swimming first

Pammy took this great shot of Zeke at the faculty club. I can't wait to see what other great pictures she takes with her new camera. Kaity said ever since they got to Nevada City all Zeke wants to do is go swimming. I have tons more cute Santa Barbara pics to post soon.

Happy 30th Birthday!

Both Danny and Tony turned 30 last week. Danny on the 21st and Tony on the 26th. Luckily we got to be in SB on Sunday to celebrate Father's Day and Danny's birthday.

kaity made chocolate haupia pie with raspberries on top.

gio stole all the raspberries off the top of one of the pies. he loves fresh berries.

for tony's birthday, suzie helped me make these cupcake sliders from bakerella.

we didn't get to have a party on friday since we had our last day of birthing class, so we had a yummy pasta dinner on saturday with friends and tony got to eat his cupcakes.

We were all at camp except for Jake...we even had Jessika and Rachel Lipman, loads of fun!

Cami and Rachel and friends having fun!

Nicki going down a 150 foot rock.

Rapelling Queen!

Jessika rapelling 40 feet down then putting her hair into the water....We call it the HAIR DIP!

GIRLS CAMP

Some cute mikey and nami up at waimearock.com

www.waimearock.com

Father's Day Interview

a little interview I did with Enzo

I really like it when my dad...
arranges my train table


My dad really likes to....
paste, draw, and cut with me


My dad always says...
choo-choo


The best thing my dad does is...
draw


I'm happy when my dad...
is happy at a party


I like to....with my dad
play games 


My dad likes to cook...
banana pies


If my dad could travel anywhere he would go...
to my grammy pammy


I love my dad because...
he loves my train table

It's No May Day

Here's a picture of Carson at his final Kindergarten performance. It had a "Luau" theme. It was very adorable. Carson actually sang a solo performance of the Hawaiian color song with his ukulele. As fabulous as it was, I just kept thinking...it's no May Day. David and I still agree that the May Day show was by far the best school performance we have ever witnessed. We miss living in Hawaii. We miss all the family there. Maybe someday we'll be back???

Graduation Day

We had a great day yesterday helping Quinton celebrate his graduation from high school. Luckily for us, his plans are to stay close to home at our community college (even with his honors status and President's Outstanding Academic Excellence award) for a year and then go on a mission. We are so proud of Quinton!

Otsuji Farm

I picked up this box from Otsuji Farm in Hawaii Kai today. They were happy to learn of my connection with Adam, and that I had met Jonas.

$10 for: 2 huge bok choi, 1 choi sum, 2 heads of lettuce, 2 daikon (w/leaves), humongous batch of green onion.

I added $9.50 for 3 beets w/greens, a HUGE batch of Kale (at least 10 leaves), a bag of tomatoes, a bunch of cilantro.

I love farms.

Now I'm roasting beets (for a chocolate cake), marinating kale, and prepping veggies for a Vietnamese meatball dumpling soup this afternoon, and I still have a fridge stuffed with greens.

Any ideas?

graduation

I graduated today! I have to do some editing on one of my radio segments still (blah!). But I am in fact officially a Master. We just found out that Christian got his MA in Anthropology this year too. So he's a double Master. We're a triple Master household making under poverty level income.

They have a special graduation for students with kids. It's short, kids can run around, and it's... SHORT! It was actually really cool to see all the different parents getting their diploma with their kids. Doing school and being a parent is a whole different ball game. I'm still wondering what I did with all the FREE time I had as an undergraduate. Oh yeah...I was chatting on MSN with Christian.

We don't have any of our certificates framed and hung up on our walls. But I think I'm going to frame the one Enzo got today. He's been a good sport having both parents in school full time and having to take the bus with us a million times a day as we trade him off to each other.

He got a Graduate Banana Slug too! Juliah also graduated with her daddy.
We also had our thesis exhibition today. We pretty much moved our whole living room into an art room on campus to create a listening room where we played our radio pieces. I only have bad pictures. Here's one of them
It was actually really nice and cozy and I was very happy with how it turned out. Below is my partner in crime, Briana. She's the other audio student. She's a wonderful friend and a wonderful producer. For now I won't miss being a student but I'm really going to miss my cohort and all the friends I've made along the way.

