Thank you Steve Jobs

While listening to NPR in the car yesterday, I heard the commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University a few years ago. In it he said he used to ask himself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" He then said that whenever the answer was "No" for too many days in a row, he knew he needed to change something.

So, I yesterday I asked myself "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I did today?"  And this is my answer:

Yes to hugging my kids
No to listening to their whining/crying
Yes to eating warm cookies with gooey chocolate chips
No to cleaning up under Amelia's high chair
Yes to snuggling with Andrew
No to laundry

So, I think what I can learn from this is that I need to get a maid and a nanny.  If I had a maid and a nanny, then I could answer yes to this question every day.  Andrew can now thank Steve Jobs for his iPhone, his iMac, his maid and his nanny.

Breakfast

This is what Amelia said she wanted for breakfast this morning.

Happy Birthday Amelia

It was so fun to celebrate Amelia's birthday on Friday. Grandpa and Grandma Checketts came down and we had a great weekend together. Amelia looked forward all day to "afer dinner" when she got to eat cake "and i-keam too" and open presents. Her favorite presents were the cake pop from Uncle Joe and her new silver shoes.

Cake pop sent from Uncle Joe all the way from Oregon

I don't have a picture of her silver shoes, but stay tuned because they will probably make an appearance in every picture you see her in until they are too small. She wears them everywhere. But that's okay with me because silver shoes go with practically everything. They go with black, brown, pink, sweats, swim suits, jeans, shorts, church clothes, pjs with stains on them...you know, pretty much everything. That's why I got them for her. I'm smart like that.

As for the birthday cake, I made her a chocolate cake (with beets and applesauce of course) with an orange cream frosting in the middle and a fluffy cocoa frosting on top - it was yummy, if I do say so myself! I saw a cake frosted like this in a magazine and loved the way it looked, so while Amelia is still too young to ask for a Curious George cake, I love making the cake I want for her birthday!

I spared you our singing of Happy Birthday, but here is the sweet birthday girl blowing out her candles. Andrew helped her at the end, but she was pretty pleased with herself as you can tell. Grandma and Grandpa Asay skyped us and it was fun to have them join us! Although the cake was tastier on our end than on theirs.

Here she is telling Uncle Joe thanks for the cake pop


And here is William in the tub. I love how he waves his arms when he gets so excited - it looks like he is trying to make a snow angel.

And here is Amelia snuggling William. She really loves her baby brother and he loves her too! But he is going to have to be a tough boy...

And yes, she yells, "No picture!" at the end. She often yells that when we take pictures these days. Very charming.

I also love that Amelia's not old enough yet to tell me not to post pictures like this on my blog! Ha, I just love this one though :)

Phone photos

So, my phone takes really poor quality pictures, but here are some random photos I just got off my phone from over the past few months.

Right before I took this picture I had taken another one of William smiling but it didn't save. Andrew was lamenting how it was too bad it didn't save because it had caught the perfect smile. I told him not to worry and I looked down at William and took the same picture again - it's so easy because he's always smiling! All you have to do is look at him and this is what you get. He's so awesome.

Do you recognize this grandma?

Neither do we. But apparently that doesn't matter when you are in need of a grandma at the park.

Amelia is really missing having her grandma close. This picture was taken last week when Amelia saw a random kid at the park with his grandma and decided to adopt her for the morning. She kept saying "Dramma tum!" (Grandma come!) and grabbing the lady by her hand, pulling her up the stairs, sitting on her lap and sliding down the slide. Luckily the lady was nice, but I think she wanted to play with her own grandson and not some stranger's kid...so we are so glad that our grandma is here visiting now!

This is when Amelia got dressed by herself for the first time. Her shirt is inside out and backwards, but at least the head and arms are in all the right openings. When I tried to get a picture of it, however, she would not stand up for me to take it and insisted on laying down.

Yes, mom, s'mores are a good snack.
What do you get when you mix all your colors together while painting? Yup, the answer is still brown.

Running on dad's baseball field chasing crows.

Vacation

Really depressing, but Lisa's influence has officially worn off. We just had the best vacation ever, and I took like 10 pictures of the whole thing. Andrew took a few days off and we stay-cationed in Santa Barbara and it was awesome. We spent an afternoon in Solvang which is a Danish-styled town with windmills and traditional Danish food. Amelia enjoyed feeding this bear sculpture the rest of her broccoli.

