March 2014

All the girls watching My Little Pony

We were so excited to have Travis, Stephanie, and their girls come visit us for several days at the beginning of the month.  We all went to the Monterey Aquarium and had so much fun looking at all the fish.  The next day, Lauren, Rachel, and Abigayle stayed with us while Travis and Stephanie headed up to San Fransisco for the day.  Anna was in heaven having so many girl cousins to play with!  The highlight was when our neighbor came over and invited us to come see the raccoon they had just caught.  The girls were really interested to watch it through the cage.  Unfortunately, the next day, Steve and I came down with a terrible stomach bug.  Trav and Steph were so nice and took Anna with them up to the JellyBelly factory.  Steve and I just hung out with Matthew and took turns sleeping.  Poor Steph had to make due with take-out instead of us all going to one of the nice restaurants.


Later in the month, the kids and I had just left for the gym when I got a call from my neighbor, Brenda.  She wanted to let me know that she had just seen a whole flock of wild turkeys just hop into our backyard.  I immediately turned around and headed home.  There they were!  A couple of toms and 7-9 hens.  They were scratching and pecking around the lawn.  The kids were thrilled!  I grabbed the camera and headed outside to get some shots.  It probably induced them to leave a little quicker.  I'm glad that we went home to see them, because they didn't come back before we moved, though we heard them gobbling in the distance several times.

Our two visits were the highlights of the month.  The only other things to happen were having refrigerator repairmen use our house like a revolving door.  They just couldn't seem to get the freezer working.  Thank heavens we had a stand alone freezer in the garage to pick up the slack.  We also looked at several houses in the area since the landlords decided to sell the Mira Bella house.  We decided to apply for one in San Martin, just a little south of where we were.  It's an older and smaller house, but it has a great backyard just waiting for a garden!

February 2014

February was an interesting month for us.  Anna and I started it out by making beeswax candles for Candlemas.  Anna made a heart candle for Valentine's day and a purple taper.  I made 4 small red candles to be used for Advent later.  It was a simple activity and Anna had a lot of fun.

A day later, though, I broke out in terrible, horrible, awful hives.  They were so bad!  I had them on my eyelids and the soles of my feet!  I ended up having to go on several medications plus get a steroid shot.  It took the rest of the month for them to completely disappear.  Steve was a trooper and took several days off of work to take care of the kids because all I could do was itch, take oatmeal baths, and be miserable.  Matthew was also a trooper.  Because of the steroid shot, I had to stop nursing him cold turkey that day.  Heavenly Father must have been helping him, because he hardly fussed at all to moving to a sippy cup.  The sister missionaries were great and came over to clean the house because I was so behind.  My visiting teacher also came and took my laundry home to do for me.  My doctor thinks I may be allergic to the antibiotic Flagyl because I had just finished a course when the hives came on.  Needless to say, there are no pictures from this period of time.

Matti Ihalmo & Steve

Steve & Sirpa Ihalmo

The last big thing in February was Steve's week long trip to Poland.  Google flew him and his team out there to meet with the rest of his group to have some team-building time.  On the way, he stopped in Finland to visit some friends, the Ihalmos.  Unfortunately, his layover in Frankfurt turned into a nightmare.  When he arrived, the security people were having a strike so although he got in, he couldn't get out.  His 3 hour layover turned into a 36 hour one.  When he finally did get to Finland, the airline had lost his luggage!  Luckily, Matti Ihalmo had a suit that fit Steve for church.


The rest of the time was spent in Poland at a resort outside of Krakow.  I'll put labels on the pictures so you know what you're looking at.