Earthquake!

Today's been a weird day.

Amanda had her 18-month apointment at 9:30 this morning. I forgot. I got all the way into work (was there by 7:20am) and my boss arrived at 8am asking why I was here? I looked at him quizzically before he said "I thought you had a doctor's appointment today". Oh crap. Was able to stop Mike from taking her to daycare in time, and still made the appointment with plenty of time to spare.

The usual, she's healthy, making all the usual milestones for an 18-month old. In fact, he said her vocabulary is actually past a lot of other 18-month old's. And that was before I even told him all the words she was saying, as she babbled about shoes and socks and niy-niy...

Got (back) to work about 11:15 and just got rocked by an earthquake at 11:42am. ya that was fun. We're on the 36th floor, and building is on rockers, so we swayed for a good 5 minutes before it stopped.

We're fine, in case anyone is worried. The epicenter was near Chino Hills which is a good 30 miles east of us, so we just got a slight jolt.

Pictures to follow when I get a chance to upload them of the last couple of weeks...

July 4th weekend

First of all, let me start out with 4th of July sales ROCK!  I went shopping the morning of the 4th and found pants for work on sale for $8.97!!!  And.... (*drum roll please*) I'm now officially 3 sizes smaller than when I started my diet!  Woohoo!

So, that said, we headed to my parent's house for our usual 4th barbecue and celebration of my dad's birthday (which is also the 4th).  We went swimming in the pool:

(Dave watching Amanda watching Daddy)

(Aunt Erin making Amanda smile)

(Daddy throwing Amanda in the air)

(Amanda being cute)

My parent's anniversary is on July 3rd so they received a gift for that.  I think Andrew & Amanda had more fun with it!

My mom bought chalk for the kids to draw on the tennis court with.  Amanda was more than happy to oblige!

If you've ever wondered where I get my competitive spirit from... Mike made a comment about how he didn't think the basketball net was 10 feet high.  My dad had to prove him wrong!  I only got the shot as they were taking the tape measure down, but all three guys were gathered around trying to read the numbers on the tape.  Us girls were laughing!

Playing with bubbles

And finally Amanda and I watching the fireworks:

On Sunday, Erin & Jason were heading to Ilene's house to install her surround sound, so we all joined in.  Andrew & Amanda playing on the stairs:

Andrew lost his mini car, so Erin helped him find it.

As it came close to nap time, the kids settled down with their Daddy's to watch Toy Story II. i love how this picture captures Mike only *slightly* paying attention to playing with Amanda whil simultaneously watching the TV out of the corner of his eye!

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

Trip o'Blunders (part 2)

Friday we awoke and headed to Mike's sister Kathy's house.  We were meeting the rest of the family there and we were going to take the kids to "the beach" which is really just a water park.  They have a "zero depth" area for kids Amanda's size that is basically just fountains spewing water for them to play in.  Anyway, we get there and get all changed and packed up and walk out the door... to find it raining!  Arg!  So we had a picnic on the porch.




After which, after much deliberation decided we'd head to a playground nearby in hopes that it wouldn't rain too much and we'd get an hour or two of play in.  Amanda had a blast!  She slid down the slide (more times than I can count)




Walked up and down this bridge (more times than I could count)


Swung on the swing:


And even found some more... DUCKS! (a form of this picture is now added to the top of the blog)



After that, Mike and I headed to the rehearsal/dinner... oh, except as we started to leave we found we had a flat tire!  ARG!  So after Mark & Mike changed it out, we finally got to the rehearsal.  I got a few pictures, but they didn't come out very good, so they're not worth posting.  The majority of the time was spent watching one of the groomsmen's 1-year old daughter.  She is just learning to walk, so I held her hands and let her walk all over the place while the groomsmen focused on learning the ceremony.

We got home after the dinner about 9:30 and sat in the kitchen talking to Rosalie and Mark for about an hour and a half, then I headed to bed, only to wake up at 6:30am running for the bathroom with a pretty bad flu.

I ended up not getting to go to the wedding (the whole point of this trip in the first place!) and didn't get out of bed until 5pm.  But Mike says his best man speech went off without a problem, and everyone laughed at the appropriate times, etc.

Sunday, as we were leaving we took one last family picture of us in front of the house Mike grew up in.  Rosalie and Mark just bought a brand new house and will most likely be in it the next time we visit.


Our flight was supposed to leave at 12:30pm.  When we checked in at 11am, we were told it was delayed until 1:45pm.  At 12 I got a call that the flight was CANCELLED.  After spending the next 3 hours in various lines trying to figure out what to do, the earliest next flight out with seats was 8am Monday morning.  Since it was a mechanical problem, the airline put us up in a hotel for the night, but did NOT give us our bags back.  Ya, that was fun.

Finally arrived home at 10:30am Los Angeles time Monday morning, and after finding our bags (which had been flown out the day before), finally headed home.  Mike ended up going in to work for a half day, but I gave up and just took the rest of the day.

Today, Mike woke Amanda up and found she had a 103 fever so we had to tag-team and each do a half day again.  I'm sure both our works are furious, but whatcha gonna do when you've got a sick child?