ones where you eat the whole thing, pod & all. It is hard to get really good snap peas at the grocery stores, so they are top of my veggie garden list for being easy & worth the work.

My snap peas usually produce peas from about June - mid July and then they get a virus and die. Which is fine. When the plants turn yellow, just pull them out to make room for something new.

It is also nice to plant snap peas a couple different times in the spring to spread the harvest out longer. So if you are buying starts, plant one pot now, then plant another one in late April or so. With any luck you'll get a couple extra weeks of harvest.

Herbs

Herbs are one of the easiest things to grow pest free, are expensive at the grocery stores and add amazing depth to anything you make. I secretly think eating lots of them makes me super healthy. I am convinced they will be the new "blueberries" (superfoods) of the future. I love herbs so much, I will do an entire post soon, devoted just to them.

For now, the best early spring ones to stick in your veggie beds:

Parsley

This is easy to grow from seed, or just buy a start of it. You really just need one clump of 2-3 plants, whenever I use seed, I get way too many plants and have to pull most of the babies out and toss them in my salads.

Parsley I planted in late summer in Seattle often survived all winter and I could eat it from fall until summer when it went to seed. If you plant it in spring, it will go to seed in the summer. I prefer the taste and texture of flat Italian leaf parsley.

Cilantro & Arugula

Both of these are generally pest free, but need to be planted about every 3-4 weeks if you want to be able to keep eating them for an extended time. Both of them only stay tasty for a few weeks before they go to seed. (cilantro is tasty while flowering, but dies back once seed is made. Arugula is horrible when it grows up to flower) Definitely buy seeds for both of these.

Mizuna

I highly recommend seeding this in, it is so easy and delicious. Less peppery than Arugula, but with a more assertive flavor than sweet lettuce.

Onions

I would buy a pot of seeded onion starts or perhaps sets. I grew them once from seed too and that worked pretty well. You can harvest them young for green onions, or let them grow all summer and bulb.

Garlic

Super duper easy, except that you have to hang it to dry if you want it to store all winter. Never get pests except for the occasional earwig hiding amongst the cloves. However, I do not recommend planting it now unless you are trying to grow "green garlic" (like green onions). It really needs to get in the ground by January.

Also, don't bother planting starts of garlic. And entire head at the farmers market (a good place to find varieties that grow well in your area) will cost a buck or so and will yield 6-10 garlic heads next year. (one head per clove)

I suggest finding a couple interesting varieties at the farmers market, then in October, plant all the biggest cloves. They will grow all winter and you harvest them in aprox. July. Garlic probably needs its own separate tutorial actually, but it is very foolproof once you get the hang of it.

RISKY ROOT VEGGIES

I put all the root vegetables in the medium category because they often get wormy. If you catch the worms (they are teeny and leave an obvious dark path through the veggie) early enough, you can just cut off the portions with the worm holes and eat the rest.

I'm not going to go through each root vegetable, but a few tips

Eat root veggies small - the longer they are in the ground the wormier they will get. Baby carrots are delicious!
Radishes are one of the fastest growing veggies around, good for avoiding worms and fun for kids to get quick gratification from planting seeds
I don't get nearly as many worms in my potatoes (compared to carrots), but I know some people have problems with it.
I've never actually grown beets, I'm just guessing they are a lot like carrots.

PESTY BUT WORTH IT

All the sweet salad greens

Two tips for getting the best harvest from your salad greens

1. Plant early, eat them young

2. Go on bug/slug patrol

You can start eating lettuce leaves when they are only a couple inches long. Harvest 1-2 leaves per plant and it should keep producing more leaves until it gets super hot & dry. I like to space my lettuces apart so they can actually grow to head size eventually (love the tender inner leaves), but some people just plant them densely and cut them to the ground when they are only 3 inches high for "baby salad mix". That works too and they should regrow 2-3 times using this method.

The best prevention I have found for pests is picking them off (slugs) or picking off infected leaves. As soon as I spot a leaf with aphids or white fly, I pick it off and throw it away. You can also spray the aphids off with a stream of water sometimes. The key is spotting the buggers before they proliferate to plague proportions. Once aphids get the upper hand, it is worth it to just pull the plant out so they don't spread to other plants.

Artichokes

This time of year you will see artichoke starts at the nursery. They are easy to grow, but take up a lot of room. Luckily, they look pretty cool as an ornamental plant and being related to the wild thistle, they don't require the same pampering as many other veggies.

Artichokes need a 3 ft sq space at least and will eventually get 6 feet tall then they are flowering. The part you eat is actually a flower bud, but if it gets buggy, as mine sometimes do, you can just let it go to flower and it is gorgeous.

Each plant will produce for 3-5 years, so pick a permanent spot in your yard for them.

My Girl

2011-03-23T09:21:00.001-07:00

My girl rides like the wind....

Annika's first bike riding, 3 years 8 months

And I am so proud of her!

And terrified. I took these last week when she was still puttering along. The last few nights we've gone out and she is bound and determined to keep up with her brother. Last night she rode off a curb into the street when she tried to stop. No cars coming thankfully, but did I mention she didn't even crash as she jumped off the curb and completely landed it?

When Saben learned, he was in complete control, all the time. We have to encourage and push him to try new daring things. Annika just sort of goes for it. We did have to go around the block quite a few times holding her shoulders, but once she figured out she could do it herself, she screams "I can do it myself!!!" whenever we try to help her. She doesn't stop very well and spends about 50% of the time looking like a crash is immanent. But she doesn't crash and actually has phenomenal balance. And goes way to fast, trying to keep up with Saben & Daddy when they ride together.

Growing Edibles - Seeds vs. Seedlings

2011-03-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

So now you have your gorgeous raised beds and they are begging to be filled. You might start ogling seed packet racks at Lowes or drool over a huge seed catalog you got in the mail. I recommend staying far away from both of them if you are a new gardener.

ONLY READ CATALOGS AND LOOK AT SEEDS THAT GROW WELL IN OUR CLIMATE

If you are growing in the Pacific Northwest, I want you to go to Territorial Seed Company right now and order a catalog from them. The information that is printed about growing each variety will be super helpful to you, even if you never order seed from them.

Territorial is located in southern Oregon and specializes in seeds for gardeners in our climate. By "our climate" I mean a cool growing season. Yes, we get a couple hot months, and thankfully our evenings stay relatively warm compared to mountain regions, but we just don't get enough sunlight, even in summer, to easily grow many heat loving veggies. So right now, please cross these veggies off your list: Eggplant, most peppers, melons, okra

Someday, you might want to experiment with these and that is fine. But not for your first couple years and not if you are tight on space. In fact, if you have small raised beds, also cross winter squash and pumpkins off your list, they are huge plants that will fill your entire bed with only a few fruits per plant.

Now that your list is shorter, you can peruse the catalog and read whatever you like. But don't order anything yet.

BUY SEEDLINGS WHENEVER YOU CAN

For the new gardener, it is much easier to buy vegetable seedlings if you can find a source for cheap, good quality ones. Bellingham is blessed in this regard. Joe's Gardens has an incredible selection of seedlings. Not only that, they only put out ones that are appropriate for the season and they generally only sell ones that perform well here. The staff is super friendly and knowledgeable and all this is for only $1.39 per pot - which is usually 6 plants or up to 20 for onions & peas.

Joe's starts are also sold at Haggens and the Food Co-op, but if you go directly to Joe's, they are usually a tad cheaper. They are grown without pesticides but Joe's does use a chemical fertilizer on all their plants.

If you live somewhere else, try nurseries, farm supply stores or farmers markets. Remember these guidelines and ask the people working at the store if you are unsure about their plant quality:

1) Plants need to be "hardened off" which means they have been outside, overnight in your locale, not lounging about in a greenhouse. The shock of going from warm greenhouse to cold raised bed will stunt their growth or even kill them.

2) Plants for most things should be young and stocky NOT outgrowing their pots or looking spindly. For spring plants, they should all be tiny. Summer plants like tomatoes & peppers can be larger, but should be in a large pot.

3) Choose a place that cares about your success and does not carry plants that don't grow where you live.

The benefits of seedlings are these:

1) You can plant earlier in spring. Seeds don't germinate well in the cold wet spring, but if you put in seedlings, they will start growing roots and will take off as soon as the weather warms even slightly. Planting & harvesting early is vital to avoiding pests that come out in swarms late spring/early summer.

2) In the summer, you don't have to remember to water your seed bed everyday to keep it moist for germination. (I can't tell you how many times I've screwed this one up)

3) You don't have to over seed and then thin out your plants, you just plant exactly how many you want, spaced out how you want and are done with it.

Cons
1) you don't get to pick the exact variety you want - less choice

2) Overall cost is a bit more

Most seedling trays come with more than one plant. Be sure to tease each plant apart and plant them spaced out appropriately. Don't worry if you break a few roots, this should only take a couple minutes. If spacing info is not on the tag, this would be a good time to get out your Territorial catalog and read the correct spacing for whatever you are planting.

WHEN TO BUY SEEDS

You can not buy starts for everything, some things - i.e. root crops - do not like to be transplanted. Also, for things that are small, that you need a lot of - i.e. arugula plants - seeds will be much cheaper.

So for those of you crying about not getting to pick out gorgeous seed packs, there is hope! Even better, for most root crops, you can buy any brand and any variety you want. Go crazy! Rainbow hued carrots? French breakfast radishes? Golden beets? Go for it.

But whatever you do, you must PROMISE me, do NOT start any seeds in those cute magical jiffy pellets indoors. (or in any pot indoors) Someday, yes, you might want to try it. But starting seeds indoors is really hard. You must have a grow light of some sort. Sunny windows will not cut it. Worse, you must gradually introduce them to living outside which means days of moving them in and out, in and out of the house. Seed starting is not for busy moms who are just starting to garden.

IF YOU CAN'T FIND SEEDLINGS....

If you really truly can not find a reputable and cheap source for seedlings, go ahead and start your spring crops from seeds, sown directly into your garden bed. Some good easy bets for this are lettuces, snap peas, herbs, green beans, kale, zucchini, etc. Plus all the common root vegetables. The only ones to stay away from are the ones I already crossed off your list, plus tomatoes. You must buy tomato plants to have any hope of getting ripe ones in our climate.

Don't worry, I will go through the pros & cons of a bunch of common vegetables in a future post and tell you when to plant them (very important) and what to watch out for when picking the varieties.

Again, I recommend purchasing from Territorial Seed, but there are many good brands at nurseries. You won't be able to start your garden quite as early using seeds, but since you get so many in a packet, it is fine to experiment. Plant a little batch and see if they sprout. After a few years you will get a good sense for how warm it needs to be for them to germinate.

Really, planting seeds is not hard at all, just read the packet and stick them in according to the directions. Pay careful attention to spacing and do not ever plant the whole pack of seeds. Most seed packets are huge and last me at least 3 years. Seeds do go bad and stop sprouting, so don't keep them more than three years.

Seeds need to stay moist to germinate. In the spring, I rely almost exclusively on rain to do this for me unless we get a surprise warm dry spell. In the summer, they need to be sprinkled almost daily, especially if they are planted shallow.

Growing Edibles - Winter & Early Spring

2011-03-16T20:52:00.001-07:00

A picture of my raised beds so you get an idea of what I explained yesterday

I am going to do two types of posts for my garden guide - ones that tell & show you what I am doing right now in my garden, and ones that delve into specific topics, like what to grow & when to grow it, exactly how to fertilize, etc. So don't despair if all the details you want are not here.

THE WINTER AND EARLY SPRING GARDEN TASKS

First, I'm going to back track and start our growing season calendar in October, (or November...or even December when I am super late) with the first (and some in my family might say most important) task of the year - planting garlic.

Each fall, I clean out the tomato bed (they die early) and stick garlic cloves in an entire bed. They poke their tips out of the ground during the winter and as soon as it starts to warm up, they are off and running.

I don't touch my garden again until about February. In February, on one of those lovely rare warm days, I spend an hour cleaning out anything left that is dead and picking out weed seedlings. The kids then help me spread "all purpose organic Whitney Farms fertilizer" (found at Fred Meyers) over all the beds. (they list how much to use & instructions on the back of the box). We sprinkle it around and then rake it in. I spray it with some water if we're not expecting rain.

I like to do this early so the fertilizer gets a chance to start breaking down & releasing nutrients as soon as it gets warm. Organic fertilizers take longer to start releasing nutrients compared to chemical ones. This provides a nice even base of nutrients for anything I plant in March.

In March, as soon as we get a few warm days, I go buy some veggie seedlings from Joe's Gardens. My seedlings might not grow very fast until it warms up, but they are there, waiting, growing nice roots and are ready to go at the first sign of sun.

For early spring this year, I chose snap peas, kale, romaine lettuce and broccoli. For about $6, I was able to almost fill two beds with seedlings.

Pea seeds are notorious for rotting instead of sprouting. This is about 1/10th of the pot I bought.

Spacing your plants can be hard until you get to know how big your plants will get. I screw it up all the time, especially if I buy more than what I have space for. The nice part is that if things get too crowded, you can just eat a head of baby lettuce so there is more room for the others. In fact, I often squeeze them purposefully so I don't feel bad harvesting a few things early. Baby veggies are delightful.

I also have quite a few things in my beds that either live there full time (chives) or self seeded from the year before (parsley, cilantro, sorrel, chervil).

There is one plant I grow from seed that does extremely well in the cold spring - Mizuna. You may not have heard of it, but it is common in baby salad mixes. It is actually a type of mustard, but if you harvest it young, it is mild, delicious, prolific, easy to harvest (clean) and I didn't see a single bug on it last year. Much easier for salads than mud splattered lettuces that get plagued by slugs & aphids.

Here is my first bed that I planted yesterday:

First, notice that I put the tall snap peas in the back. (the north side of the bed) They are actually a "bush" variety which means they will be shorter and don't need tall poles to grow up. Always plant tall things in the back (north) so they won't shade short things. Kale gets quite large, but I harvest mine as baby leaves for salads, they will get covered in aphids by the time they get huge. I just rip them out when that happens.

The garlic on the right was just planted in February and is densely packed. It will be for a spring treat called "green garlic". You harvest it before it bulbs and treat it just like green onions. I generally throw mine on the grill whole or chop up some leaves and toss them in a salad like chives. We can most likely start eating it by mid April.

In this bed there are more self seeded herbs and another patch of snap peas. I always plant my leftover pea plants in a special spot and harvest the tender pea shoot tips & tendrils to toss in salads. They are so yummy! You just pinch off the softest new growth, leaves, tendrils & all. Even blossoms sometimes! Generally they will never grow big enough to produce peas if I keep on top of harvesting the shoots. This little patch should give me enough sprouts to toss into salads for weeks and are soooo easy.

I am not sure if I should have planted that broccoli. It gets covered in aphids so easily, but I grew some last fall once it cooled off and had a couple delicious bug free heads. So it is an experiment to see if I can get heads before the bugs go crazy. I will let you know how it goes.

I planted red romaine and have some more lettuce varieties I will plant seeds for in a couple weeks. The seeds are leftover from last year, but I think from now on I will just buy starts and not mess with seeds.

The sorrel is sort of a silly thing I grow - each spring I make a batch of sorrel soup, just for fun. I also toss a few leaves in salads, but they are quite lemony flavored and strong. Chervil is a french herb that I also like to toss in salads. I let some go to seed last year and a ton of it sprouted and survived the winter. The flowers are also pretty & delicious in salads.

I told you, I adore my spring salads, and what I really love is having all sorts of wonderful, unique things to throw in them. Herbs, flowers, lettuces, other greens....I just pick a few leaves of each thing and toss them all together. This way, I slow the growth of my lettuces by plucking baby leaves and then still get a head at the end when it gets really warm and they get huge quickly.
Lastly, my huge bed of garlic. We are still eating last years harvest. The chive plant is a perennial which means it doesn't die. It dies back each winter, but re-sprouts in spring and lives in that corner permanently. I love chives & chive flowers in my spring salads.

I should also be planting potatoes right now, but I sort of forgot and then realized my beds were full. I am supposed to be getting another bed (or 3) this spring, but we can't agree on where to put it (or them).

These are my favorite gardening gloves. They are so soft, its like you are not even wearing gloves at all. They are only $8 or so (find them at Garden Spot and lots of other places) and keep your hands clean. I love getting my bare hands in the dirt, but when your kids come running up with a poopy diaper, it is nice to not have to scrub your hands before you touch them.

For leafy crops like kale, broccoli and lettuce, I sprinkle around a high nitrogen fertilizer. Yes, it is made from blood and no, my plants don't turn into vampires. It sort of stinks if it blows on your clothes and animals sometimes dig in my beds after I use it. Once my dog ate a bunch. But it works great. I will go more into fertilizers in another post.

While I got all this done (about 40 minutes of work) Saben built a swimming pool and beach for ants. (really. that is what he told me it was)

Growing Edibles - Garden Beds

2011-03-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

I am going to write a post (or two or more?) about my approach to vegetable gardening. People ask me all the time for gardening book recommendations and I have yet to find one that is

a) not completely overwhelming for someone who wants to grow veggies for the first time

AND

b) appropriate for our climate

AND

c) appropriate for small urban lots

Plus, the added benefit of my guide is that it is perfect for moms who are short on time and also want to delight the kiddos.

Tender Babies

One thing I think most people don't realize at first is that veggies are the weird mutant weaklings of the plant world. Most of the seeds you will buy would never survive out in the wild alone. We humans have created them and they need our loving care to flourish.

When you plant a native grass, a dogwood tree, or even daisies - these are tough plants only a few generations removed from their wild siblings - they need very little care.

Vegetables on the other hand have been bred for years & years to create freakishly huge reproductive organs for us to eat in a relatively short period of time. On the one hand this helps them because we keep growing them, but they are completely reliant on us and need lots of help to grow into what we expect them to be. (shiny, huge and perfect like the pictures on seed packets)

But the babies (like most babies) are worth it

So don't go into it thinking you can just sprinkle seeds & let them be. Veggies take work, but as a busy mom, I love that I can go out in the sunshine for even half an hour, putter around in my raised beds and still feel like I was being very productive. (on a sunny spring day, would you rather plant seeds or vacuum?)

I really only spend maybe on average an hour a week from spring to fall in the veggie garden. Usually it is ten minutes picking slugs & aphid leaves off of plants before I head to the grocery store. Then 20 minutes on another day pulling a few weeds, fertilizing, or thinning seedlings. Then a couple times a month I will spend an hour transplanting tomatoes and pulling out the snap peas that are done.

My kids enjoy helping pull weeds, planting seeds and picking the most bizarre carrot colors to grow. And playing with the worms. I love not having to buy salad greens for most of the spring and being able to make a salad whenever I want AND having it be the most delicious one I've ever had. In the summer I always have fresh onions, tomatoes and zucchini to throw on the grill with no trips to the store.

The most important things

There are four things that are most important for veggie success

1) Soil - is it fluffy (not compacted), have some compost/organic matter in it, well draining?

2) Nutrients - Are you regularly adding fertilizers to feed your veggies

3) Sun - Are your beds getting full sun everyday in the spring/summer/fall?

4) Water - Pretty obvious

1st Step - Your Garden Beds

This is a big initial investment, both in money & time. But getting raised beds in place will make everything that follows easier for you - for years to come. No one will walk in your beds, your soil will be awesome, weeds will be few & easy to pull out and they will be ready for plants earlier in the season than just digging into the ground.

BUILD RAISED BEDS

For small urban lots, I recommend raised beds. They are neat, tidy and will make things super easy because you will have amazing fabulous soil from the get go.

Build a frame out of 12"x2" wood and fill it with a truckload of gardening "3 - way" mix from Pacific Topsoils or Grow Source or your local nursery. Get the best gardening blend they have. It will pay off later. Don't even think of using 1 cu ft. bags. Borrow a truck, you will need lots of dirt. (find a website to help you calculate how much)

Make sure your beds are no more than 4 foot wide - the width most people can comfortably reach is about 2 feet, so as long as you can access it from both sides you will be able to reach the middle. (NEVER walk in your raised beds)

I grow my veggies in 3 raised beds that are each 4'x6' and about 12" deep. They are made of pressure treated wood, but many people prefer natural cedar or redwood. I've seen people cut salvaged doors in half lengthwise and use those (it is cute) but be sure there is no lead paint.

You need to do your own research and make your choice, but pressure treated is much cheaper than natural rot resistant woods like cedar. (and contains toxic chemicals that may....or may not enter your food) Kyle used metal brackets in the corners to attach them together and built them in about 2 hours.

