How I got my groove back!!! not that I had it to begin with

Like half of all Californians, we spent today at the beach. We were fortunate enough to go with friends who brought a very fun toy- a one man kayak. I have to say that I was a little intimidated by it all. Although I have been kayaking several times (and for some random reason I took a canoeing class at BYU) I have never started on the shore of the ocean and kayaked head on into the waves. I just knew I was going to capsize, or equally scary have a collision with one of the many surfers around me. But I did it and I'm glad I did. It was so fun. Coming back in was kind of scary with the waves crashing from behind and yes, I got flipped out of the boat. If only we hadn't left the camera in the car. Above are the "after" shots of our day.

Say it ain't so

Can you believe this? How do you guys feel about a 60 year old woman giving birth? Just think, when her kids are in kindergarten she will be a senior citizen and everyone will think they are her grandsons.
I take Blake to the library every week for story time and I have been very fascinated by a certain woman there. She brings a toddler each week and is very pregnant with another child. She looks like she is in her mid-fifties. It's really hard to not just blurt out the burning question of how old she is EVERYTIME I see her. Although that reminds me that I haven't seen her lately so I guess she had her baby.

A few of my favorite things

Just admit it, you like them too!! I grew to like these when I worked at Sepulveda Middle School and the kids ate them constantly. I thought they looked like the sickest thing in the world but then I tried them and they really are good in a gross kind of way. That being said, I probably only buy them about once a year. Mike bought me these as part of several Mother's Day food treats.

Is there anything better than freshly cut purple roses from your garden? Even though purple is not one of my favorite colors I planted these (correction- Mike planted these) because I don't think any rose is better smelling than a purple rose. Truly divine!!!!

A Sunday walk with Mike and the kids, looking for lizards and doggies.

Nice System, LAUSD

So, I haven't worked all school year but lo and behold a $1300 check arrived in the mail for me last week. At first I thought that perhaps it was some sort of back pay that they owed me, but on closer inspection I realized that in reality they just screwed up. I called my old supervisor to inquire further and she said that they are having major problems because they are phasing in a new pay roll system and while many people are not getting paid for the work they have done, other people are getting random checks in the mail. The best part is that I'm sure they spent a pretty penny for this new system that doesn't even work. You gotta love working for a bureaucracy. Mind you, when I first got hired, someone messed up downtown and I spent the first couple of months without pay and health insurance.

Happy Mother's Day

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day. My sweet little Julia who normally sleeps through the night was the first one to wish me a Happy Mother's Day when she awoke at 3am looking for food. Then she woke up again at 6am. So unlike her.

I got treated royally today with breakfast in bed, a yummy dinner, and best of all no changing of poopy diapers.

I really love being a mother to my 2 sweet little ones. I hope they can be patient with my "work in progress" mothering as I am still so new at this.

LAWYERS

And lawyers wonder why everybody hates them. Read this. (No offense to my 2 lawyer brothers :))

I am the little red hen

There are many things that I really don't like to do. My all time #1 is waking up early but that is a post for another day. Another activity that I don't enjoy doing is gardening, much to the disappointment of my mother who has the world's best green thumb. One would think that I would enjoy this activity as I grew up doing it almost every Saturday as a girl but the opposite happened. Something about squatting in the ground and getting your hands nasty with threats of weird creatures emerging from the ground(see previous post) just doesn't appeal to me. Now here's the little red hen part. I love flowers and homegrown fruits and vegetables. I think they are absolutely wonderful, and there is nothing prettier than flowers and and plants in your yard. So basically I want to eat the fruit of someone else's labor. Saturday was planting the garden day and my contribution was going to the store to purchase the plants. Meanwhile my husband was busy roto-tilling the side yard in preparation. When it came time to plant suddenly Julia got really hungry and on and on. In 50-60 days we should have our first harvest of carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, bell peppers, and tomatoes. Yummy. I'm just glad I married a guy who likes to work in the garden.

And here I am pretending to garden just to show Mom that I did help.......a little. Look I'm even wearing red in honor of the little red hen.