Together Again

On Saturday morning our CRV packed with the remainder of our things was dropped off in Orange County.  We are now officially out of Arkansas.  My husband finished up residency at the very end of last month and has started his new job here in California.  Man, is he hating the commute!  Arkansas certainly has California beat for traffic. 

We are completely done with Little Rock, except for the friendships we made in our time there.  Our house closed earlier this month, so that is one less thing to worry about and huge step in lowering our debt.  It was a nice house and a good learning experience, but I am so glad we were able to sell it.  We will know better what to do and expect when we buy a house here later on.

We are together as a family again.  This morning I looked at the time and calculated what time it was in Little Rock to figure out what my husband would be up to.  Then I realized that I don't have to do that anymore!  The girls are happy to have their daddy back with them.  And I am happy to have him here helping me with the girls.  Their grandparents are of course very helpful but the girls aren't their responsibility in the same way.  It's nice to be able to share that responsibility again and not have it all on me.

I'm excited for the next chapter of our lives together here in California with family and friends watching the girls grow up.

Dora 3rd Birthday Party

Funny how the month of June just flew by like that.  On the 21st, we celebrated the twins' 3rd birthday here at my mother's house.  The girls love watching Dora and I don't mind letting them since it is one of the more interactive, educational shows out there.  I decided it would be a good theme for the party.  Only, I didn't want it to be all Dora, all over the place.  I wanted the decorations to be more subtly Dora and concentrate more on the activities now that they are at the age where they can participate in party activities. 

We don't really know any local toddlers around the same age yet and my friends in San Diego with little ones have too far of a drive to make it worth their while.  So it was a nice family party with just the cousins.

I made a map for the three toddlers and we went through it like on Dora.  "Birdhouse, prize box, cake and presents!" and repeat two more times in your best map voice imitation.  Making the map was easy and quick.  I simply searched for what I wanted on google images and copied and pasted them into Paint. 

 

I tried to stick to a orange/purple/pink color theme for decorations but almost anything could be argued to work with the Dora theme.  So the green table cloth that Oma found in her collection and the flowers/bug decorations from Little H's 1st birthday party that my sister brought all worked out perfectly.  For food we had quiches with asparagus and tomato, deviled eggs, a veggie and cracker platter with hummus and shrimp with home made cocktail sauce.  The fruit and cake came later. 

 







 

After eating, we painted birdhouses.  All shirts came off so their would be no permanent messes. I got the birdhouses for a dollar each in the craft section of Walmart along with the acrylic paints and little paint brushes.  Being a full 8 months older gave Big H the edge in painting his bird house.  The girls mixed their paints a lot making their houses a muddle-colored mess.  Big H's turned out really well though; he was very careful to clean his brush between colors.  They all had fun painting.

 

 

 

After the birdhouses, we moved on to the prize/punch box.  I followed the tutorial over at Diapers and Heels.  It is a great idea for this age group instead of a piñata, although I supposed a piñata would go with the Dora theme better.  All the kids, except baby M, got three turns punching into the circles and pulling out prizes like flutes, maracas, whistles and bubbles (all Dora themed from Party City).

 

 

I baked two square strawberry cakes with a cool whip frosting.  I mixed blended mulberries into the frosting to give it a nice flavor and pink color.  I also piped a yellow T and D on the cakes so they would know whose was whose.  They each got three candles to blow out, but Big H jumped the gun and blew out D's.  She didn't exactly realize that he had done it.  She just looked surprised that her candles went out before she blew them.  Then when we congratulated her on blowing out the candles to avoid a fight, she looked suspicious until she decided she must have blown them out after all.

 

 

My big three year old girls!



Mulberries

We have been picking a few mulberries every morning from Oma's tree, mostly just to eat immediately, but some to save for later.  It is a tree, not a bush, although as you can see in the picture below, it does look very bushy.  It has a thick tree trunk but the branches come down so low and the leaves are so full and dense that it seems like an enormous bush, just like in the song.

The berries are very sweet and juicy when ripe.  The juice is a beautiful deep red color but luckily it does not stain, otherwise we would be in trouble. 

We made a very limited supply of jam with the berries and also have been eating them over vanilla ice cream.  So yummy!

Swim Time

The girls' Leila and Pho Pho have a beautiful pool in their backyard.  So last weekend we went swimming for the first time this summer.  The girls got new bathing suits since their size 3T ones from last year a too snug.  We yelled for the camera to keep things interesting.  It's a lot more fun for them than just posing and smiling.

 



 

They practiced swimming on their own by degrees while wearing their life jackets.  Last summer T was definitely a water baby.  She still is the one who wants to go further into the pool, way before her sister is ready too.  She can now paddle around the whole pool by herself.  She even went in the deep end, which made me so nervous.  I was with her, but since I haven't been swimming in so long I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep us both afloat if something went wrong.  But she did great and the life jacket, of course, is a huge help.  

