it's that time of year

Oh I love the remnants of good holiday projects! Thanks Scott for keeping us busy cleaning up after you! It is SOOO worth it!

Adventures in Avacado

This is the part where I have to let go and let things get a little messy. This is not my strong suit. I am not good with messy, but I think she looks good in green, no?


I am grateful that I have little ones to remind me of important truths and perspectives. It is just always crazy to me how much we have to let the little people struggle and figure it out for themselves and how messy it is in the process.

Thought of the day -- same for us.

Fall bonding in the neighborhood

So....this is a little late, but fun times.

We bought our house without even recognizing the BEST feature. We have a huge tree in our front yard that annually drops the whole of its leaves in 2-3 days. This makes us popular with children and grown ups alike--at least for those 3 or 4 days the leaves are in our front yard.

We always have a good time making an enormous leaf pile, making forts and jumping in.



This year, the kids decided to start a leaf throwing fight. . . and then the grown ups got really into it. The kids were mostly ganging up on their moms, but then the moms stole the show. Good thing I was there with my camera (I thought I would need it for the kids!).

I am not sure who won, but everyone had a good laugh. . . and leaves in their underwear for the rest of the day.

I know you are all wondering and the answer is Yes. You are all invited next year. Just don't miss it. It only lasts a few days. . .

Ignorance is not bliss: Lessons in Sugar

Erin and I have been doing a little research lately-- Just in time for the holiday season. In an effort to overcome our addictions and reign in our overindulgences we have decided that we need to cut back our sugar intake, for us and our kids. This will be particularly hard because I LOVE baking sugary goodness and even more than that, I love to eat it. It surrounds us at every turn.

Just for fun we thought we would do a little research on alternative artificial sweeteners. We started with everybody's favorite Splenda and found out is is not so splendid. Lets just say we wont be stocking our pantry with that stuff, or any of the other chemical artificial sweeteners on the market. Here are a couple a links to one of the many websites we found (not) extolling the 'goodness' of artificial sweeteners.

Artificial Sweetener Explodes Internally

Sweet Sabotage: The Harsh Reality of Sugar, Sugar Substitutes and "Natural Sweeteners"

We already knew aspartame was a bad one, Erin has an acute sensitivity to it. When ever she consumes food with even small traces of aspartame in it she is immediately overcome with nausea and intense headaches. My first experience of seeing the effects of this toxin on Erin happened on a family vacation to Hawaii a few months after we were married. It was savory nuts that we were not expecting to be sugared up. I now take every precaution to make sure she is not accidentally besieged.

Many people use chemical artificial sweeteners thinking there is not problem with them. Artificial sweeteners are in nearly every possible food you can think of and in many you would have never dreamed. How many people have similar reaction to artificial sweeteners as Erin does, but don't know what the cause is? Is your favorite sugar-less gum or your daily diet soda causing your headaches? The more we learn about chemical sweeteners, the scarier it is for us. We hear more and more stories that are alarming –we thought Erin's reaction was bad, but it turns out it is pretty mild compared to symptoms similar to MS or worse.

The bad news is that good old fashioned table sugar is not much better. (long sigh...) We are on a mission though, to find a perfect balance of good healthy life style and yummy goodness. Recipes to come.

signs signs everywhere are signs

We have been enjoying E's new found skills. . . you just never know when you will see her instructions or thoughts literally spelled out for you to read. . . several times I ran into these little gifts and almost couldn't contain my laughter. . . i thought it was time to share . . .

yes this says "notoelitepapr inmom8dads bathrom"

"lidlekids onley" --which is good because I wouldn't have fit in their fort anyway...

And most recently. . ."No Burping in my rom! allowed!" She really meant it!

Our Disney Adventure

I will admit it...I wasn't sure I really wanted to take 4 young kids to Disneyland. . . land of simulacra and fantasy (I am just not that fun). . .my mother persuaded me to go with her.

The trip to CALI was relatively calm. We rode in the BIG car (grandma's excursion). . .and everyone was snug as a bug in a rug...or something like that.

