12-29-09 - Catch up day

Lazy day today... hoping to get a bit of pre-party cleaning in, and catch up on phlogging a little.  May also visit Full Bloom to get some knitting and social time in.

I'm hoping to finish Dad's Santa hat today, too, so that I can give it to him for Christmas.  Here's a photo of it in progress:

12-28-09 - Carmen Angel

Some days, Carmen is an awesome kid ALL DAY.  Today was that day!  We went to the Y early on, and she played great and didn't want to leave when I was done.  I spent a full hour on a stationary bike, knitting the whole time.  It rocked.... definitely be doing more of that in the future!

We came home and had snacks, and she was great.  We ran out to the bank, and she was sweet.  We came home for lunch and outdoor playing time, and she rocked.  Then it was naptime, and she went down easy.  Even dinner and after dinner play time was wonderful.  Carolyn was happy all day, too - bonus!

I ran outside to see if I could get a picture of Jupiter's moons again today with the new tripod.  Unfortunately, my eyes weren't working too great and the photos are out of focus.  Oh well, there will be more clear nights!

Since my photos all kind of sucked today, I'll post one from yesterday.  This is Carmen using her new fingerpaints from Grandmother...  she wasn't so sure about getting her fingers messy, so she mostly used a paintbrush:

12-27-09 - New tripod!

Today, we finally got to pick up our "ladies" from Double Durrango farm.  They should be having their kids sometime in late April.  Let's hope for more girls this time!!!

We also went to Main Street Yarns to get some yarn for Dad's Santa hat.  We got an alpaca/wool combo for the red and a baby llama for the trim.  The baby llama is incredibly soft - I want to swim in it.

Tyme got a new tripod for me for Christmas!  I'm really stoked to try and catch more stars now that I can point the camera in lots of directions, instead of just straight up.

We're also really enjoying our new living room.  I spent lots of time today on the new windowseat and on the couch, which is oriented in a really pleasing way now.  I'd always been afraid that it would make the room unusable to have it in the middle of the room, but it actually works out really well.

Here is a shot of the moving stars, taken at 2 AM - check out the green on the trees and the beautiful stars!  This is with no photoshop enhancements:

12-17-09 - New windows, and Santa

This morning started out with a lot of waiting and some cleaning.  The windows got here late, and Uncle FL got here even later.  As soon as he pulled up, though, he got right to work ripping up the window in the front to make way for our new bay window, and after about 8 hours, it is nearly done.  Tyme was helping, too, which is awesome since we're both into learning as much about construction as possible.

I also put up the Christmas tree and took the girls to visit Santa Dzia Dzia for pictures.  When we got back, I started to immediately make our holiday cards, since those need to go out on Saturday at the latest.

Tomorrow, we plan on finishing the bay window and (hopefully) starting on replacing the other windows.  The new ones look awesome and I can't wait to see what the house looks like with them in!

Pictures:

Carmen and Blaze (FL's dog) watch the progress on the bay window -

Carmen and Carolyn visit with Santa Dzia Dzia -

12-16-09 - Errands, knitting, sun

Today started out well because I got my butt out of bed early and was able to run some errands while Andrea watched the kidlets.  They didn't wake up until noon (!), so she got off easy today!  I finished my out of the house stuff and came home to camp out in the office with Tyme and finish his hat.  See picture below.  It's pretty awesome.

Then I started on a soft bunny blanket thingee for Carolyn.  The yarn I'm using is 89% bamboo and 11% acrylic.  I didn't even know they made yarn out of bamboo, but this stuff is so soft and nice to touch... it's really amazing.

Carmen was very happy to play outdoors today, which made me happy.  I think it's great when she pretends to plant and water flowers, collects rocks, lines up stuff she finds in the yard, and runs around with the goats.  She's also very into her pretend friends right now, and I love hearing her make conversation with them.  Today was a perfect, sunny, cool day for her to enjoy playing outdoors again.

