Marika's Favorite Grocery Store

So what does a 4-year old know about grocery shopping? Usually, that it's boring, right? Marika's second-favorite store has little carts for little people. Her new favorite place is...


And why, might you ask? She just ADORES their sampling kitchen. And why not? She gets some juice and pretzels. Today, I also got to try their cheese-filled crumb coffee cake (Entenmann's). Mmmmmm... there's nothing like running a few miles every day to easily rationalize buying some coffee cake!

I love the store because it's never crowded, prices are really good, and there are certain items that the family loves - like fresh pizza dough, the rosemary focaccia with spicy jalopeno hummus (yum!) and the kids' new favorite: popcorn chicken (Michelle's recommendation). They also have smoked salmon for $0.99 (what a deal!), as well as my favorite Mexican soda.

On the way, we passed by that fire I mentioned in my last post. At this point, we were probably about 5 miles away from the fire. The newspaper say that that brush hasn't been burned since the 1880's, so basically... the fire is being fed really well. Hopefully they can contain the fire and save all structures and people.

Rumor has it that it will be an El Nino winter. As far as rain goes, this is excellent news! Howevever, you have to worry about potential mudslides if there are destructive fires...

If it's not earthquakes, it's some other natural disaster, right? *sigh*

Relaxing and a bit of retro

It was so lovely to have a relaxing weekend and have Daddy Dude at home. The poor guy has had a tough August - they changed his work schedule (to correlate with a pay raise - no idea how big THAT will be) so that he had to work a lot more... longer hours, more weekend days to work, and some overnight stays. It was super HOT but that didn't stop Daddy Dude from playing baseball. His team has been doing really well this season... they are in second-place, but giving the first place team a definite run for their money!

The girls LOVE going to their daddy's games now. Usually other kids from the team come, too, but it was SO HOT (100+) that nobody else was crazy enough to show. Really, it wasn't too bad under the shade cover ! The girls still found ways to have fun and even got to run the bases at the end (Marika did peter out after one lap, though - Mika powered through two).

When we visited Marika's second favorite grocery store last Wednesday (they have little shopping carts for people her size), we picked up some Cracker Jack's. WOW, talk about a blast from the past! I don't think I'd eaten those in ages! Years! Decades! So we bought them to eat at the game on Sunday. It would have been funnier if we ate them during the 7th inning stretch time while the girls played "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" on their little toy, but they couldn't wait that long.

Do you remember CJ prizes? That was almost the best part! I remember getting tattoos and magnifying glasses. The girls were all primed and ready for an exciting surprise...

Marika got the pencil topper (left) and Mika got... whatever was on the right. You had to fold the picture and I gathered that the idea was to move the mouth so the duck would look like it's talking. She thought it was cool, but I wasn't as impressed. Good thing I'm not six anymore!!!

No other excitement this weekend, except that there's a fire brewing two towns over... right below the raspberry patch. We're a little anxious (we're in no danger) but a little concerned about all the people over there... if it spreads, there's a huge cluster of homes below...

A place for the birds

Since Marika was feeling better today and I felt terrible that she had to miss school yesterday, I finally took her to Bracken Bird Farm. The local paper had had an article on this store a couple of years ago but I just never got around to taking the girls there until I ran across the article again while sorting files. As you would guess, they are a bird farm and also sell feed supplies, but they also have a small menagerie of animals: donkeys, a Brahma cow, red cows, turkeys, pgymy goats, a camel, and all sorts of others birds. We bought a $1 bag of corn and Marika enjoyed feeding the goats.

And now I finally understand what Daddy Dude's former baseball team, the Brahmas, were named for. Man, that thing (the white cow above) was HUGE! It must have been taller than me (at its shoulder)!

Fun, fun and more fun!

We're still getting used to the "back-to-school"routine, but we wanted to treat the girls to something special, especially since Mika took her first spelling test and scored 100%. So... we took them to "Market Night" - somewhere we hadn't been in about a year! Marika loves riding the ponies but Mika opted for the slides this time...


Gotta love the Lightning McQueen slide!

And how could we resist buying them pink light sabers?! They thought they were the coolest toys ever! I had fun taking some action shots of them in the dark - pretty cool, right? Good thing they weren't selling blue light sabers, or we would have had to buy Daddy Dude one, too! =)

Last Saturday, we drove out to Orange County. I met with a former student of mine, whom I hadn't seen in over 4 years. She had been utilizing my insect collection (from graduate school) for her elementary classroom teaching - I was delighted somebody could get some use out of it! However, since Marika is showing such an avid interest in entomology, I had asked to borrow my bug boxes. It was fun to finally meet her daughter, who is only 2 months older than Marika.

Afterwards, we drove over to see Grandma and spend the rest of the day with her. Grandma had recently been to Japan and bought the girls new yukatas (summer kimonos), along with some gettas (matching shoes). Aren't those yutakas pretty?

My college friend, Michelle, also come to visit so we spent a leisurely afternoon on the beach. The girls immediately made some friends with some other kids and enjoyed trapsing about in their matching bikinis ("zoo-kinis", they call them).

