Yesterday was Plain Awful

You can say that again.

Yesterday was plane awful.

It was. And you may say, "Stacie, you're prone to exaggeration." And I'll rightly admit I have a dramatic flair for storytelling - but this time it's just a black and white fact: yesterday was plain awful. Because of a plane. Well, actually multiple planes. I suppose I should expound even though my shoulders tense up just remembering the harrowing details.

Let's just say it involved a rowdy drive in heavy snow, security check (which I hate!!! love the end, hate the means. must we take all of our shoes off? must I remove the peacefully sleeping baby from his carseat and put his blankets in the scummy gray bins? do we have to toss all of our water? it's so annoying!) hours of delayed flights, kids sleeping on the Vegas airport floor, paying a taxi for a ride home so our friend could go to bed, and hitting the pillow at 2:15am.

That should suffice. Seriously, in the taxi on the way home - with soft armenian chatter in the background, watching the meter go from 26.75 to 28. 85 - I felt my jaw slacken and realized that it had been clenched for the previous 13 hours. And although deep down I know this isn't true, it just makes me feel better to say that I will never fly again!!! Curse Southwest Airlines and whoever made the decision to give our plane to the flight heading into Orange County because they have a curfew and LAX doesn't!!!

Phew! I feel better. My back still hurts, but I'm over the rest. Ya know why? Because . . .

The sun'll come out . . . tomorrow!!! So ya gotta hang on 'til tomorrow!

Long December

It's been a long December and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.

Love that song.

Yes, my sporadic and lackluster blogging is finally coming to an end. Somehow I don't think I'm alone in the dryspell, or at least the decreased frequency in posts. And I seriously doubt we've all been checking on one another that much lately with the holiday mayhem and all. Onward and upward, eh.

So the boys are back in town. After 12 days in Canada, we've resumed our post in Los Angeles. It was a winter wonderland in the Great White North, and we partook of all the Creston Valley has to offer. Grandma Rennaker's homemade goods are unparalelled - and she pretty much has a store in the basement. I wish we lived closer so I could shop there. Unfortunately we can't take much across the border or I'd fill a box with home canned everything, fresh steaks, ground beef, big ol' brown eggs, delish dried apples, and the lastest of Marie's wonders - homemade soaps. I told her that wherever we move after school she has to come and help me put in a garden. Perhaps it's being here the city, feeling vulnerable with little space for food storage - but lately I've been feeling this urgency to become more self reliant. I also want more whole food for my family - and nothing beats home grown.

But I digress. Didn't we just have a major holiday? Oh yeah! Christmas was like, only 5 days ago! How was the haul?

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Sorry times up. S'pose I'll have to finish this story tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Long time no blog

I feel like I'm standing windwhipped and dazed on the platform. Life is flying past me before I can even get out my ticket.

The holidays? kids? life? I swear I am savouring to the best of my ability, I'm just not blogging about it.

Legoland tomorrow and maybe, probably, hopefully I'll post the pictures. Heaven knows I'll take a million.

Dalton Bradley

Happy 7th Birthday Dalton!!!

How quickly they grow. I used to shrug off older people telling me that, but now I really understand that it's true! You have to savor every moment of their little lives; they grow so gradually that you don't even realize it's happening. I always think of the movie Finding Neverland, where Johnny Depp says, "Little boys should never be put to bed, because when they wake up they're a whole day older. "

So here are some random pictures from the life of Dalton, about one per year.

Happy Birthday to Dalton, happy birthday to Dalton . . .

Here is a little update on our firstborn son as he rings in his lucky 7th year!

favorite color- back to BLUE, the original favorite (he went with green for a couple years out of

loyalty to his buddy Aidan)

favorite food - corn on the cob

favorite toy - legos, especially the new bionicle and underwater explorer sets he just got

favorite place - zimmer museum, disneyland

favorite movie - Pirates of the Carribean #3 "which I haven't seen, but I know must be really

cool!"

favorite thing at school - "take away", aka: subtraction (go figure!)

favorite sport - baseball (with dad at the park by our house and Dodger games)

favorite book - How I Became a Pirate

favorite scripture story - Ammon and the Sheep thieves (dismemberment? of course it's a fav!)

Seven Years. Also an anniversary of a different kind.

Seven years ago today I became a mother. Our lives were changed when Dalton was born. How do you even begin to express or comprehend the significance of this? The beginning of a new life? the beginning of a new part of yourself? an entirely different way of living and thinking? I remember sitting in the hospital hours after giving birth and feeling the weight of the parental mantel falling on me. It was actually a tangible experience, for me. I can recall the dawning of realization of what it truly means to be responsible for another life in every way - and honestly, it was stressful!

AAAaaahhhh, parenthood.

Well, I'll post about the festivities later. For now, I'm just happy to be Dalton's mom.

California Dreamin'

On Saturday we all headed out to one of my favorite spots, the beach - a place I've been missing because I didn't get to spend much time there over the summer. (I was rather huge pregnant and then purdy busy with a newborn) Well, since it's clearly too chilly now to do the waterplay, it's time for other kinds of fun - like strollerblading. It's been years since I got Darren to put on his rollerblades, so this was a treat.

Baby Davis and I enjoying the sunset by Venice playground.

