Jinxyisms

We’ve been in California for about 2 1/2 months and it has been so nice.  Yes some days the weather is too hot but the mornings and evenings cool off nicely.  Other then the heat (and a little too much traffic) things are great and one our favorite things is spending time outside in my Father-in-law’s wonderfully taken care of yard.

Snacks outside are the best

Lily and Grandma Rita

Sparkly eyes

I want to go in there

Hello

Happy girl

Cloth diapers FTW

These next few are some of my favorites of all times

Deep in thought

Oh Hi

I just love that smile

Trying to pick peaches (taken with my new phone)

Kitty approves too

We spent last Saturday and Sunday morning in the adorable little coastal town of Cambria.  I love it, I want to marry it and move there.  Or just move there so Waldo can come too.  We were there for Waldo’s cousin’s baby shower so just about all of Waldo’s family was there too.  We all had a good time and we got some great pictures.

Lily played with two of her little cousins, well she played near them and talked to them in some unknown language two or three times.

We're at the baby shower.

We went to the beach.  It was Lily’s first time.  It was magnificent.  And it was a little painful.  The beach has a lot of rocks on it and they killed my feet, but one look at the water splashing on the bigger rocks make up for it.

Lily didn’t hate the beach but she wasn’t sure what to do with it.  Maybe next time we go it will be warm enough to swim in, that might make her realize how fun it is.

Lily's first time at the ocean

I'm trying to explain why the ocean is so amazing. I think I failed to get my point across.

After we got tired of trying to impress Lily we went to the little play area.

Lily got to swing for the first time since her real first time last year and she was loved it.

"Oh this isn't too bad"

"Oh my, I'm going so fast, this is pretty darn cool"

"I LOVEEEEEEeee this"

Do you see the ocean through the fence. The playground is at the top of the beach.

We took her down the slide and then I had the crazy idea to see if she wanted to go into the tunnel that connect the two sides of the play thingy.  I was a little worried that she wouldn’t like it but she loved it.  She was a little sad when we wanted to go back to the swings.  But once she was swinging she didn’t care anymore.  Swinging is good stuff.

Bean, Lily Bean.

She loves these tunnels.

I think the best part of the whole trip was sitting up late into the night with Waldo’s brother, sister and their families.  Hanging out with our families and getting to know them is one of the biggest Pro on the list so it was really nice to really be experiencing it.

Lily's very first time on the swings. She was 8 months old.

My world is a little upside down and I am loving it.

I moved from my Dad’s house in Central California to Northwest Montana almost 14 years ago. I was “in love” and I had always hated my hometown so when I was asked to move to Montana by my then boyfriend I jumped at the chance. I grew up in the same town as almost all of my family and I was pretty close with most of them. We had holiday traditions and parties and someone to pick you up when you needed a ride; all that stuff that makes family so important and special. This same closeness can seem suffocating sometimes too. I was 20 years old and living on my own sounded good.

I loved Montana. I made a life there. I had some really great friends and knew all the good stores. I loved the mountains and trees. I loved looking at the snow, but I really hated being out in it. I knew how to drive in the snow like it was no big thing. When people asked me if I’d ever move back I told them that I’d never move back to California. Montana had cold winters but the summers are pretty darn nice. California is too hot. California has smog and graffiti. Montana has clean skies and walls (mostly).

A cute alley that was part of our almost nightly walk.

A street on our walking route.

After Lily was born I had moments of sadness that she wasn’t going to grow up knowing her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins like I had but still didn’t want to go back to Cali for all the reasons I just listed and many more.

Then on May 1, 2010 we got some news from a family member that made us think long and hard about life. I believe the conversation went sort of like this**:

Waldo:  So this stuff is happening.

Me: Well, that’s something.  It’s at times like this that I hate being so far away.

W:…

M: !!!

W:???

M:…

A few days later

W: So…

M: Well I guess we’re moving back.

During the few days that it took for us to vocalize our decision we made a couple of pro/con lists and it was just about all that we talked about.  The only pro/con list that got written down was made that first day.  At the top of the pro side was FAMILY.  The pro side also had things like going to the zoo on it.  The con side was pretty short and lost out no  matter what because “family” was hard to beet now that we had Lily.