FIND THE SUN

The most important thing in placing your beds is SUN. You want your beds in the hottest, sunniest spot you can find, especially in the Pacific Northwest. My beds are all lined up against the south wall of our house. Be sure to line them up east - west so each one gets as much sun from the south as possible.

Ideally, your beds should be in the sunshine from sunrise to sunset during the summer. Don't forget that shadows are longer in winter - my beds are in almost full shade from our fence in the winter. In the summer, the fence shadows don't even come close to the beds.

Sun matters less for things like lettuces, herbs, peas, carrots and matters a ton for hot weather veggies like tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.

It is also important to note whether there are any large trees nearby that might send roots into your beds. This is not a good thing, but may not be able to be helped. If your beds are near a large tree and only get sun for 1/2 the day in the summer - don't give up, but be aware that these will hinder your efforts. (And now you have something to blame failures on! Good for you!)

Lastly, before you fill your beds, make sure your lawn mower can fit between them. (assuming they are on grass like mine are) Two feet apart is nice I think. Put the frames where you want them and if it is on top of grass you have two options - dig it out, or cover it with wet cardboard/newspaper and bury it. I did the latter and it worked fabulously. I would use the wet cardboard method on weedy dirt areas too.

Lastly, lastly, if you ever see deer in your yard, build a cage over your beds. Look on the internet for ideas and have fun with that. I hate deer.

That's it for today, next I will talk about the fun stuff - what you can do & plant in your garden right now!

Tidbits

2011-02-24T10:11:00.000-08:00

Saben: "You know what mom, I want to be a ninja when I grow up" (does some ninja kicks & punches in the air)

Annika: "And I want to be an ORACORN!"

(Annika says "ORACORN" instead of Unicorn. It is adorable.

*******************

This week Annika and I went in to volunteer with Saben's class during an art project. It is the first time I've taken her in with me to volunteer and I was nervous. She did great though. The best part was when we walked with the class to the art room, Saben held her hand the whole way.

I just love how unpretentious he is still. I treasure every hug he gives me in front of his friends and love how excited he is to tell everyone "That's my mom and sister!!" when we show up.

I also LOVE kindergardeners. They are just adorable and I love getting to know the kids in Saben's class. Ok, some of them are ridiculously annoying too - one boy is so stubborn and won't listen to anyone including me, but then gets mad when his projects don't turn out.

Let's put it this way - I am glad I am not their teacher every day, but still, I love being in the classroom. So cute. (actually, I occasionally do get the urge to be their teacher, but I tend to think almost every job looks fun at some point or another. Ask Kyle about how I think it would be fun to work at Transition Bikes. ha!)

***************

Annika does not like boys. She told me this herself when I asked if she had any friends who were boys in her preschool class. I have tried asking why, but she has no answer. She just doesn't like them "But I do like Saben mom, just not other boys".

She is so much more aware of sex differences than Saben ever was. Not sure if its a second child thing - she grows up knowing her brother is a boy and has someone to compare herself to. Or if its a girl thing - are girls just snotty brats about it and boys don't care as much? Or if its just her....after all, she's always shown a preference for women ever since she was a baby.

Then again, she's not really had many little boy friends either, while Saben grew up with both boy & girl friends. She's spent some time with Maverick, but that's it really. hmmm....need to find her some boys to play with that are her age. Get on it mom.

The best winter

2011-02-21T21:32:00.000-08:00

You should hate me. I deserve to be hated. Because really....I have had the best winter ever. First off, December. I didn't write much (anything actually) about Christmas, but it went off without a hitch. Better than without a hitch. It was busy...but for the first time since Annika was born, I felt like we got it all timed right. I finished shopping early enough, worked HARD and made sure there was lots of time to chill and love on the family. I was stressed...but not too stressed to enjoy it.

This was no easy feat - it took 3 years of Christmas turmoil to figure it out and honestly, I probably didn't figure anything out at all, our kids just got old enough and we got lucky enough to pull it off. We even spent an amazing weekend in early December up at a cabin in the snow with friends, something we hope to do every year. I completely loved Christmas this year.

On top of all that, Kyle got me a new 4runner for Christmas. He was going to surprise me with it and took great pains to pick it up on Christmas eve, even taping the garage windows with plastic so I couldn't see it hidden inside. Unfortunately I suspected everything. When he asked to go on a Christmas eve "bike ride", I said yes, only because I secretly hoped he was going to pick up my car. I even peeked out the window to see if there was a bike on his car when he left and sure enough....no bike. I was so excited, but even more excited when I drove past him in my new car as the kids & I headed out to do some chores. So much for the surprise.

About the second week of December, Kyle bought the tickets to Vietnam. (we left Jan 3rd). So off an an amazing trip for that. About the same time, Shauna, Kyle's sis, started bugging us about going to Hawaii with them in early february. At first we thought it was dumb to go so soon after vietnam, but the plane tickets went down in $, Kyle's brother agreed to go, and we realized we had enough miles on our credit card to pay for all the tickets. Sweet.

So two weeks after we got back from Vietnam, we went to Hawaii with the kids and Kyle's siblings. And Pete.

But before we look at those pictures, I have to mention what we did BETWEEN Vietnam & Hawaii. We bought ski gear for the whole family and went skiing for the first time. (Kyle had a good hook up for gear, plus Annika's friend Riley had been going and her Dad talked us into it)

Ta-Da! Our first ski day, one day before we flew to Hawaii!

Saben has been doing AWESOME.
But we did spend a lot of time in this position helping the kids up.

Skiing Saturday, hotel in Seatac on Sunday, fly to Hawaii on monday. To join up with these folks. Can you tell which one doesn't belong? I mean...isn't a sibling?
We had the best time. Our condo was a bit grotty, and stunk of stale cigarettes, but we loved Maui and it was so relaxing. We pretty much went to the beach every day, took turns watching the kids, swam, snorkeled and played in the sand. One day, Kyle went biking with some guys from one of his shops. I missed him, so I made myself a replacement.

Beach art, seriously the most fun ever, even though it took me 2 hours to make this guy who was far from perfect. The kids were scared of the waves at first, but over time they got used to them. Annika was the queen of getting sand absolutely everywhere on her body. The kids had so much fun playing with cousin Hailey, especially Annika. Cousin Charlotte spent most of her time snoozing on the beach since she is only um...4 months old? Sigh, I can't even keep track anymore.

Saben loved building in the sand. Except the structures you see were actually built by Jason & Pete. He liked digging deep holes and was working on a cave in this picture.

It was a lovely time and I am one lucky, spoiled rotten girl.

Phu Quoc Days 6 - 9 (planning is awesome & wrap up)

2011-02-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

Day six, we caught a taxi to the airport in the morning. The taxi driver immediately turned on some techno beats to "wake us up" and we hit rush hour traffic with the throbbing music pumping. It was the perfect accompaniment to the orchestrated chaos outside and made for a very memorable drive. I made one last attempt to capture the scooter madness on film. Or digital disk.

Our flight was only an hour and soon we disembarked, ready for some tropical island bliss. Phu Quoc had been hailed as one of the best, most unspoiled tropical islands in the area. People were especially fond of it because it hadn't yet been taken over by big touristy resorts. It's had huge growth in the last 5 years, but there is still a notable absence of mega resorts or chains, the biggest and nicest place in the area probably only had 50 rooms or so.

I had wanted to book a beach bungalow on Phu Quoc before we left, but certain male members of our party insisted they didn't want to be tied down to a specific itinerary. I had spent four hours just to find that one place open, almost everything was booked when I was looking a couple weeks prior to our trip. When the guys balked, I just gave up on going to PhuQuoc altogether, but somehow once we were in Ho Chi Minh, it seemed like a good idea to everyone. (in face, we followed the EXACT itinerary in Vietnam I had sketched out that the "non-planners" originally rejected) And of course now EVERYTHING was booked solid, but a travel agent found us rooms at this place:

Please note the woman holding the snake. And the lovely beach, umbrella shelters and recliners. None of these things were present and the lack of a python was especially devastating. There were no chairs, no umbrellas, and even worse, no beach at all because they had expanded their property to the waters edge and added a seawall. And planted nasty leaf dropping small shrubby trees along the seawall that you didn't want to sit under. But thankfully, they had added some other charms not even found on their brochure!

Giant horse sculptures galloping down the road leading to the rooms! As our taxi drove down the driveway, I will never forget Kevin saying "This looks great!" and I'm sitting there, looking at these WACKO huge animal statues everywhere thinking "Oh man. This is NOT a good sign"

Sure enough. Our rooms....yuck.

Dirty walls that desperately needed paint, the most uncomfortable beds ever, nasty old furniture and the smell of mothballs permeating everything.

Kevin & Kelley did get a nice big poster of a topless woman in their room, unfortunately their amenities also included a cockroach in Kelley's shoe the first morning. Oh, and did I mention the metal roofs with some sort of fruit tree overhanging them? And how the fruit would drop in the middle of the night with the most startling loud racket - so loud it sounded like a car had crashed outside or something had exploded in a trash can? I was seriously scared to death when it happened the first night, but after a couple more times that night, I figured it was nothing dangerous. Besides, there were obviously about 20 dogs outside barking to protect us, so I was sure everything was perfectly safe.

Thank goodness the beauty of the island made up for our less than ideal lodging (at $30 a night it felt like a complete rip off). We had lunch on the beach, some of the best & cheapest food we'd had yet. Every restaurant had little charcoal grills going, with a selection of fresh prawns, calamari, fish, etc for insanely cheap. We had chili rubbed grilled squid, fried tofu w/ chili & lemongrass, Braised fish in caramel sauce and tons more food. I felt much better. We took a quick dip in the water after lunch, only to find a mysterious tingling that soon turned to strong stinging. Apparently that section of water had swarm of little clear stinging Jellyfish. Thus ended our afternoon swim.

Our hotel had decent scooters to rent for cheap, so we decided to go explore a bit. Kevin and Kyle had been itching to drive a scooter since we'd arrived, but I was terrified. I have almost never ever driven a motorized two wheel vehicle in my life. (once I did a little loop on shauna's dirt bike, and that is the only thing that gave me the confidence to do the scooters) But I pushed past the fear and figured it out. And had SO MUCH FUN. I loved it, really. And I loved going fast, even with a stupid ill fitting cheap-o helmet. It wasn't neccessarily the safest thing I've ever done, and as per usual, there was some crazy traffic as well as a quick jaunt through a super crowded street market.

We rode for 45 minutes and ended up at this gorgeous beach at sunset. Notice the complete lack of beach hotels or sunbathers? It was completely deserted. Amazing

The group with our rides. It was only after the sun set that we realized we had to ride back in the twilight with no goggles - on the way their our sunglasses protected our eyes, but now it was way to dark for even that. We got lost for a while in the main town, but finally found our way down to the beach about 1/2 a mile from our hotel and proceeded to gorge ourselves on fresh seafood and wine. We're talking four huge grilled prawns for about $3 - in fact everything we ordered cost $2-$4 dollars. It was amazing. The bill for four of us, including "several" bottles of (somewhat nasty) vietnamese wine was $50.

Did I mention we were only 5 feet from the ocean, our toes curled in beach sand? LOVELY.

The next morning we had a snorkeling tour, and I snapped some more great shots of our hotel sculptures while we waited for the bus to pick us up. Creepy.

The giant crab

"Monkeying" around

Seriously creepy

Evil goat wearing eye-liner

The best hotel slogan ever, especially for a crappy weird sculpture park hotel.

Our bus ride to the south of the island was interesting...we were crammed into a hot, no air conditioning van (you know those 12 person ones with little jump seats?) and proceeded to drive 30+ minutes on dusty bumpy dirt roads. Apparently the little tourist zone where we stayed is pretty much the only paved part of the island.

When I saw these beautiful squid fishing boats I freaked a bit - I get seasick easily and the bigger the boat the better - luckily they weren't for us, we were on a relatively large boat.

We did hit some rough waves, but I had taken a dramamine so I was fine. After chugging slowly for an hour, we went into a group of islands and stopped to do some fishing. After about five minutes, I caught my first fish, the 2nd one caught on our boat. Two minutes later, I caught my second fish. 5 minutes after that, I caught my 3rd. Kyle didn't catch a single one, Kevin caught one, and Kelley finally caught one right as the boat started pulling away with her line still in the water.

We snorkeled a bit and then had lunch - and yes, they served the fish I caught and yes, I ate one. Yum. And yes, it still had skin, bones and a head when I ate it. No problem. The snorkeling was ok, quite a few fish, but pretty normal wear and tear on the coral, a lot of it was dead. Still fun though.

After several hours of snorkeling, we headed back to land and the bus took us to a remote beach with the most beautiful sand I have ever seen. Super white and super fine. The guy below was selling ice cream bars to the Western tourists.

The woman below was selling fresh creamy tofu with ginger sauce to the Asian tourists. I really wanted to try it, but wussed out, fearful of the safety of her homemade goods. And don't even get me started on the difference between asian & western beach snacks.

On the way back to our hotel, the bus broke down for a few minutes and imagine my surprise to find out the engine was nestled between the drivers seat and our seats.

Thankfully they got it going relatively quickly and we were on our way, through the potholes, breathing red dust through the windows and over the rickety bridge we go!

Oh, did I forget to mention the sculpture park on the beach side of our hotel? Completely separate from the entrance one? This was supposed to filled with water I think and each swan's head would be up to my shoulders almost. In the background, you can see they started reproducing some different famous structures around the world including the sydney opera house and Malaysia's twin towers. And there was a guy on horseback. It was a jumbled psychotic mess.

Thankfully cocktails on the beach were just a short walk away and they were only a buck or two each.

We had another lovely dinner on the beach, here you can see how close we were to the lapping waves. One weird thing about the town is that supposedly every hotel was completely booked up because it was the peak of high season. But it was super quiet, tons of room on the beaches, restaurants were often empty. We kept wondering where all the guests were....even our resort was supposedly full, but we rarely saw more than 2 or 3 other couples at a time.
The next day we laid on the beach all morning, took some jellyfish-free dips in the ocean and then flew back to Ho Chi Minh after a final beach lunch. We had a rotten time in the evening trying to shop and find a new place to eat. We finally ended up back at the Temple Club we'd eaten at earlier in our trip, but it suddenly seemed very expensive compared to the beach places in Phu Quoc. Kyle ordered a pineapple juice that arrived completely rotten and smelling like nasty sulfur. I tried it and confirmed it was disgusting. What is with last nights in a place being sort of lame??

And then it got even lamer. Two hours after dinner, Kyle started throwing up. Two hours after that I joined him and we missed our taxi to the airport to fly home. We laid around all day recovering and were able to fly home the next day. Menards were not so lucky, Kelley didn't get sick till she was on the plane to Hong Kong. Yuck. Kevin felt ill but never actually puked. Lucky guy. Who knows what it was, I was sort of feeling off after lunch and all afternoon, but it didn't fully hit me till after dinner.

Overall, Vietnam was hard, but awesome. I retain my firm belief that I would much rather plan a trip before we leave, rather than do all the leg work once we were there and have to settle for less than ideal accomodations. (although our lodging "find" in Ho Chi Minh did work out really nicely)

Is it worth going to a country where you are almost guaranteed to get food poisoning at some point? I think so, in fact, I am almost getting used to it. When we first got home, I had a hard time showing a lot of enthusiasm for the trip because we got so sick at the end, but with time...memories fade and only the good remains. I love that.

Vietnam - Day 4 & 5 (Mekong)

2011-01-25T20:45:00.000-08:00

We woke up nice and early and met up with our tour guide for biking through the Mekong. The tour was not cheap at all, but....it was just the four of us, a private guide and everything we needed completely taken care of. It was awesome. (http://sinhbalo.com/cgi-bin/app.cgi)

It was about 3 hours to reach our destination - somewhere just outside of My Tho. We got out of our van, pulled the cheap bikes out, strapped on ill fitting, dented busted helmets and set off on the skinny paved road. It was heavenly after the chaos of Ho Chi Minh. Cows, canals, green, rice farms, tropical fruit trees, scooters, school kids on bikes - not exactly supreme peace and quiet, but everything was fascinating and came at a much slower speed. Actually, it was far more urban feeling than I expected, but delightful anyways.

Notice the awesome fit of my custom helmet. Did I mention it had a huge dent in it as if it'd already been in a wreck or two? After an hour of biking we stopped in at a factory where they made made some special local treats the old fashioned way - by hand, cooked over rice hull fires. (specifically for the tourist trade of course) We bought some delicious coconut candies and had a chance to sample the famous "snake wine" seen below:

Yes, that is a sun tea pitcher filled with dead snakes and moonshine. Or home distilled rice wine - and I do mean distilled, we saw the distiller. So wine is being generous. I took the teeniest sip, it tasted fine, but the idea of snake guts mixing around in there really grossed me out. Kyle and Kevin manned up and did full shots of the stuff.

After sampling and purchasing a bunch of the treats, we rode another mile or so to our boat. And we sailed off down the mighty Mekong.

I loved the boat paint jobs which were a mix of weathered wood and bright cheery colors. We had lunch & drinks on the boat and then sat back in our chairs for a couple hours to relax.

It was gorgeous and perfect. Well ....Kevin & Kyle kept talking about how they needed to go on more sales trips, which is always a downer (for me anyways), but other than that, it was perfect!

Eyes were painted on the boats to scare crocodiles. Or so our guide, Tao, told us. But he was often full of crap. I can't even tell you how many things he told us straight faced that turned out to be completely wrong. Apparently our gullibility amused him.

We docked in a completely non-descript location that was an island in Ben Tre province. Five minutes of biking and we were at our homestay where we would sleep and eat for the evening.

It was called a homestay but was really more like a family had added an outdoor sleeping area for up to 10 people, a few bathrooms and showers. Notice the Pomelo tree over the chairs & tables.

Our guide had told us he'd slept here once before and rats chewing on the roofs had kept him awake all night. I only half believed him at that point, but when we saw our sleeping location, it seemed pretty likely he had told the truth.

Not exactly the privacy we expected, that is one large, not fully enclosed room with 10 cots in it. And mosquito nets. I was feeling sort of nervous. I mean, we were in the tropical jungle, weren't there all sorts of critters who might scurry around our "bedroom" at night? Like my arch enemy cockroaches? Ugh. Would mosquito nets really keep everything out?

We put our fears aside and talked our guide into taking us for another bike ride since it was only 2-3:00 (at this point, time & days of the week had completely lost relevance). We went on a brutal 1.5 hour ride down a super dusty, bumpy sandy road. My bum ached.

See me in front of the lady with sticks? And Kyle in the green shirt?
But...all the kids yelled friendly hellos as we went by and we saw fascinating things like wedding preparations:

And the shells of cocoa beans:

It was gorgeous. Even though by the end my bum really ached. Darn bikes. We had a wonderful meal back at our homestay. First we got to watch the grandma kill, scale and gut our fish, then we took cold showers and missed the rest of the dinner preparations. We had rice wraps for appetizers - the steamed fish, topped with pineapple, rice noodles, lettuce & basil, all wrapped in the those awesome chewy rice paper rolls. All the meals in the Mekong ended with soup - in fact most meals people ordered for us ended in a soup. (when we ordered for ourselves, we tended to skip the soups)

By 9pm it was dark and there wasn't much to do, so we went to bed. Kyle and I saw our very first firefly ever. Prior to that, we saw a rat climbing around in the beams of our roof. I went to sleep very nervous, but relieved that so far I hadn't seen any bugs of alarming size and no cockroaches.

I slept very well. I woke up a couple times to dogs barking and a another time to a helicopter landing on our shelter - no, make that a boat motor - that thrummed loudly on and on. In the end I loved it. I slept well and loved waking up to fresh air, morning sunlight and twittering birds. Kyle and Kelley had the worst sleep ever.

I would definitely recommend a homestay, it was rustic and made me a bit nervous, but it turned out great and was one of the most memorable parts of the trip (in a good way).

The next morning, we were off on our bikes again. It was even more beautiful as we were on tiny single lane paved trails with gorgeous coconut groves and more traditional houses. I won't even mention how much my bum ached this time, but I promise to get more time in the saddle before I ever suggest a bike tour again. My leg muscles & stamina were fine, but man...its like riding a horse and getting saddle sore if you haven't done it in a long time. Gorgeous traditional houses were everywhere. We left the trails for a bit and hit our first main road. Wow. It was frightful but fun since none of us got run over. The traffic was no Ho Chi Minh, but roads were narrow, and there were lots of trucks, many scooters, bikes and no real rules about how & when everyone tried to pass. Or what to do when the guide was way in front and you were stuck between some old guy going 5 miles an hour on his bike.