Mom: "Dalton, look at me and smile."
Dalton: "Not now mom, I need to watch the road."
He's learning bike path ettiquette.

Dane and Davis all snuggly in the stroller. Dane was pretty upset at first that he couldn't ride his trike (holy smokes, that would take forever!), but we finally convinced him it would be more fun this way. He sure doesn't look like he's having fun, but that's only because he's almost asleep. Just a nice side effect of a stroller ride.

So nice that Dalton can ride his bike. He was cranky earlier in the afternoon and was in such a better mood as we got going. Reminds me of that part in Legally Blonde when she says "Exercise gives people endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. And happy people just don't kill their husbands. They just don't." Classic.

Goodbye Halloween

It's been done for days, but here are the boys in their costumes.

1. Davis the "Jack-o-Lantern", minus the interior candle - although he does have a radiant inner light ;). He wanted to be Freddy Krueger, but I thought it might scare Dane.

2. Dane, aka - "Harry Potter". I had to take away the spectacles a few weeks ago to keep him from breaking them (from constant handling), so he hasn't been impersonating the wizard lately. (phew!) But when his Harry alterego reemerged, it was very cute.

3. Dalton as "Indiana Jones". Not a lot of kids knew exactly who this was this year, but I'm sure with the new movie coming out next year we'll see Dr. Jones a lot more. Now that Dalton is tall enough to ride the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, he thinks he's pretty cool (although the ride freaked him out a little).

4. Darren - Daddy gone Mummy. We had our friends the Merrells over and all the boys (they have 3 as well) mummified their dads. This is Aaron and Darren hamming it up for them as they all ran away screaming.

Goodbye Halloween! See you next year.

The Carve

We know they'll rot if we carve early, but we had to be ready for the trunk-or-treat! So last Saturday (my blog is on time-delay) we got out the kits and had a little carvin' party. The boys love this and sit patiently by us as we carve, cheering us on - for about 5 minutes. Then they run off and play, returning intermittently to ask "Are you done yet?" Ah, but it's worth it in the end. Gotta love a good jack-o-lantern. And wouldn't you know it - I don't even have pictures of the finished product loaded. At the time I actually put down the carving knife and said, "That's as good as it's gonna get" I went straight to the sink to wash - I didn't want to look at my butcher job for a while, even through a camera lens!

Our duplex neighbor is the graphic editor of the LA Times and he came out and saw us making a mess all over the paper. He laughed and took a picture of a big glob of punkin innards and said something about how they stress over content and it's really just tomorrow's fish wrapper.

Big goopy messes!!! Why do they always want to taste the pumkin guts?

Dane wanted a happy pumpkin, so he chose this cute face.

Dalton wanted a creepy skeleton - labeled "difficult" to carve. I can't wait until they can do it themselves! Actually, I can.

Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch

A couple of weeks ago we visited Mr. Bones Pumpkin Patch in Hollywood. Of all that we did there, I think the kids most enjoyed playing in the haystack maze. A good time was had by all!

This is the pumpkin we picked to take home. He was too cute to resist!

The pony ride was fun - and surprisingly not stinky.

I thought Dalton might be bored - seeing as the ponies are attached to a pole and just go in a circle - but whaddya know? He loved it, too.

Yeah for Mr. Bones!

Halloween 2006

As we countdown to the big day, I couldn't help but look back a little to last year's festivities. It was a monumental year for a couple reasons:

1. Dalton didn't want to be a pirate (he had been a pirate in some form for three consecutive years out of his 6 year life)

2. It was the year that Dane figured out what Halloween was all about. (He was 2) It was fun to watch him take it all in and come to understand the fun of Halloween.

Now that Darren is Dr. Candy Nazi, we are on our 3rd year of "Great Pumpkin" visits. Essentially, they trade their candy for toys and the giant gourd gives their candy to less fortunate children. I wonder when they'll catch on and we'll have to let them learn to self-ration their candy. I know that as a child I would hoard my candy and still have some left by the time Easter rolled around and we got a new batch. So maybe we underestimate their restraint.

So here's a look at last year's costumes . . .

This is little Daners as a pirate. He wanted to be Thomas, but when it came down to the wire he refused to wear the cumbersome get-up. We resorted to the good old pirate standby. He wouldn't even wear the hat for pictures, but he was cute anyway.

Here is Zorro at the school carnival. He sure felt cool - you could tell from his strut. What is it about the costume alter ego that makes you so silly?

I actually dressed up last year - which I love to do but haven't done so much since I had the kiddos. This is my friend Maegan, prego with her little Kieran and glowing. It was hard to recognize her in the wig.

Here is Karalenn Hippen - Halloween Queen! I wish I had a picture of her full costume. I'm sure her blog will show it somewhere. It was phenomenal and entirely handmade. She based it on the "Twilight" books - not necessarily a character, they just got her excited about all things vampire. She spent months on it. I have nowhere near that patience or creativity. Notice my cliche witch costume.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

The Clinic

For all you out there who watch The Office, this spoof is worth your time. It was made by Loma Linda Dental School students and it's hilarious. The dubbing is off at times, but it doesn't deter from the cleverness. It's called The Clinic and so it's actually two spoofs in one - a parody of dental school life and the tv show. Here's the link:

The Clinic


Enjoy!