Realizing how neglected my blog is..

...still doesn't mean I have time to do much about it. But the winter/Christmas photo should really be updated to a springtime apple blossom photo I took almost a month ago now. See, I have good intentions. I still manage to take photos of the kids. Sometimes. We had a fun farm visit at our CSA farm in Scott Valley this past weekend. But I forgot the camera. Milking goats and shearing and baby chickens and kittens and puppy dogs and yummy food.

Meanwhile at home I have stacks of mail and other papers and things to be read/dealt with piled on horizontal surfaces awaiting me to do something with them (recycle, shred, file, respond to, throw away after the cat has a hairball upon it). I've retreated from my desk because it wasn't that comfortable to sit at anyway and the crazy paper piles overtook it as well. I keep hoping my red couch in the front room will exhibit magical powers by folding the piles of laundry I keep washing and piling upon its cushions.

Even though are spring is still very chilly here, the ants have manages to exert themselves on my sticky floors. I attacked the weeds out front last weekend but only managed to clear a small area around the mail box. Our weed whacker has a leaky gas tank and wouldn't start. I still haven't planted pretty flowers out front in the annual or perennial variety. Matt and I did manage to prune our apple tree before it bloomed out completely.

Around the house:

*Evalyn just had her tonsils and adenoids out. She had some pretty enlarged tissue back there that was causing obstructive sleep apnea. Her surgery was last week and it's amazing how after just a couple of days she was back to her old self and back at school on Monday. And listening to her breathe at night is restful rather strained. The biggest challenge was motivating her to take her antibiotic 3 times a day. We're on Day 6 of her 10 Day chart. The BIG reward: silk flowers from the dollar store!! : )

*Henry is into everything and says the funniest things. "Mommy I'm a hundred hungy!" is one of my favorites. He loves to play with our neighbors black cat/kitten Huck/Otis who spends most of the day at our house when his owners are away. Jadie isn't too thrilled with this especially when he sneaks into the garage and eats her food! Henry is really loving the trampoline Uncle Dougie got the kids for Easter. I was nervous about it at first but have mellowed out now. I still say no flips or somersaults though. I'm just glad to send him out for 5 jumps when he gets restless and then of course he stays outside a lot longer!

*Linnea is already into size 3 clothes and is as opinionated as ever. We're having some success with potty training. (ie some days she wears big girl undies and somedays she wears a pull-up all day. yeah, pretty pathetic on my part. ) She is very cute with her imaginative play and how she rotates between what toys or dolls are her favorite to sleep with. It's fun how she tags along with H&E during their outside play. She consistently calls them "En-ghee" and "Em-ma-in"

*Hazel is everyone's little darling. She's 4.5 months and all smiles. She just talks and coos and eats and sleeps. Aside from having a consistent night time wake-up to eat, she is the sweetest easiest baby. Henry can always get the biggest laughs out of her and Linnea is very protective of her and her toys. "Haytzels" she will declare. And she is very good about running to her crib and putting the baby's paci back in. They're all good with that actually. I keep waiting for her to roll over consistently so she will sleep on her belly and keep her thumb and or paci in her mouth. She's at that age where we still swaddle her so she doesn't knock the paci out. If we don't swaddle her she will sometimes find her thumb or she'll just knock the paci out and get mad.

*Daddy and Mommy just roll with the punches and are both trying to figure out how to motivate ourselves to work in exercise time and eat better. Our latest equipment purchase is: the T-Bow. Pretty cool tool. Definitely gives you a good workout. When you actually use it. The DVD it comes with has the added bonus of teaching you German while learning the different moves.

At the end of the day you will find us watching the original Little House on the Prairie series (were still on Season 1) with the kids and having fun conversations about life back in the day. Matt and I try not to be distracted by the southern CA trees and hillsides rather than open prairie land. I have major flashbacks to my own childhood with all the live oak trees and mustard flowers and golden hillsides. They really should remake it on the real prairie, though it would lose a lot of it's nostalgia.

Oh, and during the day I've been spending a lot of time working on the Children's Discovery Garden at our local community garden. It's a really neat project incorporating educational demonstration beds to teach where our food comes from as well as outdoor play areas including a bean tee pee, a sunflower house, a willow tunnel and a butterfly garden (the part I'm most involved with). So while my own yard and garden is seriously neglected this year (again) I'm helping build a really amazing community garden. That's got to count for something right?

