Beach

This kid likes sand.

Too much sand for my taste.

At least he has a well-exfoliated digestive system. 

Jillian after her panic attack. (No joke). This was a high surf day, and the waves came within 8 feet of our blanket. She LOST it. After dragging the blanket behind the lifeguard tower, and putting the umbrella between her and the ocean, she regained composure and collected miniature sea shells the rest of the time. I think this is a sunflower seed she is holding in the picture though...

Happy Birthday Ev!

Our Ev turned five last week, and we had most of Ben's side of the family here for it. It was a lot of fun to see everyone. All her presents (except for a soccer ball) were for school. She made bank in the clothing department (thanks everyone!), and really enjoys modeling them. She is so excited to go to school in September. 

3 weeks before her birthday, I asked her what kind of cake she would like. She told me, "Strawberry ice cream cake." After much clarification, I figured out she wanted strawberry ice cream, in cake form. I've never made an ice cream cake, so this concoction turned out well considering that. It had a golden Oreo crust, one layer of strawberry ice cream (Breyer's), a layer of sliced pound cake smeared with strawberry jam, and then another layer of strawberry ice cream and crushed Oreos and sliced strawberries on top. It was a hit, and I will be making it again. 

Great Park

Here in Orange County, there is an old air base that was sold a while back, and the developers are turning it into a huge park. It will be larger than Central Park in New York City when finished. It's the same park where we take the hot air balloon ride. A week ago they had a five year anniversary party, which was more like a county fair. We weren't able to see everything unfortunately, but it was all free! There was so much for the kids to do, and I wish we could have been there longer. 

Fun petting zoo. Gordon wanted to play in the animal water dishes. This was located in the part of the park labeled "the north 40." It will have a working farm for people to come visit when it's finished. 

Ben LOVES airplanes. Gordon liked watching the vintage air show with Daddy. This was the first time we hear Gordon say "whoa!"

The girls were enthralled by this ballet company's booth. 

The armed forces were out, doing drills and taking pictures. This was a big truck the girls were in. 

One part of the park is called "the gallery," where all the kid's crafts, music, dance, and museum booths were. The park developers are leaving most of the original air base structures intact and restoring them and using them for concert venues. This large swath of concrete is part of a run way-turned-sidewalk chalk project. 

It's going to be an awesome park when it's done, but we won't be here to see it finished. It's speculated that it will going to be another 10 years before the park finished. I guess that will be one reason to come back and vacation here. 

Gone

In May, a series titled "How the Universe Works" began airing on Discovery. It was very cool, and I am kind of a nerd like that. It's trying to take basic astronomy principles, and make them understandable to the public. They pair it with cool graphics, and Mike Rowe narrates. Any way. On one episode they talk about these:
This is a simulation of a black hole, a feature of our universe that sucks up surrounding matter and light, never to be seen again.

I think I have one in my house.

It may or may not be related to this:

We have had Ben's wallet, his school ID, and our checkbook completely disappear in the last month. We turned the house upside-down, prayed, to no avail. So we watched for identity theft to show up, thinking Ben had lost his wallet at school. There hasn't been any weird activity, so we are very grateful for that. But it still leads us to question where these things went. I have found some random stuff in our waste baskets lately, and wondered why it was there. Yesterday when I was baking, Gordon got out my aluminum mixing bowls, walked over to our garbage can, opened the lid and confidently tossed them in. So that is confirming our suspicions that some of our belongings are ending up in the black hole that is the landfill.

Better the landfill than with an ID thief. Still better would be if these things had stayed in the house...

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Football (soccer) is my second favorite sport.  In Brazil they call it jogo bonito, the beautiful game, and it truly is. I'm loving the the World Cup and today I almost shed a tear for the U.S. team when they lost.  Four more years...

