Moments of 2008

I started out 2008 buried in classwork for my 30 graduate units. Luckily I had a dedicated assistant!

J, B, and S. came to visit for a week in January. Here they are in Union Station on the way to Universal Studios.

During their visit, my aunt and uncle D. and S. came to town, along with my cousins! We enjoyed having family over to our place.

For Valentine's Day, we went to see the seals and their pups in Carpenteria and then to the Santa Barbara Zoo.

I made my students these cute cell phone valentines I saw in a magazine. They turned out great!


Two girls with Vday hair!

In February, Gretchen came for a long overdue girly weekend. Here we are cooking up a storm!

In March, we got a new dining room table off Craigslist and Luna really had fun getting acquainted with it.

Kristin came to visit in April! Here we are in Santa Barbara.

My parents visited in April, too. Here we are with her college roommate and her family in LA.

In May, we repainted the third bedroom, changing it from butter yellow to lavender.

Our parents housesat for us while we went to Italy (my pics were separate for Italy so none are here). We enjoyed visiting with them and my cousins D. and S. after their CA road trip.

On Sept. 27, D's parents' anniversary, we attended our friends' wedding and also found out we were expecting!

Vazquez Rocks

We went to Vazquez Rocks park today for a little diversion. It was so beautiful and bright (though windy!) We brought a picnic and D. went all the way up to the top. Baby and I stayed at a more sensible altitude! Lots of things have been filmed here, including:
Star Trek
Planet of the Apes
LIttle Miss Sunshine
Austin Powers
Flintstone
Power Rangers
Short Circuit
Blazing Saddles
TV-Maverick,24,Buck Rogers, Star Trek,Wild Wild West, Macgyver,Big Valley, Cisco Kid, Rin Tin Tin,Bionic Woman and many more!
The formations are part of the San Andreas fault and are located about 12 miles from us. So, for anyone planning a visit, we'll be sure to take you here!

Christmas Day visions

17 weeks and counting...

Cat and Dog on Treadmill

thought this was too cute! hmmm...

Christmas Eve

It's been a lovely quiet day here at home. Luna is snoozing beside me with her head all curled up cute. I am watching General Hospital! I see it about twice a year, and I just can't get over how quick you can jump back into the characters and storyline. It seems like I've known many of the characters my whole life! The Quartermaines, Felicia, Bobbie, Luke...it's fun to go into their world bi-annually for just a bit. I worked on knitting a scarf today, finished writing thank yous to my students, sent a few online gifts, and had a surprise holiday visit from our realtor, who sweetly remembers us and stops by even a year and a half after moving in! Love it! D. had a half-day at work and decided to stop at Whole Foods on the way home since we are expecting a winter storm this afternoon/evening. We are having cinnamon rolls Christmas morning, and pot roast with carrots and potatoes for Christmas dinner. Little one is hanging out, shooting me adorable little bubble "kicks" every couple of hours. I've been having fun surfing the internet too. Here is just a sampling of the topics I've searched today:

1. Vail, Colorado rental homes (just for fun-no ski trips planned in the immediate future)
2. modern nursery photos (flickr has a nice set) for baby room ideas (check out my friends' adorable nursery at www.hijackd.blogspot.com)
3. wine cabinets
4. cat vaccinations
5. virtual tour of our labor and delivery unit (go to www.kp.org/ob/scal and click panorama city)
6. blogsurfing (including some of the 900+ virtual Christmas decorations tours at www.boomama.net from Dec. 15)
7. penguin thematic materials (I am teaching winter intersession to 2nd grade at my school Jan. 5-9 and we will be reading Mr. Popper's Penguins!)

Wishing everyone a happy holiday-love and quiet hugs from our chilly California valley!

A Day off

Derek stayed home from work this morning since we had a dr. appt. at 11:20. He spent the morning baking chewy chocolate cookies, a new recipe from Cooks Illustrated magazine. They turned out delicious! We each had one at 10:30, before leaving for the appt. Today we got to see a Certified Nurse Midwife for our 16 week appt. She was wonderful. She waited patiently as I made my way through my list of questions and we listened to the heartbeat. After the appt. I got a flu shot and some labwork before going over to Homegoods for some last minute Christmas shopping. I came home at 2:00 and had an absolutely delicious lunch! Yesterday I was craving egg salad with lettuce and tomato big time so I had stopped at Von's to pick up eggs, mayo, celery, lettuce, and tomatoes. I made a big batch of egg salad yesterday and had a big sloppy sandwich on an Asiago cheese bagel with bread and butter pickles and cucumber slices on the side yesterday. Today was a repeat performance, but I learned that the bagel sandwich worked better as an open face sandwich, plus that way you get double the lettuce and tomatoes! I had celery sticks on the side with a big glass of milk and one of D's cookies for dessert. Needless to say, I am stuffed and ready for a little snooze!

