Em was just about the cutest duck that you ever did see. After getting into her costume (which she did not enjoy), she was happy as can be. She even wore her little webbed feet all night long. We started early, meeting up with Brooke, Darren and the kiddos for group pictures, and practice trick-or-treating for Emily – walk up, knock on the door, say “treat please”, take one piece, put it in the pumpkin, then say “thank you”. On the walk back home Emily got in her first real life trick-or-treating and she absolutely froze. She had plenty of opportunities after that to get the hang of it.
We had both of our parents over to our house for some homemade chili, before we started making our rounds. We first made a loop through our little neighborhood to see our friends, show off our little duck, and get a good candy base in her pumpkin. Then we met up with our friends the Brumfields who just moved in up the street, then over to our friends the Mattsons who served us hot cider and let us stay for a little visit. By then it was 7pm, so we headed back home where Emily got to admire her stash while she drank her bottle, got a bath, then got tucked into bed. We stayed up with Betty and Lyle and watched the Yankees dominate in game 3 of the World Series.
So, I bought Emily’s Halloween costume a month early. This was under the assumption that it would give her lots of time to see it, get comfortable with it, so that come Halloween she wasn’t afraid of it and refusing to put it on. Well after 3 weeks of her absolute refusal to put it on, I felt that we were running out of time. I did the exact thing I hoped to avoid and forced it onto my crying child.
She hated it at first. But then we gave her the pumpkin to hold, and had her do a practice at the door, where we gave her a pack of Smarties – “Treat”. That’s pretty much all it took and she was happy to continue wearing the the duck suit. Success!
We had our annual Pumpkin Carving Spectacular with our niece and nephew last weekend. We started at the Zoomars Pumpkin Patch where the kids each got to pick out a pumpkin. Then back to the house for lunch, decorating homemade cookies, and pumpkin carving. It was loads of fun, and Emily was in heaven getting to spend the afternoon with her cousins. Such a great tradition!
Emily was dedicated tonight, at our church, RockHarbor. Family and friends came to support us which was to Emily’s delight to have some of her most favorite people all in the same room.
The purpose of child dedication is to say before our church body that we are committing to raising our daughter in the ways of Christ. By dedicating Emily we are asking to be held accountable by our friends, family and church that we will raise Emily to the best of our abilities in accordance with the love that God has demonstrated toward us, until she can make her own choice to follow Jesus.
Tonight we got to introduce her to our church, share a life verse that we’ve chosen for her, pray a blessing over her, and be prayed for as well. It was very special.
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. -Phillipians 1:9-11
Emily is just so much fun these days. 18 months really is a great age. I’m trying to find activities in and out of the house to keep her entertained, learning, and interacting. It’s amazing how much of a sponge she is right now. She picks up on new words and new experiences so quickly and recalls them often. It’s so fantastic to watch her develop.
Here are some of her favorite new activities.
Climbing
Going down the slide all by herself
Driving the car!
“Coloring”
Watering the Plants
Playing in the reclaimed water in Ladera, with her buddy Charlie.
Em is at such a fun age where she takes great joy in seeing and experiencing new things. She even remembers them and wants to talk about it later. We went to the horse races a few weeks back with my family and grandparents while they were in town visiting from the desert. She heard everyone yelling and cheering as the horses ran around the track. Then she got to see the horses close up and even got to pet one on the nose. Every day since she has said, “Horsie!…Trot trot trot…run around, run around…pet it…nose.” It’s pretty adorable.
One day, I decided that we would go driving around off Ortega to find some horsies for her to see, as I imagined it would fill her little heart with great joy. To my surprise we found horse stables just a few miles from our house. Now I don’t know that we’re allowed to be wandering around the stables. But nobody kicked us out. We got to wander through 30 or so horses while Emily stared on in amazement.
A few days later, she asked to see the horsies again. So we headed back down to Ortega to discover that they were setting up for a horse show! Free parking, free admission. She and I sat on the lawn while we watched the horses trot and gallop around, jumping over their obstacles. I felt like such a cool mommy, and she was so satisfied with the experience.
We went back the next day with our friends Beckey and Berlyn. We had blankets and lots of snacks this time. I only wish we had been wearing long flowy dresses and oversized hats to make the picture absolutely perfect.