My favorite is baseball, for me it is also a beautiful game. So I was excited to take the girls to their first ball game today. I knew they wouldn't last 9 innings so instead of going to see the Angels or Dodgers, we went to see the Orange County Flyers, part of the Golden Baseball League.  I'd heard that minor and independent league baseball is great but I'd never been.

Today the first five hundred fans got free hats. The kids reallllly wanted a free hat so we got there super early. All the staff thought they were adorable, I agree.

We had choice seats, third row back just to the left of home plate, with tons of leg room.

Today was Armed Forces Appreciation Day so they had a veteran from every major American conflict (going back to WW II) throw out the first pitch. Then a Marine color guard brought the flag out for the National Anthem.  Ah the American pastime, I love it.

I taught the girls about the field and what "fair" and "foul" mean. While Ev followed the game pretty well, Jill was worried about staying as far away from the mascot as she could, so she sat on my lap for half the time.

It's not a ballgame if you don't get a hot dog (nom nom nom).

The cool thing about small ballgames is that you get to be real close to the action without busting the bank. We were so close that I could have called the strikes and balls, awesome!

I think the girls know that I'm a softy, so they kept asking for cotton candy. We compromised, they could have cotton candy if they also had some peanuts. You know, 'cause the song says so. They didn't mind.

There were quite a few servicemen and women there and they had some complimentary items for the fans as well. The girls were excited to get Army water bottles and pins. A nice servicewoman even put the pins in their hats for them.  Though Jill was afraid of the mascot, she wasn't afraid of the army lady.

Even though the kids only lasted three innings, we got to see a two run dinger, a double play, and some great hits and strikeouts. It was cool to see Ev and Jill get excited and clap when the home team played well.  Since it was affordable it wasn't a big deal that we left early. It was a good time, a sharp contrast to a Major League game where people that take pro sports too seriously swear, insult the other team, and get drunk while instructing their team from the stands how to beat the other team. I hope we end up in a place that is close to a minor league team.  For the price of one Major League ticket we got four tickets (only used three), tons of junk food, a few cool souvenirs, and some good memories.

Super Picture Post or How We Got Here From There

When Ben's parents were in town his brother came over and we had a great Brazilian dinner that consisted of: feijoada (black beans, rice, and meat), tomato and palm heart salad, collard greens, Brazilian cheese bread, grilled pineapple and, of course, guarana soda. The food was excellent and the company was better.

Ben did some projecting with his Dad while they were here, they fixed the balcony screen door, installed a screen door in the front door jam (which allows us to enjoy the cool breeze!), and when Dan came over they installed this nifty bike hangar on the balcony so that Ben's bike will be out of reach of the kids.

Here are the girls riding to L.A. to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's hotel...

...in Uncle Dan's cool car.

Ben tried to get some work done on his term papers while everyone else slept at night. This is what it looked like. He had one more paper to finish by the end of June but the professor for that class passed away. Ben is sad about losing a great professor, but some good has come out of it, it looks like every student in the class got an "A", even those who hadn't written their papers yet.  The jury is still out but it looks like Ben won't have to write that last 20 page paper, which means that he is completely done for the summer. Yay!!!

Jillian started her summer dance class. She loves it. Here she is learning about "exploding," which is a dance "energy trait."

We met our friends at her parent's place to swim in their pool. The girls had lots of fun with their friend Lincoln.

This is the last picture we got of the humming birds before they flew away. The last time we saw them they were so big that they were sitting on the edge of the nest because they couldn't fit in it. It was neat to see them grow so fast.

The girls love helping Dad use his tools, but Gordon seems to love it even more. Here he is finding where the studs are so that I can hang a decoration in our room.

Our friends finished school and are moving away so we had a picnic to say goodbye. The girls will miss Ethan a lot, he was always fun to play with.

The girls played some basketball with our friends Jared and Max. Later Ben was showing Evelyn how to pass the ball and she ecstatically said, "I'm learning how to use the ball. I'm getting ball lessons!"

And of course we went to the beach. Its's warmed up so it was crowded and for some reason there was a TON of seaweed in the water and washed up on the beach.

