Mid Week Updates

This past weekend was pretty busy. We had some friends, Tony and Tara visiting from out of town, here for GDC and scoping out the area in hopes to maybe move here. We met them in the afternoon and went to a cool SciFi bookstore called Dark Carnival. After we went to down town Berkeley, walked around checked out a comic book store and got some Gelato.



Later we met some mutual friends. Mike, Diana, and little Otter over at our house and we had dinner in. Joel loves to cook for friends and it is so fun to have people over for dinner. Especially when they have a baby for Holly to play with! Earlier in the day Holly and I went shopping at Costco to get some dinner supplies. I found some fresh salmon for 12$ and it was enough to feed 6 people, large portions (normally in a restaurant for 12$ each) Joel had just read in his Cook's Illustrated magazine some tips on how to keep it from sticking to the grill, and it worked like a charm. Everyone loved it. He also made some potatoes and asparagus from our veggie box and threw on some chick for me and a few Garlic Chicken Sausages for everyone to snack on.



I love Costco, when you can buy in bulk for some things you get amazing prices, and while for just the two of us, it would have been a waist, for a small gathering it was perfect. We also get fresh chicken breasts in bulk there and Joel will prepare some dinners and freeze them, for easy access later in the week. I also picked up some wine, which was a good deal and everyone enjoyed that. Holly and Otter hung out for a bit. He is only 4 months old, but a hit of the visit was getting to weigh him on our scale. He was hear about 3 weeks ago and gained 1.5 lbs topping out at 16.5 lbs, only 2.5 lbs lighter then Holly and she is a year old. He liked hanging in her little nest, and we tried him in the little red chair which he liked last time, but with the added bulk of his cloth diaper, he is too big for it now.. Its amazing.On Sunday we ran some errands and cleaned the house and rested from the week.




Monday was crazy busy. Holly had Therapy in the morning with Katie, it had been almost 2 weeks since she had seen her do to some reschedules and illness. This session was to be video taped for her to share with her colleagues and it was fun to work the camera and watch them play.After that Paige and Amy came over. Paige is 3. It was amazing having her. We joke about Holly leaving a path of destruction in her wake "Hollzilla" but Paige, in ten minutes did what it would take Holly an entire day to do. Every bag of blocks and toy was dumped out and she had a blast running from new item to new item checking everything out. It was certainly a glimpse into my future, and while slightly overwhelming, it was so fun.



She and Holly played remarkably well. Holly would follow her around as fast as she could like a little puppy wanting to play with and touch everything Paige was playing with. Paige has seen video's of Holly in the ball pit, and she wanted to try. I posted these on Wednesday but they don;t really do the experience justice. Paige would hide and bury herself under the balls and Holly would look for her. Then she would press her face when she found her, and then push her own face into the net and make a funny face at her. They did this over and over. Then Paige would dump out ball and Holly would hold them up for her to grab and Holly was laughing hysterically. She was having so much fun, I don;t think I have ever seen her laugh so much, she was utterly mesmerized by Paige and how much fun Paige was having in the ball pit.Eventually we had to wind things down, Paige had to go home for dinner with her Dad, Amy was a former co-worker of mine, so while we mostly talked mommy stuff i did get a few updates on my old job which was fun too. We certainly will be getting together again soon.



Then I was off to pick up daddy for the last day of our parenting workshop. Holly exhausted fell fast asleep in the car and slept the first 30 or so minutes of the workshop. Once she woke and we fed and changed her she was very cuddly. She likes to wake up slow and stay in my arms for awhile. But then of course Seth came and she just had to go and play with him. She was so well behaved. Now that she was pretty familiar with the space and had done the rounds she was happy to stay in the general vicinity of Mom and Dad and play with Seth and her toys.





Lots of the other parents had coffee cups and the little ones kept trying to get into them, so we gave them a cup of there own to play with, Seth was showing Holly how it works. They are just about the same age, I think Holly might be 1-2 weeks older. It is amazing watching two kids of the almost exact same age play together, the similarities and differences are so neat. At the end of the class when it was time to go, Seth gave Holly a hug. It was so sweet.



Well other then this Chaos, I decided that I would hang low on Tuesday I originally had a play date at a Bunny Farm and an Eye Doctor Appt scheduled, but the Dr. Called to Cancel, so I figured lets stay in and rest we can go see Bunnies another time, these play dates happen Monthly. It was a nice relaxing day which i spent most of it playing with Holly and reading a parenting book for my Playgroup / Book Club on Thursday. I will post more about that later.

Finally the weekend also had some sucky parts too. On Friday it seemed we may have forgotten to lock our car door, and when I went down to go shopping everything had been riffled through. I had about 20$ in change that was taken and sadly my GPS and cell phone charger were also missing. I was mostly mad that I lost all my addresses I had about 50 in there from all the stuff we had been doing, so it was annoying. It was hidden from view inside a compartment, so a passer by would not see it, I thought this would be good enough, even though Joel always tells me to bring it upstairs. But I guess with someone actually going through everything its not safe. Thank god though that my stroller, fast track, and Garage Door Opened were not taken, and nothing was missing from the garage. When I got to Costco I got a new GPS, so I am out 20$ Plus 169$ for the replacement, and a Pair of Sunglasses.

Sadly, however we are dumb, and the next night our other car got broken into. That is my "sports car" and the battery has been dead. When the grannies were visiting we had triple A jump it and i drove around for over an hour, then the next day they went to drive it and it was dead. We haven't even looked at it since, I haven't had time to deal with it. Well we aren't quite sure if it was too left unlocked, or if the person crawled in through the truck, which i can;t seem to lock when the battery is dead, but this time, it looks as if someone was "living" in my car. I heard noises about 1:00 Am and Joel had woken up, we looked out and saw something in the street that later we discovered were my floor maps. When he went to investigate and discovered it was torn up we called the cops. I made a report on both cars at this time. But inside we found a bag of leftover pizza, a sweat shirt and dress and shoes and even a wig. We don;t know if they had been there for several days or just that night, since we hadn't looked into the car for a few weeks, and the windows are tinted. I didn't have anything of value that I recall in there, so nothing seemed to be missing.

The next morning Joel cleaned all the stuff out. Then tonight, we were shocked when a woman knocked on our door and admitted she was sleeping in the car and she was so sorry and please don;t call the cops on her but can she have her stuff back. Joel told her it was in bags in the trash and she could go and get it. He said she didn't even look like she was homeless, but was very skinny and tired looking. it made me so sad. and in all honesty, I don;t think this was related to the theft from the night before, but then again, I am a very trusting person. Crazy Isn't it!