Hip Hop Goes the Bunny

Hannah got 3 Easter Egg Hunts this past weekend. The first one was on Friday at school. She came home with 4 plastic eggs and was very excited to see & eat the candy that was in every one of them.
On Saturday we had breakfast with the Easter Bunny, walked in an Easter Parade and participated in Hannah's second Easter egg hunt for the weekend through the City of Davis' Eggstravaganza. Hannah is so in love with the Easter Bunny that we got in line 3 times to get pictures with the famous bunny. Hannah's friend Sydney was not so thrilled by the bunny...one picture with mom and crying "I want to go home!"...poor thing. At this event there are also many other famous characters such as Sparks the fire dog, McGruff the crime fighting dog, the Rivercats mascot (don't know what his name is), many more, and of course Gunrock. Hannah was SOOOO exicted to see Gunrock that she screamed out "Gunrock!" when she laid eyes on him and as she went running up to him she tripped and fell partially into his arms and partially onto the sidewalk where she scrapped up her hand pretty good. As you can see by this picture, Hannah wanted to pose for a picture with Gunrock but was kind of unsure because her hand was all scrapped up...poor thing.



Here are Adam & Hannah having too much fun walking in the parade:



Hannah ever so carefully hunting for eggs...you gotta' pick the right one!



One of the many Easter Bunny pictures we got:



And trashed after Saturday moring's Eggstravaganza events (she kinda looks like a bum sleeping on a bench :) )



On Sunday, Easter was at our house and we had the whole family over for some lunch and Easter Egg Hunting. Hannah & I started the morning by taking a walk down to feed the goats and sheep an Easter breakfast of weeds:





When we got back Hannah took a nap and Adam & I hid the eggs in our backyard. It was so much fun to hide the eggs all over the backyard and then let the kids loose.















After hunting, eating, playing, and socializing for a while we had a little Easter "parade" of our own with the whole family and walked back down to the park to feed the goats again.



Then of course Hannah had to do some exercise to work off all that chocolate and food:



What a fun weekend! But we are all sooooo tired!

Deceptively Awesome!

As many of you know Hannah will not eat most fruits and vegetables. It is quite frustrating. She is an extremely picky eater...yes I know I am too but she is worse. For a long time I have been trying to figure out how to get her to eat more fruits & veggies and for a long time I have been meaning to buy "Deceptively Delicious" the cookbook Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld's wife) wrote about grinding up fruits and veggies into recipes. I finally bought it and read it. The first step is to puree the fruits and veggies you will be adding to whatever recipe you choose that week. I felt like Hannah was about 6 months old again b/c we use to make her baby food and puree fruits and veggies for her. The first recipe I attempted was chicken nuggets with a cup of pureed spinach in it. It is a really healthy recipe with flax seed and I was so proud of myself for making it b/c as many of you also know I do not cook. Hannah was so excited to have chicken nuggets that night but she did not know there was lots of spinach in it too! I gave it to her hoping she would like it and she loved it! She couldn't eat them fast enough! Literally at one point she had so many in her mouth she had to spit back some out on her plate...I know a lovely picture.
I was so pumped up from how well she ate the chicken nuggets with spinach that I decided to be super mom and make her applesauce muffins with carrots that night. The next morning Adam said she loved the muffins and said "Good job Mommy"...to cute. :) This morning I was having breakfast with her and again she was chowing down her muffin and she looks at me and says "Thank you Mommy for the muffin...good job". It was so cute. She started to ask for another muffin after she ate her first one but then realized she was full. Tonight I will be making mac and cheese (Hannah's favorite) from scratch with cauliflower. I am sure it will turn out just as good as the first two recipes. The great thing about this is that I am eating them too and I know that I am eating healthy as well...and they are very good...you don't even taste the veggies!

In other exciting news our bowling team "Up Your Alley" won the bowling tournament yesterday! Since October we have been competing against 15 other staff teams from around campus. There are two parts to the whole season and as some of you know our team won the first half in a bowl off against "The IT Crowd". So while playing in the second half of the season we knew that if we didn't win this half it would be ok b/c as winners of the 1st half we would play off against the winner of the 2nd half to determine the league champion. I guess we really slacked b/c we came in 5th the second part of the season but "The IT Crowd" came in 1st so it was another re-match against them for the grand champion. Yesterday we bowled against them pretty much evenly matched with our handicaps coming in...ours was 192 and theirs was 198...so they actually had the advantage. They apparently had practiced as a team during that week so we were a little nervous that we would lose. They also have their own bowling shoes and balls! We ended up slaughtering them! We beat them by over 90 points and I played my personal best score of 162! I am so excited! I started my first frame with a strike but my next 3 frames were terrible with a 1, 7 (split), and a 6. Then I got really mad and the rest of my frames I had either a strike or a spare...it was awesome! My team said they should have got me more mad the whole season. :) Anyway next week we have a potluck with all the other teams and we get awards presented to us. You bet I will post a picture of my trophy here next week and I will proudly display it in my office.