We rode for a couple hours and our guide took us to the house he grew up in, where his parents still live. It was so beautiful - just maybe 500 sq feet and entirely made of natural local plant materials. The roof was woven of palm fronds and the walls were made of something similar with light filtering through. The floors were packed earth and swept immaculately.

His parents have a rice farm they tend and also grow cherries - or at least something he called "cherry" that looked like a cherry and tasted like a cherry, but had no pit & a different seed structure. We drank fresh coconut juice at their house because Ben Tre is the Napa Valley of coconuts. Famous throughout vietnam. And they were indeed the best ones we drank through the whole trip.

More biking, but this time we hit an even bigger major city and had more spine tingling adventures with the traffic. The biggest rush was biking through a roundabout with the rest of traffic. Ay-yah! It felt so good to make it through alive! We were true vietnamese traffic veterans at this point.... and then we boarded another boat to take us to our lunch location. This boat was teeny and the canal we traversed was equally teeny. and muddy.

Once again we got off at a non-descript dock and found lunch waiting for us. First up - fried elephant fish, rolled once more in the delectable rice paper rolls. Yum. I keep forgetting what we ate for the rest of the meal, I loved the rice rolls the most. I know we always had some clear soup with greens, rice and some sort of stir fried or stewed meat. It was all delicious though.

That is a whole fried fish. With a special "fried fish stand" apparently. I want one. After lunch we had an hour to nap in hammocks. Delightful. Then we rode off, back to the big town and went through the same big trafficky round about (equally exciting the second time).

Actually i have to stop and explain what made biking in the traffic so great. It was frightening, things coming at you from all directions, with no seeming organization. But, observing the vietnamese, you could see they were alert, but relaxed. No one made sudden movements and you realized your survival depended on doing the same. So I would purposefully relax, breathe deeply and try to not focus on any one thing but observe the movements all around me and in my peripheral. And flow with everyone else. The way it works is that you stay alert but act slowly, gracefully and try to be predictable to those around you. It was amazing to become a part of that and have it work. Like I said in Saigon, people would just walk into traffic, but do it slowly enough that everyone goes around them. That is the key to the chaos. Be predictable, alert, no sudden movements. It was fantastic.

Then we were back in our van, headed to Ho Chi Minh. Dinner that night was superb but once again...sort of a blur.

Rats

2011-01-25T10:22:00.000-08:00

After a year of indecision, Kyle and I finally bought a new 4runner to be "my car" and replace our old suburban. Kyle went ahead and arranged it all so I could get the car for Christmas - unfortunately when he was "sneaking" it home on Christmas eve, I left the house later than I expected and managed to pass him on the road driving it. So much for the surprise!

I love my new car, but this morning a bunch of weird warning lights came on. Angry, I took it to the dealership and demanded they take a look. The technician nodded knowingly and I thought "oh great, its a known issue with 4runners! And there are only 800 miles on it, are you kidding me!!???"

She popped the hood and peered inside...then screamed. "It's a RAT!" Apparently she knew it was most likely rat damage making the wires go crazy, and sure enough, he was still riding around inside. They backed the car out of the garage and he jumped down, ran back into the garage and scampered around while we women squealed.

Seriously, why don't guys squeal?? I'm not even scared of rats, but something about the scampering made me do some hard core squealing.

I think the rat climbed up inside someone elses car, but it sort of just disappeared so who knows. What I want to know is - do rats just like new cars? Because we've never had this problem before and I happen to know a rat was living in our garage a couple winters ago.....

blog header

2011-01-24T09:53:00.000-08:00

I can't believe this, the first time in 3 years I bothered creating my own blog header image and I do it the exact day people start reporting a bug that makes header images blurry on blogger.

Sweet, I won't ever get that hour+ back that I spent trying to figure out what I was doing wrong....gotta love technology.

http://knownissues.blogspot.com/2011/01/some-users-have-reported-that-header.html

2011-01-21T11:31:00.001-08:00

Must be getting rusty...anyone want to tell me why my header looks awesome as an jpg image saved to my computer but is garbage once it is uploaded to blogger??? It is about the right size I thought....1002 x 280 pixels

Vietnam - Day 3 (we recover)

2011-01-21T07:45:00.000-08:00

View from our "new" hotel window

We spent the morning slowly getting our energy back up after the day before. Kelley and I had a leisurely breakfast in the hotel buffet while Kevin & Kyle scouted out cheap pho shops. (pho is the traditional Vietnamese breakfast) We moved all our stuff over to the new hotel and then talked about what to do after our bike trip to the Mekong.

Most of the morning was spent booking flights & a hotel to a beach destination - Phu Quoc island. We ate at a cheap Thai restaurant for lunch and finally left our little backpacker neighborhood to go do some shopping.

Vietnamese take Christmas decorations very seriously.

This little kitchen was literally open to the street

The food in Vietnam was one of the best parts of the country. And the availability of it. I had gotten cautious after my stomach scare the night before, but everything looked and smelled delicious. So many tiny places on the streets that offered cheap, cheap amazing food. A bowl of Pho costs less than a dollar for a local, maybe $1.50 - $2 for you & me. I was especially insanely jealous of the fruit vendors - I only wish people were wandering around my neighborhood selling tropical fruit. I love this sort of dense urban environment where everything you need is within a couple blocks.

This is a picture of your traditional fruit vendor - an older woman with baskets of fruit balanced on a wooden stick over her shoulders.

A hint of the insane power/phone lines. Some of them must have had a tangle of hundreds of lines going into one uh...transformer? Onto one telephone pole. Unfortunately we lost that photo with Kevin's camera and I forgot to take another.

Sorry, but we couldn't help but laugh at some of the contrasts between tall foreigners and petite Vietnamese. (did I mention they made me feel like a huge giantess?)

Ah yes, the scooters. First of all, why don't the kids wear helmets? Every adult was wearing a helmet and NONE of the kids were. It was so scary, especially when your taxi was weaving and swerving around and you were just sure a scooter with youngsters was about to go down.

We crossed the street you see above, its like what....12 lanes of traffic? Yes, you wait for a break in the traffic, but ultimately cars are always turning and scooters just seem to be going every which way. They even zip down sidewalks during rush hour. Ho Chi Minh didn't really feel like a "walking town" - generally kyle and I love taking long walks in big cities, but the traffic was so scary and crossing the street so exhausting, we actually walked way less than normal. (not to mention the stress of worrying if someone was going to ride by and try to grab my purse)

Litchi seller
More traffic. There are occasional bikes, but most everyone has switched to scooters. We went to the main nearby market and did some souvenir shopping first. Somehow I forgot to take pictures - probably because everything is jam packed and hot and its not arranged artfully like other markets. Just too much stimulus to even think about a camera.

After shopping, we wandered back to the central area where Kevin had lost his camera. A girl who had been selling fruit when it happened was on the same corner and told us it had happened four times that day already. Crazy.

After some healing minutes spent discussing plans in which we would dangle empty purses until they got stolen, then rip the thieves off the bikes and beat them up, we headed up to the Sheraton rooftop bar for some drinks. It was a gorgeous view and we stayed till after sunset.

Seriously, did I mention how much they like Christmas decorations? The lights were incredible, my kids would have gone nuts. Much better than anything I've ever seen in the USA. After our drinks, we walked to a nearby restaurant "Temple Club" for dinner. They were full so we sat on red velvet couches in the lounge for dinner. The food was amazing as usual.

Vietnam - Day 2 (Ho Chi Minh City takes her best shot)

2011-01-20T20:54:00.000-08:00

Day two we were scheduled to have a Ho Chi Minh City tour with Samuel. Yes, we were shown around the capital of Vietnam by a Taiwanese man, one who had lived there and done business for ten years and still hadn't learned a lick of Vietnamese.

This is the view from our hotel room.

This is one of my very favorite pictures - the Asian Food Pyramid. My very favorite fact is that it was ONLY posted in English - in the hotel workout room. Apparently they think English speakers need some diet tips? Also notice red meat is monthly, at the very tip of the pyramid. So interesting...Personally, I found the fish to be the tastiest thing in the country, if I lived there, I would easily eat fresh fish every day. Yum.

We left our hotel at 10:30 and went to a travel agent to schedule a bike tour of the Mekong Delta. They recommended a $25 a night B&B type place next door, so we checked it out. It was immaculate & perfect. For $25 we got a huge room, air conditioning, quiet, cable and TWO free breakfasts. We LOVED it. So much better than the $130/night hotel. They even did all of our laundry for just $4.

Finally we were off to see an old church and post office. Very nice. Then we walked up to Reunification Palace, but it was closed for lunch. Seemed like the thing to do was go ahead and eat lunch, so we headed to Pho 2000, quite famous because of its previous clientele as seen below:

There were pictures of Bill & Chels everywhere and guess who got to sit at the VERY SAME TABLE that they ate at? That's right, we snagged it. It even had a fancy maroon tablecloth, just so you knew how special it was. But seriously, I am very disappointed neither of them got beef pho. Who goes to pho in Vietnam and gets the veggie & chicken versions? Suffice to say, I ordered the beef pho. Yum!! Unfortunately, I wasn't super hungry and couldn't even finish it.

After lunch, we headed back to the palace. It was the seat of South Vietnam government during the war and when the North won, they broke down the gates with a tank and renamed it "reunification palace"

We had an hour guided tour that was mildly interesting. Let's just say that when Samuel told me he'd taken the tour over fifty times with guests, I shuddered in horror.

The South orchestrated much of the war in the bunkers below the palace. Dad, this picture's for you. My favorite were the old maps and the list of soldiers from each country. USA clocked in about 500,000 soldiers while Canada sent...two. I think New Zealand sent nine. Awesome.

After the palace, we took a walk to the People's Committee building and that is where disaster struck. Actually, we were crossing the street right in front of the Opera house. You have to understand that every single time you cross the street, it felt like you were risking your life. Scooters and cars zip around everywhere and sometimes all you do is walk slow and trust no one is going to hit you. For the record, I think it was scarier than Egypt - in Egypt the traffic is very similar, but its all big cars. The little scooters zipping around all over leaves you super edgy - even if it looks clear, you never know when one will appear out of no where.

Anyways, so we cross the street - a fairly tame crossing actually, because there was actually a stop light. Just as we reach the curb, a scooter darts in front of us. Kelley, Kyle and I immediately stepped back, scared it was going to run it over. (for the record kyle claims he immediately knew what was about to happen. I just thought it was going to hit us) Kevin was holding his $1800 camera by its body. The lady on the back of the scooter reaches down, grabs the strap and they are off before anyone really realized what was happening. Kevin chased them but in flip flops, he had no chance.

It was so lame, especially because kyle and kevin both thought they could have grabbed them if they'd just reacted a split second sooner. Kevin was so mad. We all were. The worst part was that every single one of us - except kevin - had read about this happening and were being super careful. Apparently he didn't even know it was a possibility.

We sat down and I immediately felt sick. Sort of the "just before a sports game" queasy butterflies, but maybe something more. My heart was racing, I was sweating and I just felt like going home - pretty standard panic attack really. Kelley was doing the exact same thing. (something about our illusion of safety being shattered, it suddenly felt like everything was very dangerous) I finally decided I needed to go to the hotel instead of to our scheduled foot massage. I was so bummed but kept feeling awful and was worried I was going to vomit.

Finally, back at the hotel, I went ahead and took an anti-bacterial, because I felt so sick. Within an hour I was totally fine - but by that time everyone had already left to go to dinner with Samuel. My stomach was still pretty queasy until the next day, but I had no more problems.

Around 10pm that night, music started playing. Not super loud...but you could tell it was live and definitely hear it. It kept going....and going....all night long. Turns out it was a Buddhist funeral procession and they played until 7am the next morning. serious. Thankfully I can sleep through about anything, but some in our group weren't so lucky.

Vietnam - Day 1 (How Bikes are Made)

2011-01-18T13:01:00.000-08:00

Unless I've talked to you recently or you read my facebook post, I am sure most of you are shocked to hear that we just returned from a trip to Vietnam. Vietnam has been at the top of my vacation destination list (along with Thailand & Indonesia) for a couple years now. I've been itching to go to Southeast Asia with Kyle, especially since he has gone to Taiwan and China so many times without me these last few years.

Unfortunately, Kyle didn't really want to go for vacation because he hates the tropical heat. So we went to Spain last year instead. Just two months after that trip, Kyle found out a bike factory in Vietnam was finally "ready" for them to come visit. It is a branch of the company they work with in Taiwan - a new facility they opened to compete with the bike factories in China.

As soon as they knew a trip to Vietnam was in the future, Kyle and Kevin promised to take me and Kelley with them. Midway through December, they realized that there was only a two week window the beginning of January that would work for everyone involved. So we bought tickets - three weeks before our Jan 3rd departure.

We did minimal planning. We knew the company would take care of us the first few days, we had almost no time to plan, and plus Kevin....doesn't like having his trips planned out. That part was a stretch for me, there is so much I wanted to see and do, I just get excited and want to figure out how to squeeze it all in. We left with a rough idea of some things we could do, but really I spent very little time thinking about it.

After 2 hours to San Fran, 13 hours to Hong Kong and 2 more hours of flying to Vietnam, we were exhausted. Thankfully we arrived at 10pm and went straight to bed. We were in a pretty fancy hotel that the factory had recommended for us. Apparently it is where Bill Clinton stayed when he came, but I would rank it somewhere with the Westin in terms of quality and it was a whopping $130 a night. And only came with ONE free buffet breakfast per room.

The guy who created & founded the Vietnam factory, Samuel, arrived at 8:30am to pick us up. After eating our way through the incredible breakfast buffet that included breakfast options from around the world (pho, spring rolls, stir-fry noodles, deli meats, smoked fish, tropical fruits, pastries, omelet bar, waffles) we walked out into the glorious, amazing, warm moist air and gasped. Is there anything lovelier than leaving winter for a couple weeks and basking in 80 degree sunshine? I think not.

The factory was a fascinating one hour drive to the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). The first thing we did was tour the aluminum frame factory.

Each frame is welded & made by hand. There are machines there, but they are all manual - you pull the lever so the machine will bend a metal tube to just the right angle for that particular bike.

Bike Tubes

It was fascinating, I'd seen Kyle's pictures before, but really amazing to see everything getting done in person.

These guys were my favorite. Whenever a frame is finished, they stick it in this contraption that checks all the angles and makes sure the bike lies flat. And if it doesn't? Why, you hit it with a hammer till its correct of course! Serious!

Samuel, Kyle & Kevin

Samuel took us to lunch after we toured the factory and it was as amazing as I had dreamed. (yes, I do dream of Vietnamese food) We had the most delicious tea I have ever tasted in my life - unfortunately I have no idea what kind it is. I'm trying to decide if its appropriate to email Samuel and find out. Yes, he was super friendly and spent two whole days showing us around, but he is also the very busy CEO of the factory. Kelley and I talked with him quite a bit and it was fascinating to hear his life story.

Anyways, back to lunch...its hard to remember specific dishes, we ate pretty similar foods for most of trip. Fried thumb sized spring rolls, lemongrass grilled short ribs, rice steamed in a banana leaf, crispy fish skewers...and for dessert, fresh mango and pomelo dipped in chili salt.

After lunch, we visited the carbon fiber frame factory, which blew my mind. Carbon fiber frames feel like they are made of plastic. But apparently they are super strong, strong enough to handle anything an aluminum welded frame can handle. First, we saw huge rolls of carbon fiber sheets. Each sheet is the thickness of say....a sticker and is comprised of thin wispy carbon threads, all running the same direction, that are held together with glue. Ripped with the grain of the fibers, it is super easy to tease them apart, but against the grain, they were cutting with huge metal blades.

Next we went into the room where they assemble pieces of the frame. Its basically just like playing with... stickers. They remove the backing from each pre-cut piece of carbon fiber and stick it onto plastic wrapped wooden dowels. It is EXACTLY like sticking stickers on a piece of wood. They do about 7 layers of stickers, carefully changing the angles of the fibers to each other so that the finished product is strong. In the joints, etc, they put on many smaller stickers to reinforce those areas, on the long tube pieces, just a few larger stickers.

The black piece you see above is finished, but if you pressed on it, it would crumple up relatively easily because the dowel has been taken out. Because its just made of stickers at this point.

Detail of the stickers

Each section of the bike is made, completely by hand. Its almost entirely women applying the stickers because apparently they have steadier hands and better attention to detail for the work. Each woman has one piece she works on and creates, over and over. All the precut "stickers" are put in numbered boxes and she has a diagram showing how each one is to be applied. At the end they weigh the piece to make sure not a single sticker was missed.

When the frame is finished, they put it in these metal molds to be fired. Plastic tubes are still inside where the dowels were and as the frame is cooked, they are filled with air which creates the smooth taut surface.

Cooked bike frame coming out of the molds. It now is just one solid, hard piece of plastic.

One of the most amazing parts of the process is the painting & decals. Each bike is hand masked for paint and decals are also applied by hand - no rulers, no measuring...somehow everything ends up relatively straight and perfect but I have no idea how they do it. Super crazy.

After the factory tour, the guys had to work with their designer. Kelley and I read for an hour or so and then started to die of boredom. We walked around the big open area in front of the walled compound, took glamour shots of each other and chased fish in the fountain. Finally we peeked into the meeting room and requested a basketball for the hoop we'd been wistfully eyeing.

Success! Samuel even came out to play HORSE with us and we both got whooped by a fifty year old Taiwanese business executive. Sweet. Later when we were chatting, we asked him what he did in the Taiwanese military services as a teen and his answer? "I played basketball". That eased the sting of our defeat somewhat.

Finally the guys were finished and we headed to dinner at a famous seafood restaurant. First course was sugarcane shrimp - my most favorite thing, although I adored every rice paper roll I ate. They mince up shrimp into a paste, maybe add some stuff to it (?) and then press it onto a piece of sugar cane before grilling it. To eat, you take a crispy piece of rice paper, add lettuce, the shrimp, pineapple, basil & some vermicelli noodles. Wrap (like a salad roll, except the wrapper is still chewy instead of soft) and dip in a mixture of fish sauce, lime, sugar, & chili....fabulous.

We also had drunken shrimp, which involved them pouring cognac on live shrimp and then LIGHTING THEM ON FIRE at our table. Sick. But hilarious when a flaming shrimp tried to make an escape by jumping out of the bowl. Even more hilarious when we all yelled in surprise and then cracked up loudly...and then realized the entire restaurant was quietly looking at us.

But my very very favorite thing was the baked crab. They picked all the meat out of a crab, mixed it with....apples, butter, something pasty (breadcrumbs?) and sauteed onions and then put it in the empty shell, put cheese on top and broiled it. (bit of a french influenced dish I think) I think we had a seafood hot pot too, but the crab was by far the best. Samuel loves pomelo, so we had that again for dessert along with pineapple. I love tropical fruit for dessert. I could do that after every meal and never eat sweets again I think.

The end of day 1. Phew.

sleep

2010-11-30T20:38:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know, a month and a half absence probably deserves more explanation....Lately I just haven't been excited to write. The blog feels like a chore to accomplish and that isn't how I want it. Or maybe it just feels overwhelming, I'm not even sure. But tonight I am giving it a go, in hopes that I get into it again. I think the photo bit is especially frustrating because I have been feeling lazier and lazier each month about actually organizing and editing all our photos. So no photos tonight either. Sorry.

So without further ado, here is how my children sleep.

Annika:
Always on her back, arms crossed behind her head, looking like a pristine princess. Her little lips pout a bit when she sleeps and she is so adorable, it is ridiculous. She doesn't move much and always has her blankets still on, unless she happened too get hot and kicked them off. In actuality, what I want to write about it how she wakes.....

Anytime you wake up Annika, she is nearly always, completely out of control. Since she was very young. She kicks, hits, cries, yells... Nothing I can do calms her once she gets like this. Randomly, she sometimes wakes up happy. I have no idea why. If I am really on top of things, I wake her up and immediately scoop her, plus a blanket, up into my arms. She really likes that and will generally not fuss too much, especially if I carry her upstairs and put her on the kitchen counter so she can pick her cereal.

If Annika wakes up on her own, for ages, she used to come to the bottom of the stairs and cry and cry. She would refuse to walk up the stairs and I'd have to go down and carry her up, otherwise she threw extremely prolonged tantrums. Lately she's been doing better waking up on her own and likes to climb into Saben's bed and look at books with him until one of them hears us moving around upstairs. Huge relief, because she's been doing the crying thing as long as I can remember. But again, sometimes she would be absolutely fine, like one morning a week. If only I knew the magic of that one morning....

Saben:

Saben is almost always on his belly, legs askance, hands behind his back, in all sorts of weird positions, just like Michael J Fox in "Back to the Future". His blankets are never on him, but I don't think its cause he's too hot, he just moves around a lot.

