Huntington Gardens

We recently joined our dear friends, the Browns, at the beautiful Huntington Gardens in San Marino.  They remembered a camera, so follow the path here to see their pictures.  We enjoyed the children's garden and a lovely picnic.  It was a beautiful day shared with friends.

Freetime

On the day Katie and I took Jenny and her girls to the airport to fly back to California, we left our 4 at the triplets' daycare.  Avery was a little apprehensive but was comforted by two of their very special teachers.  Miss Debbie and Miss Rachel are both so sweet and nurturing and Avery ended up having a great day at school with her cousins. She learned about the letter T and made a rainbow with a yellow cupcake wrapper sun.

While the kids were at school, Katie and I enjoyed some time in a pretty little seaside town where we had sushi and went shopping.  We enjoyed lots of time in the car talking.  It was our first outing together without our kids in over 3 years and it was wonderful.

Here is a picture of Avery with Miss Debbie and Miss Rachel on the day we left for home when we dropped the triplets off at their great little school before we drove to the airport.  I was so sad, as always, to leave my sister and her family. They are so precious to us.

Peacocks and Deer

We went to Aunt Patty and Uncle Chip's house the last night Jenny and her girls were with us.  They have peacocks and deer who come visit their yard every day/night.  The peacocks were there when we first arrived but they really only come up to the house when it is quiet, not when there are 6 kids running around and talking.  We did get some beautiful peacock feathers and we got to see how the peacock trap works so they can give the peacocks to another family.

We went to see the horses, they have many horses and they are so sociable, as we walked toward their pasture they all came toward the fence to check us out and they stayed even after they could tell we weren't there to feed them.  Avery enjoyed petting one horse in particular.

  The deer did eventually come into the yard to eat.  They were so pretty and graceful.

We enjoyed yummy cookies that Aunt Patty had made for us.  One last picture on the swing, where's Elliott?

  

Arts and Crafts

One morning, Katie and Jenny were kind enough to let me go for a run down the country road.  Katie told me to run to the 2nd abandoned house and that is just what I did.  It was a lovely run with lots of different things to look at and puddles to run around.  

When I returned home I found that all the kids had done arts and crafts.  Lucia and Avery were the last to leave the table.  We were cleaning up stickers from the floor for days to come.

Travels

Avery and I recently flew with my dear friend Jenny and her girls Kylie (5) and Kira (2.5) to see my sister and her family on the farm.  We had a great flight out followed by a 2.5 hr drive from the airport.  It was a long day but well worth the travel to end up with Katie and her crew.  Our first day there was filled with adventure.  We went out to the barn to see the horses and feed the goats.  We rode out there on the EZ-go.  Avery is not a fan of the EZ-go, insisting ever after that we walk anywhere rather than jump on the EZ-go.

One Gun and Pistol in the pasture, across the pond is the house

Nearly all the kids saying hello to the goats

We got to watch one of the Jones' boys get Bessie ready for a cow show.  If the cow wins the show they get more money per pound when they sell her at the end of the show. 

 The kids got to see Bessie do her business big time, this was funny to us city folk.

L to R Kylie, Jenny and Kira, Avery, Auntie Kate, Mazie, Lucia and Elliott

On the ummm, tractor?  with Auntie Bee, Avery wanted no part of this activity but the others enjoyed checking it out

All the kids got to pick a bucket to bring some food to the goats, Avery picked the big red bucket

It was soooo heavy, thank goodness Auntie Bee came to help

Kylie checking out the goats

A girl and her bucket

Pretty little purple flowers in the grass, we don't see things like this in LA, at least not at our house.

After the barn activities, we went back to the house where a big trash pile was assembled for burning.  We had ourselves a lovely bonfire.

  

Mazie, Kira, Avery, Elliott, Lucia and Kylie (note it is impossible to get everyone looking at the same time), patiently waiting for the s'more making to begin

Avery's first s'more, she sat for a good 20-30 minutes enjoying her s'more bite by bite while everyone else ran around.

It was a great day.

Good Five

A few weeks ago Avery added yet another step to our bedtime routine.  She pulled out her little pink stool and asked us to pay attention.  She was pretending to be her teacher at school and we were her pupils.  She started to sing "Good morning everybody, how are you?" and then told us to hold up our hands like we were giving the air 5 and say back to her "good five".  We would sing this back and forth.  I could tell from her face that it wasn't exactly right, I mean what does 'good five' mean?  But she insisted this was the proper response.

Jon recently picked Avery up a little early from school and we were able to ask the daytime teacher how the song actually goes.  "Good morning everybody, how are you?"   "Just fine."  Oh, of course, that makes much better sense.  That night we tried to sing it the "right" way and Avery made us say "good five".  And she thinks it's really funny too.

Other funny words of note are stefacope for stethoscope.  Quincy is Renty and don't try to correct that one either.  Quincy answers to either name now.  And oatmeal is "oh-pee-moe".  Spot is "fpot" and twinkle is "fwinkle", as in "fwinkle fwinkle little stah".

