Blue Ribbon Award

In Alexis' school, three different awards are given every month to students in the class excelling in some area. Alexis was the recipient of the "Blue Ribbon Award" for being "the best of the best" as her teacher put it. We are very proud of her -way to go Alexis! She was rewarded with a certificate and a voucher for a mini pizza at Me-N-Ed's, which she enjoyed with her daddy a couple nights ago.

a visit to San Diego

We ended September with a bang! On the last day of the month, Adam and I became an uncle and an aunt, respectively. Adam's brother Danny and his wife Heather welcomed baby Brayden Mark to their family and we couldn't be happier for them. Congratulations! When I told Alexis I would be an aunt and she a cousin, Aubrey piped in to ask, "what will I be?" :) We can't wait for our next visit with them to let the spoiling begin!

Prior to that exciting news, Adam had a work conference in San Diego this past weekend and as long as he was headed southward, we figured we should tag along. We had marvelous time! We went to a streetside art fair where we enjoyed watching sidewalk chalk artists and sand castle creators and many other types of artists as well. We enjoyed he La Jolla coast at sunset, which was absolutely charming. We also visited our favorite beach on Coronado Island. As you can see from the pictures, a walk along the beach is rarely ever just a "walk" along the beach. (The girls went swimming in their clothes and we all got covered, literally, in sand! Poor Aubrey couldn't keep her wet skirt up and everyone on the beach at some point or another became aware that she was wearing elmo undies.) While Adam was in his meeting I took the girls on a morning walk to see the boats and the sea lions and then we spent the rest of the day at the pool. It was SO great to go swimming again. My girls really love the water!

Soccer Season

Yesterday, I was grinning to myself while I washed the counters and Alexis was vaccuming the family room. I was thinking how great it is to have a slave, I mean helper, in training to do chores. (How great will it be when I have three little Cinderellas that can help tidy up as least as much as they mess up!) Just as the fantasy of kicking back while my kids clean up for me was beginning...I was abruptly woken from my daydream by the sound of the vaccum eating its own cord (luckily, it's nothing a little electrical tape can't fix)! Guess my celebrations were a little premature. :)

Other exciting events around here include the beginning of soccer season! Alexis is on a team with fellow Kindergarteners from her school and having a great time running around on the field in cleats and shin guards chasing kids for a chance to kick at the ball. (The ball, by the way, is more often "out of play" than in bounds.) She has been enjoying it so far and is gearing up for her first game next weekend!

Alexis also recently got to attend "Donuts with Dads" at her school. That was a fun special morning for just the two of them to visit over donuts and juice and choc. milk. It's so fun for me to remember the way I looked up to my dad as a little girl (and I still do) and how special he made me feel, and how sureal it is now to see Lexi looking up to Adam in that very same way.

Taking me back in time

This weekend was a "blast from the past." If ever we'd wanted to try and plan to recreate a weekend from our years of "younger love," this would have been it. It was not our anniversary or anything, it just happened this way and what fun. Adam got us tickets to go to a Good Charlotte concert, which was SO awesome! We had such a great time rockin' the night away. We used to love listening to that band back when we first started dating so it was a memory jerker just for that reason and was a ton of fun besides. Here are a couple fab. cell phone pics from the event:






Following our rock concert, we headed off to 7-11 for a slurpee. Another time warp! Adam used to take me out for Slurpees after putting practice at Mulligan's. We did this many, many times as dates. I use to wish he'd bet me a kiss for a good putt instead of a Slurpee some time...and eventually he did!

Last, but not least, there was Nutella! This was the ultimate flashback! I don't know why we hadn't thought to do it before, but we saw a jar of Nutella at the store and brought it home to make crepes, much like the ones we ate on our honeymoon 7 1/2 years ago! After just one bite, I closed my eyes and I was back in Paris, on the streets near Montmarte eating my crepe! What fun memories and a fun weekend remembering them.


Je t'aime mon amour!

A Princess in Training

Today, Alexis and I were looking through her book order form for school and I offered to buy her one book and told her she could buy any others she wanted with her own money. She "hum-hawed" about that for awhile (she really doesn't like spending her money) and eventually picked one out that looked fun but didn't cost too much. We got the money out of her bank and filled out the order form and I noticed Lexi playing around with her bank again. Amazingly, although we had taken out the only five dollar bill she had, there was another five dollar bill in her bank just a few minutes later. I asked her about it and she came up with some story about how she'd been keeping another five dollar bill somewhere else and now that she used the one in her bank, she was replacing it with this secret stash. I didn't get upset (viusally, anyway) right off the bat but keep up the questioning so that I didn't accuse her if she were really telling the truth. The further she got into her rather elaborate "story" the more suspicious I became until I eventally cracked the case and figured out what had happened. I was broken -hearted to discover that Alexis had stolen money from Aubrey's bank and then lied about it! My sweet little girl! You want SO much for them to make good choices and hope you are teaching them good things and then when they do something like this...well, it hurts. I can teach her how to read but how do I teach her to have a good heart? I left her alone for a few minutes to think and when I came back, she was on laying on my bed with tear streaked cheeks and sobbed, "I feel like Katie! She stole the Widow shoemaker's pie and lied about it like I did to Aubrey!" Katie is the main character in the wonderful book, "Daughter of A King" by Rachel Ann Nunes. If you don't have it, you should! We have read this book to Alexis dozens of times and we talk about it and use the principles in the story (which are those of the gospel) often as we talk about our choices and actions and how we want to act like princesses so we can return to the "Crystal Palace" one day. Although we talk about it regularly, we haven't read the book in a little while so I was surprised she thought of that incident in the story. I was glad Lexi reminded me of the story to help me decide what to do next with Alexis. (I wanted to be really mad at her and call her daddy at work to think up some great punishment!) I thought for a moment, "what did Katie's parents do in the story?" We had a good talk and took care of the necessary apologizes and moved on and I will keep up my hope that next time she gets a crazy idea to do something like that, instead she will think about it and choose not to do it in the first place!

