My Magical Weekend

I just know I am going to jinx the mood in the household by saying it, but this weekend has been absolutely wonderful. The kids are getting along splendidly, we saw the Nutcracker yesterday as a family, and we decorated gingerbread houses today. No offense to the extended family, but it's waaaaaaay easier to build gingerbread houses with two kids instead of eight (or however many there were around the table last year).

We also went to a puppet show today at the local library. We promoted it at the house as a special activity for Norah, and she was mildly excited about it. More intrigued than excited, I think. Toby's opinion was "I like action, Mom, not puppets!"

They both ended up getting a huge kick out of the show, which was a re-telling of the boy who cried wolf. I let Toby play chess with another kid (who also wasn't interested in watching the show), while Norah and I chose our seat. About 3 minutes into the show Toby slinks up and slides into a seat in the row ahead of us, near some of his buddies. I don't think he was intending on having a good time, but he was laughing right along with the rest of the kids. Norah was sitting on my lap, and at one point she laughed so hard I was worried about my lap staying dry. (No accidents to report, thankfully.)

With the trauma we experienced on Friday watching the news surrounding the school shooting in CT we were wondering how to approach the subject of such an awful tragedy with the kids. We have found solace and comfort in each other, some quiet Christmas music, and home-y activities preparing our hearts for the coming of the King. Our hearts and prayers are with the families who will be forever changed.

My First Nutcracker Ballet

Toby, Norah, and I got to experience our first Nutcracker Ballet last night. (Apparently the philosopher grew up seeing the Nutcracker every year at, like, the National Ballet or something fancy like that. Not really, but he has seen it before.)

We all dressed up and took in the performance on opening night. They did a great job! Norah got a new holiday outfit, and Toby got a new pair of pants (not jeans or scooby pants!!) and we went out and painted the town red. Kind of. We were all tuckered out after the performance so we came home and went straight to bed, but it was really fun to go out and see the locals. Both Toby and Norah had classmates in the performance. It's definitely something we'd do again next year! And if anyone's out here visiting the weekend of the Nutcracker we'll be sure to take you along!

My flu shot: attempt number 3

I've been meaning to get flu shots for everyone in the family for a while.
Today marked my third attempt -- I've learned a lot about how the planets need to align to get two kids and myself flu shots (we generally leave the philosopher to his own devices to get a flu shot, as his time is somewhat flexible).
Anyways, Norah got her flu shot today (the pediatric office didn't have any flu mist--maybe I've make a bad choice of pediatric offices).
She had to get the shot in her thigh, and we all had a good giggle when we discovered that she was wearing a pair of Toby's underwear!
We'll have to go back to the doctor's office for Toby to get his shot. Chances are pretty good he won't be wearing any of Norah's underwear.

My Boy Adds to the Nativity

Toby added a few characters to our nativity set tonight. They blend in really well, so I didn't see them until way after Toby had gone to bed.

My Failed Photo Session

We took some pictures of the kids playing together at Mission Ranch last month. The weather was great, the light was clear, and the participants were... willing to goof off more than sit nicely and smile.

But they had fun. 

 

 

 

 

And the drinks were lovely too!

 

My Pacific Sunset

It gets dark before 5:00 here these days, as it does everywhere else, I know. But there's something magical about watching the sun dip below the ocean's horizon in the evening. Something that a picture can't capture, but I still try sometimes.
:o)

(November)
From Mission Ranch, looking over Toby's school's garden

(November)
From Carmel Beach

(November)
From Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur

(October)
From Carmel Beach
(Everyone else was out to watch the 10-minute sunset,
 and then we all got in our cars and drove off to where ever we were headed.)

(July)
One of our first sunsets from Carmel Beach

My Big Sur guided adventure

Drive south down Highway 1 from our house and you'll see some of the most beautiful scenery.
We took an afternoon to drive to Big Sur and caught the sunset over dinner at Nepenthe.
It was just georgeous!
(Small side note: I hate heights, so I wouldn't go near the edge. They were looking at Bixby Bridge.) 