When I wake Saben up in the morning, it takes him about five seconds to wake and pop up with a huge, alert smile on his face. Seriously, you could not have two more opposite wake-up styles. He is NEVER grumpy, never cries, and he never was like annika at all, even when he was little. He starts chattering, makes jokes and is generally more alert than I am.

When he wakes himself up, same thing. Just reads magazines in bed and then sneaks upstairs to see if we are awake.

I love how different my two kids are, and even though Annika's grumpiness is tiring sometimes...there is something endearing about it...it is so "her".

Cross Country team 2020

2010-10-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Saben had a Jog-a-thon at his school as a PTA fundraiser. Parents were invited to stay and cheer the kids on as they ran and since his class was running right when they got to school, I decided to stay with Annika.

We went outside and the "race" began - two kindergarten classes and a couple first grade ones as well. The kids were so excited and of course all took off sprinting and cutting corners at the beginning, even though they had to run for 30 straight minutes. It was super fun to see their excitement, cheer, clap and they even had music playing loudly like it was all a big party.

Saben ran one lap pretty fast, then sped by us on his second lap. By his third lap he had slowed a bit, I figured he'd get exhausted and be walking in another lap or two. But no....he kept going. And going. I couldn't believe it. Every time he passed we cheered him on and even ran with him a couple times.

He basically ran for almost 30 minutes straight and got the most laps of any kid in his class. Occasionally he would walk for 1/4 of a lap and each time he got a rubber band to count his laps he slowed down to a walk for a few seconds. I was so proud of his determination and completely shocked by his endurance!

I decided the course was about 200m, maybe a tad less and he did 28 laps. So...aprox 1 and 3/4 miles is probably about what he ran.

At the end of the time he was so completely exhausted, he just sat down, wrapped his arms around me and said "I want to go home and take a nap mom". I ran and got him a couple orange wedges immediately and that started to perk him up. By then we really needed to leave - we were running late for Annika's preschool. Of course right at that moment they pull out popsicles for all the kids and Annika starts screaming "POPSICLE!!!!" We fled through the school with her screaming. so fun.

Seriously though, that race made my day, I just couldn't get over how well he did and how earnest he was about the whole thing. So proud of my boy.

No more dirty diapers

2010-10-13T10:50:00.001-07:00

It is quite possible that I have put the very last diaper on my children. Last night, after weeks of sleeping "dry" in his pull-up, saben slept in underwear for the first time. Annika was dry almost immediately after potty training and has slept in underwear with no accidents for months.

This morning I contemplated moving the diaper pail out of their room and realized I had no remorse or sadness attached to that...unlike every other baby thing we've slowly gotten rid of this year.

For the last 4 months I've felt a sick pit in my stomach everytime I think about the infant things I got rid of in April. Probably one of the hardest "goodbyes" I've ever done and I deeply regretted just sending them off to a garage sale for weeks. (I love it when friends/family takes stuff, hate turning it over to strangers)

I just realized today that I am finally uh...healed...and can think about it somewhat unemotionally again. I remember when our suburban was loaded up, I felt like the last five years of my life were in there and I was getting rid of it all. It was Kyle's birthday present to clean out the attic of all that stuff and he will never know that it was probably the most emotionally traumatizing gift I ever gave him. (definitely more traumatizing than the xbox I got him for christmas)

Thankfully getting rid of the diaper pail will be much easier. Other than the guilt of sticking a huge piece of plastic into the landfill.

The Blue House

2010-10-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention that our house has officially won the title of "best house being painted blue right now in our neighborhood" as judged by the guys who work at our neighborhood market.

Yes, you heard right, there are currently THREE houses being painted blue in our neighborhood. The competition was fierce, so first, lets take a look at the runners-up. First there is this beauty, which artfully mingles purple, light blue and blue with seeming random abandon.

Next up is what I like to call "smurf house on steroids". Some have argued our house could also be in the running for "smurf house of the year", but those people seem to have forgotten how turquoise a smurf is. This house immediately catches your eye as you drive up the street and elegantly captures the simple theme of "let's paint everything blue!"

Last but not least, our humble entry, which is still quite blue...but makes me happy everytime I drive up to it and will look amazing when I get some fall leaves planted up near it.

And yes, they are still working on it...I think this is the fourth week of work, although they had some days off here & there.

The five year remodel

2010-09-20T20:10:00.000-07:00

I decided to do this for my own records and to help myself understand why our latest remodel project has me so exhausted....More pictures to come I hope!

REMODEL TIMELINE

August 2005 - Moved into our house with 3 month old saben. Immediately tore out old carpet in all the rooms, kitchen linoleum, and lowered ceilings they'd drywalled into the living room. Spent the next 3 months patching holes, refinishing the fir floors, painting and somewhat landscaping the front yard. (I'd brought plants from our old house I needed to get in the ground) Lived in our attic room most of the summer & fall.

January 2006 - Rip out the old kitchen cabinets over christmas/new years break. Fix walls, get rid of superfluous doors. Install new EVERYTHING into the kitchen. Make our own concrete countertops which stalled the project for months.

May 2006 - Move into our new kitchen

Fall 2006 - Start working on our backyard, rip EVERYTHING out, build a new fence, remove concrete parking pad, remove old backstairs, all the old grass & plants, build a new patio.

Spring 2007 - Rototill in 10 yards of manure into the backyard, plant new garden, install drip irrigation while 7-9 months prego with Annika.

July 2007 - Annika is born! Start of a nice remodel hiatus....

Fall 2007 - Install Hot Tub

December 2007 - My favorite Blog Post Ever about our yucky bathroom. Spend christmas break emptying out our basement so it can be "finished"

Spring 2008 - Start framing in our basement,

Summer 2008 - Rip out old bathroom upstairs after adding new toilet & sink downstairs. Redo plumbing, water heater, gas lines, electricity, furnace & ducting.

Fall 2008 - Work on gutted upstairs bathroom, new EVERYTHING

Winter 2008 - Basement FLOODS, luckily we hadn't drywalled yet. Realize roof is also leaking. New roof, new gutters to help improve water flow away from basement.

Spring 2009 - Basement is drywalled, paint, carpet installed. Bathroom upstairs is finished!

Summer 2009 Move into new basement!

Fall 2009 - finish up odds & ends in basement, decorate. sort of. Move kids downstairs.

Spring/Summer 2010: Replace all windows on the main floor. Move our bedroom, create an office in the extra bedroom. Repaint both bedrooms. remove windows & doors from our front craftsman style porch.

Fall 2010: Start working on getting our house repainted. Get house scraped, pressure washed and then 2 days before the painters start applying paint, decide to rip off aluminum siding.

And now the work begins...new trim pieces, fixing old boards, more scraping and finally new paint, hopefully before it gets cold and rainy, but who knows. Thankfully we are hiring most of it out this time.

First Days of School

2010-09-15T08:59:00.000-07:00

Saben's first day of school, Annika's was the next day, but we're going to count this picture as "first days" anyways.

S: "Annika, did you make any friends today?"
A: "I don't know...."
S: "Did you learn anyone's name?"
A: "No"
S: "Do you want to make friends Annika?"
A: "Yah"
S: "Ok. Here is what you do. First you start playing with somebody. Then you need to ask them what their name is. Then they might ask you what your name is too! And then you will be friends! And you can maybe even invite them to your birthday party!"

By far my favorite conversation this week, it was soooo cute. I love it when Saben enters his "teaching" mode with Annika, and especially that he always starts it by asking her questions. And he always affirms her if she gets the right answer too. He's done it to teach her about planets, moons and stars and several other topics. So cute.

By now you should know, the pictures only get crazier from here. This is the one I got when I was super serious "Ok, YOU GUYS NEED TO LOOK AT ME AND SMILE. NOW. QUIT MESSING AROUND!"

On Monday, Saben had his first day of Kindergarten. I almost lost it at our orientation day and felt sort of choked up at the first day, but they kept us parents busy showing our kids around the school so I managed to get him dropped off without a single tear.

Of course Saben was super excited, he told me after our orientation day last week "mom, I like kindergarten better than our house" and "Why can't we stay at kindergarten mom?" On the first day he just ran to the lego table and never looked back. When we picked him up, he did remark on how long the day was and said he was ready for a nap practically, but on his second day, he didn't seemed fazed by it at all.

First day of kindergarten, Saben was most excited to tell me about the friend he made. (Enoch) On the second day, he leapt into the car excitedly telling me about this amazing thing called a calculator. He was soooo excited and was trying to figure out if you can type a googol out onto it. He had also drawn this long list of numbers, just like a calculator.

On Tuesday, Annika had her first day of preschool and I had my first 3 hours alone without either kid. Dropping her off was a lot harder. She is most likely one of the youngest in the class. Her preschool changed locations over the summer and it was still messy & chaotic inside. It's functional, but they are obviously still working on it, lots of 1/2 completed projects.

Annika was super excited though. Making her lunch for school was super funny, she was just thrilled by it and wanted everything in her lunch box. Then when we arrived, she got pretty shy and clung to my leg. We did a puzzle together and she told me it was ok for me to leave in five minutes. When I waved goodbye to her from the doorway, she had on her super serious stoic face...you could tell she was trying so hard to be brave but was pretty scared. Of course I did shed a few tears at that point. Saben was always so easy because he was thrilled to be there. I can't imagine how the people with the screaming kids do it.

Annika's "stoic face"

Annika did have a really good time, but she ran to me and hugged me for a long time when I came to pick her up. She told me she played dress-up (as a fairy princess) with the other girls, painted, used playdough and read stories.

As for me...Well I spent my glorious 3 hours alone hacking back all my plants so the painting guys can get to our house. Awesome.

Photos

2010-09-08T09:57:00.000-07:00

In case you missed seeing it on her blog, my wonderful "photographer friend" Andi did a photo shoot of me & the kids this summer and you can see the best ones here. I am so delighted with how they turned out!!

Deconstruction

2010-09-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, I have a couple huge "summer" posts to complete before the kids start school next week, we have had a wonderful wonderful summer and I want to record some more of it... but for now, just thought I'd pop in to say hi and share what we've been doing this week.

We were visiting a friend last week and for some reason she mentioned that when she taught preschool, they would get old appliances, phones, etc and let the kids take them apart and build things with the parts. I instantly knew (and I think she did too) that Saben would LOVE doing this. I mentioned it to him and it was practically all he talked about for 4 days.

Finally yesterday, I took him to goodwill to find something suitable. The only problem is that goodwill is expensive!! They were asking at least $6 for nearly every small appliance - toasters, phones, etc. And they were super junky, trashed cheap brand ones, not nice at all. (probably $9-$12 brand new) I grabbed one old hideous 80's style phone for him.

We managed to walk out with quite a few other things as well - a couple books, a puzzle for me, a lego checkers set and a double lightsaber toy. I also resisted supreme temptation to buy things just because I thought they were funny. For instance - a puzzle of Jacob from the Twilight series, a widely grinning ceramic monkey and several games featuring characters from cancelled teen tv shows.

Saben learned checkers last week, that was his other highlight of the week - he even managed to beat me first game although I wasn't terribly focused. I think he beat Kelley second game too, although that one was more of a tie. So we were excited to find the lego checkers set.

Anyways, I asked the guy at checkout if they checked to see if these $6 appliances worked or not - apparently they don't even check them, they just expect you to pay the money and then return them if they are broken. What a ripoff. Luckily when I told him we were buying it to just take apart, he dropped the price to $1. He also let us walk out with another $3 worth of stuff annika was holding that I forgot to make her put up on the counter. Awesome.

Saben loved taking the phone apart and now has a huge bag of junk pieces that he will do who knows what with...he didn't really like my idea of putting the phone back together, so we'll just wait and see I guess.

Annika turns 3

2010-07-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

Annika's last day wearing her "I'm 2" necklace that was mommy's when she was 2.

Present time, after breakfast. Annika's first gift was a box of mini sugar cereals that her & saben shared for breakfast. We might have a tradition here....cocoa krispy birthday breakfast.

Sweet birthday girl.

We spent the morning preparing for Annika's party. Family and friends were due to arrive at 3pm. We did take plenty of time to play with her new gifts and then sent the kids downstairs to watch Annika's new tinkerbell movie.

Annika was so cute because she just sort of looked at each gift with no emotion. Later, she LOVED them all, but the only one we got a positive response to was the tinkerbell movie and it was mostly because she recognized tinkerbell. We also got her some melissa & doug magnetic dress up dolls, a unicorn puzzle, a kids Uno game, pasting book (kumon), ladybug girl book, curious george soundtrack and putamayo kids singalong CD. Saben got her a Calico Critters playset.

Soon the guests arrived, including our adorable niece and nephew:

We quickly moved the party outside for some water play. Riley & her family came and the kids all had a ball.

Annika loves the water.

Beautiful miss hailey.

Riley made sure she was available to help Annika with anything she needed during present opening time.

For some reason, Saben jumped on the tutus that Grandma Young made for annika and quickly was wearing all three. (one for each arm and one on his head). Later we got all three older kids to model them for us. (Saben with GUNS)

Annika chose My Little Pony plates/napkins so I decorated her cake with a My Little Pony doll. (a hideous new one with gigantic head and weird hair) After the party, Grandma wanted a picture with her three grandchildren. HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Seriously, this is what I live with every day - complete insolence.

Literally the best picture we got out of....15?

Kyle argues that we shouldn't try to make them be normal, these pictures capture their "true" personalities.

After picture time, Annika & Riley decided to go swimming.....naked. It was hilarious, especially since both girls were completely hopped up on sugar.

Annika got quite chilly after swimming in the evening air and I caught a couple pictures of her "cold face".

Riley tried to mimic Annika's cold face and this is what she came up with:

Keep trying Riley, you'll get it someday...

Annika is the funniest, sweetest, most rambunctious three year old and I fall more in love with her each and every day. We love you birthday girl!

Fourth of July

2010-07-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

We had a wonderful fourth of July weekend this year. On Saturday, we did Saben's lemonade stand again. This year was super different from last year - Last year was so positive, all the neighbors came out, everyone loved the lemonade and people were giving Saben "tips" of extra money...This time we hardly saw any neighbors, the college students didn't even seem to be around and we had several cars that slowed down complain about the price. ($1 a cup, but its fresh squeezed strawberry lemonade!)

Overall it was still a good day, we just made about $15 less than last year, although some generous friends & grandparents stopping by certainly helped our bottom line.

Our generous friends let Kyle ride their bike too.

On Sunday after church, we drove out to the rez for our fireworks and Saben came home with this haul....

Saben was trying to look mean with his fireworks

In the evening we had lots of friends over for a BBQ & fireworks. Super fun group this year!

All the kiddos except Ayda who'd gone to bed by this point. There were also two babies inside, they didn't make it into any pictures.

Saben's love/fear relationship with fireworks

Chris & his blowtorch did the majority of the fireworks lighting. About 15 minutes into lighting fireworks, a car went flying by fast down the street and I had the brilliant idea to stack some boxes in the middle of the intersection as a "roundabout" to slow the cars down. It worked perfectly. (the kids were not in that street, but it still worried me since we were just a few feet from the intersection)

Sparkler time!

Annika the brave

muses

2010-07-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

We have been doing a babysitting co-op with some friends for the last few months and it has been wonderful. We get 2 weeks of dates & then have to watch five kids one night. The other night when we were babysitting and playing outside and I noticed how lovely the light was so I went to grab my camera.

The first picture thing that happened when I pulled out the camera was that Riley started blatantly picking her nose. To save whatever dignity she might have left after I publish this post, I went ahead and omitted that photo. I told them "Ok, stop picking your nose Riley" and this is what happened:

Mischevious fake nose picking.

The next group of pictures, Annika kept sticking her hand in her mouth. One girl always looks cute while the other looks silly. Finally I got the keeper below, but notice how Ayda was supposed to be in it and is escaping off to the right.....

Nothing was working so I tried the 'ol "Give Riley a hug Annika!" Riley jumped on this one and quickly had Annika in a head lock.

It's still fun at this point.

"Ok Riley, I think that's enough...."

Look at the sheer determination on her face.

"Ok, this time, lets have Annika hug Riley"

This is the best smile I could get out of cutie pie Ayda

Sandbox fun where we actually managed to prevent them from dumping sand on eachothers heads like they normally do. They are especially fond of dumping it on Ayda's head.

Riley's parent's came, and the girls climbed in the chair again. Immediately, Annika started saying something about "I need more room!" and pushed Riley aside.

The battle began.

Is it wrong to laugh and take pictures while your girls are wrestling on a lounge chair?

I think Annika has Riley pinned....

No! Riley, in an amazing comeback, throws Annika to the side!

At this point I had tears streaming down my face, but we finally pulled them apart.

Poor Saben, this is the most entertaining thing he could pull off. Cute for sure but definitely upstaged by the girls.

Dancing

2010-07-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago, Annika had her first dance class. At first I was reluctant to sign her up...rock climbing or gymnastics seemed way cooler and less likely to push her down the ultra-girly path. Annika is very athletic & coordinated. She loves physical challenges and is always scaring me to death on the playgrounds. When she is figuring out how to climb something new on a playground she gets this gleam in her eye and you can tell she loves it. And she'll practice it over and over until she has it down.

So dance....well I wasn't even sure if she'd like it. But in the end I thought "oh why not" and went for it.

First we had to find soft shoes, so I hit the consignment stores. When I found the first pair of shoes that were the right size (9.5) for only $6, I was excited, but most suprisingly....my heart melted at how ADORABLE the little shoes were. Suddenly I wanted to buy her the full get up and couldn't wait to see her dance in them. Unfortunately the 9.5 didn't fit, but we managed to find a 10.5 at another store and that one fit about right, tad big. (did I mention my daughter has giant feet? And wears a 4T already?)

The directions had said kids were welcome to wear leotards & tights but that any comfortable clothing was fine. So, thinking myself the savvy thrifty mom, setting aside my suprising impulses to see my daughter dressed as an adorable little ballerina, I sent annika to class wearing some stretch pants and a shirt. Big mistake.

Every other girl on our first day was wearing a leotard and tutu. Luckily the class had tutus to borrow, but Annika was still very, very unhappy. She desperately begged me to take her pants off. And by beg, I mean screamed and kicked on the floor. I figured a little girl dancing in a tutu and underwear wasn't quite appropriate so she kept them on.

To be honest, the first class was fun, but sort of a nightmare. It was annika's first time in any sort of formal class (other than library story time) and she didn't listen super well. Riley was there so of course they wanted to run & goof off. Plus she kept throwing fits about her dancewear. But the outfits...all the little girls were so darned cute. I realize now that moms sign their girls up for dance, just so they get to buy the cute little skirts.

Our next class went 100x smoother and I've realized this is a pattern for annika. On the first day of something new, she is nearly impossible. By the second day, she is doing just fine. We only have had two lessons so far because we've been doing swimming lessons the last two weeks. She did the exact same thing (cried the entire first lesson) with swimming. But that is another story.....

2010-07-07T13:23:00.000-07:00

First, your five year old gets some star wars lego kits. Then his friend has a toy light saber. Reluctantly you check out a star wars book at the library because you know he'll love it. (but apparently his preschool class has had star wars books in the classroom all year long, unbeknownst to you)

Finally, you let him watch a pod race clip on you tube and he is ecstatic. Next thing you know, he knows exactly which of his friends have seen which star war movies and he brings it up at least once a day, just to make sure you know that one of his friends got to watch "the one with the snow" and another watched the very first movie.

So Kyle and I watched the last three "classic" movies together and agreed he is far far away from being able to watch those ones. Now we have to force ourselves to watch the first one because we've heard from another parent that it isn't so violent. But seeing as how we hated it the first time, we're in no rush.

Marketing to kids is a powerful force....

Just came home from Haggens, where Annika & Saben threw a monster fit over which toothpaste to buy - Dora or Spongebob square pants. I refuse to buy two tubes of toothpaste and mess around with them both each night. Annika screamed at the top of her lungs 3 times for over 5 seconds each time, completely traumatized by the thought of leaving dora on the shelf. We finally left with Bakagulanku something or other...the one no one wanted or recognized. Yet.

We had a wonderful fourth of July weekend, the kids are in swimming lessons every day in the warm 70-80 degree sun and Annika had a couple dance lessons last week. With any luck I will get pictures & blog posts on all those things soon, but we are happy, busy and celebrating the sun right now.

The end - Mollo, Acala de Henares and Seattle

2010-07-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

So. It was our last day in Spain to do as we pleased, before driving 8 hours back to Madrid and flying home. One last day in the mountains, breathing in the fresh crisp air and hiking all over the Pyrenees. We woke up bright and early and...