My littlest girly girl

Allie is growing up fast! She nearly 17 months old and is leaving baby-hood behind and quickly entering toddler-hood...and causing a great deal of trouble along her way. She is into everything and climbs like crazy. My barstools can no longer be near the counter or table and since she is learning how to push the stools around, I can't leave ANYTHING on the counter either. My cupboards are always emptied out (the child locks keep breaking) and she has learned the "N" word ...NO! She does still have a very cute side and is learning a lot of fun things too. She loves to "sing" and "jibber jabber" and is actually learning quite a few words. She recently cut through seven new teeth all at once! She is very much into girly things. She loves purses and lipstick and especially painting her toe nails. In spite of the terrible twos on the horizon, she is still my little sweetheart!

Box Tops

Alexis is loving Kindergarten (she's a little tired after a couple weeks without a nap but is otherwise great). She has met several new friends and it is true that Kindergarten is a place to learn the rules of life as the poem says. Every day she comes home with some new "catch phrase" to remember a rule about this or that. She is also learning all sorts of cute little songs about colors, numbers and letters. Fridays at school are "cooking day" and that is high on Lexi's interest list; she's been counting down until Friday all week. Another thing that Lexi has been busy doing is scavanging through my cupboards looking for "box tops." She is collecting them for her school and would love help getting more. She would like to invite her grandmas and aunts and uncles and friends to clip any box tops they come across and send them her way. They can be found on hundreds of products including General Mills cereals, Ziploc bag boxes, Kleenex products, and many more. A complete list of participating products can be found at www.boxtops4education.com
Thanks in advance for your help!

Vineyard

This past Saturday was the annual Grape Harvest at the LDS Church's Vineyard. The grapes are harvested and sun dried for use as raisins in the Church's humanitarian aid program. Adam and I have both had the opportunity to serve there over the past couple years at various times of the year and during varying stages of the grape growing process...from training the vines, to prunning, to harvesting and rolling up the "trays." It has been really neat to learn a bit of what is involoved and to have a hand in helping out.

For this stage of the process:
the grapes must be picked...

and collected in a tub...

and then laid out to dry in the sun on "trays".


(Hey Austen, I think that might be you in the background of the first picture!)

I finally got to ride the trolley car!

We have visited San Fran half a dozen times since moving to California but I've never been able to ride on the trolley, although I've always wanted to give it a try. This past weekend while my family was "stranded" in California, we took a trip up there and I finally got my chance to hang off the side as we went up and down the hills of the big city. It was everything I hoped it would be...especially hearing Allie shout "Wow!" sporadically throughout the ride. We also go to enjoy such delights as Ghiredelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, bread bowls at Boudin (okay -we went to Boudin about 6 times in this one weekend...I really like their bread!), took a bay cruise, visited Union Square, Alcatraz, went over the Golden Gate Bridge (we drove this time; much easier but not nearly as breathtaking!), and took a first trip into Sausilito. It was a fabulous weekend with fabulous company! Thanks family for a wonderul visit and a lot of fun! Can't wait until next time! ...my poor family may quite possibly never take a road trip to see me again. They were supposed to get home Sunday night and didn't get home until Thursday! Their truck first broke down here in Fresno, then again on their return trip home in Las Vegas where they were again stranded over night. It was a tough week for them but we were glad to have spent the time with them, for better or worse. My mom and brother brought with them a friend from France who has been staying with them for the summer. It was so fun to have boys in the house for Adam to be a boy with and we all loved hearing them rattle off in french all day! Enchante Adam et Bon Chance!

Kindergarten!

Today was the big first day! Alexis was SO excited for school and all that she would learn. She tried on several outfits (she had one picked out before but nothing looked quite right today) and packed her backpack (with everything that the list she picked up at the store suggested; including boxes of tissues for the class, etc. I convinced her that there would be a class set of markers and crayons and we should keep ours at home for homework so she emptied out a few things). Her teacher was sick today so she had a substitute on the first day! All in all though, things went great. I even benefitted from the misfourtune of my family, who came to visit last week and is stuck here with a broken down truck. This allowed me to go to figure out the school pick-up / drop-off routine without toting the younger two along. That was a huge help today! It was pretty great to have Grandma along for the first day too! And so Alexis' journey through school begins... (we were thrilled to learn last night that she has plans to go to two colleges like her daddy did!) As I lay in my bed the other night thinking about Lexi starting school today, I thought of this poem I'd read years ago. It is so true. We could all benefit from a reminder of the things we learned in kindergarten.


All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten
by Robert Fulghum

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do
and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the
sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned - the biggest
word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any of those items and extrapolate it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about
three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.

Happy Birthday Mom!

Sending our best birthday wishes!

FRNDS 4 EVR!

This past weekend was wonderful with a visit from my dear friend Jenn and her fantastic husband, Ryan. We had such a great time with them! We went out on a double date to a fabulous chinese restaurant in town, ate frozen yougurt in the beautiful evening weather, and attempted to play tennis. Later on we played cards, went to the pool, did a little shopping ;) and movie watching, spent an afternoon at the park, and of course, what visit with the A.Wahls would be complete without a trip to See's Chocolates! Thanks for a great weekend guys! Can't wait until you hit the road to come see us again.

Since my camera is STILL out for the count, here are some photos courtesy of Jenn and Ryan: