Thank You, Jack Brown

I thought today was the 17th of February because I missed yesterday. It flew by in half a flash. I missed my littlest sister's birthday and because I hardly know her I don't even know how to apologize.

I missed Annika's 13th month birthday and what kind of mother does such a thing? She is now 13 months old. She still doesn't talk much but is picking up signing really quickly. It would be even faster if my sign language consisted of more than 10 words. But she uses those words all the time correctly. She says, ma ma, dog, da, da, Ali, Ashling (something like that,) ball, ba ba, and not much more. She signs, more, please, eat, drink, and sleep (yes this is my favorite one.) She walks and runs all over the house and has an obsession with her shoes (her aunt Melissa would be so proud.

Today Annika went to the doctor and she has an ear infection. That explains the 4 hours of missed sleep we experienced last night. I am glad for an explanation this time. The doctor was wonderful. He always is but he out did himself this time. Instead of rushing in to diagnose what I am sure was his 6th ear infection of the day he walked in slowly and said hi. He took his time to get to know her before he touched her and he got her to laugh as he examined her. She smiled and considered herself lucky to go to the doctor today especially when he gave her a sucker.

I then went to Stater Brothers to pick up my prescription. After I dropped it off I walked around the store and bought things I needed. I helped myself to some delicious cookies in the bakery and then went to pick up the prescription. Imagine my surprise when I found out that my antibiotic was free! FREE! I have never actually been to the store and been given something I needed for free. At least not without a coupon. When I asked who paid for it they said Jack Brown and so I am saying thank you to Stater Brothers and Jack Brown.

Beach Get-a-way

hFor President's Day weekend we decided it was going to be too crowded at the ski resorrt. And the weather was supposed to be wonderful down the hill. We decided to leave our beloved mountians for another favorite destination... the beach.

After posting on Facebook that I was going to go to the beach... one of my friends on facebook offered up their house to us for the weekend. They live in Oxnard by the beach. I had never been there and wasn't sure what was there but after googling it I was hooked. We took her up on her offer and packed to stay over night in Oxnard.

They have four kids and everything that we needed. We got there around 11:00 am. The girls were excited to play on the trampoline first thing.

We ate lunch and then headed up the coast to Carpinteria where there were tide pools.

We got there right as the tide was heading out. We enjoyed looking through the rocks to see what we could find.

Ali found a rather large shell right off and it only predicted better things to come.

The only problem with this beach was that there was tar everywhere. It oosed out of the ground. And caused things to get a little messy. Don't wear your best clothes.

After going to the beach and collecting tons of shells we headed out for a nice Valentine's Dinner. Cameron bought the girls sundays that were huge for desert. We then showered and settled in to watch the olympics on T.V. Ali was super excited about the olympics and it made it very fun to watch.

Sunday morning we had a nice breakfast and headed to the beach for a few hours. It was so warm. Annika liked the beach right away and enjoyed walking all over it.

The girls got in the water right away and enjoyed getting wet.

Pretty soon Cameron decided to take off Annika's clothes and let her really enjoy the waves.

Annika was not impressed when a big wave got her feet all cold and she yelled at the cold water.

Look who is walking...

She finally did it. Each day there was a little less crawling and a little more walking. Each day a little less falling... I would say that last Tuesday the 9th was the day she was officially walking. It was a little weird today to let her out of the shopping cart while browsing REI and have a little kid who ran every where. (Something I don't recommend is ever letting your child out of the cart! They never want to go back in. I didn't let her out... big sister helped with that.)

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Obsessions

Goals are pretty important. Annika and I both have goals that we are working on right now and it is amazing how similar we are with our goals.

Annika is learning to walk right now. It is all she wants to do. She is pretty good if she is wearing her nice soft shoes and not so good in her snow boots. She walks all around the house but she falls a lot too. She is not so sure about walking other places and tends to crawl a whole lot more. Her shins are full of bruises and she has a few other places too from all the work. Some day I will take a picture and you can see her walking. Cameron did get a nice video but I don't know how to put that on here....

I am trying to learn to parrallel ski this year. It is all I want to do. I wake up and think about the way I need to place my legs, the way my hands should be and that my knees should be bent. When I am running I think about how I would shift my weight if I were skiing. When I drive the car I think about the way I would turn if I were skiing. As I sleep I imagine skiing down a steep hill in pefect form. I think about it a lot and wish I could be out there practicing what I learned. I took a lesson which helped a lot and now I just need to practice a lot. I have never wanted to learn how to do something so bad and for it to be so hard for me to learn. I have never wanted to do anything so bad as I want to ski right now. It isn't just that it is fun but the goal is much more important. I want to ski with ease down whatever hill I come to and I want to look good doing it too. My thighs are soar and I have bruises on my shins and still all I want to do is perfect that skill.