Beach Day

Carson and Adeline at La Jolla Cove
Adeline happy at the beach
Ballet at the beach, doesn't everyone do an arabesque at the beach?
My boy and his long eyelashes
The beach, the beach, yeah!!!


Before I was interrupted with my husband and birthday post, I was re -living our vacation. What is a California vacation without a trip to the beach? As a child we never visited the beach. It was not until I was a teenager that I had actually been to a beach. I was sure not going to let that experience slip by my kids.

We took off for the beach in the late afternoon so I could get pictures at sunset. Before we even left the house my mother got all anxious about what to wear to the beach, were we going to get wet, and a host of other questions (hence the reason we never went to the beach as kids, totally out of her comfort zone). With Nana calmed down, we made it to a beautiful area with waves and rocks.

Carson jumped right in the water having a grand time. The first wave that hit Adeline she screamed and started jumping around. When she finally composed herself, she told me she did not like this dirty beach! She was not a fan of the kelp tangling up on her legs, so she stayed on shore and built sand castles.

Mid way through this beach excursion I ran up to the car to get snacks, and got a "crisis" call from my sister in Utah. Our dad had sprung the news to her that he was married, of course we did not even know he was dating, let alone married (the 70 year old's eloped. I was told the news 3 days earlier and sworn to secrecy so my dad could share the news in person to all his kids) and to top it off they were driving to his new mini castle, his new half a million dollar home in Utah, over looking the Salt Lake mountains, and the Draper Temple. Oh, of course, no one knew he bought this house over 6 months ago. Talk about shocker!! This is a whole story to tell at another time.

I helped to calm the crisis both with my sister on the phone, and with the hungry kids on the beach. I decided to venture off on the beautiful rocks of the cove, having a fantastic time snapping pictures right and left of my son, when the next thing I know, I am flat on my tush, blood coming from my toes and two little puncture wounds on my knee. But despite the fall I saved the camera, toes come and go, but a good camera is a horrible thing to break!

Wounds patched up, I was almost ready to call and end to this beach trip. As we were debating the fact of leaving, a beach photo shoot came and started to display their mostly naked bodies on the beach next to us. The man taking one shot after the next of a bikini clad lady hugging a surf board. This display went on for a bit, the camera man laid in the sand and was pointing the camera up, when my mom, a little 76 year old red head, says out loud, "What is he doing? There should be no reason for his camera to be there unless he is taking a picture of her vagina! This is porn if I have ever seen it."

With that, the beach trip abruptly came to an end. But I did get great pictures of the kids at the beach!

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday to me,

happy birthday to me,

happy birthday.......

Is it OK just not to celebrate my birthday this year? It has historically never been a wonderful time for me. In my younger years, school had not started, so I did not have big class parties. As I got older school always started right around my birthday, or on my birthday. Happy Birthday, you get to go back to school! Then as an adult, I just don't know, it has never been memorable.

This years birthday is marked with family chaos. When I was asked a week ago by my sister what kind of cake I wanted her to make for me, I suggested spice cake, thinking of the box cake mix for $2.99.

Well, mom took that out of the ball park and made all these calls to local bakeries to find spice cake. Nonetheless to bakeries that make specialty cakes that cost half her social security pay check. Apologetically, she tells me no one makes spice cake until the fall around Halloween. So she did finally resort to the box mix and picked up all the ingredients apparently thinking my sister may or may not make the cake. Of course, this made my sister quite upset as she had already stated she would make the cake. That is her specialty. My kids get excited every year that Aunt Di makes them a special birthday cake.

Needless to say, the cake has turned out to be an issue, my dad has brought a host of issues to the family dynamic, and has not called to see if there are any birthday plans, and I have to work all day. Really, in the end, I just don't feel much like celebrating, it will be marred with stress.

In Between

Just an in between vacation post.

My husband said to me this morning,

"What are you guys doing today?" I reply, "going to work this afternoon. It is Thursday."

Does he forget where the other half of our income comes from? Oh ya he would since I handle the bills.

Legoland

Carson and Adeline fighting some Bionicle

Don't eat my kiddos Mr. Shark!

Carson and Adeline Knights

Jousting

Darth Vader

Legoland was a blast! It was our first time visiting the park, and boy, was it well worth it. The first sighting at the park was Darth Vader and Batman as well as a few Bionicles. Does it get any better then that for a 7 year old boy? We also found a beautiful princess for Adeline and plenty of Knights and jousting.

We were able to cool off at Pirate Shores and have some fun on the pirate water ship and boats. For even more water we went into the new water park inside Legoland. Pretty fun, except the one set of slides were too big for my kiddos and the smaller water slide features were closed.

After the water we were off to more areas that I cannot even remember their names. We literally were at Legoland from the time it opened to the time it closed. Fabulous day!!!