Marika and Grandma like to fly kites - here's Marika flying her pirate skull head kite. Unfortunately, there's a limited variety when you buy kites at the Dollar Tree! When the girls become older and more responsible, I'll be willing to spend more money on them. More responsible, you say? Yup, for the second time, Marika LET GO of the kite again - but this time, I was lucky enough to run and catch it before it floated up the hill! Michelle wonders if the day will ever come when the kite will not escape while she is there. So far, she is 2 for 2!

Yeah, I kind of wonder, too...

So tired... *yawn*

Marika is just lovin' preschool, but as you can see, it tires her out! Yes, that's her napping under the living room sofa (yup, that's black vinyl... from my parents' house... that my brothers and I used to bounce on when we were kids!). I told you these kids can sleep anywhere!

"Alone" Time

So today I had some quality "alone" time, since I didn't have to run any errands while the kids were at school. Ahhh... 2.25 hours without any distractions! I was finally able to work on and complete a layout that I'd had sitting ("in progress") on my work table for several months...

Supplies: cardstock (Bazzill, Target), patterned paper (Scenic Route - "Hampton"), diecut title, monogram and shapes (Quickutz), flowers and brads (Prima Marketing), border punch (Fiskars - Apron Lace), rhinestones (The Paper Studio), journaling tag (Creative Cafe), stamp (Joann's date stamp), white pen (Signo-Uniball), ink (Memories), heart clip (unknown), corner rounder (Marvy-Uchida)

This was Marika's first visit to the beach, I believe - we went to Kauai and visited Poipu Bay, which had a fantastic little inlet with no waves and shallow water. It was a beautiful day, especially considering that the island had been battered by heavy rain for 3 weeks prior!

First day of preschool!

Today was Marika's first day of preschool. My baby's all grown up! (*sniff, sniff*). Daddy Dude went to work a little late to make sure he could see her off to school.

She looked spiffy with her new shirt, new shoes and new Lightning McQueen backpack. Once there, she hung up her backpack, put her snack bag in her cubbyhole, signed in (herself!) and then started her first assignment. I know we prepared her well, but it was still a little shocking to see her be "so ready" - to start a new chapter in her life and separate herself a little further from us. *sigh* She happily and confidently waved bye to us and turned to read a book.

Here is Marika with her teacher, Ms. J. This was from her "Meet the Teacher" a couple of days ago. I can't even begin to imagine what she'll look like at the end of the school year! Will her cheeks still be so lovably plump? *sniff, sniff*

Back to School for Miss Mika!

I think Mika had a hard time sleeping last night - she said she was so excited about school starting! When the alarm went off at 6:30 am this morning, both girls bounded out of bed and got ready lickety-split!

Mika enjoyed a little bit of playtime before school got started (business right away!) and enjoyed saying hello to some old friends. I hear that her teacher is very quiet and demure - I can only imagine that that is EXACTLY what Mika may need!

A Last Hurrah!

Miss Mika starts first grade tomorrow (I still can't believe it!), so we tried to pack in the fun early this week...


Here's the gang at the local park, enjoying a quick snack...

And at the local Barnes & Noble story time - for the last time for a long time - since Marika starts preschool next Tuesday!

And finally, we went to the raspberry patch with some friends. The picking was fantastic and the kids had the extra fun of feeding carrots to some friendly burros (I had to look this up, but apparently burros are small donkeys) and romping around in the fields for a good hour or so. It's so nice to have kids running and playing outdoors - that's the way it should be!

And so... summer vacation comes to a close for Miss Mika. We checked her class list today and only 2 classmates are from her kindergarten class. I guess she'll be making lots of new friends this year!

Lately...

It just seems to get busier and busier - we're at the tail end of summer vacation, with only a few more days before Miss Mika starts school again! Where did the time go?

The girls have really enjoyed doing arts & crafts. Thanks to H., they LOVE sand art! They also played with Nuudles (gotta love those!) and painting little clay figures... (I was a little surprised that the result was not as symmetrical as I had expected...)...

I've really gotten to love the Fresh & Easy market and one of the things they have are ingredients to make your own pizza! Marika insisted that she and Daddy Dude would make the pizza. See Daddy Dude toss that pizza dough into the air!

Last Saturday, we went to the local speedway to watch the races. This was the first time we'd ever gone and it was really interesting (especially from a scientific point of view - love that Doppler Effect!). The girls seemed to have a good time, even though it was really loud. I thought it was pretty cute that one of the cars looked an awful lot like Lightning McQueen, too (bottom left, above).

And a few days ago, we were invited to join our friends when they went camping. We are novices, so we went "pseudo-camping", meaning we only drove up for a few hours. It was blissfully quiet there and so pretty. We all enjoyed playing in the stream - and I had fun looking for aquatic insects (it had been several years for me) - we found stone flies, caddis flies, and water striders.

The only bad thing? It was confirmed that Marika DOES get motion sick when we go up to the mountains. At least she didn't hurl, but it certainly didn't help that I wasn't sure how far away the campsite was and had to keep stopping to ask for directions! Whew!

And yesterday, we went back to the raspberry patch for more berries. The picking was much better this time and the girls had a good time petting the donkeys/burros that were there - they were very sweet! I was treated to a dance performance by the girls on the stage, too... we're hoping to be able to visit at least one more time before school starts...