Amaya

Meeting Isaac!

May 14

Surfing at Cowells

I surfed dawn patrol at Wind and Sea. Came home and had breakfast and grabbed Enzo for a session at Cowells. We stayed out for a little over an hour, caught a bunch of waves lying down and a few standing up. Enzo always wants to go in but after being on the beach for a few seconds wants to get some more waves. Its going to be low tide with swell every morning this week so we should be getting a lot more waves. I got him a 4/3 size 4 wetsuit so it should fit him until we go to Brazil at which point it will be warm water surfing. Hopefully by then he will know how to swim as well.

more baby news!

SO...Liz called today to tell us that they are having a . . .


girl!

Big [Sur, Belly, Problems]

I've been feeling very pregnant and big. It might have something to do with the fact that our car broke down on our way back from Big Sur and we had to squeeze 5 people in the back seat (I sat on the floor right under Enzo's car seat) of our friend's car for the 2 hour drive home. I almost convinced Christian to push our car down this cliff and into this beach and then convince our insurance to give us some money. He made me feel bad because we'd pollute the ecosystem.

I spend the whole weekend being like "I can't believe we only live 2 hours away from THIS and we haven't been here in 2 years!"

Now I'm thinking 2 hours is far since we have to get back out there tomorrow morning where Christian will attempt to fix the car (wish him luck!!!!). It would have cost us close to $200 to tow the car to the nearest shop. We figured the car isn't even worth that much.

Other than this minor inconvenience the weekend was perfect. Big Sur is so beautiful but if the car doesn't get fixed I might have to push it down the cliff myself.

jake and mimi

50 years ago today!

Natalie and David celebrated their anniversary 2 weeks ago, but today is the actual day. I was just finishing kindergarten and was very honored to wear a matching flower girl dress with Pam and serve cake. My kindergarten teacher came, because our dad was her boss. Here are a couple pictures from the weekend. There was a paid photographer taking the group shot. Natalie was thinking it didn't seem possible that they had been married for 50 years until she saw all 0f their kids and grandkids in one place. For more story and pictures see Kirsti's and Melonie's blogs.

the white house

So apparently we know somebody who knows somebody - and lucky for us that distant acquaintance works in the West Wing. Yes, as my next-door-dorm-mate put it, "like the TV show." Apparently you can only get a tour of the West Wing if you know someone that works there. The normal tours are only for the East Wing. So on a beautiful, slightly sunny Saturday morning I woke up, I shaved my legs, I blow dried my hair, I took my sweet ol' time, strolling down the staircase, stroking the rail, ready to go to the White House. Then as we were almost to the check point to go in for the tour, I realized, oops, I forgot my ID. "NO WAYS," said Alex. "You're kidding, right?" Well, unfortunately, I wasn't kidding. So I hauled booty down the road, frantically found a taxi to take me back to the house. Needless to say, I was not as neatly put together as I ran back the White House. Luckily, I made it. Just in time to panic when the Security Guard asked for my ID. Oh, ok. 

The tour was really really cool. Obama was not there. He and Michelle were spending our tax payer money,  using finite fossil fuels

, flying to New York in the Marine One for a "date night." Well, this actually worked to my benefit, because if he had been there, we wouldn't have been able to see inside the Oval Office. It was smaller than I thought. Apparently in all the photos of it, they use wide angle lenses to make it look bigger. Cheapskates. No, it was a great size. Perfect for an offi

ce. And on the table there was a bowl full of fuji apples, cause they're Obama's favorite. Mine too! What are the chances?! We also got to see the inside of the Situation Room because two men were walking out of it as we were walking by. All I saw was a series of digital world clocks - Badghad 14:00 hours, Tehran ...can't remember the time. I actually made up the 1400 hours - but you get the idea. The lawns/gardens were nice, although Mimis rose garden is far more impressive. Sorry Michelle. :) We weren't allowed to take photos inside,  but we could outside, so here are some pics of us. Oh, and we could take pictures in the press briefing room - so we did. 

Breakfast ma lady??

It would be fun if you could make it