weekend fun

D. and I enjoyed going to dinner at Saketini in Brentwood Saturday night with A. and J. Fun was had by all!

digital dependency

we had rainstorms yesterday and nearby areas received lots of snow. As one result, our digital cable and internet was out all evening. I hadn't realized how dependent I had become on both...at the same time. So I napped, finished a book I had on the nightstand for several months, wrapped a few gifts, and realized I need to finish shopping AND HOW! D. baked cookies and got a little neck massage since there was nothing to distract me. Lesson learned: turn off the computer and TV after work. We plan to pick one hour for each and that's it. I hadn't realized how much time I spent surfing and facebooking. aacck!

weekend fun

D's holiday office dinner party was really fun; great to see all the people I don't get to see every day like he does and fun because they all knew our news but hadn't seen me yet! Today we went to lunch at Noah's bagels, picked up a half dozen for tomorrow at home, and stopped by World Market for a shopping preview. Then we drove through a new section of town we hadn't really realized was there, a neighborhood known as Happy Valley. Lovely place with old sprawling homes from the '60's as well as some newer construction and best of all - old big trees and land! big yards and space between homes. We really enjoyed the area.

whew-what a week!

Daisy meeting Tuesday-check
Daisy Investiture ceremony Wednesday-check
Daisy leader's meeting Thursday-check


D's work holiday party Friday- 24 hours to go!

A busy Monday

It feels wintry here today; cold and gray. Here is a taste of my day:

taught kinder from 8-3; we tasted gingerbread men cookies and brainstormed describing words about them. Here is a selection of what my kidlets came up with:

sweet
hard
sugary
tasty
delicious
brown

Each student started by taking one bite and putting the cookie down. Then I gave them a paper gingerbread man and they had to cut off the part they bit, either the head, the arm, or the leg. Then we made a pictograph of the parts bitten. 12 kids bit off the head, 3 an arm, and 3 a leg! We also learned about the letter C and made paper mitten wreaths today. At 3:30 I:

headed to the grocery store for supplies to make the Daisy cupcakes for our Investiture ceremony on Wednesday. Here is what I bought:

organic milk
3 thick and creamy yoplait yogurts
french bread pizza (deluxe)
cake mix
frosting
cupcake liners
2 frozen lunches (butternut squash ravioli and vegetarian masala)
food coloring (to make yellow center of daisy cake)

Then I stopped at the floral department and a florist shop searching for fresh Daisies to buy on Wednesday since we want to give each girl a real daisy with her pin at the ceremony. Found daisy mums at Bloomie's for $2.50 a bunch (3-5 blooms on a bunch) yay!

Next I stopped at the Union Bank branch to set up an appointment to open the non-profit fee-free checking account for the Daisy troop. Four of us need to go at once, so it took a bit of coordination. I haven't been inside a bank in a while. (our credit union is in Florida!) They had a weapon check entrance where you walk in one at a time and the interior door doesn't open til the outside door has shut. weird/wild!

Finally I got home, turned on our cheery garage Christmas lights (that D. put up on Saturday!), and came in to greet the Lu. I made a snack of a grilled cheese, tomato soup, and milk which I haven't had in ages! Now it's time to watch a netflix movie before D. gets home. Hope you had a productive Monday too!

Back in action!

whew- it's been over three weeks since my last post but with good reason! I was merely waiting out the last bit of my first trimester before announcing right here at casitaluna that WE ARE EXPECTING!

Yes, it's true! I know the rumors have been flying (or not) but the fact is, I am 14 weeks along in my first pregnancy and our little one is expected the first week of June, 2009!

I will continue posting here but if you are interested in more pregnancy/baby related posts, please email me a request since I will be setting up a password protected baby blog in the next month or so.

P.S. I always wondered which celebs I would "be pregnant with" so, without further ado, here are some ladies also expecting in May or June:

Kerri Walsh, olympic beach volleyball medalist

Anne Heche, actress (Men in Trees, and yes the daddy is her hunky Men in Trees co-star, James Tupper)

Kelly Rutherford, actress (Melrose Place, Gossip Girl)

Alyson Hannigan (the "one time, at band camp" girl and also from the tv show, How I met your Mother)

Kimberly Williams-Paisley (actress, the daughter from Steve Martin's movie Father of the Bride and married to country star Brad Paisley)