Phone Talk & Friends

Carsten loves the phone. We've given him several old phones to try to keep him from taking our working phones. He's even called 911 successfully.

Also, a cute picture of Bradlee & friends just before the Elvis concert in the park last night. She made me stay up late to pick her up.

First Day of School

We had three different first days of school, or actually four because Micah changed schools after 2 days. Micah started the year first at Camarillo Heights. At the end of the week I decided to stick her in the lottery for CAPE, just because. I knew there weren't any openings and didn't think there would be any. A couple hours later we got a surprise call -- there was a new opening, could she start Monday? We said yes and talked about it all weekend and decided to go ahead. I think Micah likes her new class, but misses her friends at Cam Hts. So now I am the bus for two girls and three boys to CAPE everyday.

High School didn't start for another week, but Bradlee had already been going to band camp for two weeks so it seemed like she had already been going forever. At least I got pictures of everyone this year.

Ventura County Fair Parade

Bradlee is in Rio Mesa HS colorguard. This was their first parade this year. I think they looked pretty good. Right after this I went and bought a new video camera so I don't have to take bad video with my camera anymore. Yea!!! I have a really cranky 1 year old crying at me right now also. Not fun.

Bradlee is the middle of the back row.

Baby is One

Happy Birthday Carsten.

We've made it one year. Its been fun, and hard. I think the next year will be more fun and less hard. You are walking, getting into everything, smiling at everyone, laughing at Micah, tearing apart notebooks, eating a lot, sleeping almost through the night, wearing big boy clothes and loving all of us. We love you Carsten!

Carsten had his one year checkup and got 2 shots and 2 pokes. He is 31 inches tall and 25 pounds. That's a wriggly sack of flour.

Summer Time

Wow, summer has been going quickly. We went to Utah for a week and a half and then came home and Ava & Micah went to Creative Arts for another two weeks. Now we are just home all day. I try to give the girls a chore to do everyday, but some days we are just lazy and don't do anything. Everyone is reading a lot. Avarie has read the Twilight & Eragon books probably 5 times each, Micah is reading a lot of Redwall & Bradlee is working her way through Harry Potter again.

Major Sunburn

Hi it's Micah this time. I went kayaking with Bradlee and her friends last Tuesday in the Ventura keys.  One of the teachers at my School, her name is Mrs. Friday, she let us borrow her kayaks.  We went Kayaking for a while.  It was only four people.  When we were done we went to the beach.  I dug a hole about 2 1/2 feet deep, maybe 3.  So at the beach there were thousands of sand crabs all over in the sand.  The hole was originally going to be a sand castle but the tide kept coming and washing it away so I made a huge around it and then I made a huge pit just in case the wall gave away, but the sand kept collapsing around the pit so I kept digging it out and the castle became a hole.  My mom brought us In-&-Out for lunch.  When we got home we discovered that I had a huge sunburn on my back.  I didn't put any sun screen on my back.  So now there is a pretty big circle in the middle of my back and a stripe on the top.  I put aloe vera on it four times now.  And I sprayed sun burn spray on it.  

What's Up

Dang, its been a long time since I posted. Here's some pictures.

Look, they have the same eyes.

In one month Carsten has gone from kind of crawling to climbing up on everything. He doesn't cruise much but he gets into enough trouble anyway.

Everyone is done with school. Avarie skipped her last day because girls camp started. So she and Bradlee are gone to that this week. I bought us all Hurricane Harbor passes for my birthday so Micah & I & a friend went yesterday without the big kids. It was fun.

Water Works

This letter came in the mail a couple of months ago:

From Pleasant Valley Mutual Water Company
To Shareholders/owners of properties having more than one dwelling

"Please be informed the Directors of the Pleasant Valley Mutual Water Company has adopted a policy requiring every dwelling in its service area to have its own water meter. ... equitably distribute the costs... New services and meters will be installed at Company expense [yea!], it will be the responsibility of the owner to connect the dwelling to the new meter [WHAT???]. blah, blah, etc. Very truly yours, "

I've been in denial for a couple of months about what this means. Then today crews came by and started cutting holes in the street in front of my house. So the time for denial is over. What I think this means is that I have to connect two water meters to the duplex behind out house - 300 feet from the road, through our front yard, through our side yard, through our back yard, through the duplex parking and finally to the duplex, which as of now only has connections for one water inlet.