Kyle puked. And puked. And.....more puke.

I felt...sort of funny, but not too bad. I was waiting for it to hit me too, my stomach definitely wasn't quite right. I nibbled some plain yogurt & dried fruit for breakfast. Barely got down some a cod fritter salad for lunch (much tastier than it sounds). Kyle meanwhile said it was "the worst food poisoning I've ever had" and barely spoke a word to me until about 4pm. (he just slept and puked)

I sat in the sun on the balcony and read for hours - "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, a favorite I'd read before that our book club was supposed to be reading. Juan, the english speaking guy who worked/ran the hotel was exceedingly nice. He always asked what I needed, offered to call a doctor and brought me a free "special" appetizer of peppers, eggplant & anchovies for lunch that I could barely stomach.

After lunch I read my Marie Claire magazine from the plane that I hadn't even opened - I'd gotten sucked into a sudoku book on the flight instead. Finally, six+ hours of reading later, I was feeling better, but really really missed the kids, missed my husband and felt quite lonely. So I texted my friend at 7am on a saturday so I'd have someone to talk too. Whoops. Luckily her daughter had already woken her up and she gave me a good lecture on how lucky I was to have a full day of peace and quiet to read. Thanks Liz.

About the time I was ready to take a walk by my lonesome, it got really cold and a storm moved in. So I sat and read some more listening to one of the most intense thunder storms I'd heard in years. It was actually quite wonderful. Of course it poured rain as well. Kyle was finally speaking at this point and we watched some world cup together. Unfortunately, my hotel dinner was scheduled at exactly the time the USA & England were playing, so I had to leave to go sit downstairs and eat alone.

Luckily, my lamb chops were exquisite, so I didn't mind too much. And I was starving - my stomach was definitely feeling better.

I never did get sick. Was it the random pinxto that kyle ate at lunch in Figueres, which I only barely tasted? Other than that one thing, we'd eaten exactly the same. Was it my year spent in Europe, plus 4 months in Egypt that made my gut extra tough? Kyle was sure it was the raw prawns, but who knows....

The next morning, we left by 10am, right after breakfast. Kyle was well enough to drive and nibble cookies/crackers. I got a kick out of the fact that they offered a carafe of wine along with the juice at breakfast...and that I did see a guy drinking it. I think it was the only place we stayed that did this, maybe its a french thing?

8 hours later we arrived at our last stop before heading home. I'd booked a room in a small university town called Acala de Henares just outside of Madrid. It was very close to the airport but was still supposed to have some spanish charm...rather than the bland hotel chains that surrounded the airport.

Once again, as we tried to drive to our hotel, we were blocked by crowds of people and road blocks. Apparently there was some...sort...of festival going on. Lots of kids, a merry go round....and a religious parade off on the side streets. Very odd. No idea. We checked into our hotel finally (the hardest one to find yet) and wandered.

and wandered.....looking for a dinner place.

Unfortunately we'd both lost our appetite for spanish tapas and that was all we could find. We didn't have any recommendations to go on and were wary of choosing something random after kyle's barf experience. But the lighting was lovely.
And there were cranes in nests on the old buildings.
Finally we settled on Donar Kebab. But it wasn't good at all, it had ketchup and ranch dressing for sauce. Gross. Oh well.

Back at our hotel, we realized our double bed only had one looooooooong pillow. Yes, that is right, one loooooong pillow that stretched across the whole bed. Like a body pillow for us to share. It was ridiculous. And kyle saw a cockroach in the lobby but had the smarts to not tell me about it because I would have screamed. It was a gross hotel and I highly recommend staying in a fancy airport hotel next time because they are cheap and clean and have one pillow for each person. No "character" though....if you're into that sort of thing.

We made it through the night with only minor muscle aches and thankfully no more cockroaches. 5 hours later we were flying home on Salvador Dali. (if you zoom in, its the name of the plane??)

On our flight to Chicago, Kyle had TONS of leg room and I had an empty seat next to me. It was heaven.
On the flight from Chicago to Seattle, I had an extremely obese woman and her husband taking up at least 1/4 of my seat, and trying to chat with me when it was 3am spanish time. But that's not all! I also had a child kicking the back of my seat almost constantly and occasionally pulling my hair. (while her mother read a book and ignored her). It was not awesome at all. Kyle had no problems.

Finally we were reunited with our adorable childrens and drove home. But we barely made it because when I turned around, this is what I discovered:

It is not wise to trust a three year old in the back seat with an empty bag. Luckily she was giggling hard enough that it was impossible not to notice right away.
The kids had a WONDERFUL time with their granparents. I was so happy hearing all the stories of how much fun they had and do not regret leaving them to spend time with both sides of the family. I LOVE how much they truly enjoyed their time with both sets of Grandparents and am so grateful that we get to go travel and have our kids get spoiled rotten by their awesome grandparents. We are the luckiest parents on earth I think. THANK YOU to everyone who helped with the kids (and roxxy!) while we were gone. You are amazing.

Day 9 - Costa Brava to Mollo

2010-06-30T21:56:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist one last picture of our fabulous eating spot. Breakfast was fresh squeezed juice, cafe con leche made to order, bread with jam & butter, little pastries, assorted meats, cheeses & fruit.

The previous day, we had decided to wait for the weather - if it was sunny, we'd stay in Costa Brava & swim, then drive to the mountains later in the day. If it was too cold we'd hit the Dali Museum and head to the mountains. It was cold. Off to the Dali museum. Kyle and I both thought this would be our favorite museum of the trip. The books made it sound so interesting, but with no background on Dali at all....it was our least favorite. The art felt like jibberish, it was crowded and the crowds for some reason were particularly annoying and rude. Maybe if I took a class on Dali and had some clue as to what things symbolized.....

Pink building with bread on the walls and an egg on top. Sounds fun, but gets old quickly. After the museum, it was lunch time. We had no idea where to eat. Everything looked horrible touristy - the town the museum is in is basically a backwater where Dali was born with nothing going for it but the museum. So there were tons of "tourist" restaurants everywhere.

We finally found a pinxto bar that looked edible. There was a room temperature case with bread topped with stuff that you could just help yourself from. For some reason it gave me a bad vibe - it was not tasty really, so I hardly ate much. Kyle was starving and ate one extra thing I didn't eat.

We headed out towards the pyrenees and stopped in Besalu, a cute medival town. The area was littered with them.

Finally, maybe 3 hours from Figueres/Dali Museum, we arrived at our hotel in the tiny mountain town of Mollo. It was pouring rain with a capital P.

A few minutes later, it let up and we went inside. The hotel was reminiscent of a swiss chalet and people were speaking french everywhere since we were so close to the french border. Except for the group of american motorcylce tourists. They were speaking texan.

The front desk asked if we wanted to eat at the hotel restaurant that night. I had read it was quite tasty, and planned to eat there one night and at this "semi-secret gastronomic gem" (Can Po) I'd found in Fodors that was 15 minutes away the other night. We looked at the night's menu, and the helpful desk guy who spoke english, we'll call him Juan, translated for us. When he got to the third entree choice, I freaked. It said "poltre" which I assumed was some sort of chicken. Thank goodness we never order chicken, because actually the entree was "pony cheek". In fact, the area was having a big "eat ponies" festival. I picked up the brochure just to prove it.

Kyle thought we should do the gastronomic gem, so I agreed. Actually he really wanted to eat the ponies, but sensing a fierce argument, I quickly suggested Can Po instead. An aside - when travelling with Kyle, he always wants to eat the weirdest thing on the menu. I tend to want to eat the best sounding thing, or whatever the waiter reccomends. Granted, he got me to try the veal carpaccio and baby eels, which I loved. But I resisted snails the whole trip and was wary of rabbit....and certainly refuse to eat ponies.

Within an hour it had quit raining so we went for a walk before our 9pm dinner reservation. The village was exquisite in the late evening sunlight.

When we got to the end of the village, we realized there were numerous walking routes heading out into the hills. We followed the lovely sound of cow bells and headed up a trail through pastures.

This is what I love about Europe. I love the mountain villages with cute homes and lodging, that have been there forever. I love trails going through private property, from town to town. I love amazing gourmet restaurants out in the middle of nowhere. Yes, I am glad we have our pristine wilderness areas, but sometimes, I just wish there were a cute mountain villages perched on hills and cow bells, all along Hwy 20. Or anywhere in our mountains.

Our walk was sublime and we couldn't wait to do more the next day. But first we had a date with Can Po, one I'd been looking forward to for quite a while. When we arrived, it was dead empty. It was 9pm, much too early for a spanish dinner, even in the mountains. On a friday. I think they do most of their business in the winter ski season because only a few more diners joined us at 10pm.

It was a good thing we were early because there was a big language barrier and we were very indecisive. So many things looked amazing and we weren't really sure how much to order since everything in spain seems to be small plate style. We finally settled on prawn carpaccio with fresh porcini confit, plus a puff pastry tart layered with fois gras, potatoes and ...apples maybe? (actually...I don't really remember what was in it). They both blew our minds, if I remember correctly.

Next we had a goat cheese salad with avocado and jamon.... and finally our main courses. We ordered a wild boar stew and a filet w/ a porcini mushroom cream sauce. I loved the beef, kyle liked the stew better than I did. The stew was full and earthy, but still a stew and I don't think I'm a huge fan of stew meat. We shared both and were stuffed. I'm sure we had dessert too, but my memory is seriously failing me. Take notes next time I guess!

Back to the hotel and off to bed until......

Days 7 & 8 - Barcelona to Costa Brava

2010-06-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

On Day 8, Kyle and I fell in love. But before that...Day 7, our final day in Barcelona. We'll keep it brief. We woke, it was pouring rain. Gorged on Chucho's again, spent lots of money on fancy food souvenirs at the Boqueria. Went to Sagrada Familia again, in the rain.

When you buy tickets to go inside the church, you can also take an elevator up to one of the tallest towers. This was the line of bored tourists waiting for the elevator, snaking around a sculpture of suffering Christ, being flogged on a pole with a tear running down his cheek.
Inside was chaos. Walls up, multiple heavy machinery moving scaffolding between the columns. Jackhammers or something loud to that effect, going constantly. We couldn't even hear each other speak. If you look closely below, there are two men in red, rappelling on the column in the back. I took this picture over a wall that completely obscured our view of the construction area. Its the best one I got.

We were a bit disappointed that we couldn't even see most of the church or get a feel what it would be like when it was finished. (and that the noise was deafening) This sign made us feel much, much better.

Down under the church was a museum of plaster models and drawings that sort of showed what the church would be like when it was finished, how Gaudi had envisioned it, etc. It was pretty interesting but didn't really make the 11 euro (each) entry fee feel worth it. Thank goodness the money went to help build the church, otherwise we would have been bitter.

Now it was really truly pouring and we were supposed to eat lunch at a special "rice" shop way across town. (and take a long walk) Bedraggled & grumpy we made it to the rice place, sort of a more rustic paella that was supposed to be amazing & cooked over a wood fire. I enjoyed it, but let's just say it wasn't the highlight of the trip for Kyle and he complained about the rain & the rice...quite a bit. Apparently hand peeling prawns that are covered in sauce is very high on Kyle's list of pet peeves.

Out of sorts, we went straight back to our hotel, hit up one more gourmet food store for gifts and then got in our car and drove away from Barcelona. On the way out we decided to stay by the water to check out the beaches. It was already later than we'd hoped and rush hour. But we were in a better mood, feeling cocky about our navigation skills, so we kept skipping the on ramps to our freeway in favor of the more scenic route.

Suddenly we there were no more signs for our freeway. The road dead ended in an industrial zone. Kyle's iphone map quit working and we had no other map of this area. We drove in a couple circles.

I know you're crazed with suspense, but we found our way somehow. We'd gotten lost in Badalonia. That's right, just outside of Barcelonia is a suburb called Badalonia. We were very amused. Finally, very late and a few more hours and wrong turns later, we found our next hotel up the coast in an area called Costa Brava.

The fog was thick, but our lodging looked promising. We'd picked up fancy jamon, wine, manchego & fruit to have a picnic on our patio but when Kyle saw our hotel terrace restaurant he decided he was too hungry to have a picnic. This picture taken the next morning shows why:

The location was breathtaking. We enjoyed our dinner wrapped in cozy restaurant provided blankets under an white awning. Raindrops occasionally snuck onto our cheeks and the waves crashed below. Most of the lighting was by candles and a couple lamps.

Later on our room's patio (seen above) we polished off the "picnic" we'd brought as well. It was wonderful. When we woke the next morning and were able to truly appreciate our hotel and we....well we loved it. In fact we loved it so much, I don't even want to type the name here. Because if I tell you the name, everyone will get my blog on google and then run to it and it will be booked forever. But if you beg me in person or by email, I will tell you.

We had breakfast on the terrace again and then got ready to take a nice long walk on the pathway carved out along the shore.

I don't know why, but I was in love with this couch & the lavender. and the rocks, terra cotta pots and the giant citronella candle in a glass pot. sigh.

With our room, we had access to this crazy apartment building next door so that we could use their saltwater swimming pool. Apparently the place we were staying used to be the maid/guard quarters for it, back when it was a huge luxury resort for Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. Now it still has charm but no ones maintained it super well. But the pool area was still incredible.

Notice the handrails leading into the ocean. It was still rainy & windy, so the waves were too big for any swimming. And they drained the pool so we didn't even get to try that.

The pool. After admiring where we could have hung out if it was sunny, we went on our walk. The path goes right under the house in the picture below and you could use the stairs to go swimming if you wanted. If it was sunny.

Walking trails crisscrossed the area but we only used the one right along the water. It led to the point you could see in the pictures far above...the point we looked at while we ate dinner. Here is the coast past that point:

On your way to the point, you go through a teeny town with a nice sandy beach & a couple restaurants. And lots of cute cute houses.

How can we get a turret added onto our house? I really want to know....it would fit our neighborhood I think.

Looking back at the tiny town. The huge apartment is the monstrosity to the far right. Our hotel is nestled in the trees to the left of it. The beauty is that we couldn't really see the apartments from our hotel because of the angle, so the view was not diminished.

We were hungry so we headed to a nearby town for lunch. We couldn't find anyplace that looked appetizing so we sat down at a busy looking place filled with british people. The menu looked horrible. So horrible and un-spanish that we finally left, cursing brits and the way they ruin perfectly good food.

We went back to this smokey little bar we'd seen, hoping that it was better than the british place even though at first glance it did not look promising. In the states it would have been a nasty dive bar. In spain...bars like that are apparently culinary heaven.

Everything was sitting room temperature, but when they warmed up our salt cod, chorizo, & marinated squid they were spectacular. The marinated anchovies were the best I'd ever had, mild & delicious, I could have just had them, bread and wine and been happy. And of course they had padron peppers. With all that salty food we had four glasses of wine, plus coffee, plus an after lunch liquor and the total was less than $40. We were stuffed.

Time to walk it off, through the cute medieval little town, up to the castle ruins on top of the hill. It was so pretty.

The view from the castle went all the way to the border with France practically. And by now it had cleared up and was sunny and warmish.

Funny local teen kids flirting on top of the castle with the catalan flag.

Hot local on the streets with more castle like buildings. By now we were smitten hard with the whole area. It just kept getting better. We picked up a real estate brochure and dreamed over it back on our hotel porch. Its amazing what 1.8 million euros will get you over there. (sea view, swimming pool, large beautiful house with character)

We took another walk along the coast before dinner, just to make sure we had an appetite. Then we settled in at 9:30 on the terrace restaurant for a fantastic night.

I LOVED the blankets. Such a cozy way to eat dinner. The restaurant had live blues music at 10pm. We ordered my first beef carpaccio (amazing!), tuna carpaccio (eh), risotto, razor clams and finally....fois gras on top of a filet mignon. We hung out for hours, ate some dessert and finally went up to the inside lounge where I whooped kyle in a game of chess. I think we went to bed sometime after 1am. I love long dinners.....

By far our favorite place on the entire trip. We saved all the real estate brochures, just so we can dream.

Day 5 - Barcelona

2010-06-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, we did Barcelona.

First back to the Boqueria for breakfast at the most famous place to eat there: Pinotxo. It was very busy and we had no idea what to order, so when the Juan pointed at a deep brown greasy pastry coated in sugar we said "sure!"

Chucho. That is the word for the most fabulous gut bomb breakfast in the world. Imagine a croissant, filled with amazing vanilla custard then deep fried and rolled in sugar. Crisp & deep brown on the outside, flaky tender on the inside (NOT like a donut at all and not exactly like a croissant either) and then perfect homemade pudding/custard. It was amazing.

We wandered through the food stalls some more, we just couldn't help ourselves. Then we walked to the Barri Gotic to explore a bit. We went in the cathedral and went to the courtyard with the geese where they had the gorgeous flower petal mural seen above.
By 11:00 we had made our way over to the Picasso Museum. No lines, just lots of tour guides blocking entire rooms or certain paintings for 15 minutes at a time. I could go into a huge a rant right now about how I hate tour groups, but I'll refrain. (they just cause clogs that the rest of us have to fight our way through) We loved the Picasso museum because it was organized by age and started with some paintings he'd done when he was 12. It was so incredible to see his early work, see the painting that got him a scholarship in Madrid, and watch his work progress towards cubism.

The funny thing is that the museum didn't actually have many good examples of the type of work Picasso is most known for - all the famous ones are in bigger museums. Another highlight was an entire room of paintings where he had copied and played with Velazquez's "Las Meninas" which we had just seen in Madrid. Kyle loved the logical nature of the museum - not just a bunch of random paintings, but ones that told a story.

After the museum, we walked to the park and contemplated our lunch options. After quite a bit of thinking, we finally picked a place up by the sites we wanted to see next - Gaudi's houses in Eixample. First we walked the waterfront from Citadel Park to the Columbus monument. A few subway stops later we were outside of Casa Batillo and the Block of Discord, admiring the funky twisty houses.

We found our restaurant which unfortunately I forget the name of. Kyle threw away the pages I'd ripped out of our guidebook for each town, claiming I wouldn't need them. I reluctantly agreed (I have a rick steves book from 1996 on my bookshelf, but still try to fight my hoarding instinct) and now I can't double check the names of the places we went to. Oh well.

This was probably our favorite meal in Spain. It was super crowded (with locals), but huge and we were able to get a table right away with a waiter who spoke very good english.

Favorites:

Solomillo - a 4 oz piece of filet mignon grilled rare on a piece of toast for only $5

Our first ever grilled razor clams - from then on we ordered them every place we went

grilled wild mushrooms w/ pancetta (seen below with the peppers)

The only spicy padron peppers we got in all of spain

skewers of cheese & bacon wrapped dates (seen below)

The steak & the skewers were so good and cheap, we ordered seconds. It was amazing food.

Next up: Gaudi's Casa Mila. It was beautiful and fun to walk through. We loved the roof "terrace"

Kyle with our next stop, the Sagrada Familia in the background.

At this point, I got bored of taking pictures of funky roof sculptures and decided my real calling in life was to take pictures of other tourists. See my "tourist opus" above. Lucky for you, my camera battery died right as my excitement for my new muse peaked. This was the only "good" shot I got. (also note: we borrowed a camera and didn't realize till we returned that the lense had a smudge on it. So picture quality isn't great, the best photos are from kyle's iphone, like the Sagrada Familia ones below)

We walked a nice long mile or so to the Sagrada Familia and had a great conversation about art. One we've had many times before - what makes art art and an artist an artist? But somehow seeing the art & architecture renewed our interest in the topic. Kyle also brought up this question: Why does art rarely express joy or laughter? Why does it most often address such sullen topics? (feel free to share your thoughts in the comments if you have them!)

Quickly it seemed, we were at the church. We weren't planning to go in it, but once we sat outside and read about it we decided to come back the next morning. Basically the church was started 125 years ago by Gaudi. It was his final project, his grand vision and if you read about the symbolism in it, it is phenomenal. Only one side of it was finished when Gaudi got hit by a trolley and died. It was halted for years during the Spanish Civil war and under Franco, and it still has about 25 years worth of work left to be completed.

I could go on and on, we loved and were so fascinated by the whole project. Kyle even bought a book on Gaudi, and he actually doesn't really even like his work at all. (being the square straight line guy that he is. Of course I have always loved Gaudi since my first brief visit to Barcelona 13 years ago - being the chaotic whimsical creator that I am) We decided the entrance fee was worth paying since it helped build the church and vowed to come back in the morning.

The "Passion" side of the church with sculptures done in the 80's/90's

The "Nativity" side of the church, done when Gaudi was alive in the early 1900s.