We went hiking in Santa Barbara and went to the beach at Carpenteria. It was so fun to watch Amelia and Andrew playing in the water at the beach. Wish I had pictures of it...hopefully the images of Amelia clinging to Andrew as she braced for a wave, squealing in delight and the two of them walking hand in hand along the beach will remain in my mind's eye forever.

Then we went hiking in Ojai when we came face to face with a RATTLESNAKE. We didn't even notice him until he rose up and rattled at us about 4 feet away! Andrew grabbed me and we ran (the kids were both in packs thank goodness). When we got a safe distance away we stopped and watched him slither off into the bushes. Andrew thought to take a picture after the snake was almost gone, but he was big, and scary and creepy! Yikes!

The only other pictures we got were of Amelia enjoying Root Beer and wearing a swim diaper on her head. Good times.

If this doesn't make you smile...

So this is pretty much par for the William course these days. If he's awake, there's a good chance he's doing this. In fact, he's doing it right now sitting next to me. And when he's done, he just falls quietly asleep. Like I said, I could do babies all day if they were all like this one...so sweet!



And here is Amelia skipping to her loop before nap time. She has started skipping around the house singing "loop, loop, skip to my loop, skip to my loop my dar'in." Sorry the video's dark, Amelia doesn't like to perform (i.e. do what you ask her to do when you ask her to do it), so I was just lucky to get this on camera.

And one last tidbit, when we were in the car this afternoon with the windows rolled down Amelia said, "Smell food!" I said yes, it does smell like food. What kind of food does it smell like? (It smelled like fast food grease) And she said "Yummy, yummy food!" Clearly a good nutritionist's daughter...

Just call me Martha

Let me just say yum and yum and yum.

We went blueberry picking yesterday and have been enjoying lots of yummy blueberries.

They should have weighed Amelia before and after and charged us for the ones she ate while we picked.

Although she ate some dirt and twigs along with her blueberries, so that would have skewed things.

I also made this coconut granola this week and it pretty much makes my mornings rock.

I also got extra ambitious and made foccacia bread for a picnic the other night. Um, delicious! And the best part is they are both easy recipes.

You can just call me Martha. Or Betty. Or Molly. Or whatever, but just know that if you had visited me this weekend, your taste buds would have been happy. Sorry Dan and Lisa, you will just have to come back.

Awesome Uncle Dan

My awesome brother came to visit this past weekend and it was so much fun having him! Thank you so much for coming. We love you.

So, while he was here, of course, we went to the beach...

Uncle Dan watching Amelia dance on the beach

This girl loves to sing and dance...and she's got some sweet moves as you can see!

He also taught her to bury her feet in the sand

Here Andrew is teaching Amelia how to sneak up on seagulls. This is how they walk right before they sprint after the unsuspecting bird. They have yet to catch one, but that hasn't stopped Amelia from yelling, "Touch it!" every time she sees one. Also, if you tell her to "sneak" she crouches down and walks around the house like this. Pretty cute.

I love Uncle Dan!

From watching other people, Amelia learned to shade her eyes with her hand when looking up at the sky (like when she's looking for airplanes), but the funny thing is that she does it even when the sun has gone down...or we are in the house...or it is night time...:)

We also went to the Museum of Natural History Butterfly garden. There were literally hundreds of butterflies flying around in this greenhouse. They even had people stationed at the exit to give you a look over before you left to make sure you didn't have any stuck to your clothes. One landed on my foot!

You can't see them in this picture, but they are looking at butterflies

Hard to see, but I am standing next to the blue butterfly in the next picture

Dan is such a fun uncle and my kids loved him and I loved having him here. Can't wait until you live close to us!! (hint, hint)

In other news, Amelia is thrilled that our neighbor's cat like to come into our backyard for belly rubs. So far the cat has been very patient with Amelia's attention...even when it involves her sitting on him...I am just hoping he has been declawed!

I know I say it every time, but I seriously can't get enough of this boy! I am constantly in awe at what an awesome baby he is and I LOVE it! He is so sweet. If I could guarantee that all my future babies would be like this, I would adopt hundreds :)

He is so smiley and I often look over to find him just waking up with a huge grin on his face! I tried to get a video of it, but of course he did not perform like he was seconds before. Just imagine this video with bigger, more exuberant smiles and loud squeals of delight. Or just come visit and see the joy that is William.

