The trip of all trips

If you drive south on the 1 just past the Hearst castle, on the out skirts of San Simeon, you will see zebras in a field with cows. I kid you not. My own mother didn't believe me! I was on the phone with her the exact second I spotted them and said "hold on Mom, what is that! Guys do you see that!?" I squinted my eyes and said out loud "are those zebras?" Aaron looked, Jake looked, and Andrew looked, and yes they were in fact zebras prancing around with cows of all things! How peculiar. "You better take a picture because no one will believe you." my mom told me. My camera battery died early on into our trip so no picture was taken. Nonetheless they were there.

Our trip to Big Sur was sprinkled with various animal encounters. It started on Wednesday with the condors. We were on our way to sand dollar beach, located just down the mountain from our campsite. We had pulled to the side of the road briefly, I can't remember why, and out of no where flies up this enormous condor with a pink head and the number 96 stamped, stapled (however they do it) to one of his wings, or was it his leg? I can't remember. He was fantastic and all of three feet from my car window. Not a minute later, another one arrived on the scene, and took his place next to the pink headed one. He was number 11 and he had a black head. I have never seen a real ,live, wild condor and it was pretty cool. Amelia kept saying "wow!," which cracked the boys up!

The next day we went to Andrew Moalver beach ( I don't think that's what it's really called, I can't remember exactly. It's Andrew M-something). The hike down to the ocean was a mile. On the way there the boys and Aaron sped ahead. I was left behind with slow poke Amelia, who insisted, as usual, that she would rather walk then be carried! The slow pace forced me to stop and notice everything from the elaborate branches on the trees, to the wild flowers, to the lizards, to the dragonflies, and finally to the song birds. There is something to be said about taking your own sweet time. I was really able to take everything in. The walk reminded why I love hiking so much.

On the way back Aaron decided to carry Amelia and again he sped ahead. I told the boys that if they were really quiet and paid attention they would see things in nature that they wouldn't normally notice (my dad always told me that when i was there age. In return I would roll my eyes and say "I KNOW DAD!"). Not two minutes later Andrew whispered "Mom,look!". There in front of us were four deer (one of which was a stag). I had never seen a stag before so it was really, realy cool. The two smaller of the deer looked right at us and we looked back for what seemed like a long time and then we quietly continued on.

Besides those animals, we saw more on the drive back home to san Diego (all through the car window). In all we came across 11 deer, four of which where running from a mountain lion that I didn't have the privilege of seeing. Only Andrew glimpsed that rare moment. I still kind of think it might have been a cow but he swears that it was in fact a mountain lion. "duh, what do you think they were running from mom! Why would they run from a cow." Andrew said rather snidely after I suggested the mountain lion was merely a cow.

my camera did not last long on our trip. I should've been more prepared and brought my back up piece of crap digital one. My film camera takes fantastic pictures and I didn't even consider the idea that the battery would die nor did I factor in the idea that ho dunk mountain shops wouldn't carry the battery my camera takes. My camera lasted all of two days and then I bought a disposable camera that was terribly overpriced. It made it through a day and half. I am trigger happy and tend to go through a roll of film, on an average day in about 1-2 hours. I couldn't bring myself to spend another $20 on a cheapy disposable camera. I really think that the reason my camera died was so that the next time we go back up to Big Sur we will be just as enchanted by everything. It will all be fresh and new with our lack of photo documentation to remind us of just how breathtaking it is (glass half full!). I think I can go as far as saying it is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

After trips or just plain normal days I always ask the kids "What was your favorite moment?" Always it is something unexpected and their view on what we saw and did makes the memory that much more brilliant. Andrew's favorite moment was collecting rocks at jade cove. He was perched on a big rock just over the ocean watching Aaron as he gathered handfuls of rocks and polished jade from the shore, each time a big wave would come Andrew would frantically yell and say "daddy be careful!". He liked watching out for his dad. Andrew is the protector in the family. He very much assumes the responsibilities that go along with being the oldest kid.