We walked another couple miles back to our hotel, running into yet another closed street with a huge mass of protesters. (government workers this time) After a rest, we headed out for dinner in a taxi at 9pm. It was to be our one "fancy" dinner in Spain. We ate well all the other times, because for us, food is a huge part of our trip. (in case you haven't noticed) But this one time, I wanted to try fine dining in Spain, especially getting a chance to try the catalan "experimental" style food that originated with El Bulli up the coast. The chef there, Ferran Adria, does "molecular gastronomy" and has impacted cuisine world wide with his creations. (if you've ever had a savory "foam" on your food, you can thank him)

Supposedly the chef at the restaurant we were going to, Gelonch, worked at El Bulli before opening his own restaurant. His tasting menu was also considerably cheaper than many that we looked at, plus someone on chow.com raved about it. So we went.

It was fun. Not our favorite meal in spain, but worth the experience in my book. Our starter were these crisps with a bunch of flavored powders on them - olive, tomato, a couple cheeses, oregano. When you took a bite, it tasted like a pizza.

Next up was mussle pate w/ a sesame crisp. It arrived looking like this:

You got to squeeze the pate out onto your crisp and it was fun to do it all decoratively.

My favorite menu item was this soup. Each color is a different vegetable puree and in the center was a deeply flavorful vegetable broth. But the fun part was that when it arrived there was a glass dome filled with smoke over it. The soup was infused with a nice smokiness and was delicious.

Other favorites were a mille feuille of pork & octopus and dessert of cherry crisp with balsamic ice cream & tufa nut foam, and a pineapple sorbet with candied fennel, bay cream and other stuff I don't remember. I think we both found the meats a little disappointing - the sauces seemed more french style than experimental - deep broth flavors that probably took hours to reduce and the meat was good, but he seemed to take extreme pride in cooking it forever at low temperature to make it succulent. Which for us...well it was hard to really notice when we'd never eaten pork belly before. Tasty, but not quite as exciting as we'd hoped.

So finished our awesome Barcelona day. I LOVE Barcelona. It is probably one of my favorite cities. Catalan cuisine blew us away and there were always about 10 restaurants I wanted to try for each meal. I love Gaudi and the way his style infuses the whole city. I love the old quarters with their winding passages. The tight areas could be creepy, but everything is so clean and nice and actually feels lived in rather than just completely touristy. (but yes, there are lots of tourists). And we didn't even make it to the sandy beaches rimming the town....But we did see a guy ride by on his bike completely nude.

Day 4 - Drive to Barcelona

2010-06-22T20:42:00.001-07:00

Woke up early and headed to the airport to pick up our rental car. Woo hoo! I'd never driven in a foreign country (other than with my parents) before this. And actually I never really drove....but close enough. I certainly worked my tail off navigating! At the pick up counter another couple was trying to get prices on a car for ONE DAY from Madrid to Toulouse France. And they wanted the Mercedes. The price they were quoted was nearly triple the price we paid (via expedia) for a car for a week. Crazy.

On the road, things quickly got relatively flat and boring. Except for the exciting bulls on the hills, as seen above. My favorite part about driving in Spain is the plethora of "rest stops" along the way. Every 2-10 minutes there is a sign for a gas station & restaurant, hotel, etc and they are right on the exit ramp. You can literally exit, get gas or food and then get right back on the freeway. None of the "Dairy Queen at this exit!!!" which is actually 5 miles from I-5 and impossible to find. Loved it.

But then the question became....which of these fifty bazillion rest stop restaurants is going to be good? Some looked great, some looked shady...and you could never get a visual until it was too late to stop.

Finally we saw a cute town in the distance with a historical marker sign and decided to try eating there. 10 minutes later and a drive through an very quiet, very dusty town with no parking spaces, no apparent restaurants and a strong muslim population, we were back on the freeway. For some reason my travels in the middle east kicked in when I saw women with head coverings and I realized I was wearing a strapless tank top. I just couldn't bring myself to get out and try to find something remotely resembling a restaurant when I was dressed like a complete hussy.

Finally we "just picked one" and had a boring bland lunch. Oh well.

So. Wind power. Really? Have you ever seen a wind generator like the one above? Talk about blight on the landscape. They are obnoxiously huge. Ginormous. Not so sure I want 100's of them dotting our landscape, but that would depend on the alternative I guess. (probably better than oil pouring into our oceans?) Just tell me one of them powers and entire town and I'd be fine, but I have a feeling that's not the case. (if you look really close, there are the those "huge" power line poles in the foreground, completely dwarfed by the windmills)

6 hours later, we arrived in Barcelona. Actually more like 7 with lunch, 8 by the time you reckon finding our hotel in rush hour and going the wrong way several times. Luckily we had Kyle's iphone map working, otherwise we may have never found our hotel. Never ever.

For some reason there are no street name signs in Europe. Yes, there are cute little ones plaqued onto the side of buildings, but they are impossible to read when you are driving. (but adorable when you are walking) So I was basically counting intersections to figure out when we needed to turn. Hellish I tell you. But we made it and got our hotel room. A room whose balcony did not lock and had flies. So we got a new room and free cava. Thank you Hotel Regina.

Now I really have to rant. This part of the trip made Kyle and I so incredibly angry. It was the luscious farmers market in Barcelona, the Boqueria. Never in my life have I seen such an abundance of amazing food. Such a selection. Not at Pike's Place, certainly not at the Bellingham farmer's market and maybe, not even at the fabulous San Francisco farmers market.

Look above at that picture. There must be at least 30 different kinds of cured pork products. THIRTY!! If not 50 or 60! And that is just pork - sausages, salames and jamon. Then things got really nasty. First Kyle spotted this below:

But I was much too busy catching my breath and nearly fainting over the amazing scene across the isle:

It was pretty funny, neither of us would even turn to look in the other direction.

Kyle: Oh! Look at all that candy!!!! It's amazing!

Kari: WOW!!!! I've never ever seen like 1/3 of those fruits and there are fresh mushrooms I've never seen and sea worts and all sorts of crazy things I would DIE to cook with!!!! IS THAT A FRESH PORCINI!!!

Kyle: That's like 150 kinds of candy!!!!

Then the seafood...oh the seafood. Nine kinds of shrimp alone. 15-20 types of fish. Razor clams, crabs, cockles, three kinds of squid.... How can they possibly have double or triple the amount of seafood that Pike Place Market does?

It seriously made us sick, especially since we didn't even have a kitchen to take advantage of it. How did America ever get so poor in the selection of foods we have available?

It went on and on. Butchers with every type of animal part. I thought I was doing well looking at 1/2 racks of baby, BABY lamb and tripe, but then I spied the skinned heads with eyeballs still in them and had to quit looking. Ex-vegetarians still do have a few standards. And everything looked so fresh, plump and wonderful. SIGH.

We finally tore ourselves away and walked through the Raval neighborhood that Rick Steves warned us not to visit. It was amazing. When we stumbled upon a street of plump prostitutes, we finally turned back. Once we were safely in the Barrio Gotic, we went to Taller de Tapas (Translated "the Tapas Workshop") and stuffed ourselves silly with delicious goodies. Grilled squid, apple cider braised chorizo, more padron peppers, roasted pepper & eggplant w/ anchovies....

Day 3 - Madrid

2010-06-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

Day three we managed to get up with our alarm at 9:30am. We were hankering for something other than our beloved egg/jamon/cheese sandwiches, so we foolishly decided to try and find this coffee shop we'd heard was good. 30 minutes of walking and searching later, we were back in our hotel ordering the same old. (we even sat down at one random place after we gave up but were ignored for 10 minutes...we just couldn't win)

We walked to the palace again and this time the line was much more reasonable. The inside had lots of fancy things - tapestries, gold leaf, giant crystal chandeliers, walls made of porcelain, embroidered wallpaper, clock collections, thrones, etc. It was fun to see it all. Then we went into the armory and wow, kyle stared at the armor (and swords) for ever and ever and ever.

Once I dragged Kyle out of the armory, we went to a restaurant in the nearby park, with an amazing view of the palace and the silly tourists wandering about. We watched in horror as one well endowed 20-something girl had her friends take a picture of her in front of every bush, every tree, every statue....often leaving her purse sitting 10 feet away all by itself. They must have taken 50 pictures of her in the park while we watched, some alone, some with her friends...it was ridiculous - but memorable. I only wish I'd thought to take her picture too.
We had our veggies for lunch - simple grilled ones with a nice slice of melty goat cheese for kyle and a tuna/egg/olive/tomato salad for me.

After lunch we ambled to the Prado. We decided to get the audioguides since we got in for free. It is a huge museum, but on the back of our program they listed a bunch of paintings as the "masters" so we just sort of wandered and made sure we saw those ones.

It was the perfect way to not get overwhelmed and the audioguide was a huge help to both of us. The highlight was seeing Las Meninas by Velazquez - often referred to as the best painting EVER. Crazy.
Worn out, we wandered into Retiro Park for a bit and sat down. These old guys were playing a game in the walkway where they threw on old chunk of slate tile at a coke can. That's it. Like Bocce Ball on a budget.

Walked back to freshen at our hotel before dinner and oh! Surprise! Plaza del Sol had once again erupted into chaotic crowds - this time apparently a Corpus Christi parade that was blocking the main thoroughfare and taking up the entire plaza.

Somehow we fought our way through the madness and made it to the restaurant we had decided to try. This one was described as "traditional simple home style Madrid cooking". Most restaurants in Spain are not even open Sunday night, usually people do a huge lunch out that day and a light dinner at home. So the place was mostly empty. I had read that their pigeon stew was good and since we had never had pigeon I sort of wanted to try it. The stew was gone, but they had "pickled" pigeon. hmmmm....We ordered it and some lamb dish from the daily specials menu that the waiter recommended. (one of the first phrases I memorized was "que recomiendo?")

The lamb was spectacular, the pigeon horrendous. The best part was that it was an entire leg of baby lamb, complete with hoof as seen below.

Kyle love loved the lamb and I had been the one rooting for the pigeon so I ate mostly pigeon that night. (voluntarily and yes, kyle did share) It was definitely edible - just bony, mealy & dry. The sauce was a fine vinegar sauce, but even it couldn't really help the dry pigeon. Oh, and it was cold.

We went to bed a bit earlier so we'd be fresh to drive to Barcelona in the morning. Farewell Madrid!

Spain - Day 2

2010-06-20T21:47:00.001-07:00

After staying up till midnight our first night in Spain, we managed to sleep in the next morning till 11:30pm. (Kyle set the alarm for PM rather than AM). We had a quick breakfast in our hotel restaurant of cafe con leche, fresh squeezed orange juice and a little toasted sandwich of egg, jamon & cheese, we headed out for the palace.

On the way there we got distracted by a sign on the El Cortes Ingles department store that said "gourmet grocery" and spent a fun 30 minutes ogling everything from entire legs of jamon to isles stuffed with every canned seafood product imaginable. I even found a bottle of our favorite wine that Haggens claims is "the number one table wine in Spain". Sure enough, it was there, but couldn't tell how many people bought it.

The palace had a huge line in the sun (it was blissfully hot & sunny) so we decided to try the Reine Sofia art museum first. We wandered through a couple new neighborhoods and found some sort of "bollywood" street party with lots of fried Indian goodies.

The funny thing about Reine Sofia is that I can hardly remember anything in it other than Picasso's Guernica, which is what we came to see. The museum was free Saturday afternoon & Sunday so it was nice to be able to pop in and not feel obligated to wander for hours getting our money's worth. We did look around, but I've wanted to see Guernica for years so it was definitely a highlight of the trip. Best of all, it was just as magnificent as I'd hoped.

We read our guidebook descriptions, the museum descriptions and really enjoyed seeing it. We mused over the symbolism of the horse (did it represent old methods of war vs. modern?) and only later at the picasso museum did we read that picasso used the horse as seen through the lens of bullfighting - the passive bystander who gets gored by the bull even though its not his fight. He gets dragged into it by others. I couldn't believe we hadn't read that anywhere while we were looking at the painting, but oh well.

When I finish all the museum posts, you might think kyle and I are major art connoisseurs, but let me assure you we aren't. Both of us dropped out of art history courses in college, but I do enjoy art and Kyle really surprised me in how much he enjoyed some of the museums too.

By now it was too late to do the palace, we decided to have gelato instead. Then we wandered some more, I got us lost and finally we made it back to plaza del sol which looked like this:

On friday we'd seen them wiring speakers to the lights in the plaza and it seemed like every night something was going on, people yelling through the speakers...this night is was some sort of anti-Israel demonstration (or pro palestinian?). Amazingly our room was pretty quiet, even being above the restaurant on the 2nd floor. I woke up a few times to people outside yelling at 4am, but generally it wasn't too bad.

By 9pm, we were back down on Cava Baja looking for tapas. We stopped first at another basque style tapas place that was crowded already where you just point to bread topped with yummy stuff. We got a raw salmon one that sort of freaked me out later (its all sitting at room temperature), but most memorable was the scrambled egg & gulla - baby eels. It was actually quite delicious, the eels had almost no taste. We saw jars of them in all the stores, so they weren't fresh and who knows how they were actually cooked.

Next we headed to Tempranillo wine bar where we managed to score a table. (it was packed) I actually don't even remember what we ate because the next place was so much better....(or because my memory is getting horrible!)

Our last stop of the night was a place next door to Tximiri called "El Bu". We ordered Padron peppers for the first time. These things are amazing, one of our favorite foods that almost every bar has and we ordered it almost every day we were there. Little peppers, fried in oil, sprinkled with lots of course salt. Supposedly 1 in 10 is jalepeno hot, the rest are mild, but we only had one place that gave us spicy ones, the rest were mild & sweet. So good and so much better than french fries.

On the right of the padron plate is our very favorite thing in Spain. It was a piece of bread (everything comes on bread) with pork cutlets lightly pan fried and slices of foie gras on top of them. It was mind blowingly good, especially with the sweet padron peppers. We've had foie a couple times in the states, but its always so fancy...in Spain it was cheaper and usually on the bar menus at least a couple different ways. We tried to order it whenever we could.

Finally we headed home and got lost again. A policeman turned us around towards our hotel because we were walking in the exact opposite direction. I think we went to bed around 1 or 2am that night.

Spain - Day 1

2010-06-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

We just spent the last 12 days in Spain...this may come as a shock to some of you since I do not advertise trips in the public web-o-sphere ahead of time.

This trip was weird. First, we knew we wanted a vacation. On the one hand, Kyle travels overseas 2-3 times a year and it feels like I am always the one sitting at home alone, missing out on all the fun. On the other hand, so many people we know are getting pay cuts, out of work or just struggling and I felt spoiled rotten (guilty) planning a vacation just two years after we went to Italy. Plus I actually felt more guilty leaving the kids this time than I did when Annika was only 13 months old.

But...we had a specific amount of money we'd set aside for travel and it was enough for a trip. So we decided to go for it.

First we thought of going to Chile so Kyle could attend a bike race there. That plan got canned, and good thing - a huge earthquake happened EXACTLY when we had thought to be there. Instead we somehow sort of decided on Spain, but then the whole Iceland volcano thing happened just 1 1/2 months before we wanted to go. The idea of being stranded in Europe away from the kids was really frightening. Plane tickets were about triple what they'd been to Madrid last summer. So much uncertainty and indecision.

About 4 weeks before the trip we finally jumped and bought plane tickets. Then Annika got dreadfully sick for almost an entire week - we missed our anniversary weekend in Seattle and now I had 3 weeks to plan a twelve day trip to Spain. Luckily I read a bunch of guidebooks while lounging with Annika and was able to get some of it ironed out.

Some of this explains why I've been missing from blogland for the last 1 1/2 months. I tend to ahem...obsess...about trip planning, wanting to get perfect hotels for cheap, every night, find perfect restaurants for each night and discover perfect untouristy villages to visit. All that takes so much time.

ANYWAYS. June 4th, we got up at 4:30am and drove to the airport. Finally.

If arriving in rome two years ago was like slowly turning the pages of a story as the city revealed itself to us (we rode an above ground train and then walked a mile to our hotel in the center of the city), arriving in Madrid was like suddenly emerging from a birth canal into chaotic world. From the airport, we hopped on the Subway for 30 minutes, wandering dark tunnels like moles, changing trains often until we climbed up the stairs, blinking in the sun and were suddenly smack dab in the busiest plaza in the very center of Madrid - Plaza de Sol.

All I could think was "what on earth am I doing here?" We found our hotel on the plaza (hotel europa, loved it), dumped our bags, grabbed a quick breakfast in the hotel restaurant and set off wandering...blissfully with no maps in hand, no agenda. Probably kyle's favorite part of the trip as I managed to keep my map in my purse for 20 whole minutes. And I only looked at it a couple times during our walk.

The first thing I noticed was how amazing the shopping was by our hotel. I could have spent an entire day or more just shopping for clothes. If only we'd had the time.

By early afternoon we crashed for a nice 5 hour nap in our hotel. We woke up very refreshed and headed out again to explore and find dinner. We wandered into the market near Plaza Mayor and had a relatively expensive cold octopus & mussle salad. Then we went over to the palace and went in the chapel next to it. It was beautiful.

Finally it was near dinner time (8pm) so we headed down Cava Baja to a place I'd read was one of the best for Tapas - Tximiri.

We sat down on stools at the bar to order and I chose one of the things labeled "chef recomendations". The waitress/bar tender women suddenly started jabbering quickly in spanish and we had no idea what she was saying, except that they didn't have the
special anymore. Amazingly, the women next to us suddenly goes "She is describing the solomillo to you and it sounds delicious". We ordered it (it was delicious - filet of beef with some different sauces drizzled on it) and found out the couple next to us were a canadian & spanish couple. She had moved to spain with him a few years ago and we had a lot of fun asking them questions and getting more restaurant recomendations.

After some tortilla pattata and a few other things I forget at Tximiri, we wandered back to our hotel and had a drink in the hotel restaurant in the plaza with some anchovy olives (yum!). Finally, craving something sweet, we went back down a couple blocks to the churro & chocolate place. We fell into bed around midnight, proud that we'd actually stayed up so late and enjoyed our evening.

Mom

2010-05-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

My mom is amazing. Other people worry about being "better" parents than their own, I actually worry sometimes about living up to the amazing, loving, self sacrificing example that mine showed me.

I have so many treasured memories of my moms devotion. Countless hours helping me clean horse stalls, running around catering to my whims while I stressed out and got super cranky at horse shows, nursing me back to health when I got a terrible flu in college, graciously inviting all our friends into her house whenever we wanted (and fully enjoying us being there) and my wedding...I remember just laying in bed some nights running over wedding details and suddenly being in complete awe that I had such awesome parents helping me put it together. I always felt loved beyond belief, my entire life and I am so incredibly grateful for that gift.

My mom loves children. When me and my brother were both in college, she went to work at a daycare because she missed being around kids. She has amazing patience and joy with Saben and Annika that constantly reminds me to treasure these times with them. You can tell she is doing exactly that, every week that she is here. My favorite thing she ever said about the kids was when someone asked her "if you could go on a trip with anyone besides your husband, who would it be?" She chose Saben, who was only 3 at the time.

After mom quit working at the daycare, she started picking up volunteer "jobs" all over town. Food bank volunteer, language tutor, church librarian, MOPS mentor mom, discipleship group teacher and I am sure many more I am forgetting. She comes up almost weekly to help with the kids while I get my grocery shopping done. My mom has a gift for showing God's love to others through service and it is beautiful.

I admire my mom's faith in God and the way it plays out in her life. She has this knack for striking a balance between strong principals and enormous grace and generosity to those around her. I only hope to raise my children and show them love the way she did me. Happy Mother's Day Mom, I love you!

This little light of mine

2010-05-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

It came to my attention yesterday that Saben's entire preschool class likes to sing:

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine
(repeat)
Don't let Saben blow it out, I'm gonna let it shine

One little girl finally asked "Mommy, why does Saben want to blow out our lights?"

When we named him, "Satan" was the only word I could think of that rhymed with Saben. I figured it wasn't too horrible...I mean, its not a wussy nickname anyways. Ultimately its the most horrible, but not for a kid probably.

In the car I asked Saben about the song.
"Do you think the song is about you blowing out the light?"

He said "No, its about that snake blowing it out"

Wow, sometimes biblical teaching can be so darn complicated. This led to my surely confusing explanation of why a snake represents satan, why light represents goodness & God and why darkness represents sin/evil. And why we are supposed to be like a light and what sort of things can hide it, blow it out, etc. Not to mention what the heck a "bushel" is. Sheesh.

