cousins

davis crying and seth trying to hand her the teddy bear

as i look through my viewfinder, i see seth slowly lean back without changing his expression. next thing i know, he's flat on his back. perhaps a sign that he'd had enough?

davis' sign: she turned around

seth is actually digging something out of the wood AND EATING IT

set and ava have one cousin: her name is davis. and this weekend davis came out to visit with her parents, shannon and justin. since all three grandchildren were constantly hanging out together, kristine requested a picture. and we sure tried to give it to her.

at one point shannon and kristine were dancing wildly in the weeds, swinging their arms, laughing hysterically and singing, "a wise man build his house upon a rock. . ." and while ryan laughed and seth looked puzzled (you'll notice his expression doesn't change. i don't think he smiled once), i shouted, "RODGE! RODGE!" because the reflector was being held askew and there was shadow on seth's face.

remind me to never do that again.

a visit from great grandma and great granddad

great grandma helps seth put his oven mitts on. when dealing with hot pans it's a good idea to find oven mitts that go all the way to your arm pits. you can never be too safe! right, seth?

a three generation picture. for posterity.
(edited to add: that actually, it is a four generation picture. i forgot to count)

my grandparents came out to visit (my mom) from nebraska. it was so good to see them, because i tell you what, finding the money to get out there to visit and then managing to arrive all in one piece is a task that makes me quake in fear. so, we sat around and talked until my children wept with exhaustion and i was forced to take them home. it was fun. and now, more than ever, and despite the quaking, i am motivated to get my little family together and spend some happy time in nebraska.

christmas eve

it was ryan's idea. and boy, was he enthusiastic about it. i, i will admit, was a bit apprehensive. "what is there to do in solvang?" i asked.

ryan was not to be deterred. "lady, i'm danish! those are my people! they will welcome us with open arms."

well, that didn't happen. but we had a good time all the same. i mean, there are danishes in solvang, so who wasn't going to have a good time? and i discovered something called a cinnamon crisp. and after i "shared" with my family, i went right back in and bought two more. because they are delicious. we hiked, we ate, we looked at a statue of the little mermaid and we accosted a metal statue of a bulldog.

also, did you know that there's a miniature horse farm out there? A MINIATURE HORSE FARM (click for pictures). guess what animal i've added to my list? yeah, right underneath donkey (which is underneath an elephant and, i don't know if you knew, but i'm also going to one day have bees and yes maybe i have a problem).

christmas card

did NOT manage to get a christmas card out this year, so enjoy this little gem and read back a couple posts. that ought to do it.

oh yeah, and merry christmas!

beach day

skirball and a date

saturday morning began the way it always begins: pancakes, disco music and a list of things we need to get done. i, of course, had a huge list and ryan, of course, had a huge list. breakfast ended and as "boogie wonderland" played in the background we stared grimly at the yellow legal pad we'd scribbled all over.

"i want to go to the skirball instead," i said.

ryan hopped up. "okay," he said.

and that's what we did. we went to the skirball, where ava is just the right age for the set up they have (a noah's ark with animals to play with and a little jungle gym that, despite the fact that it terrified both kids, was brilliant), and we played all day. it was absolutely the best. and then, as if that wasn't enough, ryan came up with the brilliant idea of going out that night for dinner. so he called his mom and started talking about a plan. like, maybe we could go to dinner about five? and we'll probably get home around ten or so?

"ryan," i said to him when he hung up, "what on earth are we going to do for FIVE HOURS?"

he shrugged, "maybe i just want to hang out with my wife, okay? you got a problem with that?"

"for five hours?"

we didn't make it the whole five hours, but we did sit at the table at the restaurant long after our food was consumed and talked. it is SO nice to talk to ryan withOUT the little voice piping up in the background, "EXCUSEMEMOMMYEXCUSEMEMOMMYEXCUSEMEMOMMY".

heaven. as much as i love the little fuzzy heads who climb into bed with us every morning, as much as they enhance my love for ryan,  the fact remains that i didn't marry him just because i thought he'd make a great dad. i married him because of all of the other aspects of him, the thinker, the goofball, the historian, the salesman, the romantic--and i love it when i can sit down and focus on all the other ryans. he's (they?) (are) my favorite.

