Belated Birthday

In all the excitement and chaos of the last week, I completely forgot to do a birthday post for this little girl

and I can't believe that in two short years we've gone from this:

to this. It's hard for me to even remember Alena as a tiny baby, but it's certainly not hard to remember her as a 2 year old. The expression she has in this picture, it's the one we see all the time.

She is one determined, intense little girl who is not going to be left out of anything, and we love her all the more for it

We celebrated a little bit before we left to go to CA and a little more this past weekend after we got back. She didn't seem to care that we were gone on her actual birthday.

We love you, Alena Bena, and can't wait to see what the next year holds for you.

California...Part 2

Even though we both enjoyed seeing San Fransisco for a day, it wasn't until we were in Napa Valley that the restful part of our vacation came (at least for me, Nae had to go to his conference every day). The resort was quiet, and the weather was beautiful so I spent most of my time either on our deck or by the pool reading. In fact I read 4 books while we were gone. Probably more than I've read the last 6 months combined. I would meet Nae for lunch and then every evening there was a dinner for us to go to.

There was basically no grass at all in Napa Valley. Every available piece of space was covered in grapes as you can see in this picture taken from the wine train window which is why it looks a little blurry.

Here are Nae and I ready to go on the wine train.

Of course, I forgot our camera the night we ate at a winery which turned out to be the neatest thing we did while there. We ate by candle light in the cellar where all the wine was stored and the food was so good. A couple people we were with did take some pictures so hopefully I can get copies of those. This picture of me and Nae was taken at the bay right outside our hotel.
We stopped by the Golden Gate Bridge on our way to the airport on Wednesday and walked part of it. What an incredible thing - it's just amazing how they built that thing and it was cold and windy up there! Nae said he looks like a Chinese tourist in this picture but I like it so I'm going to put it on here anyway.
We read that the bridge is continually being re-painted to keep it from rusting. What a job that would be.
We had a great vacation without the kids, but both of us missed them terribly and we were very glad to get back home. Gabe at least seemed to miss us while we were gone, Mya could have stayed a few more weeks without us, and Alena was just plain mad. She wouldn't even look at me when we got home. Today she seems to have recovered, though. I don't know what she's going to do when Mommy is gone and comes back with a baby!

California...the first part

This week, Nae and I are on our long awaited trip to California were Nae has a conference for a few days. Grandmama and Aunt Carrie are very graciously manning the fort back home and all 5 children (our 3 plus Carrie's 2) seem to be having a great time. Nae and I miss them, though.
We flew into San Fransisco Saturday afternoon and here is the view from right outside our motel and also were the planes land/take-off. We probably saw 20 planes come in right over the water while we took a short 30 minute stroll.
In San Fransisco you can see just about anything being used as a tour bus. Of course there are the trolleys and cable cars we also saw a fire truck and a boat on wheels and here is an open top double decker bus we didn't ride, though after walking a few of the many very steep hills in the city I was very ready to catch a ride.

A view from the top of one of the hills we had to climb.

We visited the original Ghiradelli store and of course had to try out some of their desserts. I'll let you guess which one is Nae's and which is mine.
On Saturday we saw China town, Fishermans' Warf and just generally walked around the city. On Sunday our plan was to drive out and see some of the coast as well as the Muir Forest where the giant RedWoods are located. I guess that was everyone else's plan as well. The traffic was terrible and add that to the fact that there was some big race in San Fransisco and it was a nightmare getting out of the city. Took us 2 hours to get to the Golden Gate Bridge and then traffic was so backed up on the interstate we didn't even attempt getting off to see any of the beaches. Here is the Golden Gate Bridge as we were driving across, though. We are now in Napa Valley staying at the Silverado Resort where Nae has his conference, but maybe on the way back to the airport on Wednesday we'll at least get to stop and walk across the bridge.
Tonight is our dinner train ride through wine country so I'll try to take some more pics. This life is nice, but I wouldn't trade our crazy life at home for anything.

We love bugs!!!

Mya loves all things pink and girly, but she has another side too and outside she is very brave about picking up bugs, caterpillars, worms and even slugs (yuck!)

And still, the rain came down...

Mya has especially enjoyed this book which we recently borrowed from the library and it was a very fitting read for this weekend. Gabe and Mya both love to camp (I mean what's not to love about camping when you're 5 and 3) and for months we had been telling them that, "the first weekend in May " we would all go camping. What we had not control over, however, was the weather and there was no way I was dragging us all out to a campsite to sit in a little tent wet and miserable all weekend. It really rained ALL DAY yesterday with thunderstorms and flooding to go along with it - camping outside was out of the question so in order to somewhat lessen the disappointment we agreed to a camping inside arrangement. It all started Friday night when we pumped up the air mattresses and slept in the living room (everyone but Alena who was more that happy to sleep in her own bed until 10am this morning!)

Then we ate all of our meals today on a tablecloth on the floor. Breakfast is Gabe's favorite meal so he was happy with the 2 scrambled eggs, 2 pieces of sausage, biscuit and gravy and 2 buttered/jellyed biscuits Daddy cooked for him.
Our first little diversion project was to use this recipe to make up some Moon Sand. Now we've never used the real Moon Sand so I can't say how this compared, but the kids had a good time although it was quite messy and would be much better suited to outside especially when a certain almost 2 year old is involved. I doubled the recipe to make sure there was enough to go around.

After that we did self portraits/drawings on the big roll of paper. Gabe and Mya both really got into this and their finished drawings are now hanging in their room.

Daddy kept Alena occupied by allowing her to "trace his foot" which actually turned into more of a marker pedicure.

We also took a walk in between rain showers, and while Alena was napping played practically every kids game we own. Gabe and Mya spent some time outside looking for and finding worms and slugs and there also was quite a bit of loud music and dancing. To finish the night up we made Smores in the microwave and Alena got right down to the good part by declaring she only wanted, "Chocolate!" which you can see she thoroughly enjoyed.

I will add that Gabe and Mya are spending one more night "camping" in the living room on the mattress but they thankfully were very agreeable to allowing Nae and I to sleep in our own bed tonight. The weekend certainly didn't go as planned, but as a plan B it wasn't too bad and there will always be more weekends for camping though I'm not sure there will be any more weekends this summer for the pregnant Mommy...