We let the kids play on the grass above the beach when we're done and it gets rid of a lot of the sand that would otherwise get in the car.

You can barely see the cellphone in Gordo's hand as he says, "He-wO?!"

The family resemblance here is very apparent. He looks like his Daddy and his uncle Dan when they were this age.

Busy, Busy

This first half of June has flown by, I haven't written about what we've been up to for nearly a month. So here it goes:

Beach. We've been just a few times, the last month has been cooler and windy, making the beach chilly instead of warm and sunny. But you still get sunburned. I knew that, but just didn't know how bad I could still be scorched. I've gotten an equal amount of bad sunburns in the short time we've been in CA to how many I had in  my entire life up to this point.

Roseola. I thought this was a mild childhood illness. It was for Evelyn. Well, Gordon got it over Memorial Day weekend, and yuck. He had a fever and sore throat for almost a week, and didn't want to eat, drink, or sleep for about 4 of those days. I thought he had an ear infection, and then the docs tell me it was the flu, and then the Roseola rash shows up when he's feeling better. I'm glad that's over.

Grandma and Grandpa Chickens. Evelyn has been telling our friends about this for weeks. They came to visit us for 5 days, and then were staying in LA for a conference. The girls spent one night with them in the hotel next to the Staples Center, so when one of the NBA finals game got out, Grandma took the girls out on the pool deck to watch all the people party and mingle. They have great, big spotlights there, and those were fun to watch too, I guess. They spent the next morning swimming and walking around, and Gordon and I met them for lunch. The kids loved the adventure, and Jilly loved all the hotel samples because they're miniature like she is.

World Cup. I really had no concept of World Cup until 2006, when Ben watched soccer games for a month. Well this time around, I'm prepared and know what World Cup fever is about (sort of). I was out on the playground during the USA/England match and I hear several apartments resound with "GOOOOAAAL!," all out of sync with each other depending on the broadcast they were watching. It was funny.

Kindergarten registration. This has been an enormous pain in the rear for me. Getting Ev into school here is like applying for college. Minus the financial aid information. It's ridiculous and I'm tired of thinking I've got all my papers together only to find I've forgotten one of the 12 documents they require.

Summer School. Speaking of Evelyn, trying to keeping this almost 5 year old contained and content is becoming a real job. So I'm doing my own pre-school of sorts to keep her stimulated to some extent, and hopefully save some sanity in the process. Jilly will love it.

And speaking of Jillian, I cut her hair to just above her shoulders the other night, and Ben and I are convinced that she is now sassier because of it. In a good and not-so-good way. She's growing up, and slowly coming out of the "I'm a little baby! Hold me! Cuddle me! I own mommy's lap!" phase, and into the "I'm trying to figure out how to be a bigger girl" phase. I welcome this transition, and it's going to be fun watching her mature with Evelyn going to school in the fall.

Gordon is losing some of his technology obsession (thank goodness, you can hear the cell phone sigh with relief). He's not as interested in it anymore, and actually becoming a little entertained by things like balls, cars, and trains. He usually wants someone to play toys with him, and when alone, he'll still go for electrically powered devices. His newest trick is to push the footstool over to our tall kitchen garbage can, which he then climbs onto, and from there, onto the kitchen counter where he pushes microwave buttons or tries to do the dishes. He is walking pretty well now (finally!).

Redecorating. I'm moving things around again, for probably at least the third time. I'm moving mostly wall hangings, and finding some new stuff. I just get in these "creative frenzies," I don't know what else to call them. I get stuck on something for about 3 weeks to a month, and then I'm ready to move onto something else. Right now it's redecorating. It's probably brought on by the new valance Grandma Chickens made for the kid's room while she was here.

The girls have been slumber partying it on my bedroom floor to get Gordon used to sleeping in his crib. Tonight they are back in their room. Hopefully we'll have 3 kids sleeping through the night!