My hope is to satisfy Emily’s horse fetish while she’s young so that she’s over them by the time she’s 5, to avoid those dreaded words “Mommy, I want a pony”. We’ll see, this could backfire on me.
Emily made the local news during our stay in Maine, when we stopped into a Route 1 Landmark that Eric has visited every summer since he was 5 – Perry’s Nut House.
Perry’s is a store filled with an odd mix of taxidermy animals, toys, candy, novelty items and, yes, nuts. It’s a super nostalgic place for Eric’s family, so he was thrilled to introduce Emily to all the quirky details.
When we arrived we soon discovered that there was a camera crew there doing a story on the store. Ironically the story was about how nostalgic the place is for summer travelers. We were soon being interviewed while the camera guy followed Em around the store watching her squeal with delight while she played with all the toys.
Click here to watch. Emily makes her big debut about 1 minute in, and then again about :30 seconds later.
We took our much anticipated, biennial trip to the East Coast to visit Eric’s family in Searsport, Maine. We left home on August 6th at 5:30am with a sleepy-eyed baby in tow, and left Long Beach airport at 8:00am bound for Boston, MA. The flight was a breeze, despite all my excessive planning and worrying. Emily waved at the fellow passengers, enjoyed snacks, watched Tom and Jerry on her personal TV (gotta love Jet Blue), napped easily, drank a bottle for take off and landing to avoid ear issues, and in the end was given her very own set of wings. Way to go baby girl!
Following our flight, we got our rental car, and took a 45 minute drive to Sherborn, MA to stay overnight with Eric’s cousin Kate and her family. It was so much fun to stay with them. Kate and her husband, James, have 3 children: Grace 7, Jack 5, and Charlie 17 months (he was born the day after Emily). This couldn’t have been a more delightful crowd for Emily after our full day of travel. She played hard with the three of them and then crashed for a great nights sleep. After all the kids were in bed we got to enjoy dinner with just the adults, which was such a treat since we hardly ever get to see these cousins due to the distance. Here’s a picture of the 8 of us below. You may think one person’s missing but Jack wanted to stand in the corner of the shot, just to make it interesting.
The next morning our hosts served us coffee and breakfast, we watched the kiddos play together some more, then packed up and headed out for our 4 1/2 hour drive to Searsport. Eric drove the whole way, and we all got to enjoy the view, sing songs, talk and laugh together, and Emily and I even got a little extra shut eye. I thought Emily would hate being in the car after traveling so much the day before but she was happy as a clam to be together as a family, see all the news sites, direct our singing, not to mention that she got to watch Elmo on our portable DVD player.
We pulled onto Steamboat Avenue just before 5:00pm and enjoyed a wonderful greeting from the whole family. Emily took to exploring immediately, and she and I were soon discovered on the beach collecting rocks and playing with a baby crab. That first 20 minutes pretty much set the tone for the trip of relaxation, exploration, and family time. We had amazing weather the whole time so we got to do all our favorite activities including a trip to Acadia, taking out the row boats, picking wild berries, the annual pancake breakfast at the Burns’, playing croquet on the lawn, reading and naps in the hammock, our traditional Lobster Feast, a visit to Uncle David in Camden, the Farmers Market in Belfast, walking up town to our favorite book store, coffee shop, pizza parlor, library…can you tell, we really like Searsport
Emily loved waking up in the morning and heading over to the Green Cottage (Great Granddad Albert and Great Grandma Shirley’s cottage) to see everyone together for breakfast. She usually got scrambled eggs, while the adults ate East Coast doughnuts and coffee. Each day was a new adventure for her which I’m sure was a wonderful break from our repetitive day-in-the-life. Her favorite activities were surely meals with the whole family, pool time on the lawn, baths in the sink, collecting rocks, trying to find the kitty cat, Perry’s Nut House, More Aunt Mary singing “Two Little Blackbirds”, her stuffed kitty cat, reading her new book Goodnight Maine, and anything she got to do with her Granddad.
