The Beach

Anna in her oh-so-cute beach outfit from her Grandparents in Hawaii.

Seeing as we are in California and it's summer, we have been able to spend a bit of time at the beach. Fortunately, Anna loves it. The water here is cold (less than 60 degrees) so we generally don't actually get in the water but we have a lot of fun playing in the sand.


I think it's ironic that with Anna I suddenly enjoy doing things that I didn't use to. The beach is another example. Generally I hate sand. I'll refrain from my tirade now, but seeing as Anna is liking the beach, suddenly I do too. Go figure.

Since Anna is Anna, she likes to play with the other kids that are there. They very nicely shared their sand toys with her.

This beach also had some great rocks to play on. There was a big rock that the older boys were climbing on. Naturally, Anna wanted to climb it too so I put her on it a little way up. To my surprise, she kept climbing and ended up at the top. Seeing as she was higher up than me at that point, I thought it a good idea to climb up after her. I don't know why I keep getting surprised at the things she can/wants to do. I guess that's parenting.

New Favorite Toy

Kristen has a giant trampoline and Anna loves it! At first I was a bit nervous about having her up there. I mean, people get going high and it's high off the ground and there is gravel and I once got hurt on a trampoline. I have gotten used to her being up there and she has even gotten up there on her own with the help of a small slide.

Anna and Eric

The boys are really good with watching out for her while they are all up there. Apparently Kristen has done a good job of teaching her boys (she only has boys) to take care of girls. We think it helps that they don't have any sisters to pester them. It's nice to be able to let Anna go out with the boys and play and know that they will keep an eye on her.

Anna and I with Peter (middle, 6) and Eric (right, 3)

When we were first here, Anna and I spent some time at least every day on the trampoline. These days it's less but if we are outside, Anna pretty much always wants to be on it. She's getting pretty good at jumping by herself but still would rather have someone up with her.

Talking

It has occurred to me that in all the talking about what we have been doing, I have been neglecting talking about Anna. She has been talking up a storm. Most of the time it is incomprehensible to us but she sure knows what she is talking about. She is starting make sense to us though. Kristen pointed out that with little kids, they start to talk in one of two ways. Either they start with words individually, add more words then finally put them together into sentences. Or, they start with full sentences that are hard to understand but get more and more clear as they get older. Anna seems to be falling into the latter category.

Of course she has her individual words. She is really good with mommy and daddy, cheese (also a favorite food), no, bye-bye, pretty (this is a word she hears a lot, though she isn't saying it as much lately), baby (she loves babies), uh-oh, bubble (used for all round things, like balls). Just last week, she started saying duck. Then just today, she said yellow and pointed to the yellow lion after we asked where the yellow was. I'm not sure how intentional it was but I like to think she knows what she was doing.

On top of these singular words, she has sentences. The strange thing about the sentences is that they aren't really being repeated, they're more like a one-time thing. These are the sentences we have heard so far: 'stop it' (while I was putting sunscreen on her face, her first sentence and it was funny the first time), 'read to me' (naturally anything else I was doing was less important than the book she brought me after that), 'I want Daddy', 'thank you Mommy', 'milk, please' (always polite) and I think 'excuse me'.

We are also working on animal sounds. She is really good at roaring like a lion. She has a stuffed lion that we keep in her crib and when we got her up in the morning she would hold out her lion to me and go roar. When she started saying duck, Jason started working on her to say quack. What she says doesn't really sound like quack but we take it. The funniest animal sound is for a dog. Rather than bark in anyway, she will pant with her tongue out. It makes sense since that is what she hears dogs say mostly but it's still funny.

Gardening

I am the daughter of a self-proclaimed black thumb. Growing up back east, my parents liked the weeds in the flower beds, confusing the rest of us by calling them 'ground cover'. Fortunately the plants in that yard were hardy and able to grow on their own because we sure didn't do much for them. Because of all of this (and the fact that I haven't lived somewhere where I could have a garden), yards and gardens have always been a bit of a mystery to me.

