Happy Birthday JP!

John turned 29 this past week! We sure love birthdays at our house... Mia helped pick out presents, wrap them, hide them and then helped John find them (in our house the birthday boy/girl has to earn their presents by finding them whereas for Mother's Day or Father's Day presents aren't hidden because they have been earned all year...something we did in my house growing up that has carried over). We enjoyed yummy homemade chocolate lava cakes to celebrate (click here for the recipe- they were super easy and really yummy... really rich and not good for you in the least... but fun for a rare celebration : )

You'll notice in the pic above holding Norah is John's sister Julia. She is living with us for the next several months. It's fun to have aunt Julia around! We'll be sad when she finds a job and can't just play with us during the day :)

Hiking

The other day it was gorgeous so we went hiking not too far from us. I love living in the city, but being so close to places like this where we can go on a hike and feel completely alone. Best of both worlds.


Mia wanted a pic of us walking :)


I know I have lots of friends and family who need a double stroller or will be needing one soon....a used Phil & Teds from craigslist is the way to go. This isn't the best pic but Norah is laying down and Mia is sitting in a seat on top of her. 2 kids in a stroller that is as big and pushes like a single stroller. I found a pic online that I've put below that shows the different configurations of the stroller


Norah is in there too :) And we were able to push up and down hills, over streams, and through mud with it...haha.. It works great for off roading


So you can do all this... and I also can put Norah's carseat on mine... so its a complete travel system. Love it!

"Just don't look ...."

The other day I was playing with Mia in her room when Norah woke up. I told Mia I'd get Norah and then we could do a puzzle together on her floor. So I went to get Norah and really wasn't gone very long at all. When I came back Mia had slammed her bedroom door and insisted that we play in the front room. I told her I had really wanted to play in her room, but she was determined. "No Mommy." So then I asked if I could just go in her room to turn off the CD player since we weren't going to listen to it anymore. Mia thought about it for a minute and then said, "OK Mommy... just don't look at the poop." The what?!?! Yes... in the 2 minutes I was gone Mia had pulled down her underpants and gone poop on the carpet!!! I could not believe it! She's been potty-trained for nearly a year now so this clearly was not an accident. Needless to say... she's still trying to figure out how to handle having a baby in the house......

Aquarium of the Bay

A couple weeks back we thought we'd check out the Aquarium of the Bay which is a small aquarium at Pier 39 in San Francisco.

We especially liked the long tunnels where we were walked under the water and had fish all around us.

Mia was still hanging onto her noise maker from a New Year's party we went to :) This is by the fish that are really territorial...they pick one spot and then spend their whole lives there! Weird.

A little too close for my liking...

Norah was a trooper in the stroller the whole time...

After the aquarium we ate lunch at Pier 39 and enjoyed walking along the water.

Not quite a Winter Wonderland...

A bit back I had heard an ad on the radio about a place not too far away that had some sledding runs made out of artificial snow. They also said they had a kids snow play area. So we decided to go check it out since Mia hadn't really experienced snow much... and snow is hard to come by in the Bay Area within a decent drive from us. So we took a chance a couple weeks ago ....unfortunately it didn't quite live up to the hype. Below is the kids play area... and yes only that tiny mound in the middle is snow... the rest is white carpet...

We slid down the tiny mound while ice pellets were shot at us from the snow maker...

Then we gave up on the snow and went sledding down the white carpet...

You don't go too fast on carpet...

Yes.... carpet!!

It wasn't quite all that I'd hoped it would be... but it certainly was memorable. Good thing we got to go to Utah last weekend so Mia could play in REAL snow :)