We had already been planning to drive to Cali for a vacation in mid June so we already had the money for the move put away.  Our lease was to renew in June so I was able to put in almost a full 30 day notice.  We both work for the same company and really didn’t look forward to getting new jobs.  We figured Waldo would be able to find something in the web development field just about anywhere as long as people were hiring.  But we doubted we’d be able to find me something comparable; I work a couple of hours a day from home for a good hourly wage on my own schedule, you can’t beat it. Since we both work at computers all day Waldo asked our boss if we could keep our jobs, we didn’t expect them to say yes but we figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. When Waldo’s text came through that they were going to let us keep our jobs I’m pretty sure I had to physically lift my jaw off the floor and then did a few happy-excited screams. Everything fell into place so easily it was like the move was meant to be (if you believe in that kind of stuff, and I do).

On May 24th our friends helped us load the U-haul with the last of our belongings and we left Montana.

All of our stuff.

We took 4 days to drive and it wasn’t too bad. Lily hates being in the car or her seat or not being held or all of it. We bought Lily a few new toys, I made her some snacks and we had some videos for her, this was our strategy for the drive. She played with the toys a little, ate some of the snacks, watched a few minutes of video (she doesn’t really watch tv and we packed the cord so we couldn’t recharge the netbook oops), but all she really wanted was to be held and nurse. Obviously we didn’t taker her out of her seat but her seat was facing the back so it was pretty easy for me to nurse her so we did that a lot. Luckily we didn’t get a tick for me not wearing a seatbelt and I’m pretty sure I didn’t flash anyone. We had all three of our cats in carriers (well one was in a cardboard box but that’s not important) in the car which we were towing. Thankfully we couldn’t hear them because two of the three hate being in cars and yell the whole time. We had to find motels that allowed pets and that was a little pain but doable. We were very glad to get to Waldo’s parents house.

At a reststop outside Dillon MT

Do you see the little foot?

To be continued…

**I guess I have blocked out that first conversation because I have no earthly idea who brought up moving back or how the whole thing really went. This was my best guess.

My daughter’s crazy laugh

Waking up smashed between Waldo and Lily

Cooking dinner together with Waldo with Lily on my back while we talk about our days

Our family shopping every Saturday

Watching Lily learn new things

Today I am 34 years old.  In those years I have been a daughter, sister, aunt, friend, wife, mother and so much more.

Here’s a snippet of our daily life.

Waldo was hanging out with Lily when I went to do the dishes. I walked into the living room to ask a question and found the two of them in front of Waldo’s computer getting ready to watch Yo Gabba Gabba. Waldo wanted to see what Lil would think of the bright colors and what not. Apparently the real person host was singing a bubble song and blowing bubbles. Waldo asked me to grab the bubble solution from the other room. As the host blew bubbles so did I. It was interactive tv to the max.

December has come and gone and with it so has Lily’s first birthday (a separate post to come) and Christmas. These events have brought up a lot of emotion and some questions. Mainly about Santa and weather or not we are going to tell Lily that Santa is a real magical guy or something else. This is something that Waldo and I have talked about since before Lily was born. Waldo remembers his brother breaking the news to him that Santa isn’t real (sorry to burst anyone’s bubbles) when he was about 4 years old and I don’t actually remember believing in Santa ever really. I don’t think that our non-belief in Santa hindered either of us in our childhoods and then there’s the whole issue of lying to Lily which I just don’t really want to do. It’s funny we know that we will just tell Lily the truth about my Mom being a lesbian. It wasn’t a decision that we had to make, we just knew that we wouldn’t lie or try to skirt the subject, like some people we know. So then why is this whole Santa thing harder for us? The only decision that I have come to about Santa is Lily looked really cute being held by him in front of our tree this year.

********

Since Lily’s birthday is three days before Christmas I was having a hard time deciding if I wanted to send out Christmas cards or first birthday photo cards. Then my friend Starr (Gramma Starr) gave Lily a beautiful princess Christmas dress so Christmas cards it was. One weekend we went and bought a Christmas tree and wreath fixings and rented a Santa suit (more on that in a second) and set up a whole scene in our kitchen and went to work. I took like 294 pictures over the course of the weekend. I’m no professional and all I have is a couple year old Sony point and shoot but I was pretty pleased with a lot of the pictures. Lily was a champ and posed for hours.