We meant to get the tree up today for the holidays, but it didn't happen.  Maybe tomorrow we can work on it.  If not... no big deal.  The new windows will be festive enough for me.

I started thinking about Carmen's birthday party, which I just realized is only 10 days away.  OOPS.  So we're going to go with a fairy theme, and I'll start brainstorming cheap ways to entertain and feed kids and adults.  I also have to decide if it would be better to have it on her actual birthday, or on the day after, to give people a little break from Christmas.  I also don't know what we're going to give her as a gift.  She doesn't request anything, really, probably because we don't have cable and she doesn't see commercials for stuff.  I'm sure that will change as she gets older and starts wanting things that her friends have or talk about, though.

Anyways, here's the hat:

 

12-15-09 - No TV day

Today was our TV fast day.  I declared it in the morning and stuck with it through nearly the whole day.  Go me!  We have it on a good amount of the day, but Carmen rarely actually watches it.  She just likes having the option to watch it, I guess.  But not today - today was a play outside, play inside, think up new games, do puzzles, read, and watch Mom knit day.  Carmen didn't protest much, thankfully.  I feel like we watched too much tv while we were out in CA, and I don't want it to become a habit.

We didn't go anywhere, and I'm already getting itchy to get in the van and drive.

I started a new hat last night for Tyme.  It's very orange.  I'm going to call it "blockhead," but this has nothing to do with the awesome guy who wears it.  Tonight, I worked on it while Tyme cleaned up a bit in the office in preperation for Uncle Forrest Lee's visit.  He's coming to teach us how to install windows - specifically, the 17 new ones that will be arriving Thursday morning.  I'm stoked!  Double paned, high E, argon, with a neat pattern and the cross beam things on the inside, so that I can clean the whole pane of glass at once.  Best of all, these will have screens, and they will open when we want them to, and stay shut when we're done!!  No more painted shut windows for us....

I didn't take any pictures today, so I'll share one I took in Long Beach, at the aquarium:

Nothing horribly exciting happened in the past few days, but, ironically, I was too busy to write up anything in the journal.  So I'll do short summeries of each day.

12-10
Actually, I don't really remember what we did.  Probably went to the zoo again and ate something like Chik-fil-a.

12-11
See yesterday.  BUT we did go and meet Nicole, who would be Carmen's babysitter for the evening.  Then, when Tyme got off of work (on time, for the first time in two weeks!), we got ready and headed out to his Christmas party.  I sang karaoke for the first time.  I won't discuss this in further detail, but yes, I was perfectly sober.  Carolyn went with us and hung out in the pouch for half the time, then spent the rest of the time with the wife of one of Tyme's coworkers (she asked to hold her, then did so for about 2 hours!!).  She was really happy to sit on her lap, dance with her, and then fall asleep in her arms, while Tyme and I actually got to dance together, eat, and talk to people.

12-12
We had planned on going back down to San Diego for one more day, but the weather was so cruddy, and we were so tired, that we ended up having a "cruising" day.  We piled ourselved in the van and drove around Orange County to see what we could find.  We found a few great restaurants, more parks, and a couple of short cuts.  We hit the zoo one last time for a rainy jaunt, then made our way home for a nap.  After naptime, we went back out for dinner (at Buca di Beppo), and for Tyme to exchange his flourescent orange yarn for some less flourescent orange yarn.  We got "home" and then packed like mad while trying to get Carmen to go to sleep, which failed until about midnight.  Yeah, that's 3 AM Georgia time.  Special.

12-13
We woke up at 7:30 and packed up the car, had our last Holiday Inn breakfast, gassed up, got some road food, picked up Tyme's co worker (part of the complicated plan for borrowing the Boss's van), then had him drop us off at the airport.  We checked in, survived security (nine full bins, four crying fits, three pairs of shoes, two checked carseats and a partridge in a pear tree), then waited for our plane.  I knitted.

