Huell Howser comes to Templeton

Tyler saw Huell Howser go to this place called Jack Creek Farms. It's only about 30 minutes north of us, so we decided to check it out. Here's me, priming the pump. You weren't supposed to drink the water though, because it had goldfish in it.

Hat and bandanna: mandatory for roping.

We were sort of disappointed by the complete lack of farminess. No cows or chickens. They had some goats, but that was it. I asked Tyler what else Huell did when he was there, and he said, "I don't know, they brought out some onions for him to see." You know Huell, even onions are exciting.

Zucchini Pizza Casserole

Tonight for dinner, we ate something really yummy, so I thought I'd share it with you. Also we needed to use up some produce from our garden, and maybe you have that problem too.

Ingredients:
3 cups grated zucchini
3 eggs, well beaten
1/2 c flour
pinch salt
2 1/2 c shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 c black olives
1/2 c chopped onion
1/2 c chopped Italian pickled peppers (I used marinated artichoke hearts)
Jalapeño pepper rings, if you're in to that sort of thing
1 T fresh oregano or 1 t dried
1 1/2 t fresh basil or 1/2 t dried
3 to 4 tomatoes, thinly sliced
salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:
Generously grease a 13X9 casserole dish. Preheat oven to 450. If your zucchini is soggy after grating, press into colander to remove excess liquid. (mine was not soggy) Put zucchini in a mixing bowl. Add well-beaten eggs, flour, and salt. Mix well and spread in greased pan. Bake at 450 for 8 minutes. Remove pan and reduce oven temp to 350. Cover the zucchini base with cheese. Spread olives, onion, and chopped peppers over cheese. Arrange jalapeño rings (again, I did not use these) over top. Sprinkle with herbs. Arrange tomatoes on top. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 350 uncovered for 20-25 minutes.

It says this feeds 4 to 6 people, but Tyler, Lillian, and I finished it off in one sitting. I bet you could use any kind of pizza topping you'd like: pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, whatever you need to use up in your refrigerator.

Enjoy.

We grow weary of naptime

Two weeks ago, Lillian was a stellar napper. I just put her in her crib, gave her a pacifier, made sure she had a spare, and walked away. No tears. No complaint. She would just lay down and go to sleep. Then I started back at school and Lillian went to day care. Miss Janelle says that she has no problems falling asleep during the day. So, yesterday it was getting time to take a nap, Lillian was making the droopy eyes and rubbing her face, so I put her in her crib (she started to cry), gave her a pacifier (she started to scream), made sure she had a spare (she stood up all red faced and angry and threw both pacifiers across the room in protest), and left the room (which equaled the end of the world). After much trial and error and about three hours, Lillian did take a nap yesterday.

Today, I thought I'd be smart and try to recreate the day care setting: there's always soft music playing in the background. So I made a playlist of sleepytime music and put it on the iPod with the portable speakers. She screamed, she cried. I wasn't going to get her up and drag it out like yesterday, so I was going to Ferber it. After 10 minutes, I sent Tyler in. She stopped crying, but Tyler never came out. The above picture is what I found when I peaked in to investigate.

A La Bam Bam

I had to pin her down to get her to hold still... but I think the results were well worth it.

Design competition

You may or may not remember Tyler's Senior design competition that sucked up every single ounce of free time he had for seven months, but I do. The design was not only for their class competition, but an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics or AIAA undergraduate design competition. Turns out, it was a Cal Poly SLO sweep with Tyler's team placing third. Our friend Brian's team placed first. Congratulations guys.
Here's a picture of us snowboarding/skiing with Brian and his wife Stephanie in Oregon this last Christmas break.

Tyler's cut of the $1000 prize: about $100 which, if you consider how many hours he put in, it works out to about 27 cents an hour.

It's a surprise ending.

East Cuesta Ridge Hike

Rafting on the American River

Earlier this summer, Tyler asked me if I wanted to go rafting. Sure, why not? Then, when it got closer to the time we picked, everything was falling apart. The people we invited couldn't go, the person we got to watch Lillian couldn't do it, and so on and so forth. I was being practical and suggested that we nix the trip, but Tyler would have nothing to do with it.


I had so much fun, I'm glad we made it work. And no one fell out this time.


Left to right Jen, Austin, Tyler, me, Claire, Blake, Noelle. Blake was our guide.

The box

The only reason I turned the light on on her bum is because I could see her face between her legs, but couldn't see it in the camera. Sorry about the extreme close up.

Balboa Dance

So, Tyler and I decided to take a lindy hop dance class this summer through the city parks and rec. The couple that teaches it decided to teach us this dance as well, which I had seen done, but never knew it had a name.



You only have to watch the first minute or so to get the gist. The dance is called Balboa and it's way trickier than it looks. Needless to say, Tyler and I have stomped on each other's feet more than once.

It is true, anything can be a toy

Peak-a-boo

Where's Lillian?

There she is!