This is one of my favorites

This was Lily first taste of sugar, it happened totally by accident. We gave her the candy cane thinking that the thin wrapper would keep her clean. We didn’t take into account how sharp her teeth are.

The scene we created on our kitchen table

A couple weeks before our Christmas photo shoot I was telling Waldo that we were going to have to brave the mall one day soon to get Lily’s picture with Santa. He laughed and said that there was no way that Lily would let Santa hold her so (totally jokingly) just rent a suit and I’ll play Santa. He didn’t expect me to run with it. I showed him. I asked on facebook if anyone in our area knew where I could rent a Santa suit and was told to call the local costume rental place. For $25 we got the suit for 24 hours. It was money well spent. We had planned on taking some funny Santa pictures like Santa with his head in the oven but ran out of time.

When we were taking pictures I thought it would be great to do a picture with Lily standing up holding Santa’s hands. Waldo just put the jacket and the gloves on and for some reason it freaked Lily out big time. I was really surprised because she could still see her Daddy’s face.

The next day Waldo let Lily play with the jacket and wig for like two hours before he put them on and then she watched him as he got dressed. She was much more comfortable with Santa this time.

We tried taking some pictures in front of the tree as a family but we had lost all daylight by then so I wasn’t happy with any of the pictures.

*******

Christmas was a nice quiet event at our house this year. We woke up and opened our gifts and then Jack came over for a while. I made dinner for everyone and that was our day. We didn’t very many pictures somehow.

This little car was a birthday gift

It’s funny to remember that Christmas day 2008 we were bringing our 3 day old baby girl home from the hospital. Crazy what a difference 365 days makes.

**edited to add: It was the Christmas pictures that I was hinting at here.

Lily looked so cute in her little Dalmatian outfit. She wasn’t too sure of it at first but got more comfortable with it over time.

Since Lily is so little and we don’t need the candy we only took her to our next door neighbors house so we could get some pictures, then it was home so we could give away a little candy.

I took a bunch of pictures (of course) while we waited for the trick or treaters.

She really had fun playing with the candy but she didn’t get to eat any.

We only ended up with a couple of trick or treaters, this picture was taken right after the first ones left.

Our Halloween self portrait

Our Halloween got started with a bang or a bell really, the door bell. The very nice police officer had to ring our door bell probably 20 times before he woke us up at about 3 am today. He wanted to let us know that a not so nice drunk guy had plowed into Waldo’s truck which was minding its own business parked safely in front of our house. He also wanted me to know that Waldo’s truck then crunched my Honda’s rear end. This is how all great days start right?

I got dressed and went outside with the cops while Waldo cuddled Lily and kept her calm. She wasn’t thrilled to be awake so early, I will have to remind her of this next time she decides to play in the middle of the night.

I took pictures outside in the dark rainy street and was so glad I did. Both because now I can blog about it and show you all and because I had no idea how bad it really was till I edited these pictures this morning.

By the time I got outside the drunk guy was either already taken away or in the back of a squad car because I never saw him and I don’t recognize the car as one from my neighborhood so I asked the cop if he lived around here and he said he didn’t know. He must have been going pretty fast because Waldo’s truck ended up with the front right tire on the curb and my car was like 5 feet further forward then where I parked it.

This morning we found out this wonderful human being is uninsured. We thankfully have full-coverage insurance because it’s a good thing they are financed. Waldo is on his way to pick up a rental car. We’ll find out Monday or Tuesday if they are repairable. Man I really hate this guy.

Happy Halloween everyone!!

My  Dad keeps asking for pictures of the area where we live.  I figured rather then just send them to him I’d share the beauty with everyone.  These are pictures of my direct neighborhood, I’m still working on a post with the second half of my in-laws visit which will have a lot more pictures of the surrounding area.

I took most of these pictures one evening when we went for a walk.

The front of our house when we first moved in

Looking north on the sidewalk in front of our house

Looking south on the sidewalk in front of our house

A couple blocks over

Our backyard

A neighbors tree

Of course there is a lot more to our town, but these are my current favorite parts.