Jake said his favorite moment was hiking up buzzard roost and finding the baby lizard on the trail. Aaron liked seeing the condors up close. My favorite was going to Pfeiffer beach. I loved how much it resembled Ireland with it's greeness and large rocks jutting out of the ocean up to the sky. It is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. There was a small creek there that lead into the ocean. Amelia and I had a great time wading through it. I think that was her favorite moment too, that and the smores!

Craftiness cause headaches

Today was Andrew's last day of school so I decided to go all out and make adorable cupcakes for the occasion. I was super crafty and made them in ice cream cones so that they would look ultra adorable.

They turned out adorable, we're talking over the top cute. I was amazed. I thought for sure that I would screw them up but shockingly nothing was off, they tasted good and looked flawless.

Unfortunately I forgot to consider two major factors:

1. I would be traveling with three children under 5, two of whom need to be pushed around in a minivan sized stroller. How the heck was I going to carry 24 cupcakes?

2. How would I travel with them in my car without them toppling over?


These things didn't cross my mind until after all twenty four cupcakes were iced and decorated to perfection.

After thinking long and hard I decided that I could do it. I came up with the idea of placing the cupcakes in a cupcake tin, thinking that the little pits would provide extra support. It wasn't the greatest option but it was the only one I had. There was only one problem with this idea: My cupcake tin only holds 12. I decided not to lose faith. I would simply knock on a neighbors door, explain my dire situation and weasel a cupcake tin out of them. My only obstacle now was getting the cupcakes into the classroom with all the kids. I decided that upon my arrival at the school I would pull into the side parking lot, just outside the classroom, put my hazards on, and hope to run into a familiar parent that would be willing to keep their eyeballs on the kids for 2.5 seconds while I dropped the snacks off. Problem solved or at least I thought...

Slowly I made my way outside with the first cupcake tin. Just as I got onto the patio one of the cupcakes fell. I reached down to grab it and two more fell face first onto the pavement. I remained calm. After all I had baked 24 and there are only 19 kids in the class. All was still okay. I made it out to the car and reached for the door balancing the tray with as much ease as I could muster and.......all of them fell on their sides, a few actually dropping to the dirty garage floor while others remained in the cupcake tin but their icing was smeared. It was a big ugly mess. They were no longer cute. They were definitely something a group of 7 year olds would turn their noses up to. I don't think I can even begin to explain my frustration. I now have 12 decent looking ice cream cone cupcakes and a ton of jacked up looking ones. One of my neighbors was outside wheeling his garbage can to the front of his home at the exact second the cupcake disaster went down. I seriously reacted as if someone had ran over my dog. I let out a stream of f bombs. I'm sure it was all pretty comical for him or he thinks I am insane.

I am done with trying to be crafty!!!! Craftiness is for people who plan ahead. Clearly I am not a planner!! From now on I will appreciate the craftiness in others but in no way will I ever attempt to duplicate their skills.

this is how cute they turned out:

Mary Lou

It is 10 pm and the boys have just gone to bed. Tomorrow morning while be hellacious. One of them will beat the crap out of the other and Amelia will go "ah ah ah" like 89 million times on the 30 minute drive to Andrew's school. That is just about the only thing she says when she is crabby. I will bribe them with my strawberry topped crepes and maybe, just maybe, they will behave themselves.



Things that were accomplished today:

Thrift shopping (greatest score was a $1 unopened star wars toy)

Target bargain shopping (two photo albums that are super pretty, each $5.)

Laundry (2 loads)

Returned movies to blockbuster

EBay auction picture's taken and organized by Brand and size

Cleaning of the nasty upstairs bathroom

ironing

A DIY hair cut to remove excessive split ends

Dropped off application for boy's V.B.S (VBS sounds like a scary venereal disease but luckily instead it stands for vacation bible school, am I a sicko?)

Cooked a home cooked meal (fresh vegetable/tofu stir fry over noodles)

Went to see over the hedge (the boys liked it. I thought it was not so funny)

consummation of an unreasonable amount of candy

built a really lousy tent in the living room that kept falling apart every 1.2 seconds

Got 1/4 of the way through the B.F.G.