Lillian's birthday

Lillian turned one on Monday. She says thank you for all the presents and cards. These pictures were taken after she opened the box that Amy and Mom sent.



A second before I took this picture, she was "talking" on her rice cake like it was a phone. But as soon as I went to take the picture, she threw the rice cake down and was just talking into her hand.


We did get pictures of her smashing a cupcake into her face, but those are locked (probably forever :) ) on Tyler's parent's camera as we forgot ours.


Tyler's sister Tonya gave us a whole bunch of toys that her kids have grown out of. Among them was this Wiggles guitar. Up side: Lillian loves it and will play with it for hours. Down side: I constantly hear the first three notes of "Play your guitar with Murray" over and over and over again. Play your Play Play Play your gui Play your Play your guitar Play your guitar Pla Pl Play Thanks Tonya!

Silly Face

Mom taught Lillian how to make this silly face when she was about 5 months old.

So tired

Lillian is such a ham. This picture doesn't quite capture it, but what she'll do is crawl for five feet, then lay down like she's going to go to sleep. Right after she lays down, she'll look over at you, to make sure you see that she's being cute. Really, she does it all day long. After she does anything: puts a piece of sandwich in her mouth, bangs her cup on the table, makes her toy play a song, throws a ball, stacks a ring. You name it, after she does it, she looks up and you and grins. And if you don't look back, she'll start whining or crying until you look and say, 'good job.'

My favorite holiday ever

I'm sorry, for some reason, my computer isn't letting me put these pictures in order. So they're a little jumbled.

I like the Archer slide show. It continues down at the bottom.





Yesterday, we went to visit Tyler's brother Jason and his fiance Megan in Huntington Beach. I felt like such a bad mother because I didn't bring a jacket for Lillian. It was so windy: my hair isn't in a rubber band, that's just the wind.


And, we're back to the picnic.





All the kids did relatively well with the fireworks. Lillian was more confused than scared, and Archer had his protective ear wear, which, I'm sorry to say, I don't have a picture of. But, it was great.

Thanks everyone for such a great holiday!

The skinny on Lillian's head

So, as most of you know, Lillian has an abnormally small head. On our pediatrician's advice, we went to a pediatric neurologist this morning. She said if someone had handed her Lillian's growth chart, she would have guessed that there was a 98% chance that she would have had mental delays or been mentally or physically handicapped. But, after looking at her, she says that in her opinion, she just has a small head.

So, we're supposed to keep our eye out for anything abnormal. But, as for now, she's as normal as they come: she crawls like a champ, can pull herself up to standing, has a good parachute reflex, gets into the kitchen drawers and cabinets and pulls out all the tupperware and bowls, she even says a few words (woah, bye-bye, thank you, and eye).

On a side note, the neurologist even measured my and Tyler's heads, and all those people who made fun of me for having a big head can just eat their words, because my head is 50th percentile! Tyler's head is a bit bigger, coming in the 60th percentile, so you can still make fun of him, I guess.

Antigen Matching

I just got a call from Johns Hopkins. I'm 2 out of 6 matching antigens. Whatever that means. She said the person with the closest to 6 out of 6 wins. Anyone else?

I think she likes it.

Beach Day

We're throwing a party for our friends who are graduating and/or moving away. We decided to have a corn feed at the beach, so we thought we'd go down and check out the scene, and see if Lillian was into it. She did OK.




I made her touch the water, and she hated it.

PS, I didn't know what a corn feed was until I moved to San Luis Obispo, so I don't know if that's a normal term or what, but basically, you cook the corn in the husk in sea water. It's really good.

Cottage Cheese

Apparently, I wasn't doing it fast enough with the spoon. She got so frustrated that she started grabbing it off the spoon and putting it in her mouth herself. So, we cut out the middle man.

The black hole

It's convenient to blame the recent black-hole quality our apartment has assumed on a certain little one with little hands that move things from one place to another. However, when said little one moves things, it's usually from the middle of one room, to the middle of another. At most, she'll take a shoe out of my closet and try to put it in a drawer in the kitchen. The following two items have disappeared into thin air: Tyler's watch and one of Lillian's church shoes. Just gone. The fingernail clippers were lost as well, which is what prompted me to write this entry, but I found them as I sat down at the computer.

So, keep your eyes open for the watch. Tyler's really starting to miss it.

It's almost over!

For a year now, Tyler has been working on his senior design project, "Odin's Fury." It's a cargo plane that had to be able to take off and land in a short distance on a muddy field and carry something so wide, so tall, and so heavy. Tyler's touching a model of the plane. Last night, they had their poster reception and today is the final symposium. Hooray! This project has meant lots of late nights, group meetings at all hours, weekend trips to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Edward's AFB, and other places I can't recall.

I overheard him talking to Lillian last night saying, "After tomorrow, I can be your dad again. We'll play together and go on walks."


If you look at the pictures on the left, you can see that Odin's Fury can carry a tank, cargo, and storm troopers.