And so it goes.... time to get dinner figured out so no photos for you! And you still have to look at my winter banner!

Surfacing?

Hi out there! So much for all the fun posts that haven't been written to keep up with our family these past few months. Obviously our sweet baby Hazel has changed dynamics a bit. But in the past month or two things have definitely settled down. Finding time to be on the computer for more than half an hour at a time and upload photos and write a cute comprehensive story is something that seems beyond me. I marvel at how busy moms can do it all!

Perhaps it's just my way of approaching things: I'm too thorough for my own good. I need to be more efficient in all aspects of how I accomplish a task. And the computer does take up so much time! Check your email, click on a Facebook notification, look up a recipe, purchase an item, pay bills, upload some photos and delete all the ones the kids took on the sly, etc, etc.

Anyway, enough of that. Here's some pics in case I don't get back to this anytime soon!

Hazel 5 Days Old


Two Weeks Old


One Month Old


Two Months


And Three Months

Introducing Hazel Luella

Hazel Luella
Born January 4, 2010 at 6:13 PM
9 lbs 12 oz
21 inches

We are so happy she's finally here!



Evalyn and Henry are thrilled and fascinated by their new sister. Linnea is still warming up to the idea.


Henry was very excited to show the new baby his dollar store Groucho Marx glasses.



And we are glad that my mom was able to make it down and help us hold down the fort.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Okay, here's a quick catch-up post before we go into "new baby mode". Monday is Induction Day (a week past the due date), so if all goes well we will soon be posting about our new little arrival.

Christmas was low key and lovely this year, if not a little more time conscious. We sojourned to the woods and cut down a tree.






We baked some cookies and managed to deliver some before they were eaten and or went stale.





We spent the Saturday before Christmas up in Medford doing some back to back shopping while hiding gifts from each other in the back of the car. We read our Christmas books. We had a very fun box of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" anonymously left on our doorstep that delighted the kids every morning for 12 days. We still don't know who left it for us but thank you thank you if you happen to read this post! We managed to get some last minute cards out but of course not to our whole list. Next year...

We did our Christmas Eve tradition of re-enacting The Nativity Story from Luke 2, but it might've been our poorest attempt to date since Linnea wanted nothing to do with it. Daddy made a very fun "donkey ride" though.






And we opened our Christmas Bell. This too was a feeble attempt to keep up the tradition. In vain I explored gift shoppes and antique stores in search of a metal bell. I should've resorted to e-Bay sooner. Matt managed to find a copper fishing bell at Rite-Aid. So that's what we opened. But I also ordered two from a seller on e-Bay for future Christmases so we won't be stumped again!



We managed to hang our stockings a little better this year. We have this huge brick fireplace wall, but no mantle. I found some random hooks from the garage that we kind of wedged/hooked on the "lovely" brass fireplace door. It worked. Santa found them just fine. Though Henry was a little concerned that Santa would bump the stockings when he came through the chimney. Oh, and that Jadie Cat would drink the milk, so we had to cover it with plastic wrap! It was very magical as far as Santa went; especially thanks to the Portable North Pole PNP link that Grammum sent us...



I had fun wrapping gifts in fabric again. Furoshiki is the traditional Japanese technique for this, but it's something my mom has done for years and I've just evolved it into using square cuts or combining it with sheer fabric over paper in some instances. I love it. There's something about using real bows and ribbon and pretty Christmas fabric that I find pleasure in. Plus you don't have piles of paper and tape to worry about: just fold and store for next year.



Enough cutting and pasting. Here's the remainder of the photos in slideshow format.




Now that all the gifts have been given, I can post some pics of the few handmade things I did. And since my box to Hawaii, sent the week before Christmas via Priority Mail, only just arrived yesterday I could use that as my excuse as to why I haven't blogged about the holidays, but really I just haven't gotten around to it! (see photos in above slideshow)


We had our lights and decorations up Thanksgiving weekend and down the day after Christmas. The weather was nice that day even though we usually leave them up til New Years. Our tree was undecorated and out the door as well. The result was we've had a week of very low key relaxing just cleaning house and waiting for the baby... We even got enough snow for the kids and daddy to build a snowman.



There we go. My last act of nesting before the baby comes: my blog is mostly up to date. Yay! Thank you to everyone who helped make our Christmas magical and memorable.