Our first day, we HAD to go and meet Mickey. L kept saying that we had to go to Mickey Mouse's house, so we did. We had to keep N from eating his nose. I do not remember ever knowing about Toon Town, but it has been at least 20 years since I have been to Disneyland. . so I was just glad that I remembered anything I guess.

The kids had a magical time. Including time at the hotel pool, which was N's favorite and S actually asked to stay at the hotel and swim the last day rather than return to the adventure parks (which was tempting to me--but we already paid for the tix so. . .).

What a good daddy to take them ALL swimming.

Our favorite parade was at California Adventure Park--the Pixar Play parade. We still sing the song around here . .

S just kept saying "now I know that Mater and Lightning are REAL!" L was pretty excited too.

We ate lunch at the Blue Bayou Cafe (inside Pirates of the Caribbean). N was a cute pirate, although quite grumpy and tired and S was soooo unhappy that we had to spend anytime anywhere near the scary rides.

All around we had fun goofing off and finding out our inner animals (I am a Beaver--which makes sense), rock climbing, etc. Buzz light year ended up being our go to ride when L couldn't ride big kids rides like star tours, and splash mountain (he just missed the 40 inch requirement at 39 inches). I decided that it was OK even though it was a shooting game (and I was afraid his random gun fetish would get worse).


Dumbo still is a favorite, and we had fun driving in Automania (E still quotes some of the jokes that are on the screen as you wait in line). And we had to do Teacups exactly once.

E and S ran around the parks literally kicking up their heels with happiness and joy. All in all, the kids were delightful much to the astonishment of my pessimistic self. They were so well behaved I thought that maybe someone had replaced my little monsters with disney charactatures.
We done wore ourselves out. Scott decided to take a little nap here and there. Funny As Small World doesn't capture our interest on the 12th run like it does for the kids! And poor L was just tuckered out, even though he got to ride on grandma's (wheelchair) lap a good deal more than anyone else.
Poor kid. Well now we can say we did it. We had MANY conversations with the kids about what was real and what was not. They were just trying so hard to figure it all out, and it was actually fun for me to watch. When pressed, I flippantly said we would come back in 10 years (right after we get our hypothetical dog), and now every once in a while E will remind us that we get to go back when she is 16. I think everyone had fun and no one lost an eye. A success on all counts.

H A L L O W E E N 09

Well my witches hat fell over. N has my wand although she is supposed to be a 'sweet pea', my two pirates (captain and shmee) are especially happy for their cool mustaches and E kept telling us that she is a 'nice witch'. We had a pretty good time hamming it up for a few hours anyway.

The Halloween parties started on THURSDAY and E and S were so excited. L spent the day in his costume at home too. . . just to be fair.


I spent some time with Eliza at her school parade and then carnival. It was pretty fun to see her and all the kids in their costumes. I finally got past my Halloween hum bug when I remembered why this holiday is fun (the kids...the answer is the kids).


I just could not stop staring at S teacher (who is pretty tall on ordinary days) because her costume really was just amazing.

Aunt Erika came down for trick-or-treating with her pirate commrades

We went to a few houses around our block. We especially liked grandma's house with homemade doughnuts and a warm break. Scott wanted to boycott the 'trunk-or-treat' as he particularly detests it and thinks that it takes away the fun of seeing the neighborhood out on the streets. I mostly agree, but still like to go to where the party is. . .

L still identifies all the houses in our neighborhood that gave him treats (not too many as most of the neighborhood was at the 'trunk-or-treat' ). All in all a good time -- and I am so glad the pressure is off for another year!

Good thing there is a cool aunt

Aunt Erika decided that we should go to the circus. It is a good thing there are people out there making me be a good mom (i always hae good intentions). It was quite the production in the Delta Center (or Energy Solutions Arena--whatever). We got seats in the nose bleeds, but it was a great time for all. . . .well except N who squirmed her way through it. She had to look, but she was terrified most of the time (it was loud, but we took out her aids!).
She was like this the whole time.

We especially liked the elephants. . . .

Maybe next time my kids have the opportunity to ride on an elephant they won't choose the camel?! (that was last time we went to the Circus)