Trick or Treat

This Halloween was the second Halloween that the girls got to go out and trick-or-treat. Last Halloween the girls had a difficult time remembering to say the magical phrase, but tonight they did say, "Trick or treat" from time to time. On at least one occasion, Diana repeated "Trick or treat" while walking away from a home we had just solicited, but both girls did really well and looked really cute.

The first home we visited was that of a good friend of grandma's. As soon as the door was open, the girls were invited inside for candy and photographs and small talk. When we reached the second home the girls demonstrated what they had learned about the holiday by ringing the doorbell and walking directly inside a neighborhood home as soon as the door was answered. Daddy rushed after the children, and everyone had a good laugh. However, I guess this just goes to show why young children aren't allowed to go out trick-or-treating without their parents.

Lisa

Dude, where's my historical marker?

The weather has been getting a little bit chilly here in California, and noticing that Amelia did not have many long-sleeved shirts in her closet I thought it was time for a shopping trip.

While many clothes that I buy for Amelia fall right off of her, Carter's clothes seem to fit her really well. So we got in the car (after feeding the animals at Amelia's school) and headed to the nearest Carter's outlet store.

Since we were headed out of town anyway, I thought it made sense for us to try to visit another historical marker along the way. I found one online that sounded like it was nearby, and down the road we went.

As we headed down the highway that had been suggested by Google maps, I learned something new about Amelia. Turns out that her biggest pet peeve is listening to her sister make clicking sounds with her mouth. As we were driving and Diana was clicking away to her favorite songs, Amelia was throwing a fit. Although Amelia was driving me crazy, a big part of me thought this was hillarious. I told Amelia that it was okay if Diana's noises bugged her, but she had to learn to relax and deal with it. I suggested that she think about something else to which she replied, "I can't think about anything else." I told her that it bugs me when people pull into a driveway and honk, waiting for their party to come out (instead of getting off their lazy butts and knocking on the door). Amelia said, "And Diana's clicking is the thing that really bugs me."

Everyone calmed down as we neared our freeway exit. Amelia had asked a dozen times where we were going, and I told her we were going to a park none of us had ever been to. I didn't know what kind of park it was, all I knew was that California state historical marker #437 was near the Mossdale Crossing Park.

Somewhere on I-5 there was a sign telling us to "exit here" for the Mossdale Crossing Park. So, silly me, I followed the freeway sign instead of my Internet directions. At the end of the offramp was a second sign, but that was the only sign there was. The road we were following took us straight into a large cluster of new home developments. There were signs everywhere, but they only pointed to clusters of homes for sale. As we went on we encountered a park that was more-or-less complete and open to the public. (The park was labeled a 'future park' and still had a chain link fence around the public restrooms that were under construction.)

Amelia said, "There it is!" I told her that this wasn't the right park and she said, "But this is a park we've never been to before." I couldn't argue with that, so we parked and went out to explore the park.

While at the park I called my dad and told him that I was having a hard time finding my historical marker. He gave me new directions, that sounded easy to follow, and would lead me to State Historical Marker #780-7 (site of completion of the Pacific Railroad). Very good, now I have a new plan...I decided to let the girls play for a while at the park and then we would get back in the car and try to find our new historical marker.

Little did I know that half of this park was a water park. There wasn't a drop of water anywhere when we arrived, but the park had valves - somewhere - that kids could operate turning on a rush of running water. As soon as Amelia saw other kids playing in the water she asked if she could play too. I was very hesitant, but I figured that it would be okay since we were going to buy the girls new clothes anyway. If their clothes were damp, I could simply remove them and replace them with warm, dry clothes after all.

I guess I forgot how wet the girls could actually get, when given the chance. Diana was completely drenched and cold. I didn't want her standing around in wet clothing, so I offered to remove her shirt. After I wrung out her shirt, she started to remove her pants on her own. I tried to help her, making sure that she kept her diaper on. She pushed my hands away a couple of times before I told her, "You have to wear your diaper, Diana." She said, "I don't want to wear my diaper!" Next thing I know, this girl is running around naked in the park! I was a little embarassed, since the other kids at the park (who were also very young) were boys. At least Amelia kept her pants on.

Finally I got the girls back to the warm car. I put their wet clothes in the back to dry and thanked my lucky stars that I didn't live in this town and would likely never see any of these people again. I drove rather slowly to the freeway (so the clothes would have a moment to dry) and got back on the trail of my new favorite bit of California's history.

I must admit that my dad's directions made more sense than those I had gotten from Google. And they made a hell of a lot more sense than the street signs I had seen thus far. Though I made a few wrong turns at first I finally found the marker I was looking for. At least, I think it was the marker I was looking for. It was pretty damn hard to tell when the actual plaque was missing!

Now who would steal a historical marker, I ask you? And how did they do it without being caught? I realize that the marker is a bit off the road and away from most of civilization, but you would have had to have had a crowbar to pry this thing out of the concrete, I would think.

Not to be derailed, I entered the park nearby looking for the second marker that was supposed to be in the area. I drove around the small parking area, and up to the boat launch, and didn't see a thing. I finally parked in the shade and said, "Maybe I'll get out and look around a bit." Amelia said, "I want to come too!" I reminded her that she was only wearing underwear at this point and she said, "I want to run around nekkid!" I did not allow her to run around nekkid. Instead, I grabbed a free brochure and got back on the freeway headed for Carter's.