Daynie's Birthday

We had the great pleasure of attending Aunt Dayna's birthday party during our visit to Florida. There was all sorts of family.  Grandpas and GG, GreatGrandma June, Great Great and Great Aunt and Uncles and friends.  We had a great time and Avery was very outgoing and put on a singing and dancing show for all.  If we ever start editing video again, there will be video of this day too.

Getting a Hershey Kiss from Daynie

Pretty Girls

Happy Birthday Dear Daynie

Happy Birthday to you

Dress-up with GG

We recently travelled to Florida to see Jon's family.  Jon and Avery went a few days before I did since I had to work so they could spend more time there.  GG had bought Avery and trunk of dress-up clothes.  The picture of her wearing high heels frightens me ever so slightly.  She just looks grown up.  She is not grown up!  She does love to play dress up though.  Thanks GG.

Love this picture

Skuut Avery Skuut

For Avery's first birthday (or maybe 2nd Christmas) we asked for a Skuut bike for her. Grandpa and NanaLin kindly obliged. None of us knew it would take Avery 12-18 more months to grow into the bike.  Literally she was not tall enough to ride it until now.  We would pull it out from the corner of her room every couple of months to see if she could yet reach the ground.  Finally we were able to bring it to the beach for a spin.  It is a wooden bike, which we have noticed first catches people's attention, and then after a few moments they notice the lack of pedals. Apparently this type of bike is big in Europe and teaches kids to balance by scooting with their feet and eventually gliding, rather than having training wheels.  Speaking from personal experience, I hope this bike gives her the confidence that I lack when it comes to riding bikes. She loves to ride it now that she can reach the ground.  Thanks G'pa and NanaLin.

 

Tastes like Chicken

Upon her first taste of halibut tonight, Avery said "It's got a little chicken in it."  Ha!

Silly Girl

I recently downloaded pix from the camera and came across this series of photos that Jon must have taken one morning when Avery woke up.  She's a funny one.  She really does have a great sense of humor which is so fun to watch develop.

The Many Uses of Rice

One of my favorite things to buy at Trader Joe's is their frozen brown rice.  It take 3 minutes to have hot, tasty rice on the plate.  Avery has found another use for it.  She likes frozen rice much more than frozen peas for the treatment of everyday bumps and bruises.  We don't have ice in our freezer usually, so she has chosen the next best thing.

3 to 2

My friend at work and I have a friendly, although competitive food rivalry going on.  We each bake something in a specific realm and the NICU staff vote on whose is best.  I will say, I am leading, 3 (pumpkin cake, cheesecake, flourless chocolate cake) to 2 (peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies).  Jessica has recently gone "gluten-free" and so rather than make scones for our competition as planned, we decided upon flourless chocolate cake.  I found a recipe on foodnetwork.com, one of my go-to websites, for  Tyler Florence's Chocolate Cracked Earth.  

Katie gave me the idea of making a pretty design with powdered sugar and cocoa powder.  I tried different ideas one some mini-cakes I made, but none looked too good.  Jon had the idea of putting the CHLA logo on the cake, since I was making it for people at work.  He found the logo online, exacto-knifed out the design and held it for me while I sprinkled on the sugar.  I won, thank you Tyler.  I also made a raspberry sauce which I think seriously contributed to my win, thank you Ina.

When I arrived at work and opened the mini-fridge to insert my cake, I saw Jessica's cake and I was sure I was sunk.  She had this wonderful ganache on her cake, this may have been her downfall, some said it was too rich. I think there is no such thing as too rich when it comes to chocolate and I loved her cake. I thought it was super delicious.  I did not win by a landslide, it was a close one.  

I look forward to our next workplace dessert war, I mean friendly competition :).

Transferring

My sister has been reading up about Montessori principles and informing me of things I can do for Avery to learn about her senses.  This particular activity has to do with sound and touch.  Transferring dried beans between 2 different vessels.  She insisted that Lucia loves it and could do it for hours.  Avery quite enjoyed this activity too, just like her sweet cousin.  Now if I could just keep her from trying to feed the dried beans to Quincy, who by the way, she calls "Renty" nowadays.

Dance Parties

Avery loves to have dance parties lately.  She shows us the moves she learns at school.  She insists that we both join in.  I am actively looking for an actual dance class for her, so she can be a better dancer than either of her parents are.  Here are 2 pics of her and daddy dancing away.  

Beware the Silence

One recent day when I worked, Jon emailed me these pictures saying this is what happened when after some time of silence I went to see what Avery was doing.  She got these stamp pens over the holidays and decided to paint those little feet.  She thought it was pretty funny.

Knott's Berry Farm

We found ourselves with tickets for Knott's that had to be used by the end of the year.  We of course picked the coldest, dreariest, most drizzly day of 2009 to go to an amusement park.  Despite the weather we enjoyed a few hours of fun.  Here are Maddie and Avery excited about the train ride.

The girls went on their first ride by themselves, a plane ride.  I thought they were a little young because at the very end the attendant tells all the kids to push the stick forward to bring the plane down.  I didn't think they would grasp this concept so Kelly and I showed them how to push the stick forward before the ride started.  Unfortunately we didn't tell them that they also could pull the stick back so they spent the entire ride soaring along the bottom of the ride. Avery still talks about this weeks later, saying "Maddie and I flew the plane, our plane didn't go up".  Oops!!