Another one bites the dust

Ha ha, well, we're already 20% done with 2010 and this is post number two. Officially the kids have conceeded and decided that it is really time for a family blog, so you'll get plenty of Ben and Fia updates here, but this time from Mom's perspective which is usually a lot less innocent.

Our adventures in the last year have primarily been house-sitting and house-hunting. After LOTS of prayer, and I mean LOTS, we decided to stop hunting in North County and start hunting in South Riverside county - specifically Temecula and Murrieta. I spoke to some friends who bought up there in September and she had a lot of the same concerns and hesitations that I did, and they love it, so I at least felt like we were finally on the right track. Then, in true socal fashion, we learned that the further away from San Diego you went, the cheaper the houses got. We went so far as looking in Romoland - Charles came up with a really embarassing and classy and not too creative name for it and it was soon off our list. We began looking in Menifee and learned that the smell of a dairy travels further than you'd think and that it isn't a smell either of us care to smell. SO... after months and months of being picky, then not picky (we saw some of the most disgusting homes EVER), to being picky again.... Finally, we are in escrow. Things are moving along on a great house in Menifee on the west side just below Canyon Lake and North of Quail Valley. This means absolutely nothing to most of you, I know, but to us it means we are close to shopping and an elementary school and far enough away they we don't smell the dairy. Oh, and we are only an hour away from family.

The kids are big and drive us crazy and make us laugh and make us love like we never have before. Look for a few posts soon about their more crazy antics. Ben is constantly updating his birthday wish list. You won't believe it, but everything he wants is hockey related: he wants a hockey helmet, a penguins jersey, a REAL penguins puck - as opposed to all of the fake ones he comes across, and of course, a Stanley Cup. He has LOVED hearing about and watching hockey during the Winter Olympics. He cheers for Canada and the USA, mostly his favorite players. He is baffled that there is a Jack Johnson who sings and a Jack Johnson who plays hockey, but he knows that the Jack Johnson who plays hockey is an LA King who is on team USA and that Jack Johnson sings the songs in the Curious George movie. So all in all, he is a happy boy. Lately we struggle with listening and with being the Sofia police. It's all just a phase though, right?

Sofia, our darling girl and Ben's Fia is growing up so fast! Her last molars are coming in and she says "nooooo," when we ask if they hurt. She was born with more hair on the back of her head and she has gone from a full-blown mullet to being in that awkward "my bangs are too short to do anything with and too long to let me see" phase. Her vocabulary is increasing daily and LOVES Dora the Explorer, whom she calls Dory. She can count to 5 and instead of saying yes, she says "Si." Both kids do an awesome version of the "we did it" dance from the Dora show. It cracks me up. Both of the kiddos love to play outside and go for walks to find all kinds of treasures like pine cones and the spikey things from the trees, I don't know what they are called but Ben calls them specks because they are the things that knocked the speck off of the flower at the beginning of the Horton movie. Can you tell the kids watch way too much tv? Peter Pan is a new favorite movie and we like to play following the leader.

Otherwise life is really kind of boring. We hang out with ourselves most of the time and try to get out to see little bits of the world and to play tourist in San Diego because we know how much we are going to miss it when we move away. Our Disneyland passes expire next week so we are taking one last trip there on Saturday and then we'll go later in the year when we get our "Give a Day, Get a Day" passes. So life is always busy to us and I think other people look at us and wonder what it is we do exactly. Oh well.

I'm going to try and get better at this so my posts can be shorter and you can find out more about our lives rather than just yearly updates. Both kids are in bed, it is 8:20 and I am about to experience parental bliss - you know, when it's quiet and you know there isn't anything mischevious going on.

xo
H