the pictures that followed or, our trip in pictures with subtitles

on our way up, we stopped in las vegas, where our job was clearly cut out for us by pollo, who found an empty liquor bottle and did the first thing that came to his mind: act drunk. with glee. the boys, in the bellagio. from left to right: azeem, kevin, pollo (arul) and christian outside the temple little mouse at my aunt's house. my aunt is about to become a grandmother for the first time and has collected the most wonderful toys for a little granddaughter over the years. ava was in heaven. grandma and grandpa's house. ava was surprisingly kind to her eager great-grandparents. she climbed right up into their laps and told them all about herself. as i was putting her to bed she told me, "mom, i really love grandma and grandpa." proof that seth was there, eyeing heavily the bowl of m&ms that grandma left on the coffee table. what i want to know is this, how does he even know what m&ms are anyway? why do these children come with built-in sugar sensors? on the way home. utah is one of the most beautiful places i've ever seen. and autumn is one of its best seasons. i'm so glad we were there. two of these were taken as the sun rose on our ride home. do you see the moon? gorgeous. my favorite picture of the trip:

beach boys

sometimes ryan has business meetings in malibu, so after work we all meet at the beach and spend some time together. this is a favorite. i'm so glad one of my children will go near the water.

a month of birthdays

ava and seth's birthdays fall two weeks apart and, two weeks after that, my parents birthdays fall only a week apart. so for about a month, we are chin-high in birthdays. this means that at dinners end, when we begin to pull out the birthday candles (or, in my parent's situation, the matches since we ran out of birthday candles), ava climbs into the lap of the birthday person and prepares herself for the blowing out of candles. lucky for her, the birthday people are also her grandparents. i can't think of anyone else who would be more willing to hand over a birthday than ava's grandparents. oh wait: i can: her other grandparents.

want to hear the story of my dad's birthday cake? i was comissioned to make it and looked for something with lemons since i somehow had a million lining the walls of my fridge. i have no idea why that happened, it just did. so i settled on a lemon pound cake with a cream cheese glaze. and then i made it. and it looked (smelled) really good. so i put one on a plate for presentation purposes and put the second in a tupperware container for backup purposes. then we got in the car to head to my parent's house. miraculously, i remembered the cakes, my camera, pajamas, extra diapers, camera battery, the proper lens, blah, blah, blah. . .as we turned the corner to exit our street something made an awful scraping noise and then there was a dull thud on the street behind our little care.

great, i thought. my engine just fell out.

now that i think about it, that was a very drastic thought to have. do you want to know what it was? the cake in tupperware of course. do you want to know what's sad? i lost the keys to my mother's suburban on the freeway the EXACT SAME WAY only a month ago.

really? REALLY? WILL I EVER LEARN?

let's just all be grateful that it wasn't seth that i stuck on the roof of the car and forgot to take down.

so i arrived with one lovely lemon cake presented nicely on a plate and one ugly cake that looked like someone had thrown it from a moving car. . .which is sort of (exactly) what happened. good thing i have a really cute daughter. the way to make that situation a good one is simply this: give the 3-year-old the cake and have her carry it in. worked like a charm when i brought home two chickens without discussing it with ryan first. what? i was perfectly willing to take them back just in case he thought it was a terrible idea! don't judge me.

the following is what happens when you don't get your way at grandma and grandpa's house:

happy birthday, mom and dad.

the labor day wherein i did not labor

this is going to be a long one. i just wanted you to recognize that before you committed to reading this post that really only serves as a journal entry and is neither interesting or funny. consider yourself warned.

it has been SO LONG since we all piled into the car (the four of us) and did something fun. it seems like for the last few months we've had things going on, or we've had errands to run, or SOMETHING has kept us from just letting our hair down and having a good time. ryan was the genius who proposed venice beach and for that i will be eternally grateful to him.

the weather was amazing. the beach was beautiful. the children were happy. there was a little girl selling lemonade with her parents for fifty cents. it was lovely. plus, ryan managed to squeeze my car into the smallest parking spot ever. which turned out interesting. as the parking was so intense (for example, the parking lot where you paid to park was $25), there were lots of people lined up and waiting for our spot when we came back. this girl had her boyfriend swing their car out in front of everyone who had been waiting and snag our spot. this meant that as i stood outside the car and helped ryan pull out in a way that meant we didn't have to contact our insurance company, she and five other drivers all yelled at each other. then she tried to get me to agree with her that her large suv would totally fit into the spot my tiny nissan was just in. i refused to agree. i also did not disagree. this is a lesson my grandmother taught me. i use it often.

so hooray for labor day, for summer, for the amazing state of california and for the habit which, and i know this is going to be considered "stirring the pot", but i'll say it anyway: is WAY BETTER THAN IN N OUT. want to know why? REAL BACON. AND AVOCADO. and those just could be my two favorite food items. and also, ryan really likes their shakes.