When we got to Carter's I checked the girls' clothes. They were still incredibly wet, and I could not convince Amelia to put them back on. (Once she had one leg halfway on she said, "No, no, no, it's too cold and it's still wet.") So, I put Amelia in a long, zipped-up coat and held Diana and went into the Carter's outlet store. Boy did I feel like an idiot with two naked kids running around a clothing store! Of course, once I got out of the store and got the girls dressed in new, warm clothes - it was all good. Then the girls and I went to Texas Roadhouse, Diana and Amelia danced the "Boot Scoot Boogie" and both received many complements on their lovely attire.

What an adventure! Adventures in mommy-hood...Sometimes things just don't go as planned, but if you roll with it I guess you can still have fun.

I considered trying to take the girls to a California mission today (where there would be no question about finding a historical marker), but I just didn't have the energy. There's always the weekend, I suppose...

Lisa

No historical markers to speak of

This afternoon I brought the girls to the California Jelly Belly factory. The tour was interesting and it was free and we got lots of free samples at the end of our tour.

Of course, the idea behind all of the free samples is that they will make you want to buy more Jelly Bellies. At the "free sample" counter at the end of our tour I asked Amelia and Diana what flavors they thought they would like to try. Diana wanted cotton candy and Amelia chose raspberry. I have to admit that the raspberry Jelly Bellies are pretty darn good.

As for myself, I bought a bag of cappuccino and latte Jelly Bellies and a bag of ice cream flavored beans. Apparently, Jelly Belly is connected to Cold Stone, somehow, and now Jelly Belly beans come in flavors like mint mint chocolate chip and birthday cake remix. I love birthday cake ice cream from Cold Stone, and the matching Jelly Bellies are quite good as well. Their new apple pie a la mode Jelly Bellies are nothing to sneeze at either.

So all-in-all we had fun and ate too much sugar. Two things I can take away from the tour that make me like Jelly Bellies are: 1) Jelly Bellies are made from relatively normal ingredients (like sugar and corn starch) and 2) Jelly Bellies are made in the USA. Yea, for the USA! (I'm beginning to really care whether or not products I purchase are made in the USA. Maybe we should all start paying close attention to this.)

Another thing I enjoyed were the portraits in Jelly Bellies. There were several portraits of former President Ronald Reagan at the plant, and I took pictures of almost all of them. There was also a portrait of Amelia Earhart in the plant that said "Amelia" in bold red letters at the top. Unfortunately, this was in a portion of the plant where we weren't supposed to use our cameras. I probably could have gotten out of there with a picture, but I'm big on following the rules - as most of you know.

Lisa

Story Time

Diana wanted to pick out her clothes for the day, and it seems that everytime Diana picks an outfit it's almost always a dress. Amelia wanted to wear the same dress as her sister.

I think the girls look lovely in their dresses, but it does make me wary of taking them to the park (since they may burn their bottoms on the slides). But the girls had to get out of the house, so I took them to the book store. The girls like to play with the train set at the store, but they also love "reading" books that they find in the children's section of the store.

Listening to Diana read is a lot of fun. As she turned the pages of a book filled with dinosaurs all I could really understand her say (again and again) was, "Who had nothing [get] to eat." I guess Diana's book was all about hungry dinosaurs.

Diana also got excited when she spotted a book about the Wonderpets. You haven't heard cute until you've heard a two-year-old sing songs from the Wonderpets. Amelia got excited about the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie because she remembered it from an episode of Blue's Clues that she has on DVD. Mommy was excited to find a Disney Princesses book on manners. We'll be reading this book quite a bit if I have anything to say about it.

Lisa

Baby fat

There are oh-so-many reasons why it's hard to lose weight when you have little ones at home. Here's another reason: they like to eat ice cream. Yeah sure I could buy the girls ice cream and pass on it myself, but then I wouldn't be Lisa, would I?

I have never seen the girls make more of a mess with ice cream than what I saw today. See, Amelia's always asking for ice cream in a cone, so I thought I'd get cones instead of cups for the girls this afternoon. What I hadn't anticipated was that the girls would set their ice cream cones on the counter to eat them instead of holding them in their hands. The cones came with handy "drip catchers" and plastic holders but that didn't prevent the girls from making a huge mess by knocking the cones over again and again. One time, Amelia's bounced down her shirt and pants and landed "splat" on the floor. (The girl working the counter gave her a new cone - upside down and in a cup.) Diana never EVER uses a utensil to eat anything (unless she's prodded to do so), yet today she insisted on eating her ice cream cone with a spoon causing it to continually tip over. Ugh!

But melted ice cream wasn't the nastiest mess we dealt with today. Luckily, I didn't see much of this take place, but after Amelia and Diana came in from playing in the back yard Amelia told me that she and her sister had been turning snails into slugs. Yuck! I bet that wasn't too successful an operation.

Believe me, I do my best to teach the girls to be nice to all of God's creatures... even the snails and slugs. I don't know where they get these ideas. Diana has no fear of bugs, and this makes her mother crazy. In one day she destroyed some snails, picked up a dead bee and stood on a trail of ants undisturbed that they were climbing all over her legs.

Yes, I tell her that ants bite. Darn good thing these aren't fire ants.

And if you've been following our adventures to the historical markers of California, here's a photograph of the girls in front of the Burbank home in Santa Rosa. The funny thing about the Burbank House is that it doesn't have an official plaque like the other sites we have visited. So maybe it's impossible to get photographs in front of all of the actual historical markers throughout the state. But we'll keep taking these side trips and see how many places we can see. The girls enjoy the adventure, and so do I.

Lisa