A Little Update on Alice

She's got two teeth now



And she recently discovered her tongue's ability to stick out.




And she makes really weird faces sometimes




And she likes to sing along when I sing to her. I assume she's doing her best to mimic me which in turn makes me feel better about my decision not to pursue a singing career.



And she can walk... while sticking her tongue out of course




And lastly, she found out that curtains can be a lot of fun to play with.



Day Trip to Oak Glen

There is a lot to do here in Southern California for a day trip but a lot of it is the same thing or it's super crowded, or expensive. For example, you can go shopping in Palm Springs, you can go to an amusement park, you can go up the tram, there's Big Bear. Honestly, I'm tired of shopping, it's exhausting. The very thought of navigating the family through a crowded and over priced theme park makes me cringe, and I feel the same about the tram. It's over priced and over crowded. And Big Bear seems too far away, plus there's not much to do there n the fall but shop.

Yesterday we decided to switch it up a bit and head to the Oak Glen Growers Association which is a little township inside of Yucaipa, Ca. It was a blast, a totally laid back environment. While the crowds did start pouring in at around lunch time it never felt too crowded. We started our journey at Snow Line Orchards, where we ate fantastic cider doughnuts, sampled some unusual apple varieties like pink pearl, and picked a boat load of raspberries.

We then headed down to the town center for lunch at a BBQ joint called the rib cage. It wasn't bad but since I am a Texan and accustomed to certain BBQ standards I really can't say it was good either. Afterwards we walked around the village and found a cute little farm stand with heirloom apples and cider samples.

The last stop of our journey was Riley's Farm, a colonial farmstead where the employees are dressed in colonial era clothing. This is without a doubt a cool place to go, they've got a pumpkin patch, a petting zoo, great smelling food, and lot's more. We decided to go apple picking here and it was fun, you take a hay ride from the main colonial village up to the orchard and the take a trail past huge wild blackberry bushesand a beautiful mountain stream and fnd your self in a field of apple trees nestled in the mountains. From there you fill your bags with as many apples as you can. My only complaint is that one bag was $19, plus we paid $1 per person to walk the trail. It was kind of steep if you ask me but at the same time we had a great time, much more fun than we have had when we've paid more. If you don't want to spend that kind of money on apples you don't have to! You can still enjoy Riley's and then head down the road to a different apple orchard (there are plenty). Just call around and find the best price before going. http://www.oakglen.net/index.shtml

Alice is a Walker

Last night my little 8 1/2 month old baby girl walked for the first time. She had taken a couple steps before then but last night she was able to walk across the room to get to something. After numerous tries to get it on camera we finally got a few steps so here they are:

Miss Class Representative 2010

Haley came home last week and told me the kids in her class were given the opportunity to run for student council (they only choose two classes per grade) and she wanted to run for class representative. In order to do this she had to prepare an essay and then read it to her class. I really enjoyed helping her with her essay because I was able to see how aware she is of her community and the current problems with the economy. For example she said in her essay "I'll work to get tastier cafeteria food that's still affordable to make".

Anyway, today she found out that she did win, she actually had 20 votes out of 26 students. Before school she was a little anxious and carefully picked out an outfit and had me curl her hair, just in case she needed to make an acceptance speech or something I guess. Here are some photos:

She's really blossoming into a young woman! It amazes me how much she's grown over the last year. Over the summer even. We bought size 10 slim jeans for her in August and now they're too small. Pretty crazy if you ask me.

Halloween Portraits - Alice

Oh.My.Goodness. This kid is cute, but you put a horse costume on her and it's just so much cute that I can barely take it. Haley's halloween photos will come soon but we're still working on her costume.

Not so Wordless and Wow Wednesday

A fellow blogger posts a wordless and wow wednesday post every week where she just posts an amazing picture. I admire her, but I have issues with not writing, I don't think it's possible for me to post a photo without words. But I will do my best to keep those words limited in honor of wordless wednesday. I think I've already failed though. Here we go:

Wow, those are some cute Spurs fans!

Wow, that's a shallow depth of field!

The Kids

It seems I haven't blogged about my kids in such a long time! We'll start with Miss Alice, she's such a handful these days and I love her for it because she keeps me so busy! She is all over the place, in fact yesterday I had to go searching for her soaking wet. I had put her on the floor with a bunch of toys so I could take a shower and she usually never moves from that spot however yesterday she felt adventurous. I had been in the shower for barely 2 minutes, just long enough to get shampoo in my hair when I realized she was being unusually quiet so I peeked my head out of the shower and she was gone. My first thought was that she may have found the cats litter box because she has been trying really hard to get into the laundry room where we keep it. I had this horrible mental image of my precious childs mouth covered in cat litter and that was all  it took to send me bolting out of the shower. I mean, what would I do if that happened? Take her to the doctors and explain that she may have eaten a cat turd? Not cool. Luckily I found her sitting outside of Haley's bedroom and I took her and put her back in her spot, closing the laundry room door on my way.