Fortunately, I married Jason. His parents have a very nice yard and are have been known to eat vegetables and fruit that they grew and canned themselves. So when the Kleinmans left for vacation a little bit ago, he knew just what to do to put in some big plants by the walkway to their house.


He even knew about making sure there was a drip line to all of the plants. They are alive and well to this day. What a smart guy.

And Anna was able to help him put things in the bucket. I didn't realize I didn't have any pictures of faces until just now. At the time I was just glad Anna kept her hat on. Trust me, they were having fun. It reminded me of some pictures I have seen of Jason helping his dad working in the yard at about this age.


Experiences like this give me hope for our future house. Maybe it won't be a total disaster. Maybe our kids will know what to do when they have houses and enjoy gardening. Or maybe they will just remember having fun with their dad and working hard outside.

Reunions

Note: I think this will be my last post catching up on things we have done. After this, I can just talk about things we're currently doing and life at the Kleinmans.

At the end of June, we had our 10 year high school reunion. Fortunately for us, Jason and I went to the same high school and graduated together so that made it pretty simple to go to our reunion. Plus, since it was for both of us, we didn't have one person getting all nostalgic while the other one stared blankly.

Somehow this is the only picture I took. Anna on the slide. She loved it.

They had it at a park which made it easy for Anna since there was a playground there. Fortunately I didn't mind spending time at the playground. While there were a fair few people there, I wasn't really in socializing mode. Good thing Jason was or we would have been a sad pair. Don't get me wrong, I talked to a number of people and had fun but I was being kind of reserved.

All of us who graduated together at Skye's house. From left: LeighAnn, Corrinne, Skye, Jason, me and Paul.

The next day was better. I have a friend named Skye who has been living in Australia for a few years and just got married. She and her new husband had a little get-together at her parents' house to show him off and introduce him to her CA friends.

Us with Skye and her new husband Adam.

It was nice to be there and have a chance to talk to them a little more in depth and in warmth (it was dang cold at the reunion). Plus they had some yummy snacks.

We were able to talk to some other friends who weren't at the other reunion.


It was great to talk to them and see what they are up to these days. It was a fun weekend and inspired me to try to stay in better touch with people.

Graduation

Almost a month ago now, we were able to celebrate Jason's sister's graduation. She got her bachelor's degree from Cal Poly in forestry.

Us with Ann, the graduate.

The graduation was on Sunday with the university-wide one in the morning and the school one in the afternoon. Since I have a one graduation a year limit, we decided to skip the university-wide one and meet up with people for the school one after church. But when we got there, they were done. Apparently, the big one wasn't as long as we thought it would be so they just went straight to the school one and finished with that one too. We arrived just in time for pictures. I can't say I was sad to have missed it.

Jason with his two siblings. He is the oldest.

After visiting Ann's building at school, we went back to the house and hung out until dinner.

Anna had a ton of fun with Grandpa DeMarco in the fountain.

She was so wet that we had to put her dress in the dryer and let it dry in the sun on the way to the restaurant.

Me with Jason's mom Marla and Aunt Pat.

That night for dinner, we had dinner at a nice restaurant (where Jason's brother Nathan works). It was to celebrate both Ann's and Jason's graduations and we had local aunts and uncles there along with some friends.

Jason's Aunt Linda and Uncle Roger

From left to right: Roger, Jason, Frank (Jason's dad), Nathan and one of Ann's friends (I don't remember his name).

Anna liked the cake the best. She was sitting on Ann's lap (yeah, the whole Anna, Ann thing can be a bit confusing) when she got her piece and before too long Anna had usurped it as her own. At one point, she had even gotten her own fork.

We tried to give Anna her own smaller piece. I think she ate that one too. I'm not exactly sure how much each of them ate but by the end, both plates were licked clean.

Pretty impressive considering the cake was so dense and rich that many of the adults couldn't finish their piece.

Happy 4th of July!

It's great to be in the country for the 4th this year (last year was kind of sad). For some reason I have the urge to listen to patriotic country music and Bride Springstein. Rather than put that on here, I'll let the professionals do the singing and just say Happy 4th of July!