Who knew I'd ever be doing exegesis on a children's song. Who writes these things anyway?

the dirt slide

2010-04-19T21:04:00.001-07:00

So tonite Elizabeth came over for dinner, with her daughter, Annika's best friend Riley. Probably half my blog is going to be devoted to the shenanigans of these two, every time they are together, they are so funny and ridiculous. Both our husbands have been out of town for days and we had that "single parenting" phenomena of being both completely exhausted - but also anxious for company.....so we planned to chat and enjoy thai takeout.

First of all, dinner wasn't exactly peaceful, it seemed like the kids constantly were needing things. Finally the girls decided to go outside and we got some (sort of) peace & quiet to finish our dinner. Luckily I saw Annika through the window right before she jumped into the water filled sandbox with her new dressy sandals on. We told them to stay out and watched from the window. They disappeared and suddenly I heard voices coming from our side yard. UH Oh.

Sure enough both girls were already dirty from playing in this big hole that roxy likes to dig in the dry dirt under our eaves. We took off their clothes, shrugged and then sat down on the back porch to chat while they did their worst. I have this vague memory of one of the kids dragging the slide by, but it didn't really click what they were doing.

Then I heard Annika laughing uproarously and knew we were in big trouble. She only laughs that hard when she's doing something naughty or at least making a huge mess. I thought to myself "what on earth could they possibly do that is worse than us letting them play in a huge dirt pile?"

Suddenly both girls ran back out, completely naked. Ah Ha. Awesome. We went to see what they were doing and it went something like this: Girls go down the slide buck naked, into the dirt hole while saben throws dirt up in the air onto their heads pretending it is an explosion. All the kids had piles of dirt in their hair and were covered head to toe. (literally, although Saben had kept his clothes on)

So we threw them in the tub, showered them off first and it was streams of mud. We filled the tub, but by the time I'd rinsed their heads it was completely dirty. Next thing you know, annika makes up this game where she lick's riley's mouth. "Riley! I lick you!" I HAVE NO IDEA. I just know my daughter kept lunging at her, tongue first and there was more of her uproarous laugther and I had tears I was laughing so hard. Somehow the fact that they were sitting in absolutely FILTHY water made it even funnier.

Finally I drained the tub, refilled it, washed everyone and we called it a night. Phew. I kept thinking I should grab my camera, but really, it wouldn't do it justice.

Saben turns five

2010-04-12T20:50:00.000-07:00

On the morning of Saben's fifth birthday, he woke up to a present in bed with him (which he did not actually open until we got there) and balloons on the floor. Last year we filled his room with balloons while he slept and he kept asking about it this year. It might become a mouth tiring tradition.

Anyways, his present was a box of mini "sugar cereal" boxes. Normally we never ever buy that junk, but him & annika both love the mini boxes and so we relented. He was sweet enough to share them with his sister and mommy taught him the art of using the box as a bowl to hold the cereal and milk.

After breakfast Saben opened the rest of his gifts from us, a marshmallow shooting gun from Annika and the Wall-e movie, star wars lego set & bunk bed tent from mommy & daddy.

Saben immediately set to work building the lego set and had it finished by lunchtime. My heart melted when Saben requested a fresh mozzarella and pesto panini for his birthday lunch. Ahh, a boy after my own heart. (stomach)

Someone dropped off another lego set gift and he had it 1/2 built before his party. I think Saben would have spent the entire day building new lego sets if we hadn't forced him to do another things. He loves that initial first build of a new kit.

(sneak peek of our new office too!)

Saben had specifically been asking for a birthday pinata, so we had one, filled with candy, markers & lego pieces. As usual, mommy crafted an absolutely gorgeous cake, just perfect for the occasion.

Then the kids arrived....we invited 12 five year old boys to the party and I think ten of them were able to come. YIKES. When they arrived, there was a huge pile of legos set out and they went to work building. Most of the boys participated and spent about 30 minutes building.

Then it was cake time...

Then pinata. Let me tell you, they make these things tough. And nothing is scarier than ten five year old boys hopped up on sugar, swinging a baseball bat inside your house. Everyone got a couple turns, to no avail, so eventually I just ripped a hole and started shaking the goodies everywhere.

In a crazy Lord of the Flies moment, the boys all pounced on the empty pinata at the end and ripped it completely to shreds. Then it was gift time....

Then it was....uh oh, that was all I had planned and we still had 30 minutes left!!! I quickly improvised a game of balloon volleyball that was fun for all of 5 (10?) minutes. Two of the boys kept hitting kyle (HARD) and all of the boys were completely pumped with sugar and testosterone (from hitting the bull).

I finally herded them downstairs to our play room because things were starting to get sort of crazy. Saben had gotten a toy (not real) light saber and he was wielding it ferociously. Another boy grabbed his mickey mouse light saber, two more grabbed nerf swords and the rest just started hucking plastic balls at each other. It was mayhem and amazing no one got hurt. Those light sabers are not soft.

For dinner, we talked Saben into going to Shari's, instead of his very favorite restaurant, Dennys. Let me tell you, the Bellingham Denny's is not nearly as nice as the Arlington one I grew up going to and hanging out in until the wee hours of the night. I hate the Bellingham one, it's like a sleazy tavern. Shari's was much nicer, but seriously - expensive! - and we had a great time eating breakfast for dinner.

We love you Saben!

Potty Trained

2010-04-07T12:56:00.001-07:00

I'd like to thank the following people for their help in potty training Annika:

First, Saben - once he exhibited how to go in the little mini potty, she went for the first time in it. He has continually encouraged and begged her to go, so that he could get a treat along with her whenever she was successful. Really, he's been awesome through this whole thing and really really sweet to help her.

Second, Riley - Really, I credit Riley and Saben almost entirely with Annika's potty training success. Breakthroughs 2-5 were all times when she and Riley spent time on the potty (potties) together. Riley's love of going in the pot made it seem much more fun for Annika.

I also must thank Kevin Menard, who was stuck for probably a good 30 minutes babysitting last week, with two little girls who wanted nothing more than to run around with no pants jumping on & off the potty. Especially thankful because when he heard Riley was going in the toilet, he looked aprehensive and asked "what exactly do I have to do with her?" and when he heard she liked to be left alone to go, he was seriously relieved. So much for that, it was a potty party in there. I like to think our girls definitely broke him in.

Grandmas also enouraged her with success and finally, the lure of ice cream was the true winner yesterday when she went "dry" all day to earn a trip to Mallards.

So far today we are also dry all day and even had a number 2 in the toilet. AWESOME.

Basically, I think Annika figured out how to do it a long time ago, but was reluctant, nervous to really go for it. She hates having accidents in her underwear and I think that is what tramatized her. Going cold turkey to let her "learn" from her accidents did not work, she just got scared. Bribing with candy & treats definitely did work, we'll see how hard it is to wean her off that.

She actually is still wearing pull ups and has no desire to put underwear on unless Riley is here wearing hers. (or if she gets to wear Riley's underwear. Seriously.) Encouragement from Saben and also having fun doing it with Riley were definitely turning points for her.

Hurray Annika! We are so proud of you!

March Madness

2010-04-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

March felt like the quickest, busiest month of my life. I'm sure it wasn't, but I wanted to record everything that happened. Lots of fun, lots of hard work and mostly just one thing after another, seemingly endless sometimes.

5th - Friends come with their two kids to visit & spend the night.
6th - Throw a baby shower at our house for Vale, one of my best friends
8th - Annika gets tooth knocked loose
9th - Watch Riley all day while her parents live it up in Vegas & make dinner for someone with a new baby
10th - Annika gets her tooth pulled
11th - Get four new windows installed in our two upstairs bedrooms
12th - My birthday! Have pizza with the kids for dinner, family celebration
13th - Take kids to my parent's house in the morning, spend the day emptying both bedrooms & painting them. Birthday dinner at our favorite restaurant in town - Prospect St. Cafe
14th - realize we bought the wrong color desk for our new office, drive to Ikea in the morning, exchange, then back to my parents house to get the kids & have a family birthday celebration. House is a complete wreck.
15th - 17th - Reorganize & move everything back into our "new" bedroom & office. Set up kids art table, reorganize their gazillions of art supplies, book shelves, etc.
18th - Kyle leaves for Taiwan. Kari gets a cold. Too exhausted to plan anything fun for while he is gone.
19th - Suffer through the most boring weekend ever. Rain, sick, no hubby, cranky kids. Thank goodness for babysitter Vale and book club Saturday night.
23rd - Saben does his "regular" morning sick thing, but is fine by noon. Rescued from insanity by Elizabeth who invites us to dinner.
24th - Kyle returns home after a week.
24th - 26th Prepare for Sabens 5th birthday and the twelve 5 year old boys I've invited over to celebrate.
26th - Saben's Birthday! (more on this soon, I promise!)
27th - Another fun birthday party for Kevin in the evening, house chores, yard work, Kyle biking, etc during the day.
28th - Kari gets 3 hours alone, Saben has another birthday party, Kyle goes biking
29th - Kyle announces he wants our entire "storage area" attic cleaned out as his birthday present.
30th - Kari gets to work sorting through years of accumulated magazines, kids clothes, books, photo albums, linens, clothes, you name it. Spends the rest of the week making trips to drop things off for a garage sale, to friends' houses and the dump to get rid of everything. Elizabeth gets a medal since she babysat the kids 5+ hours during the week so I could get it all done.

By friday the attic is clean, Kari is exhausted and all there is left to do is pack me & the kids for an overnight easter trip to seattle to celebrate Kyle's birthday and Easter. And now its april, so I must quit writing or else my title won't make any sense.

oops

2010-03-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

At the library two weeks ago, Saben comes running up to me with a book. "Look at this amazing explosion mom!". On the cover is a picture of the Hindenburg, exploding and in full flame. I immediately took it from him and flipped through it to make sure there were no gory pictures. It was clean enough for a book about an accident that killed 35 people and I said we could get it.

One thing led to another and as a "consequence", saben did not get to check out any books after all that day. So today, at the library, I went and found the book, checked it out and we read it this afternoon.

It was written 1st person from the perspective of a teen girl and went on & on, describing what it was like to fly on the ship. Super interesting, but we skipped more than 1/2. Then we get to the part where it explodes and I'm choking up...the way they wrote it was super realistic. Then I turn the page and there are burned people pictures! Turns out I accidentally got a similar but different book - one that included some guy with a 1/2 charred face. UGH. Please no nightmares tonite....saben did say it wasn't scary. Apparently a cat chasing mice in Cinderella is terrifying, but burned faces are not.

And it turns out, the 1st person narrator (teen girl) DIES after jumping from the ship. Oh, but first she watches a fellow passenger get smashed by a metal beam and watches a teddy bear melt into her hand. I should have known the Hindenburg isn't exactly 5 year old material, but I was trying so hard to nurture his interest in explosions and "gently" introduce the reality that they hurt people and aren't just "cool". Plan backfire.

Oh well.

I prefer monster trucks jumping over volcanoes

2010-03-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

"A bad guy dropped a bomb on a gas station and it blew up. There was a weapon store next door - actually a skyscraper! And it caught on fire from the explosion. You can see all the weapons, a bow and arrow, a sword, a gun and a whip"

More musings on boys and their obsession with evil, death and destruction to come. Sigh.

Drumroll....

2010-03-17T13:28:00.000-07:00

Kyle gets very emotional over....buying new cars.

Specifically, handing over money for one he doesn't love. He just can't bear to hand money over for something practical like say a.... Honda Pilot.....that he doesn't really like.

However, he only likes about 10% of the cars on the market, and most of the ones he likes are out of our price range or develop expensive electrical issues with age. Or only fit 5. (I really want to be able to take our kids plus their friends places in the next five years)

I could go on and on, but if we ever settle on something to replace our suburban, it will be a miracle.

But him saying "I just get so emotional over buying cars" made me laugh really hard, because I literally have never heard him use that phrase for anything before.

Kari's Blog Contest

2010-03-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend, Kyle uttered the phrase "I just get so emotional about _________"

This is the first time in 10 years of knowing him that I have ever heard him use that phrase or say he gets emotional about something.

Can you guess what makes Kyle emotional? 10 points to anyone who gets it correct.

warning

2010-03-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Warning:
My daughter likes to use the proper word used to describe male anatomy. I would type it here, but I really don't want anyone searching for that word and stumbling upon my blog.

For a long long time, we did not even teach Saben the correct word for fear that he might take to shouting it out at inopportune times. Turns out we had nothing to worry about, he's never been one for those types of shenanigans. His sister on the other hand....she learned the word early (from Saben) and has used it enthusiastically ever since.

The first confusion came because she thought she had one and would talk about it while I changed her diaper. For some reason, that bothered me, so I corrected her, made sure she knew exactly what it was (using saben as a model) and then taught her another playful word for her own bits. (not an anatomically correct word)

Somehow, somewhere along the line, she said the word and we laughed. Because it is sort of funny to hear a two year old girl talking about that sort of thing. Next thing you know, we're at a pizza place and she starts shouting it. I panic and tell her to stop. The more anxious and sterner I get, the LOUDER she shouts the word, laughing the whole time. Over and over. Thank goodness this pizza place is loud, I was to embarrassed to even look around and see if anyone heard her. Kyle was the brilliant one who managed to distract her, I was so freaked out I just kept saying "SHHHHH" to no avail.

Part two of this story is her lavish use of the word for solid bowel movements. Remember the post I did in December about Jingle Poop? So Kyle tells me that if I just join in the fun, it will actually make it less attractive to Saben and he'll stop using potty talk so much. I try it one day, but its pretty weird. Somehow in all this, Annika picks up that saying poop is funny and next thing you know she is singing something she calls the "poopy song" all the time.

The best part is that once she joined in, Saben got super annoyed. Now he tells her all the time "Annika! Potty talk isn't funny!" and he rarely uses it himself anymore unless its just him & his buddies being silly.

The worst part is standing in line at the grocery store with just annika, zoning out, and suddenly realize everyone is staring/giggling at you because your daughter is singing "poopy song, pooooopy song, pooo pooopy song". It'd be one thing if Saben was there and everyone would know it was probably the older brother who taught her. But she's done it several times when its just me & her.

What my days are like

2010-03-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Kari (thinking): I wonder whether or not I should put on a movie so that I can get ready to go out....which one?

Annika (yelling): Mommy! Help! Heeeeeelllllp!

Saben: Look at this rocket I built. It is the fastest one on earth and is made out of very lightweight metal. It has 12 booster engines and two fuel tanks....

Kari (thinking): Saben doesn't like Blues Clues anymore, but at least it is short. Is there something they both like?

Annika: Help..! Help!

Kari: What do you need help with Annika?

Annika: I can't get up the stairs!!! (she is lying on the stairs sort of flopping around)

Saben: This rocket is amazing, it can get to the moon in.....ten seconds! It can carry anything too, like that house out there!

Kari: Wow Saben.

Kari (thinking): Do I have time to write a blog post before I go out? Should I put in Angelina Ballerina instead of Blues Clues? What if I want them to watch something this afternoon instead...do I really want the break now or later?

Annika: MOOOOOOOOOMMMMMY!!! HELP ME!

Kari: Annika, you don't need help up the stairs! Just get up and walk up them!

Saben: What is 10 times 100 mom? That is how fast this rocket can go. It is bigger than anything on the entire earth. It can carry a house or an apartment building or even a truck!

Kari: 10 times 100 is one thousand Saben. Annika! Stop Whining!

Kari (thinking): That's it, I am putting in blues clues before my head explodes. Just 20 minutes, so maybe I can do another one this afternoon.

*Repeat many, many times throughout the day*

Hide and Seek

2010-03-11T20:33:00.000-08:00

Hide and go seek is one of my favorite games to play with the kids. Whenever I am hiding, Saben makes Annika be the one to check all the hiding places. If he thinks I'm in the closet he'll say "annika, go check in the closet" or if its behind a door "Annika, go check behind that door!" He hangs back and watches to see if she finds me.

When the kids find me, I find it impossible not to yell and try to startle them a little, which is why Saben hates being the one to find me. Annika dutifully obeys him and so I jump at her and give a little yell, but she doesn't mind and we laugh together. I just hope I haven't traumatized my son forever.

Find What is Missing

2010-03-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

Can you tell what is missing in these photos compared to the ones of Annika & her friend taken yesterday? (no, the answer is not "her friend Riley")

Maybe now?

If you zoom in, you'll definitely see it.

The story

2010-03-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

On Monday, Annika sort of tumbled off a balance beam while trying to get on it and managed to chip her two top front teeth on the leg of the beam. The dentist was closed, so I thought we'd get in Tuesday...On Tuesday they were full so we went in this morning. I figured they would just examine her & if anything needed to be pulled we'd go back in later.

In the meantime, one tooth started to just barely change color. Uh oh. This morning we went in and got xrays - one tooth was abscessing and had to come out immediately, the other was fine and will just be chipped.

I called Kyle and he came to hold her while it got pulled. (I get nauseous just thinking about being there for it, but I'm sure I could have done it if I'd had to.) She had nitrous, squirmed during the shot, and then was fine for the rest of it. She was upset when I took the gauze out and it felt funny, but after crepes for lunch (with nutella & banana) and a polly pocket shopping spree, she has been doing great.

It's been a very emotional week for me and I'm not sure you ever really understand until you are a mom and your child's smile is changed for the next 4-5 years. I am so thankful its nothing worse and I know its small in the grand scheme of things. But there's still part of me that would rather she'd broken her arm so it would heal & go back to normal. Teeth don't. They are so visible, and now whenever she smiles I'll be reminded that she got hurt and how vulnerable she is.

Or maybe every time she smiles, I'll smile back and be amazed at my spunky brave girl. Because really....a missing tooth sums up her personality perfectly.

friends, part 2

2010-03-09T16:09:00.000-08:00

Girl time - nail painting

I wanted to get some pictures of annika & her buddy Riley...Once again, actually getting a shot where they both look good was impossible, but at least we got some super funny ones. The quotes are pretty much exactly what I said before taking each picture.

"Stand next to eachother so I can take your picture"

"Annika, put your arm around Riley"

"Why don't you make silly faces"

"Can you guys smile for the camera?"

Friends, Part 1

2010-03-09T16:05:00.001-08:00

Take a cute picture of four adorable kids? HA HA HA HA! Good luck!
Ok, how about six kids? This is as good as it gets folks.

2 adults, 2 kids? Almost there, if annika would get her hand out of her mouth.

These are the best three out of um...50 pictures I took that day? Well there are a couple more good ones and at least we had a lot of fun!

Homecoming 2010 (or 1994?)

2010-03-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

Inappropriate Birthday Gifts

2010-03-01T08:54:00.000-08:00

So, I am in a store in Portland and I spy this adorable series of books called "Baby be of Use". There is "Baby Fix my Car", "Baby do my Banking" and yes...."Baby make me a Drink". I read a couple of them cover to cover and yes...."Baby make me a Drink", while sort of hilarious, is obviously not one I am going to buy. But I love the idea of "useful" babies, so I decide to get "Baby Make Me Breakfast" for Hailey's first birthday. But I didn't read the whole thing, just the first couple pages to get the gist.

When I get home, I pull it out to show it to Kyle. Each page has the ingredients for a breakfast with a + sign in between them. So Grapefruit + cherry = 1/2 a grapefruit for breakfast. Then I get to the 2nd to last page and see a bottle of Aspirin + a glass of water and I am thinking "whhhhhhaat???"

Then I get to the last page and it shows breakfast laid out on the table. It says "Now scram baby, Mommy's hung". So apparently baby was making breakfast because mommy was too hungover to do it. Oops. I gave it to Shauna anyways. Oh well.

Moral: Read the ENTIRE book before you buy it, especially if there's already some questionable books in the same series.

Day at the beach

2010-02-24T15:50:00.001-08:00

Princess

2010-02-23T16:32:00.000-08:00

Guard

2010-02-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

January showers bring January Flowers

2010-02-04T10:02:00.000-08:00

Crocus sieberi - 'bowles white'

Every year, my spring flowers bring me so much joy, I can't help but beat all my friends over the head with them. Visitors are dragged out back to smell my sarcococa, admire the iris and I can never understand why they are not as giddy as I am.

I LOVE seeing things bloom in January and I am so thankful to live in a climate where this is possible. Here's a few of my favorites with some links so that you can go buy some winter cheer too. All of these start blooming in aproximately January, although in a really cold year it might be February. Follow them up with later spring crocus, muscari, winter daphne....I'll save those for a later post or email me if you are interested.

Iris Histroides 'George'

Early spring bulbs are the best thing ever. Just stick them in the ground in the fall and then wait for January. They'll last for years & years with almost zero maintenece, assuming you have somewhat decent soil. Mine is rather clay like, but both the iris & crocus have done just fine. (we did till in lots of compost first, but its still rather mucky wet soil in the winter)

Do yourself a favor and click on one of the bulb links under the pictures. These are the ones that bloom earliest in my garden. You can't buy these now, but go sign up for Brent & Becky's free catalog so it will arrive next fall and remind you to order some bulbs.