Our flight came in about an hour late, thanks to fog and rain.  Flying with the girls really isn't as bad as it could be - I did hear one baby, about Carolyn's age, who wailed and screamed for about half of the 4 hour flight.  I felt so bad for the parents, and so grateful that I had built in pacifiers and a generally happy baby.  We drove home, unpacked a bit, then dove into bed.  Carolyn slept the best she has in two and a half weeks.  So did I!  I'm so happy that being home helps her to go back to her old sleeping routine.

12-14
Today!  The girls slept in until about 10.  Bliss.  We didn't leave the house today, and that's ok with me.  The weather is a bit cruddy, and I was just worn out.  I felt like the girls needed a bit of grounding time, too.  We watched a bit of tv, did some puzzles, unpacked, ate cream of wheat, knitted, and napped.  Now we're winding down and looking longingly at the bed again.  Tomorrow, I hope to call some family members and see about going to visit.  Any friends want a visit, too? 

Here are a couple pictures from the last few days:

Carmen discovers camouflage... Carolyn discovers Carmen.

I finished Carmen's hat!  And she likes it!!

See more recent photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizebeth_joy/

12-9-09 Downtown Disney, and conveyer belt sushi

Ok, I promised myself I wouldn't knit until I caught up on the blog!!

Yesterday, we had a fabulous time with the fabulous Lernie (of Lernie.com).  We met her at her house, tried in vain to pet her poor, traumatized kitty, then headed out together to Downtown Disney.  She showed us around and we did a bit of shopping, I got an awesome skirt (http://www.karizadesigns.com/), Carmen built a polar bear (she named her "Taiga".... probably actually Tiger with an English accent, but I changed the spelling to be more appropriate ;)  ), we saw some giant Lego sculptures (see one of the pics of the day), and we ate some awesome Mexican food.

Carmen's favorite bit of this was probably a water fountain that would randomly shoot water really high up.  When we walked back by it on the way out, she asked to sit and wait for it to shoot one more time.  We waited a few minutes, and it didn't go, but she was ready to wait for a much longer time.  She has an amazing amount of patience, attention span and stubborness sometimes.  She also really likes her new polar bear, and keeps reminding me about how we made her.  I'm glad that the whole point of the "build a bear" stuck with her.

Traveling with the girls has been really good.  I've learned lots of stuff, like that we could survive in really small quarters if we had to.  I've also learned that taking the kids out to do stuff by myself isn't nearly as daunting as it used to be.  It's much better than sitting on our arses at home!  We also have learned that Carmen is seriously a homebody - she's asked a few times a day if we can go home, and talks about our animals (specifically Harriet, the goat) and her bedroom all the time.  The last thing I've learned is that we're blessed to have our home and our yard, as well as our critters.  Well, ok, I knew that already, but this has really helped to hammer it in.

After we dropped off Lernie, we headed back to the hotel for a failed nap, then met Tyme for a trip to a Kaiten sushi bar.  This is where the food travels around on a conveyer belt and you pick up what you want to eat.  The plates are color coded so that you know how much your food will be, and you just keep the plates for the server to add up how much you owe.  It was a two beer night for me, and the sushi was excellent.  Carmen tries natto for the first time (she swallowed it, but wasn't exactly asking for more) and she loved the crawdad handrolls.  She also pretty much demolished a bowl of edamame.  We got home, and Tyme helped her go to sleep, and I knitted between bouts of nursing Carolyn, who has picked up a really congested nose in the past few days.

Pics for the day:

This is Darth Vader, in Legos. 

This is how the knitting is going - it's a hat!  Well, part of one...

To see more photos, visit our flickr set for December:  December Family photos

12-8-09 To the zoo again

Happy 8 months of being out of the uterus, Carolyn!