She's also growing more and more fond of Ranger although Ranger is very jealous of her and I think maybe even a little scared of her.

I couldn't imagine why she'd be scared. Oh, wait, yes I can.

As for Haley, that girl is a busy bee! She's incredibly social so it seems she's always playing with a friend, this weekend though, she's staying home with us because we miss her. This year she'll be participating in a few programs, an after school program called operation hero, a program at Inspiration Place called little chefs, and maybe a drama program offered by Joshua Tree. We're hoping to continue with girl scouts but our old troop leader moved over the summer and we're still waiting to hear from the new leader.

Last weeks goals, a luau, and a picture

The goals I made last week were not 100% met. I didn't even attempt to write out a business plan, I exhausted every effort to register for classes but was still unable to do so, but my cooking club idea is doing really well, we've got a lot of people interested and a bunch of people that I've never met are coming so the word is getting out there. I'm really excited about it and I hope it turns out well.

The school thing has left me feeling very defeated. I spent Monday - Thursday trying to get things sorted out, waiting for responses, calling random departments, etc and then once everything I needed to do had been done I found out that all classes were closed and completely full. So I can not go to school at UTEP this semester. I was really mad. But I am not just going to sit here for 5 months and twiddle my thumbs, I will literally lose my mind doing that. I guess I'm going to have to take a couple of classes at AMU this semester but I really need the advice of my crappy UTEP advisor to tell me which classes will transfer. I was truly disappointed to find that my environmental science class didn't transfer over. I loved that class but for some reason it didn't satisfy my natural sciences requirement. So because of that I need to speak with someone first about what classes to take. I'm starting to think that maybe I should just stay at AMU, stay a sociology major, and then later get a masters degree from a major university. I don't know. I love the idea of attending a well known school but I just don't know what to do. I will be calling my dad for advice on this one for sure. We're also having an education fair soon so I'll have to check that out.

In addition to running around like a chicken with it's head cut off for school I was planning a back to school luau for Haley and some of her classmates. It went really well and I was happy because I got to plan a menu and cook food. We made some grilled chicken and veggie kabobs, BBQ chicken legs, a no bake peach cheesecake, this really awesome caramel yogurt fruit dip, and some Hawaiian rice. I had such good intentions for that rice, I actually dreamt of it before making it. Unfortunately it was a little bland. I think it's because it was such a big batch. It had jalapeno, cayenne pepper, green onion, crushed pineapple, and coconut milk in it, plus a little garlic. I just can  not cook without cayenne pepper and garlic. I will definitely be trying it again, in a smaller batch. My good friend Vanessa brought her sweet potato fries which were amazing, I'll be making them soon.

Lastly, I had a studio session on Saturday evening and since that studio is such a pain to put up I always make the girls take pics when I have it up. Unfortunately Haley was at a friends house so she didn't get her picture taken but Miss Alice did and this is the result:

I think this weekend we might break out the tripod and head down to 29 Palms Inn and actually do some family photos. That is the plan but it has been the plan many times before and we ALWAYS blow it off.

1/2 a year old

I can't believe it's been 6 months since our little angel came into our lives. These last couple of months have been really busy for Miss Alice. She's been traveling quite a bit and she's been learning plenty of new things, like how to sit up on her own, how to roll over, she learned how to growl, how to blow rasberries, the list just goes on and on.

She also began teething. That is really no fun at all.

This is her signature look:

It involves her sucking on her bottom lip pretty much anytime she finds something fascinating. It's her look of concentration.

And with her sister already in Texas she's learned to lower her standards for what she considers funny and now she laughs at mommy and daddy just as much as she did with her sister.

She's a happy little girl, that's for sure!

Creative Writing Wednesdays

I started attending a writing workshop at the Library and yesterday I was given some pretty neat writing prompts so I figured I would post my response to one of them. The prompt was simply "no thank you". Here is my response:

No thank you, I do not have any extra habanero jelly that I would like to sell to you. I have told you time and time again that you can purchase said jelly at the Joshua Tree farmers market every Saturday for $3.50. Stop being lazy and go get the jelly yourself. Also, if I have to text you the name of the jelly one more time I will scream. It is HABANERO jelly, if you can't remember the name go back through your texts and find the last one I sent telling you the name of it.