 





 

 

D still doesn't want to let go of our hands and chokes on water when she does. It won't take her long to get the hang of it though.  I'm going to sign them up for swim classes in July.  We'll see what skills they are able to pick up there.

 



 

Baby M also got some pool time.  She was not a fan.  I think the pool was a little too cold for her taste.  I brought out her little bath sling for her to sit in but she let me know really quickly that she wanted back up in my arms.

 

 She did look so precious in her tiny bathing suit though, especially with her chunky thighs.

Apricot Jam



Yesterday we found time to make some apricot jam.  It was an all day process because we could only work on it while baby M was sleeping.  The girls were big helpers pitting and cutting up the apricots.  D was so cute.  She kept telling me repeatedly which bowl the pits go in and which one the apricot pieces go in, just to make sure I put them in the right one.  And she was very proud of her new cutting skills.

 

T wasn't interested at first because she was so busy pretending M's blanket was her ball gown (I've been reading them Cinderella) that she didn't have time to help.  But after 10 minutes or so she had finished playing dress up and came to see what we were doing. 

After the girls and I pitted enough apricots, I blended them a little in the food processor and put them in a pot.  Then baby M woke up so that was the end of jam making for awhile.  About two hours later, baby M took another nap and I was able to finish the jam. 

I used a no sugar/ low sugar pectin which I have never used before.  I hope I did it right and that the jam will set.  I only used 1/2 a cup of sugar and a few squirts of honey for 6 cups of fruit, so we'll see how it turns out.  In the past I have used more sugar than fruit with liquid pectin and equal amounts of sugar to fruit for powdered pectin.  It will be so much healthier if it sets right. 

Now we are in Yorba Linda visiting Leila and Pho Pho.  The girls got to go swimming for the first time this summer.  They had fun kicking in the water and splashing on the shallow shelf area of the pool.  Tomorrow we will have more adults handy so they can go in without their life jackets and go in the deep end with us. 

Picking Apricots

My parents planted four apricot trees on their property some 30-40 years ago.  Over the years one has died and two are heading that way.  The last one though is going strong.  The girls and I have been out picking every other day or so for the past week. 

 

We have just gotten a couple handfuls off of the dying trees.  But yesterday we picked two buckets of apricots.  I plan to take them out this evening, once it has cooled a little to pick some more. 

 

D was a big help not only picking but also placing all her apricots out on a tray so they could finish ripening.

 

Then hopefully tomorrow or the next day we will be making some apricot jam.  My grandmother used to make apricot jam every year with apricots from our trees and it tasted so good.  I will have to figure out how to involve the girls in the jam making process.  Maybe they can try pitting the apricots with butter knives.

The apricots are so flavorful and delicious.

California Girls

Our family had a lovely vacation week here in California at the end of April.  My husband had the week off.  We spent it mostly with his family but were able to spend Easter with mine.  Now he is back in Little Rock unfortunately, until he is done with residency at the end of June.  The girls and I are busy trying to get settled in here in our temporary home in Morongo Valley. 

We flew in the day before Easter and the flights went very smoothly.  On both planes, we got compliments from other passengers for the twins' good behavior.  Proud momma here!  They even napped on the second flight which I was not expecting, since it was earlier than their usual nap time.  The only rough part was toward the end of the second flight, when baby M started fussing because the pressure in her ears bothered her.  Luckily it was around the time for her to eat anyway, and it didn't take to long for her to quiet down.

 

Catching bubbles on Easter with our new car in the background

 

We got our new car, a Toyota Sienna.  It is nice to all fit in one car when we go somewhere with the grandparents.  And there is enough space for my sister, mother, me and all five kiddos in car seats to take trips together.  I am looking forward to that!  It is red, which happens to be my favorite color.  It also has a few bells and whistles that, though I could have done without, make it so nice to drive.

  

Ready to Hunt!

Our family spent a lovely and warm Easter at my sister's house with all the grandparents and my sister-in-law and her fiancé too.  The kids had fun playing together, hunting for eggs and catching bubbles.  I look forward to girls getting the chance to spend more time with their cousins.

Also during that first week back, Leila and I took the girls to La Habra Children's Museum.  It is a nice little museum.  I could see it getting boring within a few visits but the girls had a lot of fun there on our trip.  They climbed around, rode a merry-go-round, looked at trains, played the piano and went on stage.  There were a few school groups there, unfortunately, but we just had to avoid the rooms they were in until their group moved onto the next so it did work out. 

 

Playing dress up in La Habra