Summer Time

I was recently looking through my second blog book and I realized that I use to write a lot more. These days I just post lots of pictures and write a sentence describing the picture. This blog is my attempt at a family journal so I haven't been doing a good job lately. I will try and be better at that. I am hoping the as the years go by I will continue to have just as many posts as my first few years of blogging. My second book did well now let's just hope my third one will do okay too.

We have been really busy and stressed out with this whole house thing. We should have closed on our house on August 17th however, we are still in the contingency phase. We have been waiting on the sellers to get a second opinion on the foundation issues. It was completed this week and now we are waiting on results. We are crossing our fingers. In the mean time we are passing up some potential houses while we hold out for our favorite.

On top of all the house stuff we have been doing we have been trying to have some fun.  A few Friday nights ago we headed over to College Ave. for some dinner. We went to Khana Peena a delicious Indian restaurant. Crew fell in love with Indian food just like his big brother Athen. That kid scarffed down the chicken tikka masala, rice and naan. He also loved the appetizers as well. The kids and I fight over the naan and the tikka "dipping sauce" as Athen calls it.

After dinner we walked up College Ave. to Bittersweet Chocolate cafe. We ordered a very thick, rich and chalky bittersweet hot chocolate. Good thing it was a typical cold overcast summer night in Oakland, it made the hot chocolate much more enjoyable.

This was suppose to be my weekend away since Rick has had several weekends away lately. However, I canceled my weekend with my mom because I thought we would have our house and I would be busy and not wanting to spend extra money on a weekend away when I could be spending it on my new house. Since we haven't gotten the new house I decided at the last minute (Friday after dinner) that I should still go away. I tried searching for hotels along the coast but everything was booked for the weekend. Saturday morning my mom headed over and we went into the city together. We went to my favorite cafe for brunch - Mama's Cafe in Washington Square. There is a line out the door and around the block every day of the year that is how good it is. We waited in line for 2 hours. It was worth every second and not so bad since Rick had the kids at home. We ordered banana nut french toast, brioche french toast and sweedish cinnamon french toast with fresh berries, we also ordered an omelette with fontina, mushrooms, and proscuitto with potatoes and a sour dough baguette. It was all delicious. After that we decided to head back to my mom's house and do some sewing. We went to the fabric store and picked up some material.

We sewed the kids some new pillow cases and I made some snack bags for the kids and friends. We went to an afternoon movie and enjoyed some delicious fresh food from the garden. I stayed the night in one of the guest rooms and enjoyed some peace and quiet. Sunday morning I slept in and relaxed for the day while finishing up some projects. Rick and the boys came to pick me up at 3:30 and we went to church together (it was only 1 hours because of the conf. at the temple over the weekend). 

It was nice having some free time to myself to do what ever I wanted.

When Rick picked me up he was about 30 minutes late (which means we walked into church 10 minutes before it ended) and he was a little flustered. Athen still had his jammies on and was throwing a  fit. Crew was dressed in an orange church shirt and had messy hair, messy face and a snotty nose. I asked Rick why Crew was wearing the orange shirt and he said " you didn't lay out a church shirt for Crew" (I had laid out church clothes for the boys so Rick would have it easy). I said "yes I laid out the blue checked shirt for Crew." He said "Oh, I packed that one for Athen. When we pulled into the parking lot we had to dress Athen in Crew's small blue checked shirt with black and grey checkered/plaid pants (did not match). The shirt barely covered his belly and when he lifted his arms you could see his belly. He also wear his blue leather German shoes with no socks on. He looked pretty funny. The few people we saw in the hall way I explained to them that I had been gone all weekend and Rick got the kids ready for church. It was pretty funny. I think Rick got a little taste of what I go through each and every day with two little rascals. 

The next weekend we headed to Great America with Rick's work. It was the first time taking the kids. I loved going here when I was younger. We had season passes every summer. They have some great roller coasters. However, it wasn't as enjoyable this time around. It isn't very little kid friendly and the lines were crazy long. Disneyland was much better and catered more towards little kids. I don't think we will go back until the kids get a little older and can enjoy more of the rides.

My mom and I took the kids to Happy Hollow this last week. It was much more fun than Great America. More kid friendly and enjoyable.

Over the weekend we decided to go camping. Our first local camping trip this year. We went to our favorite car camping place in the Santa Cruz mountains - Mt. Madonna. We got there much later than we expected and I forgot to pack the sleeping bags and camping mats. It was much colder then we expected so the night wasn't very enjoyable. Then it rained on us in the morning so we didn't get much sleep. The trip was not well planned and a little rushed but we still enjoyed our day. 

We went hiking and hunting for banana slugs. Of course we saw probably 100 banana slugs on our hike. I remember growing up going to this campground and looking for banana slugs so I was pretty excited to show the kids what a banana slug was. 

Of course we found the huckleberry trail. As a little girl, I would pick huckleberries here and we would make huckleberry pancakes. A few summers ago when Athen was a little one we picked huckleberries and I made jam. This year we planned the trip with huckleberries in mind. The kids love blueberries so you can imagine there joy when they saw the huckleberry bushes. They loved picking and eating them. We picked enough for me to make huckleberry jam (which I did today) - DEELISH!