Wild Animal Park

Nana on the hot air balloon
view of San Pasquale Valley
view of San Pasquale Valley
hot air balloon

I remember the Wild Animal Park from my childhood. It seemed like we went every year during my elementary school years. Now with my kids in tow we packed our water, sunscreen and hats and took off to see the roaming animals.

The highlights and low lights of the Wild Animal Park day are as follows:

Low lights:

people trying to park their cars were rude

my kids wanted to be pushed all day in the stroller up hill

the gorillas were not out

they took out the old tram that took you around the park and it is now driven by huge truck fronts pulling seated trailers.

you could take almost a true like safari down in the open areas of the park, but my kids were too young, and it cost $90 per person.

I wanted to do the flight swing but of course, that again was between $90-120. Not in the budget this trip.

had to pay for duck food, bird juice and whatever they could nickle and dime you for

Well, with that rant are you sure I found any good?

I did.

My mom and I rode up in a huge hot air balloon over 400 feet up and had the most spectacular view of the San Pasquale Valley. It was amazing! All for the bargain price of $20 (good thing my kiddos did not want to go, that would have been $60!).

they put in an elevator to eliminate a extremely difficult up hill climb.

Energy

We have returned from our trip to California to animal house sit for our friend. This was a great opportunity as we got to vacation in a house for the small price of dog and cat feeding.

Our family went to the Wild Animal Park, Legoland, and the beach, as well as bringing home my sister's newly adopted dog. I will post more in the upcoming days of our California adventures.

Today though, what I was most surprised about was after getting in at 10pm the night before, I was a cleaning machine. My house was a post vacation wreck, not only with all the stuff we traveled with, but my husband was apparently on a "home vacation" because he did not do his laundry or even run a vacuum over the floor.

Once I woke up, and drank my "turbo" coffee, I started cleaning, which lead to multiple project such as cleaning out the fridge, laundry room and clothes in my kids room that needed to be donated. I even managed to brave the afternoon heat and grocery shopped since I had totally cleared out the fridge in my cleaning frenzy. I plowed through day, totally shocked how my energy just forged on all day. I so hope this amazing feat happens again.

I have so much to blog about, not only vacation, but interesting dysfunctional family garbage. Hip, hip, hurrah for family! Stay tuned.

ADD Man

This man is who I lovingly refer to as ADD man. This is how he is listed in my contact list on my phone. At the time I was trying to think of something that started with an "A" so he would be the first to come up on my contact list. "M" for Mike was just to far down on the contact list. Suddenly it just came to me, ADD man, which refers to my husbands Attention Deficit Disorder (he does not have the HD, the hyperactive part).

The other day, the Today Show did a little segment on ADD/ADHD and marriage. I was so impressed that someone was willing to tackle this issue, and I had to see for myself how it was affecting other marriages. Thus, the inspiration for this post.

When dating, I really did not see signs of ADD, but was also not as knowledgeable on mental health issues as I am now. It was not until the birth of our son that Mike's ADD took on a new life. It seemed that he forgot everything and did not listen. He would go out to the garage to paint at night and honestly did not hear that our son was having a crying fit.

I went to a therapist at the time to talk about my feelings about his participation in our marriage. He also went and saw the doctor when we truly decided he had ADD. A time later we did not see a great change in his ADD symptoms with medication, so he went and consulted a psychiatrist and he gave him a stimulant medication that made him angry, and impatient. That was a horrible medication, I still clearly remember the day he almost verbally lost it at Albertson's grocery store. Going back to his primary care doctor he was tried on a non stimulant medication which he has been on since.

It has taken me almost seven years to adjust to our ADD marriage. I now see every moment when my husband is over stimulated and disappears into his own world, or "Mike land" as I refer to it. Loud noises make him jump, crowded stores like Wal -Mart are only done on a "have to" basis. Both kids trying to talk to him at once, while the dog is trying to get his attention does not work well. He cannot have the TV on and try to have a conversation with me, and oft times he has stopped talking in the middle of a conversation when something has distracted him. Not to count the number of impulsive comments and actions.

Interestingly enough though, as distracted as a person with ADD is there is this extreme ability they have to hyperfocus. Mike has had many "passions" to focus on over our 10 years together. It was wine making, for a time, movie watching on Netflix, painting, tap dancing and currently math. He will start reading his math books, and calculating out problems and not hear a thing going on around him.

Mike comes home some days and states that his brain is spinning and he can't slow it down. He describes his ADD brain as trying to focus on a playing card, like the queen of hearts, while the whole deck is thrown into the air and your job is to keep your eye on queen of hearts as all the cards are fluttering to the floor.

Over the years I have learned that I cannot expect more then he is capable of. I am very sensitive to his point of over stimulation, his need to sometimes leave the house even if it is just for a drive around the city. I currently watch my son like a hawk for signs of ADD. It is familial and one of our two kids genetically should be ADD.

Everyone is dealt their cards in life and this is one of the hurdles to my marriage and also our family. We learn to function and cope with what our family "normal" is.