Wordy Girls

Both Lucy and Josie are big talkers. Lucy is a determined listener who loves to sing songs and repeat whole sections of lyrics. She also seems to have inherited her mom's inability to correctly hear many lyrics. She and her cousin Aidan once had a two hour argument over whether mickey mouse clubhouse went "come inside its come inside" or "come inside its fun inside." You can guess who was on which side. Not surprisingly, Lucy wouldn't back down. Lucy's weekend line in the sand is that a library book we are reading is called "the Queen of Palloween." Even though the book is all about Halloween. The book did lead to a fun discussion of all the things Lucy has been for past halloweens, like the butterfly.

Josie is learning more and more words every day. She is difficult to understand but if you repeat back what you think she is saying, you can get somewhere. At dinner last night we thought she was saying bun and we kept giving her hot dog bun much to her disgust until finally I realized she was saying Fawn and was able to give her the fairy doll she wanted (which was also on the table.). Josie's big sentence this weekend is "Fabian will have an adventure." from the storybook about Hondo and Fabian that Matt and Denise and Casey sent.

Talking, it runs in our family...

Hot Tea and Princesses Biking

I can't believe it is already Sunday. We've had a great weekend with a mix of catching up on household chores, park time, jogging, sunny earth day festival, movie night with Jonas, Rick, Sarah, and Elliot, and plenty of Guinea pig time. The weather has been beautiful and its been nice to just relax at home. Doing a bunch of laundry may not sound exciting but when you don't have any clean underwear it is a necessity...

Here are some recent pictures of Lucy and Josie from this weekend. Lucy is wearing her "cinderella" dress made for her by Grandma Jo. Josie is pouring "hot tea" from the world's largest tea pot, otherwise known as the watering can.

On today's agenda: swimming pool with the girls, replace our non-functional doornobs, and do more laundry...

Feel the Drama

I see a lot of high school musical attendance in our future...

Mitch's Birthday!!!

Sushi delivery from dancing Seth, beautiful cake by Elise, and good friends. A good time was had by all.

Denise, Matt and Casey Visit

Matt and Denise escaped my one photo from their visit, but here is Mitch, Josie, Lucy and Casey.

We had a great visit two weeks ago with our friends Matt, Denise, and Casey. Lucy and Casey got along great with Lucy climbing all over Casey and ordering him around constantly. We hit a lot of the Ventura classics like the beach, the harbor carousel, fish and chips at the Harbor, picking veggies and feeding carrots to animals at Underwood Family Farms, and generally hanging out. Matt and Denise taught us a new card game. They were extremely tolerant of guest living in our little house which involves sleeping on crappy air beds in our living room and being awoken at 6 AM by Lucy jumping on you at 6 AM, and having Katafanga sleep on your head all night long.

Hopefully we will see Matt, Denise, and Casey again when we go through Seattle this summer.

The Boys

Blurry close ups of the boys during grass eating time. Oreo and mello.











We had quite the adventure on Easter weekend trying to adopt the two guinea pigs. When we first got to the shelter, Oreo and Caramel were there but they had a note on their cage saying they were being held for someone else. They were the only guinea pigs at the shelter that were ready for adoption so we petted the bunnies for a while and prepared to go away disappointed. The shelter staff said they would call the person who was supposed to adopt the pigs and call us back on our cell phone.

We went out to lunch in Santa Barbara and were getting ready to go home when we got a call on the cell phone - the pigs were ours!! We went over and picked them up in the cat carrier. We then took them home and started to work finishing their cage. Mitch had already been working on constructing the cage for several hours the day before. It took another four hours or so to complete the eleven square foot pig palace.

The boys seem quite happy in their new home. The girls are really into them and ask about "the boys" a lot. We take them out for floor time every night during bath and the girls feed them carrots and greens from the bath tub. We also take them out to a small enclosure in the yard to eat grass for an hour or so every day on the weekends.

They are a lot of work because they poop like crazy!! I spot clean the cage every day and fully change the bedding every three days. They are definitely more work than the fish. I think they are good pets for the girls to learn how to be gentle and respectful of animals and they do make lots of cute noises. I wouldn't say that they like petting yet and mostly tolerate being held because we are feeding them good things like carrots and apples. They do sit still in the girls laps and have only nipped Lucy once when her finger got in the way of a carrot. I still have hopes that they will come to like petting over time. Maybe we can even teach them a few tricks. Well maybe not, they are guinea pigs after all.

Skinny Pigs!!

Meet Oreo and Caramel. These handsome boys are two rescue guinea pigs looking for a good home at the Santa Barbara animal shelter. If they are still there this Friday, we are hoping to take them home with us. I started thinking about adopting a rabbit. I've always wanted a rabbit and I would like to get a furry family pet. I researched rabbits but ultimately decided (after talking to the rabbit rescue folks) that rabbits are too skittish and fragile for toddler living. There are a lot of very handsome rabbits out there in the rescue world though.

Anyway after getting really frustrated and feeling like there are NO pets that it is o.k. to have with toddlers, I decided to try to research what pets are good to have around little people. And one of the recommendations I found was for guinea pigs. I have always loved guinea pigs with their funny hair-dos and all of the wonderful sounds they make. I did a bunch of reading on-line about guinea pigs and their needs and talked to Mitch about getting a pair of rescue guinea pigs.

While they will be family pets, they will primarily be my responsibility. We've cleared out room in the girls room and are building a 10.5 square foot cage (the recommended size for two guinea pigs). I took the girls to the pet store and let them hold a couple of guinea pigs to try out the idea. They were really into it, did great with the pigs, and the pigs were very calm and seemed to enjoy the petting.

I am really looking forward to having some furry little people around. I'm sure the cats will be interested but we will keep them spatially separated and we are building a cat-proof cage with a lid.

More on the guinea pig (or as Lucy calls them "skinny pig") adventure after we actually have some pigs.

Catching Up

A lot has happened since March 21st. I got a stomach flu from Lucy and spent some wonderful time puking my guts up. The vomiting only lasted 6 hours but the nausea lasted for a week! Crazy stuff. After the stomach flu my brother Jeremy came to visit and we all went down to San Diego to Becca and Rob and Ava and Max's house for March Madness. We had a great weekend with the Lewison-German clan and the Riley Kelleys. We also got to see Allie and Tom while in SD. We took Jeremy to Legoland (not as cool as Disneyland in my opinion and no place for short people it turns out. Lucy could only ride three of the rides in the whole place. They did have a really cool log play structure though), the San Diego zoo, and a cold breezy beach day.

Then I had a super stressful few days trying to finish up my resume and complete my job application for the Chief of Interpretation and Education at my park. I would dearly love to get that job. I think it would be really interesting and would have lots of new challenges. But it will be very competitive because it is an interesting, good paying job. Only time will tell. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

I've also managed to catch another cold which I am still fighting off after a full week of coughing up huge chunks of snot and clogged sinuses every night.

The girls are doing fantastic other than making us crazy at night but each of them crying and being obnoxious several times every night. There's nothing like lack of sleep and illness to put a harsh edge on everything.

I'm going to cut this rambling catching up post off. More later.