OK so that is my response, now the story behind this starts with my mothers day pot luck. I had made some really delicious appetizers using puff pastry, cream cheese, and my very valuable habanero jelly. One of my guests really enjoyed these appetizers and asked me if I would teach her how to make them, which made me so very happy because this is another recipe that I made up on my own and it was an honor to have someone want them so bad that she needed me to help her make them. So I said yes, of course I will teach you, I have an incredibly busy schedule but I will take some time out of that and make you food. I know that sounds sarcastic, but I was serious. I love to cook and I was flattered by this friends request. The only problem was that she needed the jelly and I didn't want to share mine so I told her to get some apricot preserves and we would spice it up with cayenne pepper and little bits of jalapeno. I really think that would have been delicious but this friend of mine wanted nothing less than the habanero jelly. My very expensive for the small amount that you get, habanero jelly. She eventually talked me into letting her use my jelly, she's very persuasive, this friend of mine, and she was set to arrive at my house at 4pm to start cooking.


Well 4:30 rolled around and she hadn't arrived. I later got a text that said "my husband came home so I had to cook for him LOL." Yeah, thanks. This was during finals week where I was literally working 13 hour days trying to finish all my school work so when I said I was really busy I meant it. I figured that was the end of it but I was wrong. I have since gotten 3 or 4 texts asking me what the name of the jelly is, what the puff pastry box looks like and where it can be found, and most recently a text that said "Do u hv some jelly I can buy from u? Lol" Like it's a street drug and I'm a dealer. The thing is that I have told her this information verbally and in writing several times so I just don't understand why she keeps hounding me for the same information. I get a little testy when I feel my time is being wasted, especially during finals week, when I simply have no more extra time and when I feel like I'm being used for my jelly. And a girl never wants to feel used, especially for her habanero jelly.





Here is Alice after she ate some of my coveted habanero jelly:




Just kidding people! It's prunes, I wouldn't give my baby habanero anything!

Our Trip to Paso Robles and Hearst Castle

We just returned home from Paso Robles, Ca after a long weekend where Miss Alice met more family members like her second cousin once removed (or something like that) Cole.








And her great grandma Beverly as well as many other family members.









She also tried on an array of headwear and went to church for the first time.





The highlight of our trip was our visit to Hearst Castle which is perched 1,000 feet above sea level.



This was taken about half way up the mountain:



Once we arrived we were greeted by numerous marble statues like this one:

I wanted to badly to touch these, they just look so smooth and soft but I was told I would be kicked out if I did so I refrained.

Haley, Alice and Nick on one of the many castle terraces.

The neptune pool. This was built, torn down, and rebuilt a few times before Mr.Hearst decided it was perfect.

This was one of my favorite parts, it's a bedroom in the smallest of the guest cottages. A cottage to Mr.Hearst was bigger than my house; most things at the castle were bigger than my house.

The details put into making the cottages and the main house amazed me. Check out the tiles and carvings in the concrete ceiling, those special touches were everywhere.

Here is the main house, La Casa Grande. I believe there were 132 rooms or something like that. While it was amazing I was just left wondering why someone would spend that kind of money. Maybe he was trying to get the attention of a past love, like in the Great Gatsby. I'm pretty sure he was just a man with a ton of money that needed spending though.

Check out this ceiling, it's hand carved.

This is the dining room:

And here is my absolute favorite part of the house, the indoor pool.

Greek Gods and Godesses lined the walls and the blue and gold mosaic tiles made you really feel like you were in Rome at some pool just for the Gods, it was pretty neat.

So there you have it, our trip up the coast.

My Babies

Alice began eating solids recently. I was a little hesitant because she is so young still but I told her doctor she was reaching for my food all the time and she never seemed satisfied after nursing so I was given the OK to start introducing foods. We started with baby cereal which made her gag repeatedly so I tasted it and agreed it was pretty nasty, we tried 3 times on 3 different days and she still hated it so we moved on to avocado which she liked better but still gagged sometimes. So I mixed in some banana and that was the magic trick. She has been eating the avocado/banana mixture for about a week and it's so funny because she loves it so much that she gets mad at us for not feeding her fast enough.

Here she is during on of her first feedings, she looks a little terrified:

It truly amazes me how much Alice looks up to her big sister. I honestly did not expect her to find Haley so cool for another 2-3 years but Alice just adores her. When Haley walks in the room Alice just smiles, she smiles so hard that she uses her entire little body to convey just how happy she is. And she won't take her eyes off of Haley most of the time. Haley also has the power to make her laugh on command. She'll say "gummi bears" and Alice will burst into laughter.