My kite-flying and hole-digging kids enjoy the beach

These pictures were taken over a month ago, at Carmel beach. My mom came out for a week and we spent one whole afternoon at the beach. It was windy, and the waves were huge, but the kids don't seem to care. They had a ton of fun. We arrived at the beach around 2 and stayed through sunset. There was a deep hole by the water, so we decided to stay there and Toby got right to work digging some more. He spent about 2 hours in there. He also met a dog that would try to catch the sand that Toby threw out of the hole. It was very entertaining.

Toby found a friend who liked to chase the wet sand Toby threw.

Norah flew her kite for a long while. My mom helped her out (Can you believe my mom has never flown a kite by herself before? We fixed that.). The funniest thing about this video, and these pictures, is that my mom and I are fully clothed and still cold, and Norah is running around like a crazy person in her swim suit.

My Thankfulness in Pictures

Click on any of these pictures to see them bigger.

My mom came for a visit this month.

A short walk on the beach and some waves.

Toby and I on the beach on Veteran's Day morning.

Norah likes to swing on the bar on Toby's playground.

Norah's collage. She is thankful for:
 "my brother, and my mom and dad. I am also thankful for my dad's work, my toys, school, and myself."
Ditto for all of us, sweetie!

My Finisher's Photos

T.G.I.F.
Thank God I Finished.
My "tweaked" knee turned out to be too  much to overcome, and after 5 miles of jogging I decided to just walk. Eight miles (and 2 hours) later I met these 2 adorable creatures (and one handsome photographer) and walked across the finish line. My rewards for finishing: a new knee brace (thanks to the first aid workers at mile 7), a ceramic finisher's medallion, a sack of food, and a glass of beer.
While it took me an hour of running to feel like I broke my knee out on the course, it only took my kids 5 hours to break the medallion at home.

My Ice Bath

Some people say that a nice way to recover from a long run is to ice your legs, or even immerse yourself in an ice-cold bath.
I prefer the Pacific.

Monterey Bay, view from Pacific Grove. Click to enlarge.

After my 10-mile run on Saturday I took off my shoes and socks and waded right into the ocean.

My Solo Training Runs

I've been training for the Big Sur Half Marathon, now less than two weeks away.
When I say that I've been "training" I mean that I've been running a few days a week and trying to go long on the weekends. I have a few other people that I run with a few mornings before the kids get up (I've never had to run with a flashlight before--that's interesting). On Saturday or Sunday I tend to sleep in a bit and then head out. I've done two 8+ mile runs, one here around Carmel and one in Pacific Grove along the course route. It's been nice to just zone out and not worry too much about pace or whatnot, and while I enjoy the company that I have on the weekdays, I know that my solo running time is often what I long for.

This is a shot of the trail that I run along most often. The Carmel beach is to my left. (That's Toby, schlepping our only beach chair down the path from where we parked to the beach access stairs when we went to the beach yesterday.)
This past weekend I went out and ran 10 miles, with the help of my new Garmin GPS watch. (I love it, by the way. Happy birthday to me!) It was absolutely gorgeous out, with tons of seals barking, sun shining, and tourists wandering the path. It was wonderful to get out and go, and the fact that my ipod battery died after the first mile turned out to be a good thing. I did a lot of people watching. Unfortunately I had to make a little dodge-move to avoid crashing into a wandering tourist and I tweaked my knee a bit. At mile 7, with 3 to go. I had to walk a good portion of the last 2 miles because my knee wouldn't stop complaining. I've got to cut back on my miles anyways, so I'm hoping that with a lot of ice and ibuprofen I can heal up nicely and in time to go out and run 13 miles less than 2 weeks from now.

My Sardine Stew Prep Crew

We were a little nervous introducing Sardines to the kids, but they were really curious and interested in the prep, cleaning, and cooking.
Here are a few shots that I took of the process. I tried really hard not to get my hands dirty.  ;o)

Norah talks to the fish.

My Sardine Tutorial

I didn't know what to expect when we got the email on Fish Tuesday.
Sardines?? What on earth do we do with sardines??