Albert and Shirley bought Emily a brand new pack-n-play to make her stay as comfortable and familiar as possible. So thoughtful, and so appreciated! She slept great the entire time. She took a 2-3 hour nap every day and went to sleep at 8:00pm every night allowing us to spend our evenings in front of the fire sipping coffee, eating dessert, chatting, reading or playing games. When Em took naps, Eric and I got to get away for our own little time of vacation. One day we headed into Belfast for lunch, ice cream, and window shopping. Another day we went to the library where we each read books for a while, then went on to share a pizza. We played ping pong in the boathouse, went out on the motor boat with Albert, got to go to a book signing and cookie tasting. It’s so nice to be able to leave Emily with her grandparents who she knows and loves so much, and vice-a-versa.
It was a sad farewell when we left after our 9 day vacation. And a little bit of a rougher trip home since we packed all of the driving and flying into one day instead of two. But Em was still a champ in our book. My mom was there waiting for us at Long Beach when we arrived home at 9:00pm/12:00am East Coast time, and drove us to our car. We didn’t get home until 11:30pm and we were all zonked. Needless to say we all slept great that night and after 2 days were completely back on West Coast time.
Thank you Albert and Shirley once again for hosting us, and Betty and Lyle for paying our way to come out. (They even bought us a seat for Emily which was so generous and so essential to the ease of our travels.) We’re ready to put our next trip on the calendar!
Yikes…how in the world are we going to do this with two?!
Eric and I joined the Bridgmans for the Barcelona vs. Galaxy game at the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena. We decided to make a day of it and headed into Old Pasadena early for some Pool at Jakes, cruising Colorado Street, and then dinner at Bar Celona (pun intended) for some fantastic tapas and sangria. After dinner we got Coffee Bean before catching the charter bus from Old Town into the Rose Bowl.
The game was great fun and the guys were in full spirit sporting competing jersies. Soccer fans are passionate which made for a very lively crowd. We even saw a Chivas fan get three bottles of beer thrown at him by some Messi fans for starting trouble. In all honestly, if I had had something to throw I probably would have too. The guy was obnoxious.
It was a thrill to see such greats as Beckham, Donovan, Henry, and Messi playing live. Beckham scored a beautiful “Bend it Like Beckam”-esque goal on a direct free kick from 25 yards out, but in the end Barcelona won 2 to 1.
After the game, that lovely charter bus that got us into the Rose Bowl with such ease and convenience, now had a line that I’m pretty sure had all 94,000 people from the stadium waiting in it! So, we waited for TWO HOURS in line for the bus to take us back to Old Town. We made the best of it by playing Scramble (Eric and my most favorite App) on Eric’s iphone. We were feeling like quite the partiers compared to our normal life of being asleep by 11:00. After taking the bus, getting to our car, driving, dropping the Bridgmans off, we arrived home at 1:30am!
A very fun day seeing my husband in his element, and more fun memories shared with the Bridgmans.
A special thank you to Brooke, Darren, Caeden And Cami for watching Emily all day and even keeping her overnight when we got home so crazy late. It’s so wonderful to live near family!
Eric and I took our second trip to Ultrasound Services in Costa Mesa. I scheduled this appointment over a month ago with eager anticipation of finding out the gender of our little avocado-sized baby.
After 20 minutes on the ultrasound machine with babies legs closed tight, we were starting to accept that we weren’t going to be finding out that day…But then, a little shimmy, a little wiggle and all was revealed…We’re having a boy!
This picture shows him from the side. You can see his head (to the left), his body, his spine (the bright white part), and his little arm reaching behind his head – just relaxin’.
Eric and I are absolutely thrilled! And that Millenium Falcon that Eric bought on a whim 3 years ago for our “future son” might actually have a chance of being used. Hooray!
Em is at such a fun age where she takes great joy in seeing and experiencing new things. She even remembers them and wants to talk about it later. We went to the horse races a few weeks back with my family and grandparents while they were in town visiting from the desert. She heard everyone yelling and cheering as the horses ran around the track. Then she got to see the horses close up and even got to pet one on the nose. Every day since she has said, “Horsie!…Trot trot trot…run around, run around…pet it…nose.” It’s pretty adorable.
Emily made the local news during our stay in Maine, when we stopped into a Route 1 Landmark that Eric has visited every summer since he was 5 – Perry’s Nut House.
This picture shows him from the side. You can see his head (to the left), his body, his spine (the bright white part), and his little arm reaching behind his head – just relaxin’.