I also have Iris Reticulata 'Harmony' blooming right now, it is about a week or two later than'George', which has been going for weeks. Dry years like this are the best, the flowers last a long long time. During rainy years, they tend to dissinegrate quickly, but still you have a handful blooming each day for a couple weeks.

Crocus Ancyrensis 'golden bunch'

By the way, these particular crocus & iris that I put up pictures for, are the earliest available and it is unlikely that you will find them at a nursery. You definitely won't see them in the Lowe's bins. Actually I've seen them more and more at nurseries, but I think its easier to just order a bunch online all at once where you have a really good selection.

Hellebores Hybrid

Now that you have your bulbs, go hit the nursery, right now. My Hellebores always start poking up right after Christmas and it is so fun to watch them unfold to full bloom by the end of January. Yes, they are $12-$30 a pop, but stick them in the right spot and they are worth every penny with their cheerful nodding heads bobbing in the rain on a gray january day. They look gorgeous in a little bud vase on the windowsill too.

Hamamelis Intermedia - 'Arnold's Promise'

This one might be a bit overkill if you have a small yard, but a huge tree covered with brilliant yellow flowers - AND BEES! in January is amazing. Really, it is a small tree, reaching 12-15 feet tall & wide, but its certainly no shrub. If you love winter flowers, this one is great, and it even has gorgeous fall leaves too. It has a scent that fills our yard, but it is an odd scent. Not unpleasant, it reminds me of the old carbon copy papers and I've heard people describe it as "astringent".

Sarcococa

This plant looks incredibley boring, but nothing compares to the sweet vanilla fragrance of sarcococa in the dead of winter. It loves dry shade & is evergreen - a very rare combination of traits in a plant - and is perfect under the eaves near a doorway. It sits unnoticed, evergreen foliage discretely hiding your foundation, until a warm day in January when its perfume wafts around the yard.

That's all for now, my daughter just pooped.

random tidbits

2010-01-31T11:17:00.000-08:00

Annika's Yogurt

Annika loves going grocery shopping with me because I usually let her get one small yoplait yogurt with sugar instead of our normal unsweetened plain kind. Unfortunately she's gotten so accustomed to it, she will go around the entire store yelling, even shrieking, "YOGURT!! YOGURT MOMMY!" If she is very naughty about it, we don't buy one, or sometimes she doesn't get to eat it. And sometimes, she actually forgets about it by the time we get home.

Annika also loves having yogurt, granola and milk for breakfast. That's yogurt at the bottom of the bowl, topped with granola, and then filled with milk. Very odd, but she insists on milk too.

Saben's Rockets

Saben still builds rockets all the time from things he finds around the house. Friday he found a plastic firework nose cone on the sidewalk and within 15 minutes of getting home, he had grabbed a toilet paper tube and turned it into a rocket. That part is all nice & fine, the problems arise because he really, really wants to launch his homemade rockets.

We have talked so many times about why you can't just light a homemade rocket on fire and expect it to go into the air. I explained the concept of gun powder and then had to explain why I was not going to buy my almost five year old a supply of it to experiment with. When he found the nose cone outside he kept saying "I think there is just a little gun powder in it mommy!" and he even made his rocket complete with a purple paper fuse to light.

That night, he was anxious to light his rocket, and I had to repeatedly explain that if we lit it on fire, it would just burn and melt. Finally it sank in and he started crying "I just want to build a rocket that flies mommy!" Heartbreaking sobs....So I blurted out "maybe tomorrow we can go buy you a new model rocket". Whoops.

When we got to the store, he didn't want the packaged ones, he wanted the tubes, nose cones, etc, all separate so he could design it himself. Sigh. We talked him into a kit, but when they went to build it, it is just so hard for him to do any of it. Straight lines? Cement glue? Measurements? Everything perfectly aligned? He does much better with packing tape & toilet paper rolls.

January Recap

2010-01-24T20:51:00.001-08:00

Wow, it feels like it took most of January to catch up on the things we let "slide" during December while we were busy being festive. And December was super busy too. We drove all over Puget Sound for Christmas, then a week later, we hosted a New Years party, drove down to Seattle for our nephew's first birthday and then hosted a 30 year old birthday party, all in three days.

Part of January we just laid low and tried to get a better routine to handle Annika's 2 1/2 year old case of the crazies. It seems to be working, she has less bladder anxiety unless she is in the pool or tub when the urge hits. She is still waking up at night a lot, but generally it only takes me 5 minutes to get her back to sleep. Can't really figure out how often she needs naps, but skipping them now & then seems to work best.

Tonite I played soccer and Saben was there watching with his friend Simon. "Watching" is a bit generous, actually they were scurrying around doing boy things like searching for aliens & finding treasures. Probably some shooting was involved too. Its an indoor field and at the end of the game, Saben ran out with Simon to kick the ball around. I couldn't stop grinning, he was so adorable, little legs going as fast as they could, hair bouncing around. (he really needs it cut).

I was struck by how old and young he is at the same time. He's seemed so old lately when we are doing our normal day to day things. He's helpful, articulate, curious and constantly talking. CONSTANTLY. He has made a good friend at preschool. Unfortunately this friend loves to use "potty language" and has really enforced Saben's love of words like "underwear" and honed his ability to make realistic body function noises with his mouth. ("mom, when I make this sound, it is like a log coming out of my mouth!" Sorry Grandmas.)

Its hard when your kids start laughing and loving things that you don't think are remotely funny or interesting. It is so tempting to sneer at him when he makes yet another plllllbbbbb noise, hoping that his audience's stony silence will convince him its not actually a funny thing to do. But then I start to feel bad, like I am not supporting my son. Who wants a mom who constantly sneers at the things he thinks are funny? Is the message I'm sending more like "mom doesn't like me"? So I'm working on finding that balance.

Anyways, my point was that he seems so old. Then I see him running across the gigantic soccer field and he's just a little nugget again, so cute that I want to go grab him. He still has a bit of the baby fat left in his face and it will soon be gone. Five years old looms in just a couple months.

And Annika. 2 1/2 has been a trial, but maybe it always is. I keep thinking that we only have 6 more months of having a baby in the family and I try to savor it. The last bits of teaching language, numbers, colors....days of constant time outs, whining, screaming fits. Pretty soon that will all be over. HA! But still, a phase is definitely nearing its end. 3 and 5 are SO OLD.

Its been fun watching Annika start to interact with her friends. She has started to really engage younger cousins & Ayda. (all around a year old) We found some friends who have a daughter that is very similar to Annika in age and temperment and they have just started to truly play together. Secretly when they get in fights, we just want to stand back and see who wins...because they are both so crazy like that. But last night they were both playing with dolls and making them talk and it was the most adorable thing ever. (until I discovered the dolls were also disassembling our humidifier...but I digress)

At our new years eve party (or was it the birthday party?) the girls were sitting at the table and one sort of yelled or screamed. Then the other one yelled and they kept going back and forth, louder and louder till they were both just screaming. Her parents & Kyle & I were laughing hysterically, and couldn't even bring ourselves to intervene. But for some reason all the other guests looked panicky.... MAKE THEM STOP!

Hopefully I'll have the energy to get some pictures up this week. We've got some great ones of annika & saben dressed in princess dresses, but saben combines his with dress-up SWAT gear and swords and calls himself a guard. Soooo funny.

Update

2010-01-12T20:01:00.000-08:00

Things have calmed down this week. Annika no longer cries when she pees, but still immediately asks to be changed. She keeps having "phantom poo" - she claims she's poo'd, but alas, there is but an empty diaper. We have asked over and over if it hurts when she pees and she keeps saying no...but I have seriously considered taking her to the doctor anyways, just because things have been so odd.

For now, we are praising each an every bowel movement and not pushing potty training at all. It seems to be working, if by "working" you mean returning back to normal. We will return to the "potty training" story in approximately 4-5 months, so for now you are off the hook. Unless Annika initiates it sooner....

The funniest thing happened to me today. I was standing at the park with two other moms when this little girl I've never seen before (4? 5?) comes up and taps my leg to get my attention. I look down and she solemnly informs me "I have a bladder infection". I have never worked harder to stifle laughter in my life. I couldn't even respond for about 30 seconds. Thank goodness the other moms didn't actually hear what she said, because I would have definitely laughed in her face if they had started giggling.

"oh, that's too bad" I managed to say. "Did the doctor give you medicine for it?" The girl never even cracked a smile. She nodded seriously and explained something about the pills she was taking and then walked off. I felt lightheaded from laughter containment.

2010-01-07T20:35:00.001-08:00

It's official, it appears that Annika is now scared to pee. On the toilet, in her diaper, anywhere.

Tonight before her bath she says "I stopped it!" all proud of herself. I told her to go ahead and go, but she refused & hopped in the tub. One minute later she was hopping back out screaming for a diaper. Refused adamantly to sit on the toilet. Put the diaper on and she still didn't go, finally got back in the tub. REPEAT TWICE before finally filling her diaper to the brim - she must have been holding it for hours.

Two other times today she suddenly freaked out - crying, and even running away - for no apparent reason. I am pretty sure now that she peed each of those times.

I'm also pretty sure she's waking at night whenever she pees?? Still no idea about the hives, they did go away temporarily this evening with Benadryl though. (they vaguely reappeared when she started freaking out before her bath)

Awesome.

My little enigma

2010-01-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

So potty trainnig. Yikes.

I think I need to document this because people always ask for potty training assistance and I've got a weird one this time. I don't want to forget the details later, especially because she broke out in hives today and I'm trying to figure out if its from the stress of potty training....But seriously, BORING potty training post, please don't read it unless you are neck deep in it yourself.

Day 1 (Monday)

Annika is dry for hours in her underwear at home and kept going while we were out in public & she's wearing a diaper. Finally in the evening she goes a teeny bit, stops it and then we put her on the potty and she goes. BUT, she is sort of crying & whimpering the whole time, definitely anxious about the whole thing. All of us cheer, make a fuss, give her a few m&ms and then continue with our evening.

Day 2 (Tuesday)

Same thing, Annika keeps going in her diaper when we put it on to take Saben to preschool, pick him up, etc. She wears underwear at home, stays dry and practices sitting on the potty. Starts saying she doesn't want to go pee on the potty.
In the evening, same thing as the day before, we put the underwear on and finally after 3+ hours, after dinner, she starts, stops, sits on the potty and goes. Once again, she is in tears, whining and not really very happy about it. We cheer, give her & Saben chocolate cookies and web chat with grandma & grandpa to share the news. Everytime we mention it, she hides down in chair, like she is embarrassed.
That night annika doesn't fall asleep until after 9pm. She is very restless and I decide to skip her nap the next day. She wakes up at 3 am for the first time in 5 days, but goes back down easily.

Day 3 (Wednesday)

Decide to not have Annika sit on the potty constantly today because the last two times she went, she initiated it herself. Sitting needlessly on the potty seemed to sort of stress her out because she couldn't go.
Plan to stay home most of the day & practice more. Watch Potty Elmo in the morning. Keep telling Annika to stay upstairs (off of the new carpet) while in her underwear, but at some point she follows Saben down while I am busy and she pees all over our new carpet. (within two minutes of going down, no warning at all this time) I am super frustrated that she disobeyed and went downstairs and probably let some anger show. Try to get her to sit on the potty while I clean it up, but she refuses, I get even more frustrated. Still, only a couple harsher statements, primarily related to her refusal to do what I ask.
Two hours later, Annika pees & poops in her underwear with no warning. Handle it well this time, but once again she refuses to sit on the potty while I get it cleaned up. Still, not a huge deal, clean, try to be encouraging to her. Decide letting her initiate sitting on the toilet may not be the best strategy after all. Puzzled by her lack of awareness that she seemed to have the previous to days.
From now on Anika doesn't want to sit on the potty, says she doesn't want to pee in it. We practice sitting on it when I am pretty sure she doesn't have to go and she is fine if we read stories or do something fun.
Go out in a pull-up, when she pees, she starts crying and looks scared - just like when she was on the potty. She seems to think it is going to "fall out" like when she has underwear on.
Skip Annika's nap and she begs for a nap at 3:30pm. (this has only happened once or twice before) I let her go to sleep, she crashes and sleeps till 4:30pm. Wake her up and carry her upstairs, she falls asleep in my arms for another 20 minutes. She is very tired, even though she's gotten very good sleep for the last 4 days other than being awake late the night before.
Wears a pull-up the rest of the night & we don't push going in the potty
Annika wakes up TWICE in the night. She hasn't done this for over a week and never did it before this December.

Day 4

Annika wakes up with HIVES all over her body. She has never ever had hives before. They stick around most of the morning, disappear and then reappear when she gets upset. She hasn't eaten anything new or had new lotions...nothing.

WHAT ON EARTH???? Is it related to her anxiety over potty training? Is the night waking related? Why did I even think to potty train her now when she had just gotten over the sleep issues from a couple weeks ago? Is it better to quit or just keep pushing? Does it even have anything to do with potty training, or are the sleeping & hives related to something else? Could she be sick? Is it my fault???? Ha ha. ha.

ARGH.

Annika's first pee

2010-01-04T21:23:00.000-08:00

This evening, Annika peed in her potty for the first time. Hurray!

Her pattern whenever we try is this: Runs around in underwear for an hour or more, suddenly gets super worried and asks to put a diaper on - this lets me know she needs to go. Sits on potty for 20 minutes with me, I finally give up and let her run around again. Annika pees on the floor withing 3-5 minutes.

Tonite I held out forever - like 30 minutes after I could tell she needed to go. We read stories, sang, played barbie computer games, played "stick your hand in a cup of warm water" and drank ice water. Finally, with some M&M bribing, she went. Even Saben was excited and cheered her on.

Wish us luck tomorrow, we will probably try to spend most of the day w/o a diaper. Yikes!

christmas season 2009

2009-12-24T21:14:00.000-08:00

My favorite memories this year....

Saben's incessant, yet trusting questions about Santa, our elf Mary, and his love for Rudolph
Both kids getting attached to Christmas songs - Annika loves Jingle Bells and The Little Drummer Boy (aka rum pa dum dum) and Saben loves Rudolph. In the car, it was an eternal war over which songs we would listen too first.
Saben being an Angel in his school Christmas pageant. (his first christmas program ever!) He was the only boy angel, but he picked it out himself and didn't seem to mind. (I reminded him that all the angels the bible mentions were male)
Annika deciding to quit sleeping one week before Christmas. We do have that solved now, I am happy to report. It took some "tough love" but it worked! She now stays in bed and goes to sleep in just 10-20 minutes. (and it only took 3 days once we had a plan/strategy) As soon as we used our plan, she quit waking at night too. Unfortunately we let her drop her nap, which has been tough on mommy and is starting to show in her too.
Annika getting completely giddy off of Puppy Chow that we ate right before the Christmas eve service. She didn't hold still for more than 5 seconds for the entire thing and we were sitting right at the front edge of a balcony so I just sat making sure she didn't drop chapstick or her candle on the people below us. Or start screaming. If the service was an 8 on a ten point scale of insanity, dinner was a 9....but we got her asleep before she hit 10. Hurray!
A new car. We finally replaced our aging (not currently running) Honda yesterday, with a 2001 Mercedes E55 AMG. (after a two hour drive to Everett and back with the kids. Blech.) It is speedy. I drove it this morning for the first time and then Kyle spent most of our Christmas Eve "Look at Christmas Lights Drive" burning out at all the stop signs. "Look at those pretty lights kids!! Is that a Santa statue?!" "SCREEEEEEEEEEEECHHHH" (neighbors shudder at the psycho driving outside)

Lots more I'm sure I'm forgetting, but goodnight and Merry Christmas!!

2009-12-21T09:42:00.000-08:00

Saben: "Daddy, what would you wish for if you were at a wishing well?"
Kyle: "Probably world peace or and end to poverty"
Silence....
Saben: "But what about legos?"

sleep drama

2009-12-18T09:01:00.001-08:00

Annika has always been such an odd sleeper. The first three months of her life were hard, she would fall asleep, go into her crib and then wake up about 3-5 minutes after I left. Over and over and over. 2-3 hours worth some nights.

Then suddenly she started sleeping perfect and became the easiest child ever to get to sleep. I would lay her down in the crib awake and she'd just doze off, all on her own.
She had her set backs here & there, but we even transitioned her effortlessly to a bed.

The last few months since her & saben moved to their new bedroom, she's been sort of weird. You know, the whole bee thing. And she's always wanted very specific things in bed with her. I always sort of knew that if we didn't give them to her, she'd probably stay awake fighting us on it until midnight. But as long as you followed her special routine, she'd eventually settle in and go to sleep.

Week by week lately, things have gotten a bit trickier. More crying, a bit more screaming, more threats, discipline, etc. She'd stay in bed crying and when I went back in she'd ask for one last thing and then go to sleep. A few times she ran out of bed, we disciplined her and then she would stay in bed.

Then on Tuesday, nothing worked. As soon as we left the room she jumped out of bed screaming and crying and running to the door. Over and over and over. That night we used force because it was so new...holding her down in bed, putting her back in, holding the door shut so she couldn't escape the room. It was horrible. Then at 2am it happened all over again and I was awake for 2.5 hours. She finally fell asleep in the pack & play in our living room.

Wednesday, I took the "day off" to spend LOTS of time with her, gave her lots of choices all day and was very intentional about everything we did. At bedtime I would say "can I leave and come back to check on you in 2 minutes?" and it worked pretty well. She generally fell asleep in 10-15 minutes of that. She was up at 2am again, but only for 10 minutes or so.

Last night, it quit working. She would agree to us leaving and then freak out as soon as we were out of sight. (jump out of bed, run for the door, crying) She wanted to sleep in the pack & play again, so we moved it to the bedroom. We left her in there for 20 minutes at a time and she would be tossing & turning and never fell asleep. Eventually she'd start crying and we'd have to go back in. Finally at 9:45 I sat on the floor next to her for about 15 minutes and she fell asleep.

4am - awake again, had to sit on the floor until she fell asleep and did this twice because she woke up when I left the first time. Before this all started, she would wake up in the middle of the night maybe twice a week. Usually when she didn't eat enough dinner and would be starving at 4am. Six months ago, she NEVER woke up in the middle of the night.

So. Tonight. No sugar today, no nap, lots of exercise. We are moving her bed to the other room so she doesn't disturb Saben anymore. We will play classical music. I am not sure if I will sit in her room again, or try just putting her back in bed 100 times.

It is just so weird, it feels like she is suddenly slightly deranged. I mean, she sort of did these things before, but never, ever to this level. It was so sudden. We had lots of babysitters this weekend too, so I keep wondering if it is some sort of separation thing? Or too much Christmas sugar? It seems worse on days she has had candy in the late afternoon.

I am worried enough that I felt like I had to document what's been going on. I know some of you have kids that never fall asleep easy, but like I said - this is so sudden & new, except that her sleep has been getting steadily worse for about 3-4 months now. And I hoped writing it out might give me some new insight as I analyzed what's happened the last three nights.

My mom suggested the classical music and I'm excited because I think that might comfort her. It seems like a "comfort" thing more than a power play - yes, she is being VERY stubborn, but I think its out of genuine fear, not just wanting power. Everytime she wakes up (after a nap, in the morning or at 4am) she jumps up crying and runs for the door. She used to do that lazy stretching wake up, now its like she wakes up scared.

If you think of us at 8pm tonite, say a little prayer and if you have suggestions, we are all ears!

Are you ready for this?

2009-12-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

I am pretty sure we could win awards with this photo. It is just too perfect. (be sure to click & enlarge)

Oh the drama. I knew neither kid wanted to sit on Santa's lap this year, Saben kept saying he didn't want to and Annika said "santa yucky" even though she adores his picture in books. But I figured we might as well try anyways so we could have the obligatory picture.

This is what we ended up with. Annika was terrified, quivering in my arms crying and Saben was trying to run away while Kyle held his arm. Both kids were definitely feeding off of eachother's fears. It was embarassing and ridiculous, but they did calm down enough to take this picture where no one is actually holding them down. Candy cane bribery was our savior.

It was only later that I took a close look at the picture and thought to myself "hmm...that Santa does look sort of creepy." And I couldn't put my finger on why....until I later noticed the white furry thing winding down his arm. It's a HIPPY SANTA! No wonder! Only in Bellingham.....

Today's blog post isn't here

2009-12-11T11:42:00.000-08:00

Check out my guest post on the Giving Anonymously blog....