Today was a zoo day - we went to Santa Ana Zoo and Carmen played on the playground for about half of it.  Carolyn sat next to me and I got some knitting done, until I realized that I had forgotton the extra needle I needed for cabling.  A pen I found in my purse worked for cabling 2 stitches, but 3 was too much and I was forced to quit after about 6 rows.  :P

Carmen makes friends reallly easily.  I guess it's the age?  At the playground, I see her glom onto other kids and they are holding hands and running around in no time.  It's interesting to see how she has different with different kids, for example, she might be the "follower" for one kid, doing whatever they do and doing whatever they ask her to do, or she might be the "leader" for another.  One little girl she met today, who was just a month older than her, ended up being prey for her.  She chased her around, growing and saying "I'm going to get you!" while the other girl screamed with delight and ran around.  Each time Carmen "got" her, she would give the little girl a hug, then command her to run away from her some more.  Each time a kid had to go that she'd been playing with, she would hug them, then ask me about five minutes later "Where did my new friend go?"

We came home for a late nap, then went out shopping for new yard and some more materials that I need for knitting. I'm planning on making hats for the family, so I got a pretty irridescent white for Carolyn, the most obnoxious orange I could find for Tyme, and Carmen picked out a teal color for herself.  She's really excited about me making a hat for her, and gets disappointed when she sees me working on someone else's hat.

We went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, since it was walkable from the craftstore we had been shopping in, and Tyme met us there.  Then we all headed home and everyone crashed except me, since I couldn't sleep until I actually started a new knitting project with my new stuff.

Today's photo is of the fresh, beautiful snow on the mountains to the East of us.  We would see it on occasion while driving around, and I snapped a few pictures while driving.  It's a state law that you can't use a cell phone while driving, but, as far as I know, using a camera is fine.  Heh.

12-7-09 - Whole lotta nothing, unless you count food.

Today we did... just about NOTHING!  It was raining out all day and chilly, and I felt nearly no motivation.  We got up late and missed the hotel's breakfast, so I took the girls to IHOP.  Apparently, today was an eating day, because Carmen demolished her "Tooty JR."  Of the two eggs, sausage, bacon, and two pancakes with apples, she ate all but one bite of the eggs.  Then she ate some of my strawberry pancakes for dessert.  :O

We hit Taco Hell for lunch, and then she ate one cheesy roll up and nearly two chicken and rice burritos, as well as part of my "mexican pizza" (I don't know what the hell is on it, but I love those things).

Then I said that we would go to the library after her nap, which happens after lunch.  Well, she didn't fall asleep for about 5 hours.  By the time she woke up, Tyme was on his way home from work.... with more food!  :D  This time, we had Indian - Aloo gobi, nag paneer, yogurt dumping stuff, two kinds of awesome chicken, something really spicy, naan, and rice.  Plus dessert, but we're not bringing that out until Carmen is asleep, and by the looks of things, that's going to be a while (she's on her third time out now for climbing all over the bed instead of laying down).

Also, I took my meds with beer tonight.  Newcastle Brown Ale.  Awesome.

Um, since the camera never left its home today, I'll share one of my favorite pictures from the past.  This one goes out to Carolyn, who turns 8 months old tomorrow, and Momma Barb, who I miss very much! 

Here's hoping tomorrow will be more productive!

Recent Photos

Here is a list of photo sets from our most recent adventures:

Sea World

Aquarium of the Pacific

Irvine Regional Park/Orange County Zoo

Santa Ana Zoo

Here are our family photos from November and October:

Family, November 09

Family, October 09

12-6-09 - Family Day

Yesterday was a nice, chill day with the family.  We try to pack in family activities as much as possible when Tyme has off - today was filled with options, but we chose a simple route.

Carolyn was up all night, so we took our time getting to breakfast.  She's been a little congested, and even nursing wasn't making her feel any better... she would cry even harder and push away if I would offer.  Thankfully, during the day she seems to feel fine.  I think it's just the dry air in the hotel room that's making her nose get all stuffed up.