If you're not familiar with the Monterey area you might not know that this area was once filled with sardine canneries. Now there's nothing to see of the former canning economy except for "Cannery Row," an area which we have yet to visit.

They were big and not at all like the kind you imagine coming from a tin. The problem for us was that they came whole. So we had to do the prepping in order to eat them (and apparently you need to eat them right away as they don't freeze well). A lot of people (including a lady picking up her fish at the same time we were) swear that grilled sardines taste awesome. We, however, do not own a grill. That left us with a few alternatives. The chef decided to try a sardine stew (the pictures online instilled little confidence, but the basics of the recipes we found were good).

I'm trying a new method of video sharing here, so bear with me. I took several videos of the kids prepping the sardines with us. (And when I say us, I mean the chef, as I did not touch the things.) I have uploaded 3 videos to youtube (Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.) of Toby taking us through the steps of cleaning and prepping the sardines. I hope they come through if I embed them here. **

** There may be some people out there that can't follow the videos here and will need to view the videos from the links above. Just keep in mind that I have no idea how to monitor the OTHER videos that show up on the youtube page alongside mine and what pops up after my video is shown. Please don't click on anything that looks sketchy, and don't tell me what other videos are linked to mine. I don't really want to know. I've set the privacy level on my youtube videos to "private" so only the people with these links can see them. Hopefully that keeps things under control. But if I get a lot of spam or random views from sketchy strangers I'm going to take them down. Here's to taking the "next step" on the Internet highway.

My Son's A Future "Jobber"

Toby and I had a conversation yesterday about jobs. He felt that if you needed/wanted a job you could just walk into any business and have any job you want. In his words, you could be a "gas station jobber" or a "wine store jobber" (the two businesses we happened to be driving by). This observation stemmed from an earlier conversation about a certain homeless person that we had noticed sitting at an intersection with a sign saying "Hungry Please Help." The man was on the same street corner the previous week. Toby seemed to think that he wouldn't be there much longer because he was going to get a job at one of the businesses on the street corner. Little conversations like this (and the fact that he says "jobber" instead of "worker") are what make this stage so interesting. He's grappling with a lot of new facets of the world around him, yet trying to understand them with a child's perspective leaves him with a semi-complete picture. But it's complete and concrete to him and thus, in his mind, perfectly plain and simple.

I noticed that we will often ask Toby "Would you like to do that job someday?" Whether it's when we're stopping for coffee, checking out at a grocery store, talking with fire fighters, or walking around the NPS campus we point out someone doing a certain job and pose the question to Toby (I don't think we've started doing this with Norah). He will often say something noncommittal, like "Maybe." I am not sure what goes through his mind when his parents ask him what kind of job he might want. Obviously (upon refection) we both are of the opinion that our kids will hold jobs some day. How early they'll be allowed to work, and how often, are still up for debate around here. But I think that we both had positive work experiences as teenagers and believe that it's an important part of growing up. We also point out that there are lots of people getting paid to do work so we don't have to it (like collecting the trash or busing a table at a restaurant). Conversations like this help us to gauge Toby's observations on the world around him.

My Castles in the Sand



Norah looking west, with the sand castles behind her.

We stuck close to home this weekend in order to participate in the annual Carmel Beach Sand Castle Building Contest. Up for grabs was the coveted golden shovel. The Dads' Group at Toby's school put together a pretty impressive turn out and Norah and I arrived on scene with just enough time to see the awards handed out.
While Toby and the other students and their dads didn't win the golden shovel (rumor had it other castle-builders were bribing the judges with wine and cheese--but I'm not entirely sure about that), they did win a plaque for "Judges Favorite." They made an otter (the school mascot), a VW LuvBug (according to this year's theme), and a few random castles. Toby helped dig the moat around the drip-tree castle.
Enjoy the pictures. We enjoyed the (windy) sunny day very much.

This is how many of the pro sculptors start out. Then they carve out their creations from the big pile of wet sand.

I think this was an octopus eating a book, but it might have been something totally different from the opposite side.

A partitioned-off area for "River Dads" group to work (the otter is on the right).

The sand castle Toby and BJ worked on.