Aaron will be home tomorrow afternoon and we did not live in filth. I cooked two dinners instead of getting take out and we rarely watched TV. I might be becoming one of them (you know, one of those pesky responsible people)

In unrelated news I can no longer walk around with this idiot red hair. I think I will get it fixed only I worry that they will peroxide the Mary Lou out of my hair ( I just made that term up, hopefully it'll catch on) and then I will look like a washed up wannabe Courtney love.



This is stupid, I should be sleeping.



Here is Andrew cracked out on candy after we saw over the hedge:

I am the irresponsible one

Starting today Aaron will be gone for three days at the island on one of his work related dive trips. When he is gone I live in complete filth. The kids and I pretend to be on a mini vacation. We get take out almost every evening and stay up late watching the Simpsons and eating otter pops on a big picnic blanket in front on the boob tube. It's kind of like when you were kid and your parents went on a romantic trip for a couple days and mistakenly left the eldest sibling in charge. Only in my case there are no crazy keggers and holes punched through the living room walls. I'm kind of like that eldest sibling only I'm really the mom and ten years older/wiser, a little messier, a tiny bit more mature, and a tad more responsible. I actually make them bathe and feed them vegetables but there is a lot less "rule" following then normal.


These are the things I plan on doing with them Monday-Wednesday:

1. Walk to Gaetano's for an Italian night and stop at the pool on the way home
2. Make a Tent out of blankets in the living room and read bedtime stories with their flash lights
3. Let them sleep in the balnket tent in their sleeping bags
4. Make hot fudge sundaes
5. Go to see over the hedge
6. Pay off the library so that we can check stuff out again

The kids will be super cranky every morning. They always are. That is the biggest drawback to letting them stay up late. One of them always has a complete meltdown about something absurd like an uncomfortable sock or too much milk in their oatmeal. I remind myself that this is the reason why, normally, I put them to bed at a decent hour. Even after the temper tantrums it's still all worth it because the night before they are all smiles. Sometimes it's nice to break out of routines even when you have to deal with the consequences.

By the time Aaron has come back We are all really relieved to see him again because then we can be normal and planned and the kitchen floor will not be sticky. I always spend the day before his return scrubbing and cleaning because I know that nothing is worse then arriving home to a messy house. Mostly all appears normal but then one of the kids open their tiny little mouths about how we had Chinese food two nights in a row and they start using a lot of Homer Simpson's catch phrases and my cover is blown. It becomes quite clear that I have let them rot their brains in front of the TV will feeding them too much MSG. Maybe this time I will actually make a home cooked meal. We will see how things pan out. I took pictures of our new pad before the living in filth phase begins:

Amelia's Fairy room, part of it anyway:

The boy's knight room:

Okay so mostly that's just Amelia sitting on Jake's bed with their dragon stuffed thing, the room pictures looked dumb

My horribly executed living room:

Lastly the Kitchen:

My room has been omitted from this posting due to its state of disaster.

That is all. I am trying really hard to only post two blogs a week because it is becoming some sort of sick addiction but with Aaron gone most of the week I cannot guarantee anything. Out of pure boredom I may end up with a million so sorry in advance.

Because it is Sunday

Today my father in law is wearing a woman's hat. It's not sort of a woman's hat or something that could possibly pass as a trendy male hat; it is undoubtedly, unquestionably, a woman's hat.

It's white and has a large turquoise flower broach pinned on it. Why he is wearing this hat I have no idea. He looks a lot like an 80's rocker minus the make-up.

After church we were walking through the mall and just about every single person we passed would do a double take. You could almost see them asking themselves...

"Is that a man in a woman's hat?"

After about thirty minutes I could not ignore it for a moment longer. I had to say,

"What is the story behind this hat? It has a very transgendered look."

Luckily he was amused and not at all insulted. He got a big long laugh out of it. That's what I love about Conrad; I can just get to the point without the fear of hurting his feelings. I don't know many other people who would get a kick out of me telling them that they look like a cross dresser. I think he finds my boldness hilarious or maybe refreshing, either way I am able to honestly ask him things that with most people I could never get away with. The only explanatation we received about the hat was:

"it was on sale and I just couldn't pass it by".

Aaron's question, which had me cracking up was:

"Did it come with the broach or is that part of your man jewlery collection?".

