Vacation photos

The redeye last week from CA to MA went fairly well; the kids each slept about 3 1/2 hours on the 5 hr direct flight. And while J actually threw up shortly after awakening, his adept father caught it all in the barf bag (now that is one prepared dad), and all carried on entirely smoothly thereafter. They caught up on sleep and adjusted to the time change as well as we could have hoped in the 36 hours ensuing, and we have been having a full and fun time ever since - despite the weather which has been horrid and rain-filled. The sole exception was Saturday when Y's extended family had a big BBQ in his sister's backyard which was great fun, as photos below display. We celebrated Nona's and Grandpa's June birthdays. Our four days in CT were very enjoyable and J and Q enjoyed their 5 cousins enormously.

We're now in NH and packing ample activity into a few days - visiting the farm, meeting with our property manager, seeing friends, saying hello to our cows, and the like.

Big news from our big boy!

No training wheels...!

This weekend Y took the training wheels off J's bike, and without any fanfare he simply began to ride along. I missed the very first episode but caught this on film yesterday - his second go. The combination of 1) riding his bike out on the sidewalk virtually every day with our neighbors with 2) the new style of 'balance only' (no support) training wheels which eventually are raised up so high that the rider is riding without them anyway [plus of course the little man's coordination] seem to have done their work!

One year "blog-iversary"

It's been a year since I started this blog... and therefore, about a year since we moved. Pretty wild to think. The moving truck showed up at our farm in New England on June 20, 2008...

Took a walk down memory lane and read up on how those experiences struck me at the time in my June archive. Crazy world. Time to figure out how to print the blog in book form (I know this is doable - need to pester Michelle again for her expertise on this!) so I can have it all in hand for review and posterity...

Joshua Tree do-over

We decided last minute (Friday, to be exact) to take another crack at the weekend Joshua Tree camping trip that got so royally foiled back in March. This time we called first and discovered that the park is more than half vacant this time of year - March to May being their busy season. Weather looked good so we went for it.

I was a bit concerned that my overall hugeness at 31 weeks pregnant would be problematic but happily, I wasn't as uncomfortable sleeping on the ground as I thought I'd be. Instead our biggest sleep challenge turned out to be Q. [We all slept together for the first time in our brand new family-size tent, a Christmas gift from Nona & Grandpa that we loved.] Q kicked off the night by learning to climb out of her pack-n-play moments after being put to bed which, after she'd done it once (accompanied by removing her PJ's completely), she repeated several times throughout the night. She was patently unwilling to go to sleep in advance of the rest of the crew, which had been our plan, and ultimately fell asleep latest of all of us and slept least. At about 3 AM, when J woke up to say he'd wet his PJ's, we finally elected to get her out of the pack-n-play to sleep on the floor of the tent with us... with involved a lot of holding-down and convincing.

So it wasn't the most sleep-filled night we've ever had.

The other eventful part of the trip was the bees, which was present in abundance. Who would have thought bees would proliferate in a desert? When we arrived and set up camp around 1 pm on Saturday, there were dozens of them and they flocked to us, water sources (like Angus' dish), and food-- rather stressful. We decided to go for a drive to a farflung corner of the park for a little walk where they weren't too bad, and by 5 pm when we returned the situation was improving. The bees were were gone by 7 pm, for which we were thankful.

We bouldered, wandered, looked for lizards, cooked hot dogs and smores by the fire, and spent happy hours playing in the front seat of the van (Q - it was her happy place while at the campsite).

It's all about the boots...

What can she say? This girl loves her boots - and I do mean loves. She dons them at least three times a day... Particularly comical since we literally never get any puddles here (much to the kids' dismay). She's just a fashionista!

Blueberry-picking

This morning we went blueberry picking at a family farm in Somis, a town about 20 minutes east of us. A friend from my book club had taken her daughter last weekend, and as soon as we heard about it we were sold on the idea. The kids were enthusiastic, at least for a while, and alo more capable than we expected, especially Q (from whom we expected basically nothing). She was quite able and willing to pull the berries off the bushes and clearly understood that it was the blue ones we were after. The precision and mechanical interest she displays in clipping and unclipping buckles and the like were plainly evident in this outing.

We picked 7 lbs in an hour! And were thrilled to spend just $23 on such a large quantity. Y is quite keen to learn canning so this may well provide his first opporunity to have at it...

Blueberry pie-baking is on deck for this afternoon, and tonight I get to discuss nature-related topics with the friend who provided inspiration for the venture at book club... The book is Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, which I found interesting and well worth reading.

Our growing girls

Miss Q is a character. We finally figured out last week that her ubiquitous "mee-ba" word that she states whenever she's discontent actually translates to "need that." As in: "I need that item to which I am pointing. Desperately." Of course she does not need that in 90% of the cases, nor can she have it, but at least now we know what she's after.

I've mentioned the enormous enjoyment she takes from clipping buckles - the clasps on her high-chair seat, her carseat, the stroller, her brother's bike helmet... any buckle will do. But more recently Q has also taken to eating sand out of our backyard sandbox, and she appears to be quite committed to this activity despite continued monitoring and instructions to the contrary. Hard to imagine what could be providing her joy and continued incentive in it, but hey - the kid enjoys sand. There you have it.

Baby girl #2 continues to grow ever larger, as one would expect in her 30th week of gestation. I am beginning to feel fairly huge - that moment in pregnancy when you realize, good grief, I'm this large now and I still have months to go. 10 days ago I officially traded out running for swimming in the outdoor community pool. The little one is kicking up a storm, an active girl to be sure, and my preliminary nesting and mental organization instincts are beginning to kick in...