I just tried posting my video to youtube and embedding it here (like Trina does) and I am so excited that you can now see our videos better! Wish I'd followed Trina's lead a while ago...just another lesson to do whatever Trina does...

This is my real life!

We are finally settling into our life here in Santa Barbara and let's just say we are very happy. While walking along a secluded beach cliff close to my house watching dolphins swim and pelicans dive, I have been known to exclaim, "This is amazing and I'm not even on vacation! This is my real life!" Come visit. You'll see what I mean.

Speaking of visitors, we had a very special visitor, Aunt Seesa (as Amelia calls her), for the past 2 weeks. It was awesome. And since Lisa is the photo-journalist queen of the world, I have about 500 pictures to prove just how awesome it was! Unfortunately my blogging time is limited these days...so you are getting an overload of pictures with less dialog and you'll have to check Lisa's blog for more.

Beach Life

Okay, so I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures of us on beaches from the past couple of weeks. They are all within 15 minutes of my house.

Family picture

Struggling to hold Amelia still for the family picture

Sisters are the best.

I am so lucky to have such an amazing, sweet, sensitive, kind, loving, full of common sense and non-dramatic (very valuable in my life :)) sister. We shared a bed all growing up - even when we didn't have to - and we used to get ourselves in trouble laughing too loud after we were supposed to be sleeping. During this trip we almost got ourselves in trouble laughing too loud in church! I love you Lisa. If Matt didn't miss you so much, I'd try to convince you to move in with me again.

El Capitan State Park

Refugio State Park

Lisa and I explored this beach one morning and this was one of those "This is my real life?!" moments. We saw 7 dolphins, scores of pelicans, an otter, a sea lion, a sand crab and only 4 other humans! It was so beautiful, exciting, and peaceful.

Sandspit Beach

This is one of the beaches right by UCSB campus

Um, so those buildings you see in the corner of this picture. Yeah, that's campus. Go Gauchos!

Walking along the cliff above the beach ON campus.

This is also at Sandspit beach park. It's foggy in the background, but that is actually the ocean right behind us (that metal thing is a pier). So Amelia can swing and bang things to her hearts content, and afterwards I can take a walk along the beach boardwalk.

Aunt Seesa

Santa Barbara Zoo

Amelia fit right in with the monkeys :)

Birthday

We celebrated Lisa's birthday on the 9th with In N Out burgers and birthday cake

But of course, being the nerdy nutritionist, I didn't just make her any old cake...I had to stick a vegetable in it! Last year Amelia had zucchinis in her cake, Andrew had pumpkin in his and now Lisa got BEETS. It turned out delicious and I will definitely be adding beets to my cakes more often, but don't be scared because you'll never know! You'll just think it is a perfectly moist chocolate cake. Yum!

Kids

And finally we have some great pictures of the kids. Thanks Lisa for documenting my life for me!

Okay, for the record, William is still the sweetest baby ever. In his baby blessing, he was blessed that he would be a joy to his mother...and that has proved so true already! He is such a little sweetheart and I love every minute of being his mom.

Amelia loves him too and she is always very sweet to him. When he fusses or cries she pats his head (fairly gently, usually just missing poking his eyes out, but with zero malice) and says, "It's okay baby!"

Here she is singing Patty Cake to him. I love this picture because you can see how big William is! He is in the 90th percentile for his age and Amelia has always been around the 10th! I think he is going to catch up to her soon - he is such a big baby!

Running, running, running, running!

When I was pregnant and Amelia was climbing all over me, wanting to be held, sitting on my lap, snuggling, kissing and being on top of me all the time, I remember thinking, "How and where is this new baby going to fit around here?" Well, here's the answer!

Amelia hasn't moved over one bit for the little newcomer. We're just a trio instead of a duo now!

The Santa Barbara Festival was going on the first week we got here so we went downtown and enjoyed some good Mexican food, traditional dancers and bands.

We got ice cream afterwards and Amelia ate her whole ice cream cone, of course.

And this video is the aftermath of staying out until bedtime plus a whole ice cream cone.