The answer was, it came with the broach attached. Hmmmmm! I have a feeling the hat will be around for a long, long, time. My father in law is a strange bird. Apparently so am I. People are always shocked to learn that, no he is not my father, but in fact Aaron's dad. I am always getting the

"I thought for sure he was your dad!"

In actuality my dad is pretty tame, very tame, and mostly wears Ralph Lauren. The most off the wall thing he has ever worn would probably be those European man sandals or perhaps something orange. He doesn't even do bold colors and mostly sticks to blue's and forest greens. He is, however, part of a Native American flute circle which is mostly absurd for an Irish guy. He plays a mean flute though! I think that Conrad comes across as my dad due to the hippie factor. For the life of me I can't shake that hippie label. Every since I was in grade school people have labeled me as the hippie. Everytime I go in for a hair cut I tell the beautician
"don't give me hippie hair!"

They always give me hippie hair. It's unavoidable. Conrad has long unruly hair and he lives in OB so he has that whole image down. I think Conrad and I are a like in a lot of ways. As much as I poke fun at and grumble about him, I do genuinely love him, lady's hat and all!

This is so boring

Amelia has gotten into the habit of walking around the house crying and tearing all the books off the book shelf. Mostly I say "what is wrong Amelia?" and "wow, your feeling destructive!" and then she cries a little more. It's getting tiresome. I want this terrible two thing to end already. DO you hear me people, MAKE IT END! At this very second she is in the pantry throwing tupperware on the floor. I should probably just move the tupperware to a higher shelf but there is a lack of room. I am having a hard time trying to figure out where to put things in our new house. I love my kitchen. My kitchen is the kind of kitchen you want to sit around in drinking tea and playing scrabble. (it's much cuter in real life! oh, and please disregaurd the mismatced chairs. We just bought that table off of craigslist and plan on buying more matching chairs at Ikea this weekend.) Also, there is a lot of red in my kitchen . Red is my favorite color. Blue had been on the top of my list for 20 odd years and then I came to terms with the fact that red needed to replace blue. My living room is unfortunate; really it is. I don't know what to do with it. The coaches are really far apart and one has the worst placement of any coach I have ever seen. As soon as you walk in the front door you literally trip over our lonely love seat that is way across the room from the other coach. It's very awkward. I think we need a sectional, that and a really cute area rug. Does anyone care?? I care.

I took Jacob out of preschool when we moved out here. I have to say he is one smart kid. Is that annoying to say?? I hate when people go around saying

"my kid is so advanced, blah, blah, they are on the honor roll, blah blah."

that is annoying! My mom has always been really big on not bragging about kids. She hates when people brag and I have picked up on that. Sometimes I wish she had bragged a little more about us(you know for self esteem purposes). Mostly I was a horrible student and had no real skills other then an uncanny retrieval of details from any book I have ever read, writing papers (although they always had grammatical mistakes but I got away with them some how), and anything art related. Not much to brag about there.

Back to Jacob, and no this is not bragging, the kid is a quick learner. He is a math kid. I find math disturbing and a waste of time but little Jake is somewhat of a math genius. He's always wanting me to read him his math book that has these addition flaps. I can't stand that book because it's not a story it's math for Pete's sake and mat h is well.... a big fat waste of time! He does this funny thing with his fingers against his face when he adds and subtracts numbers. It's really cute. It's not like I'm saying he's a prodigy or anything but he is a whiz. Okay, I'll admit I'm bragging a little bit about him. I think a small dose of brag is okay. Whatever!

I need an electric granmother

Right now I have a couple of wishes:

1. That tiny, little, cute, Amelia would stop growling every two seconds and flopping herself to the ground in dramatic temper tantrum frenzies.

2. That the 897836746376473 billion random idiot stuff that I have no idea what to do with or how to begin to organize into boxes would just magically grow brains and oraginize themselves!

3. That I could find the CD's in the garage ( I brillantly decided to pack them up last week) so I could listen to decent packing and cleaning music.

4. That my mom and grandma would magically appear and help me clean stuff.

5. That my idiot vacuum did not decide to break today

That is all! Just look at the state of my livingroom!!