Raspberry Thoughts and Go Bears!

This past week, we were very concerned about two local fires. As of this morning, the Pendleton Fire was 100% contained while the Oak Glen III Fire was 95% contained (full containment expected by Monday). We received word Thursday that the Oak Glen roads were open and the orchards would be open for business this weekend. This was extremely fortuitous on many levels - no structures or lives were lost in the fires, the apple picking industry was untouched and Michelle had been planning to visit on this particular Saturday (to go raspberry picking) for the past several weeks.

In the top left picture, you can see how frightening close the fire came to Riley's Farm - literally, it stopped right across the street. We love Riley's Farm and have been coming for their raspberries for the past couple of years (Holly got us addicted!). We were lucky enough to run into Mr. Riley himself (don't you love his costume?). As usual, the raspberries were delicious!

Here are the raspberry pickers! Daddy Dude stayed under the shade - he's not one to pick berries (after all, he's "not Nature Boy").

And as always, when the opportunity presented itself, I took some photos of some insects. It's very hard to get a good picture of a bee - there's something about their shape that doesn't lend itself to good overall focusing! This particular bee would not leave my basket but went from berry to berry, sipping leisurely. The other photos is that of some plant sucking bug nymph. I loved this shot because you can see its proboscis extended, drinking plant juice!

Last but not least... today was the season opening game for Cal football (note Michelle's T-shirt)! Daddy Dude has been glued to the TV for most of the day. We are extremely pleased to report that Cal crushed Maryland! Yay! GO BEARS!!!

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*

It's all about Mika!

I love handmade gifts... this is what Mika gave me on Friday for Mother's Day, as she got out of school - cookie flowers! They were skewered and held in place with gumdrops. Wasn't that clever? She told me later, that she didn't like the gumdrops (I had to ask if she had licked my gumdrops - but she hadn't! Whew!). On Sunday, she said one of the flower cookies was for Daddy! But, Daddy said I didn't have to share... and I did offer him one!Hope everybody had a Happy Mother's Day!

I got to play soccer in the morning (though we lost miserably - hard not to, when it's 7 versus 11 (and they had 4 subs!)), so that was nice... even though I had to run off the field in the middle of the game because Marika got whacked in the nose by another child's knee and got a bloody nose...

Last week was HOT! The girls went to their best friends' house to play in their new pool. They had a great time, as always. On the way home, we passed a fire that had started brewing in the nearby regional park. I guess it must have looked worse than it was, although 80 acres or so were said to have burned. Whenever we see smoke plumes, it's always chilling.

Some big news! *Somebody* lost one of their two front teeth! This was the first time Mika had lost a tooth and NOT had the new one coming in, so the gap is very noticeable and somehow, makes her look much older. There was a little episode with the tooth fairy, though... she couldn't find the tooth so she had to write a note asking Mika to put it somewhere else. I'm sure Mika thinks the tooth fairy is pretty dense... but she did seem delighted with the correspondence (she wrote an apology note to the tooth fairy, saying next time, she would leave her tooth on the dresser). Doh!

And can you believe... Mika got her first pair of casual shoes with laces! Ah, what a world we live in now, where kids didn't have to learn how to tie shoelaces because velcro was such a fabulous invention! She's caught on pretty quickly on how to tie them... although it does take her some time to carefully do it... she seems to enjoy wearing these without socks. Or, is that the new fad???

And finally... (drumroll)... the synapses have made their connections and Mika, after a long hiatus of not riding her bike, hopped back onto it this week and within 3 days, had mastered riding the two-wheeler. Day 1, she was still falling down. Day 2, she was able to start herself but slammed into the house a few times (not a good noise from the inside!). By Day 3, she was speeding along, turning smoothly, and picking her bike up and climbing on. Yay! You go, girl!!! I can't wait to go on long bike rides with her!