After breakfast, we came back to the room and let the kids rest for the morning while I made plans and connections with local henna artists.  Then we packed ourselves up and went to In N Out for lunch, followed by an outing to the Santa Ana Zoo (here's a link to the flickr set I have with photos from this zoo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizebeth_joy/sets/72157622948295406/ ).  Tyme had never been there before, so it was fun showing him around.  Carmen always amazes me - she could see an exhibit far up the path, and ask "Can we go see the ____?"  She would inevitably be correct about the type of animal that was in there, even if it had a hard name, or wasn't especially exciting to look at.  Her memory is amazing, and just a little scary sometimes.

We stayed until they practically kicked us out at 5, and then debated dinner.  We decided to just drive around and look for a hole in the wall taqueria.  In this part of town, that's not a hard search.  We found one pretty quickly and were pretty pleased with the results.  There was a crazy fast commuter train that goes right behind the restaurant, so when we were done eating, we walked around the back and waited for the next train to zoom by.  Both the girls squealed like mad when the 80 mile an hour train blasted by about 20 feet from where we stood.

We headed back to the hotel after dinner and settled in for the evening.  It wasn't the most exciting day, but it was very satisfying spending time with Tyme and the kids.

In n Out burgers - The insides are food, the outsides are not.

A margay; my favorite type of small cat -

New blog! - Today, Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California

I used to have a livejournal.  At some point, I decided that I didn't want to post there anymore...  I'm not sure why not?  Any way, I miss writing and communicating to friends and family, and I would also like to share a photo a day; artsy, fun, sweet, or weird.

Nothing deep or too personal - just a little about my days and what's going on in them.

We're currently in Southern California for Tyme's work and a bit of vacation.  The girls and I have spent each weekday visiting zoos, parks, aquariums, and playgrounds.  They've done amazingly well, considering what havoc we've put their schedules through.  We've done pretty well, too.  ;)

Today, we drove from Irvine up to Long Beach to see the Aquarium of the Pacific.  Carmen is absolutely in love with sea life right now, and is all about petting anything that she can.  Thankfully, there were places here where she could touch rays, starfish, crabs, anemones, and sharks, and she ate it up.  She now has a stuffed sting ray she's named Kipper, who goes everywhere with her and gives people hugs.  It makes me so happy to see her so loving toward all animals, and so confident around them.  I saw a few kids who got a peek at the sharks or rays and literally screamed or cried until their parents moved them to another area.  Meanwhile, Carmen was about ready to jump in and swim with every living thing we met - no matter how big, ugly, or scary.  Do we have a future marine biologist?


After the aquarium, we drove back to Irvine and hit a Korean noodle place and then TJ Maxx for some grown-up luggage (time to retire the duffle bags) and more Carolyn clothes.  Carmen picked out the GREENEST piece of luggage I've ever seen - but she's got good taste, it's a Samsonite and in great condition.  Now we're "home" and settled in, and hoping that Carolyn decides it's a sleeping night.  She calls the shots around here on who sleeps when.  :)

Also, I've taken up knitting.  :)  This time, I'm going to learn how to do more than just make a never ending scarf.  I'm starting on some simple legwarmers for Carolyn, whose chubby, not-yet-8-month-old thighs barely fit into size 12 month pants.

Today, I took 892 photos.  I'll, um, have to pare that down a bit for flickr uploading. I'm hoping to get a lot of great aquarium shots so that I can stick them all into a folder and have them shuffle as a screen saver for our tv.  Much easier than trying to maintain a tropical aquarium!

We'll be out here until the 14th, and plan on visiting Sea World one more time, as well as hopefully meeting some local henna artists.  We briefly debated going to Hollywood today, since we've never done that before, but it really just doesn't appeal to us.  We would rather see nature stuff than really unnatural stuff, I guess.  :D

So, I think today will be a two-fer.  First photo is of Carmen showing Kipper to the sea lions at Aquarium of the Pacific -

And this is one with her petting one of the rays -

I think I'll post a "highlights" from the first week we were here in another post soon.  Enjoy!