Lydia's Birthday, walking skills, and allergies.

I think Kiera got the most out of Lydia's birthday. She enjoyed poking her fingers in the cake all day long and samping the frosting. She was very excited about the birthday tablecloth, gifts, and hats. So we have a family tradition of letting the 1-year old maul their birthday cake. Lydia spent the first 3 minutes poking holes in the cake with her pointer finger before she discovered other options. It was fun and cute to watch. Lydia is getting to be a ton of fun. She is old enough now to enjoy disneyland, and enjoys trying to do what Kiera is doing. She is a little moutain goat as she is always trying to get to the highest elevation possible and is quite good at it. She is opinionated at lets her opinion be known...loudly. Lydia finally conquered the skill of walking this week. yeah! My back may soon recover!


So the bad news about Lydia is that we discovered this week that she is allergic to cow's milk (not just lactose intolerant). The poor little thing has been quite fussy for a while now since we can't get her to drink her special formula. Poor tiny girl! The good news is that many kids grow out of it by age 3. Lets hope! I sure use a TON of dairy products in my cooking!

15 minutes with Daddy

This is a pretty rough semester for Steve. There are many days that we literally only get to see him while he eats his breakfast and then when we take dinner to him at school for a picnic for 15 minutes. I can tell it is affecting Kiera. Sometimes when he does come home and has time to spend with her she will ignore him or throw a tantrum if he wants to play. Sad! But I do have to say that this semester is good in that when steve DOES have a weekend he doesn't have to study and he can go camping/disneylanding/beaching with us. However, we need him around more for everyday life!

Black widows and Bees and Bears...oh my!!

Yesterday we went camping for the second time this year with some friends. We had a wonderful time all except for a little too much wildlife.
1. Black widows-- there seemed to be an over-population of them. They were everywhere in great numbers. At about 10pm when we were going to bed the guys decided to look under our picnic table (where we and are small children had been sitting). There were at least 5 (which were killed via burning). Yuck!!! When I woke up this morning there was a spider (not a black widow) in Lydias crib with her.
2. There were some extra-agressive bees at this particular sight. This morning while little Lydia was eating her breakfast she had about 5 of them swarming her at a time. She was delighted by them and they would land on her hand (headed towards her mouth) and on her food. It was crazy! I cut her breakfast short because they were way to agressive.
3. Last, but NOT least: a bear. As I was putting on my shoes in the middle of the night to answer the call of nature I heard a tent unzip and someone approaching our tent. Our friend Kevin notified us that a large bear hand been hanging around in our campsight for the past few minutes and had moved on. Yikes! All 6 of the adults present in the group got up to investigate the large paw prints in the dirt and survey the damage. We had left a few food items on the table (I know...duh!) and Mr. Bear had snarfed them all. He walked around our tents and then left. We stood there for an hour and a half as it started sprinkling debating whether or not we should load our kids in the car and go home and come clean up in the morning. We ended up staying but not much sleep was to be had by the females of the group.

I love my wheat grinder

Since my camera is broken I have no fun pictures to post. Therefore I will blog about my wheat grinder: Nutrimill. I've been wanting one of these for ages and finally saved enough to get it. I'm going to be making a lot of homemade bread! Yummy! I'm also going to try homemade tortillas as I hear those are pretty good.

My Obama-Care opinion

I realize that by publishing this blog I'm likely to have a bunch of comments from random people who are cruising the Internet looking for someone to be confrontational with. I welcome any difference of opinion, feel free to comment-- but I'm not going to make this blog an argument so don't expect a response from me.

*Ahem* I have 4 brother-in-laws who are all just finishing residencies or fellowships who will be doctors in the next year or so. All have worked ridiculously hard for many years. One of them has done 15 years post-high school education to become a specialized surgeon. They have gone into extreme amounts of debt because they knew (or at least thought they knew) that they would have the promise of a well-paying job to be able to pay off school loans with. Now Obama wants to make it so that all doctors will make the same amount of money (Pg 241 Line 6-8 HC Bill ) What is the incentive for someone to want to become a specialist anymore? What is the incentive to do some of the not-so-well-liked areas of health care (such a Colo-rectal surgery?). If there is no promise of having your loans easily paid off after school, why would someone go through the debt (say nothing of the difficulty) of medical school? No more specialists and incentivized doctors means no more good health care (and that is not even considering the rest of the messy plan obama came up with).

I have many other opinions regarding Obama-Care, but for now I'll let them rest in peace. Heaven help us if this thing passes.

Family pictures

What a pain to get so many little people nice looking and happy at the same time! Cute results though!

A blast in Utah

Me n' the girls went to Utah for a brief family reunion. A ton of fun was had in a few days. I love visiting Utah in the summer because of the clean air and soft grass (in contrast to California). We borrowed one of those huge inflatable water slides which was fun and we jumped on the "jump-o-yeen".

Lots of fun was had with cousins. It is fun to see them interact. Lydia has 2 cousins just her age which will be fun in the future.

My dad is quite handy with a hammer and for the past few months he has been constructing this 2 story playhouse/fort. It is totally sweet for kids. The bottom level is a playhouse complete with real windows, cupboards, electricity (solar pannel) and thanks to grandma is furnished, decoracted, and stocked with playhouse-stuff (miniature broom, cradle for baby). Upstairs is a fort with a telescope, a cot, and pulley system to lower a basket down below, a cot, and a pipe that kids an talk through to communicate upstairs and downstairs. A stream runs about 10 feet behind the playhouse and it is surrounded by trees. It is really fun/cute and Kiera LOVED it. Thanks Gramps (and grandma).

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