A Really, REALLY cold day at the beach

The forecast said 67 degrees at the beach (the high was 82 for our house). I think the reality was more like 50-something! Brrr! The girls still managed to have a lot of fun, even though they did NOT strip down to their bikinis and run into the water like maniacs.

Yesterday was a big day. We drove over to meet F., Mom's new beau, and some of his immediate family. We had a lovely time meeting them - they were very nice people and F. was a very sweet and charming gentleman. He treated my mother like a queen and with such gentleness and tenderness... I was really touched by the kind gestures he made towards her on several occasions (and to me, too - he held doors open, he offered to help carry my bags, etc.). I hope they will make each other very happy. =) We are a little worried that Mom's messiness will make him crazy (he is impressively neat! I love it!), but at least he knows already she is messy.

Mom bought a couple of new kites for the girls. They were really attractive (I only buy $1 kites for the girls, knowing that they will destroy them) - a blue bird and a colorful butterfly. The blue bird kept listing to its left - regardless of how many people tried to fly it, it was a no go. We'll have to figure out how to balance the weight and make it fly.

The butterfly kite, though I had to repair (=sew) part of the wing before even trying to fly it, flew absolutely beautifully.

Here's DaddyDude, staring in amazement at the butterfly kite in flight, while the girls stuff their faces with snacks after a big lunch. =)

Here's Miss Mika flying the kite. You can see how overcast the day was... it was really cold!

Miss Marika agreed to take our picture. We are freezing and laughing here, because we were trying to coach Marika on how to NOT cut off people's heads and feet while taking a picture. The camera she was holding kept moving slowly to the right, left, up, down... but she did manage to take this picture.

Mom and F. will come to visit us on June 1st, so that gives me a little over 2 weeks to completely weed the yard! Ah, but it's time. You know it's a jungle out there when even a guinea pig isn't willing to trapse through the back planter. I also need to put in a new garden... although our grape tomato plant from last spring is still flowering and producing a lot of tomatoes.

Long weekend...

It'd been a little while since we'd visited Grandma at the beach, so when Veteran's Day rolled around and both girls were out of school, we drove over!

We always bring kites, because the winds are better at the beach. We had hoped Michelle could join us later in the afternoon, but she was too swamped with school. I know she'll be wondering, so I just wanted her to know - none of the kites tried to escape this time! This kids did, however, decide to antagonize some poor seagulls...

The day was a little overcast and wee bit chilly, so only one kid was crazy enough to wear her bikini and enter the waves (which were a kind of big, I thought). We were lucky enough to see some huge fishing birds (neither pelicans nor cormorants) and a pod of dolphins passing by.

Grandma took the kids on a long walk down the beach, but luckily, these critters strolled by and posed for the camera. I may be a bit rusty, but I believe the one on the left is a member of the Pentatomidae family (the order Hemiptera is also known as the sucking bugs) but I won't even hazard a guess for the fly on the right.

Back at Grandma's apartment, we got to see some of her travel photos. Grandma has traveled all over the world, which is pretty cool, if you ask me! On the top photo, she's in Argentina (on a boat), passing by some massive waterfalls. On the bottom, she is riding a camel (obviously!) with the pyramids in the back. Way cool! Grandma rocks!

And finally, after dinner, the girls made some origami with Grandma. I'll have you know, though, that Marika woke us up the next morning with a screaming fit, wailing that her origami lily was broken. She cried and cried and cried. I finally couldn't stand it anymore and asked her to bring me the flower, to see if I could fix it. And do you know what was wrong? The petals had come uncurled - that's why she was freaking out. *sigh* There isn't enough room for two drama queens in this household...

And here is a picture of possibly the tiniest origami crane in the world! That big orange thing in the background is a regular-sized Fuyu persimmon...

Thanks, Grandma, for letting us come and visit! We had lots of fun! =)

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...

"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!