The kid is in kindergarten. Sheesh!

This is a conversation Ethan and I had while the family was outside weeding the garden.

Ethan - Mom, I'm going to marry Madison (a classmate.)

Me - Why are you going to marry Madison?

Ethan - Because she is my friend and I love her.

Me - Who taught you about getting married?

Ethan - Andre (another classmate.)

Me - Does Madison know you are going to marry her?

Ethan - No.

Me - Well, it helps if she knows about it.

Ethan - Yah.....

a few seconds go by.....

Me - You know when you get married you can't live with Mom and Dad any more.

Ethan - Never mind, I'm not going to marry Madison. I want to be like Uncle Russell and live with you guys when I grow up.

I love that kid so much. I take it that since he wants to be with us when he grows up, that he is enjoying himself now. I'm not sure when to break it to him that whether or not he is married he most likely will not be living with us when he is older. I guess I should just enjoy it before he turns into a teenager and starts yelling at me about "blowing this popsicle stand" as soon as he graduates.

Since visiting Oakland in November of 2008, I have noticed some things about this region that are very unfamiliar (like mowing your lawn in winter. ) I've lived the first 28 years of my life in Utah, so that is a big factor in why I have never seen them before (other than in books or t.v.) or why they just don't seem to be occurring in the right season.

Although I have lived here for nearly a year they still throw me for a loop.

I am going to start a little ongoing series called "I am a foreigner here." I hope to include pictures with each of these entries so that I can better illustrate why.

These weren't the only flowers I got on Valentine's Day, but they were the most unexpected. I wish you could smell them!

Both of these pictures are from our back yard.

Creeeepy!

So...I finally got a new camera and it has some pretty wild features, like "fish eye" and "radial blur" and "happy faces." This last one is just plain creepy, it modifies people's faces to appear as smiling. Just look what it did to my grumpy-but-still-cute son. The modified pic makes him look like he would be a registered offender of some sort.

Darling Delightful Delilah

Thank you all for your subject suggestions. Apparently people want to know about our new baby. I don't know why, she is a bit of a bore really ;)

Delilah (no middle name) Olson was born on December 15th, so that is 4 days after her due date. I was very annoyed about this and at the doctor for not inducing me two weeks early like what happened with my older two. So that meant I had to go into labor on my own, and feel all of the woman-making pain that goes with it. I won't go into the details of the labor, I'll just get to the good part - She was born at 9 lbs. 21 in. and seven weeks later she is over 13 pounds. Delilah is no longer on the growth chart and the pediatrician actually called her a "giant."

Delilah's brothers love her, Ethan a little more so than Vaughn, but that is probably because Vaughn got bumped from baby status and lost the name that goes with the position. We are all enjoying having pink, and dresses, and sugar and spice and everything nice in our house. The teeter-toter of testosterone and estrogen in our house is evening out a bit. Hooray!

I'm being summoned by her little voice, so I must go. But I'll get more pics of her and the boys later.

aaaah, so good to be back

So we finally got the internet at our house yesterday. We have not had internet for four years! I told that to the guy who came to install it and he said "nah, you weren't missing much." But I beg to differ.

I don't know what to blog about, so if any of you have suggestions or are wondering about anything in particular that has gone on since the last time I blogged let me know in a comment.

Like I said, SO GOOD TO BE BACK.

Uh! Buying a house is so unpredictable. We thought that we were going to be closing on the 23rd, but now it's going to be more like the 27th.

That causes a problem for me. Aaron in coming to get the kids and me on the 20th. So, we are going to have an entire week of living in a hotel. Man, I sure hope there are plenty of kid friendly things to do in the bay area. As a lot of you know I have some social anxieties, so it is going to be super hard to get out and do stuff without anyone I know.

Anyway, on a lighter note, the kids, my mom and I went to the children's museum. That was fun.....for a while. I don't have the patience to stay at each exhibit for half an hour, especially when the children I'm with either are too young or just plain aren't interested in understanding why things are working the way they are.

Today we went to the dinosaur museum. I was worried about taking Ethan because he often talks about bad dreams with dinosaurs in them. But he and Vaughn really enjoyed it. However I think this museum was too much for older kids for them to appriciate fully. There was a lot of reading and other stuff that they just didn't have the interest in. They just like looking at the dinasaur bones a moving on. Too bad I had to pay $24 dollars for only an hour of running around.

blah, blah, blahg

I was tired of the blah color of my blog, so I changed it. I don't need anything more to be depressing. I would like to know how to change the skin and all the other cool things you can do with a blog, so if any of you know of a good tutorial let me know.

Well, the pharmacy changed one of my meds to a generic without me giving the okay. Now I feel fuzzy-faced, drowsy and headachie. Man, medicine for bi-polar is a love/hate thing, at least it is for me. My friend Jen was telling me about a guy she knows who his bi-polar and along with his meds he is doing some homeopathic stuff, like changing his diet. I would really like to try things like that to see if they help while I still try to figure out the right combo of meds.

Maybe on my next entry I'll feel better and have more upbeat things to say. Ciao