Last in a melt your heart moment this morning as I was leaving Hannah at school and saying good-bye I started to walk away and she was standing in the door way holding her teacher's hand she yells out to me "I love you Mamacita!! Have a good day!". It was so great because it was unsolicited...like I said it just melted my heart and made my day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This weekend we were suppose to go to Sea Ranch with the Telford Family but could not go b/c Adam got pretty sick the week before last and ended up using what time off he had left. But as it turns out the Telford Family sounds like they were pretty sick in Sea Ranch so it is a good thing we did not join them...although I still really want to go to Sea Ranch one of these days. Anyway to make up for not going we decided to plan an adventurous weekend ourselves.
Day one we drove to Concord and took BART from there to SF and went to the Bay Aquarium by Pier 39. It was fun and Hannah enjoyed looking at the fish...especially the Dori & Nemo looking fish. She didn't want to touch anything in the Touch Pools but Adam & I had fun touching the sharks, sting rays, and sea anemones. After that we checked out the seals at Pier 39, had some crab mac & cheese (it was SOOOO good!) and then Adam & Hannah checked out the submarine. Here are some pics from that day:





On Day 2 since Hannah had so much fun riding on BART we drove to Concord again and then caught BART again back to SF...this time to the Civic Center for the St. Patrick's Day Parade. That was fun too. The parade was interesting although it was way too long...over 2 hours! It could have been shorter if people didn't leave big gaps between floats/bands/etc. As our friend said...drunk people walk slow...no kidding! There were some fun playgrounds at the Civic Center Park too that Hannah enjoyed playing at. Here are the pics from that day:

Our silly family picture:




Hannah all in green...


Now this was an interesting sign...usually children aren't allowed places unless accompanied by an adult:


Today for St. Patrick's Day I added green dye to Hannah's milk and she loved it! About 10 seconds after I took this picture she knocked over this glass and green milk went everywhere!! After we cleaned it up about a minute later Hannah knocked over her cereal bowl and milk AND cereal went everywhere. Apparently she was having clumsy morning but Tulip enjoyed cleaning both up. I also made her milk for school green and when we got to school Hannah told everyone that she had green milk. Here she is with her green milk:



In our final news for the weekend our snail "Sam" who cleans our fish tank that our Beta Fish "Flash" lives in gave birth to a tiny tiny snail...probably no bigger then my pinky tip. He is so cute and we have named him "Spud". He was very active this weekend cruisin' around the tank. Flash is probably not thrilled to have another snail in his tank but oh well. Spud is so small that I couldn't take a good picture of him so when he gets bigger I will post it. Hannah loves having a baby snail!

THE GOATS ARE BACK!

Every year around this time the little habitat preserve near our house at Mace Ranch Park is home to goats & sheep and their babies. The weeds get very tall around this time of year so the city brings the goats and sheep in to "mow" the weeds down. I wasn't so sure they were coming this year b/c the weeds were not that tall and last year the goats & sheep were already here in February so I was beginning to worry b/c I had been telling Hannah a lot that the goats were coming soon. So much to my surprise and delight yesterday morning as I was walking Tulip at 5:30 in the morning in the dark the goats scared the crap out of me since I did not see them until they were right near us. I told Hannah yesterday morning that we were going to go look at them when I picked her up and feed them...we always pick some weeds and feed it to them through the fence.
So yesterday afternoon when I picked her up off we went to the see the goats. As we arrived upon the area Hannah exclaimed from the bike trailer "Mommy! Look at all the white ones!". Yes there were a lot of white goats out there and she could hardly wait to get out of the trailer. As the friendly goats came up to greet us Hannah got a little scared but then I helped her feed them and in no time she was sticking her hands through the fence to check out the tags on their ears. I had to keep reminding her that her fingers and hands stay on our side of the fence.
It was a lot of fun and I was taking my pictures as usual. At one point I picked a rather large weed that I had to use both of my hands to break up. Since I was holding my camera in one hand (that was on, lens out) I decided to ask Hannah if she could hold it for a brief second while I quickly break the weed apart in one section. In that second that I gave Hannah my camera she managed to drop it, face down and bend the crap out of the lens. Of course now my camera would not close, take pictures or show me the pictures I had taken so my picture taking time was over. Here are the pictures I managed to take before my camera broke:



Doesn't it look like Hannah is having a conversation with the goat?:





While we were there these juvenile delinquent jr. high school girls came by and decided to jump the fence in the area with the goats. I quickly told them that they should get out because there was a reason the fence was up, to which they just laughed at me and ran out into the field. While they were out there the poor little baby sheep & goats were terrified and running away with their moms. So I yelled to them again telling them that they are harassing the animals and again the fence was up for a reason to protect the animals. They told me they were not harassing the animals and I told them that they were and they were not setting a good example for all the little kids around the area. I guess they finally got that I was not going to give up yelling at them and they got out. The rejoined the other delinquent friends who were pointing at me and talking about how they were not harassing animals and laughing. I was so fired up and mad that I was just thinking "yeah come on, try and say something again or do something...I will let the wrath of the chipmunk out on you!" Hannah just stood there watching the whole thing and said "the girls not listening". That is right they were not listening but I set them straight!
After we left the goats I loaded Hannah up and went down to Ritz Camera to find out about the damage to my camera. So apparently it will be more money to fix it then to just get a new one. So I have my dad researching the camera they suggested to me and shortly I will have a new camera. So a lesson to all you moms & dads out there...do not let your little ones hold your camera for even a second...it is highly likely they will drop it.

Late Bus Post

Preschool for Hannah and work for me this week have been crazy so I have not even had a chance to post about last weekend's Unitrans 40th Anniversary celebration! It was a blast...soley b/c all us old alumni got to drive buses! It was awesome! I even had a deja vu moment where I had to have Andy teach me to drive a shifting RT again...this time it all came back to me in just two laps around the pad vs. the 8 miles around the pad it originally took me. Yes...go ahead...laugh. I think what made driving around the pad so much fun this time also was having Hannah get to see me drive a bus. She got to sit right behind me in the Double Deck and she had this cute smile on her face and look to her that seemed to be saying..."Wow my Mommy is driving a bus!" At least that is what I would like to think she was thinking. :) Here are some pics from the day:



Hannah even got a chance to sit and try to "drive"...I foresee her driving in the future:



I am workin' real hard to understand this shifting concept again: