California, Day 2

Our second day began early because I popped up wide awake at 6 a.m.  Emily was up making pancakes with my dad.  We eased into the day puttering around the house.  I found Fendi.  He grew a lot.  We’re thinking of renaming him Tank.

I also found Edith!  She’s gotten bigger too.

The girls asked my mom to do their hair for the day.  They love when grandma does their hair.

That night Jeremy and I drove with the girls to our friends, Cheryl and Marko.  Cheryl and I were meeting Bethany and Brenda in Irvine for dinner while Jeremy and Marko watched all the girls.  All five of them.

Our drive to Irvine was pretty uneventful, aside from one moment where we got lost and ended up on a toll road we shouldn’t have been on.  It was so good to see old friends again.  I have no pictures of us together because I’m the dork who forgets important things like that.  Hopefully they have some they can share.

We all walked to a local supermarket for Indian food.  We were on a “Food Adventure”

The food was delicious.  The company was awesome.  It felt like I had never left.  We went back to the market for desserts and I ended up buying a yogurt drink because it was carbonated and I can’ t pass up a carbonated beverage.  A mint yogurt carbonated beverage.  Oh dear.  I can’t say that I would recommend this drink.  It was very salty.  Very, very salty.

I would have loved to have stayed late and visited longer but I had to get back to my parents because we were going to Bakerfield the next day.

California, Day 1.

Our first visit back to California after almost a year of living in North Carolina.  I had a lot of feelings about this trip.  Having never lived anywhere else but California my entire life, it was weird to be a visitor.  I’ve been really happy in North Carolina, but I was kind of worried that once we arrived in California, I would miss it so much that I would want to move back.  Thankfully, that didn’t happen.  Whew.  Instead, what happened was that I was reminded of all the great things about California that I love and I feel very blessed to know that I can live where I’m happy and now have a place to visit that makes me happy too.  The best of both worlds!

Since this was such a big moment in my families life, I thought it would be best to document everything we did.  Boy, did we do a whole lot.  So here is our trip in parts.

Day 1.  Bags packed.  House cleaned (I hate returning to a messy house whenever I go anywhere).  We were ready to go.  I hated waiting for the taxi, so much anticipation.  The ride to the airport was uneventful, as was getting through security.  We were waived through and had at least an hour to hang out before boarding our flight.

Our flight boarded around 5 p.m.  The girls did great for their first flight ever.

A mouth full of snacks.

Molly was so excited to finally see her best friend again.

The worst part of the flight was during landing.  Molly began screaming in agony from ear pain.  She had made a lot of friends during the flight (such a ham!) and they were so nice.  They were offering us gum and chewy candy, but she was so afraid swallowing because of the pressure in her ear.  Luckily, it passed fairly quickly and we were off the plane and headed to the car rental.

Our shuttle to the car rental office was really fun for the kids.  The lady driving the shuttle was so great with the girls.  Funny enough she had family near where we live here in NC.  She was talking to the girls, making jokes with Molly.  Pointing out all the neat lights around the airport.  The girls loved her.

There was a dramatic contrast between the airport in Raleigh and that shuttle ride in Los Angeles.  We went from a quiet, not very busy airport to traffic, sirens, stop lights everywhere.  Welcome home, ha!

We made it to my parents around 8 p.m. (time travel is awesome!).  The kids showered/bathed and we got them into bed.  I crashed by 9 p.m.

 

 

Speech

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you know that Molly has been having a really hard time in Kindergarten.  Recently, Fish and I had a conference with her teacher.  I was stressed about the whole situation.  I couldn’t think of anything else to help Moe.  I’ve tried everything from rewards to punishments.  There didn’t seem to be a solution to her behavior problems.

Molly’s teacher has been working so hard with her.  As they have been moving further into writing, Mrs. B noticed that Molly was sounding words out with her hand over her mouth, like she was embarrassed and then confused when none of her words were like her peers.  Some typical mispronounced words for Molly would be as follows: Star is Car.  Smell is Pell.  School is Cool (HAHA, oh the irony!).  You can imagine how confusing and frustrating this would be.   It turns out, Moe needs speech therapy.

Mrs. B has started working one on one with Molly in the past two weeks and already has seen a huge improvement in Molly’s behavior.  She isn’t crying to go home, she is raising her hand to answer questions, she is much more at ease.  I’m really glad that we have found a possible solution.  I’m trying to shake the guilt I have for being so hard on her.  I’m sharing this now, in case there is anyone else in my shoes.  The answer seems so obvious now, but for the past few months I have been at a total loss.

Brownie Bites

I’ve been having lots of fun with our Babycakes cake pop maker and have been experimenting with different ingredients.  The other night I made some really good Green Chile Cheese Corn Bites…

They were delicious, but the most popular creation so far has been Brownie Bites.  I just prepared a box of Better Crocker Fudge Brownie mix, used my tablespoon cookie scoop to pour into the cake pop maker and bake for 9 minutes.  Out comes these delicious brownie bites that are very tasty right out of the maker but even better the next day!  

I’ve calculated each bite to be 1 Weight Watchers point each.  The family size box of brownie mix makes approximately 40 brownie bites.

The Tooth Fairy Story

This is a doodle for a story that the girls made up recently.  I really wish that I had the ability to draw or do some soft of graphics because, at the very least, this would make a great animated gif.  So!  If anyone out there reads this and wants to create a visual for it, feel free to do so!

The Tooth Fairy makes her round on a large elephant.  One night they are running late and they accidentally mix up each other’s wings.  So the Tooth Fairy struggles to hang on to her elephant, as her too large wings want to raise her higher into the air,  while the elephant struggles to keep flight with his too small wings.  The elephant can barely hover above surfaces so when he gets to the end of a dresser he starts to plummet to the floor as the Tooth Fairy pulls his ears and tries to keep him afloat.

Much hilarity ensues, according to my children.

Speaking In Mad Libs

I have been terribly homesick today.  There is so much that I could share about that, but I’d rather share a funny conversation I had with Emily while we were out running errands yesterday.

Emily: Is a crow the same thing as a raven?  Why do they have different names if they are?

Me:  I’m not sure, kind of like how a dove is like uhhhh…?

Emily:  Pigeon?

Me:  Yes!  Or like a Bison is kind of like  uhhhh…?

Emily:  Buffalo?

Me:  Yes!!  Hey Ems, you’re finishing all my sentences for me, we must be playing Mad Libs too much lately.  Oh, look at those horses over there, they have their winter blankets on.

Emily:  Oh how cute!  I love horses.

Me: Me too.  You know, they say that horses are just like large…

Emily:  Dogs?

Me:  Stop that!!!

 

 

1-28-2013

I tried to write every day but then SNOW happened and there was too much fun to be had.  So that’s that!

 

You can see it all HERE.