Fun On The Farm

Last Saturday was spend having more end of summer fun with the family. We went to Tanaka Farms in Irvine, CA where we took their summer cook out tour.

Katelyn and Laura waiting for the tour to start.

Papa Rick met us down there. He got to ride in a cart for the tour.

The rest of us walked.....as you can see aunt Kathy joined us on the tour too.


This is the view from the start of the tour. Way off in the distance to the right, just above the trees is where we were headed. As we walked along the farm we picked different veggies to later bbq in the picnic shelter that you see in the distance. It was a hot day. I didn't bring water. I made it most of the way but hopped in the cart along with 2 other ladies and Rick.

Some cool scarecrows we met on the way.

Katelyn had fun cutting up her own veggies.

This was my lunch. Tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, green onions, egg plant, tofu all seasoned up and grilled for about 15 minutes. Then yummy in the tummy!

The farm also had some sauteed sweet maui onions to eat. These were DELICIOUS!

For dessert we walked down to another shelter where they had all the sweet red and yellow watermelon we could eat. The girls ate at least 5 slices each.

Katelyn and I both loved the yellow watermelon. If you've never had it before I highly suggest finding a farm similar to this one that sells them and buy one to try.

We all had a great time and none of us wanted to leave. On the drive home, I asked everyone what their favorite part of the trip was and then they in turn asked me. Here's all our answers:

Laura: "I liked picking vegetables!" (and because of this she actually ate them willingly! big thing for a little girl who hates to eat them.)

Katelyn: "I liked eating the watermelon."

Clark: "I liked chopping up the veggies for the stir fry and getting to eat all the good food."

Me: "I liked the sweet maui onions, the bbq veggies, being with family, oh and the ride up for the final leg of the tour wasn't bad either."

Aquarium of the Pacific

Okay so I'm a bit behind on blogging about this but better late that never. A couple of Saturdays ago after realizing we hadn't done anything but swim lessons this summer, I decided that we should take the girls to the Aquarium of the Pacific for the afternoon. Because my mom was set to start dialysis that upcoming week and not knowing how often she'll be up to trips like this with us, I called and invited mom and dad. Dad was at a baseball game with my sister and brother-in-law but mom jumped at the chance to come with us. Here is a pictorial story of our day:


Grandma Sunny, Laura and Katelyn getting ready for a fun filled afternoon in the aquarium

Laura got so excited over every fish she saw that day!

Katelyn had lots of fun too!


We saw eels

We saw fish

And we saw even bigger fish

And schools of fish

We saw the back of the girls...a lot

And the biggest lobsters that I think would taste delicious, haha!

And sea lions (this one had a foot fetish)

that balanced themselves on rocks under water!

We saw sharks

We saw a handsome sea lion named Miller

And we saw the jellyfish.

Then we made our waitress do this

or this

at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. where we ate dinner.

A Doctor Visit

Okay so call me a procrastinator. School starts in a few weeks and I'm finally making all the doctor appts. On top of that, today's appts were a combo for age 3 and 4 since I totally didn't get them seen for well child visits on their birthdays last year. That's cool though, I was told they didn't need shots then or now. Laura not til next year and Katelyn doesn't need to get seen til 2011 for her next well child visit.

So anyhow.....here are some stats from the visit.

Katelyn....4 ft. 1.25 in. tall....47 lbs 3 oz.....everything healthy, though recommended that she see an optometrist to check her vision since doing eye chart she was not 20/20 on one eye, but I am ahead on that, Clark and I need new glasses and since we got them at young ages and I was already making appts I went ahead and made one for Katelyn too, that appt is on Sept. 11 of all dates. While it won't be the end of the world if she needs glasses let's hope this date doesn't prove to be a bad omen for us.....when I was pregnant with her in 2001, on the actual day all the events happened that ingrain this date in all our heads for the rest of our lives, I had a doctor appt to check how I was doing with diet controlling my gestational diabetes. And it wasn't controlling it at all and I was placed on insulin injections that day. And I hate needles. Blech! So let's hope taking her to the eye doctor on that date doesn't have us walking away with her in glasses. LOL! I also told the pediatrician about the school district recommending her being tested for autism and ADD at her triennial eval. So she put in a referral for me for their behavioral group to do all that. We should be getting a call within the week to set up the appt.