Any idea how much this is going to cost??? Me neither.

Thanks water company. Wouldn't it be easier just to tack a monthly charge onto the bill for extra residences.

(by the way, if you have a rental on your property that shares your mail box and other utilities I'm guessing this won't apply. Unfortunately the duplex already has its own electric & gas meters and their own mailbox numbers.)














Am I going to have to move my fence also so that 2 more meters will fit?

One Nap

I think the baby is only going to have one nap today. He's been steadily shortening his 2 naps from 3 hours down to 1 1/2 each. Its still nice to have 2 though. Last night he slept from 7 to 7 (with a feeding at 3am) and then he didn't take a nap until 11. He's usually done with his first around then. He's still asleep at 2:15 tho so not too bad. I don't mind feeding him during the night if it means he'll sleep longer, but he's gone all night quite a few times without waking up, so I know he can do it. He has until his first birthday to shape up! JK.

We are so ready for school to be over. I talked to Sharon today and her kids are done next Thursday. I'd go for that. We have a month left.

Marjorie, if you see this I sent you some books. Sorry about the chicken book, but it cracked me up.

Does anyone have fun plans for summer?

Bear Hunt

I've been downloading all my video camera tapes to try to get caught up. Remember this one from July 2002.

OK, I was going to make it private, but its too much of a pain, so the whole world gets to watch it... if they can find it.

New Post

I was going to post about how I was trying to decide whether to replace our old van with a new one. The old is a 1997 Chrysler Town & Country with 140,000 miles and no A/C -- which is the biggest reason it needs to go. The repair bill for the A/C will be at least $1,700, and it needs another $1000 in other stuff.

We've lived the last two years without A/C by tucking into a smaller car for vacation. But that is no longer an option. The girls all grew a foot taller last year, and we added a baby to the mix -- so no possible way to travel without a large car.

Then I was trying to decide if we wanted to get a new car or another used car. We've always bought used and I know it's recommended by all the stay-out-of-debt gurus. We bought our last van with 40,000 miles on it and its done OK. Unfortunately, it was a Town & Country and needed lots of expensive repairs. We've spent over $9000 in repairs in the last 8 years. and that was with a warranty that covered some of the early repairs.

So, anyway, I took Avarie over to look at my dream car -- the Odyssey. OK, my dream car would not be a mini van, but you get the idea. Of course the price was way more than we were looking to spend, but guess what? We ended up with one anyway. It was new, It was shiny, It had A/C!!! It has a little hole to plug in your ipod. (no, we didn't get the one with the DVD & GPS and leather -- I'm not that crazy)

So come see it. It's sooo pretty.

Other news: Micah sang with CineMagic at the Celtic fair this morning. Their number was so cute. (not cute like my new car, cute like a gaggle of little girls.)

I found a really funny book at Borders last night. I'm going to order a couple of copies to share.

Carsten is also cute and getting huge. Prunes really took care of his problem. (prune juice didn't work.)

Well my 15 minutes is up. Or Carsten won't be so cute. bye, debbie

Avarie's New Look

This is Avarie's old look. She had a lazy eye when she was little so she patched her good eye from when she was about 3 yrs old until she was around 7. Her eye sight was eventually 20/20 which is why I didn't worry too much about taking her to her annual eye appointment.



















This is Avarie's New look. I was surprised to find out that her eyesight is TERRIBLE. She never complained and when I asked her if it was ok to wait 2 months for her next appointment she said fine. I didn't need to drive her to Ventura for a quicker appointment. I was in the exam with her when she was asked to read the letters on the wall. She kept moving to the bigger and bigger lines and still couldn't really see them.



Needless to day, she now has glasses.

On the way home from picking up her new glasss she kept pointing out all the things she could NOW see. Like the STOP sign (?!!!) and the names on buildings. I didn't know she couldn't see any of it.

Things should be a bit clearer for her now. And she looks CUTE!

CineMagic Pictures

I've got pictures of CineMagic, I've got movies too. Someday you may see them. But until I get around to posting them you can see pictures of everyone taken by my good friend Debbie here:

See pictures of CineMagic Here

I also have pictures of birthdays. Since Birthdays and CineMagic were the same week we just had birthday breakfast before school and then Kevin took the girls shopping on their birthdays. Grandpa is also taking them shopping. Lots of Nintendo DS items have been purchased. I think birthdays are done. Except Bradlee has one coming in 2 weeks.