Laura.......30 lbs, 9.6 oz........3 ft. 2.5 in. tall......this pediatrician saw us through Laura's growth problems as an infant when she completely dropped off the charts for the longest time because of that, Dr. P was excited to see how well Laura is doing and says you'd never know now that she had those growth issues. I agree. She is petite and probably always will be. But it's nice to see that she's right there with the other petite girls born within a few months of her either way that never had the growth problems she had. So she's basically caught up with the naturally petite girls. Miss Stubborn refused to the let the nurse do the blood pressure. See big sis started to freak out on it. Nurse and I quickly calmed her and she allowed nurse to do it. But it was enough to scare little sister. We discussed Laura's asthma. She has been diagnosed but only ever has had symptoms when she's had a cold. However during the lovely Santa Ana winds southern Cali gets during heavy wind season, I noticed Laura had a hard time breathing on our walks to and from the school. Dr. P says heavy winds can be a trigger for some kids like Laura and to always carry the inhaler with me because you never know when she'll need it. Might me one season she'll be fine and the next need it. Or it could change daily during windy seasons. And the worst part of the visit for Laura.........blood draw!

At her 2 yr old check up she needed routine blood work that they do at that age. One thing they tested for then was iron levels. Hers came back that was mildly anemic and we were told to give her iron drops and given a list of iron rich foods for her diet. So Dr. P put the orders in the lab for a blood draw for that. She said it would be like last time, just a finger prick. Wrong! Guess she didn't know the lab start doing the regular blood draws at a certain weight and size and Laura was that size. She started to panic. I was asked to put her in my lap. Ha! They make these swivel seats so you can slide in no matter your size. But if you are overweight and need to put a 30 lb, 38-39 in child in your lap there is just no way you can both sit there. Luckily there as a thin tech who loves kids who came over and held Laura. Still.....the screaming and the crying. And not just during the blood draw, after too. We have a small medical office compared to other Kaiser's I've been to. I swear the whole building heard her as some hallways echo. The poor ladies on the elevator with us. And then the huge echoing lobby. And it continued out to the parking lot.

And then an angel in disguise.......just as we reached our van, a man was getting out of his truck. He comes over and says "Oh sweety, what's wrong? Why the tears? Why so upset? Oh the big bad lab people took some blood?" Then he shows her his arm (a dialysis arm like my mom) and Laura stops crying, "That looks like gramma's arm!" He didn't ask for elaboration, just continued his soothing Laura "You should see what they do to my arm 3 times a week. And I don't cry. Not one bit. You are so brave today." Then she wiped her tears as she nodded and said "Yeah, I'm brave." And then he left on his way. And you know what.....though she had her pouty lip on, she didn't shed one more tear, cry one more cry, or scream one more scream the whole way home. God bless my dialysis angel today!

Katelyn's Progress

I said in my last blog update that I would do a monthly report at the beginning of each month in regards to Katelyn's goal of reading the Book of Mormon before her 8th birthday. I've been a bit lazy about updating my blog this summer. But her it is finally. This is her reading chart as of 8/7/09. As you can from the first blog about it, she has made some wonderful progress. She loves to pick up her scriptures and read a chapter here and there throughout the day. The goal initially was 2 chapters a day, except for the Isaiah chapters where we didn't have to read the whole chapters...just certain verses or only the chapter heading....and those we read a 3 or 4 in one day. But now we are often reading 3-5 chapters a day. I'm sure we'll slow down to 1 chapter a day once school starts though.

As for her goal of learning the Articles of Faith. She has passed off 1, 2 and 3 already. She is currently working on #4 and I'm sure it'll take her a few weeks for that one as it's a long one. But she is plugging away each day to learn it.

Laura is making progress as well. We are 6 chapters away of reading the Book of Mormon Stories book the first time through. We are ahead in our reading schedule with her as well. Everytime Katelyn says "let's read a chapter mommy!", Laura comes running over "me first! me first!" and I read her a chapter as well.

I'm really proud of my girls and their excitement for the scriptures. Well Katelyn at least...some days Laura just digs those stubborn 3 yr old heels in and says "no way!" But she makes up for it the next day when she makes me read 3 chapters. LOL!