Shop till you pop!

I'm amazed at the incredibly crafty/designer bits you can buy for your offspring. I didn't think I would give into the craze, I never thought I would get excited about strollers, but I find myself drooling at some of the fancy things out there. I try to restrict myself to function before aesthetics. So when I come across something that functions the best and is the most beautiful, I get little pangs of happiness.

The things I secretly desire (or not so secretly anymore)

This is my first confession: The Stokke Xplory stroller:





It looks amazing, and it is the favorite of anyone who has tried it. Users say it is the perfect stroller. I hope all they hype about it being comfortable, convenient, and overall the best is true, because we are getting it as a gift from Ido's parents. Thank you! Thank you!

My next confession is the Leander Cradle:


Sigh...I love this thing. It is only useful for a few months or until the baby starts to sit up. It is expensive and not practical, but it is beautiful. Best option- the practical and still very fancy Stokke Sleepi Bassinet:

It's built well, pretty, and I found one in Seattle that is affordable- I'm buying it tomorrow. After Whatshername gets bigger, probably around six months, if we so desire we can order the kit to convert to a full size crib.

Last confession is the Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair:

Kids love it, it's functional, and it looks great!

My list of crazy wants extends far beyond these few things, but at some point it just gets ridiculous. I'm purchasing items second hand when available, and I'm making a lot of the items that are necessary, but do not necessarily have to be as adorable as possible and cost three times what it would cost to make- clothing, decoration, changing table, on and on and on.

Costa Rica is for the birds!

We are back from Costa Rica! Land of 860 bird species and two million million million mosquitoes.

It was a great trip, but it's nice to be home. We stayed in four different areas- Monteverde, Arenal, Tortuguero, and Quepos. The main focus for me was to see as many wild beasts as possible. It was a success. We visited five of the seven provinces and drove for many hours each day taking in the beautiful countryside. I started writing a trip journal to post, and the first sentence went something like this:

Day 1. I spilled a glass of iced ginger ale in my lap on the plane. Thank the airplane gods Ido was sleeping so he didn't see me do it. The only evidence of my little accident was the massive jeans rash on my a** after 6 hours of flying and 4.5 hours of sitting in the van on the way to Monteverde. I'm so happy to be on vacation!!!

I decided instead of posting the trip journal, I will give you the best trip summary I can offer, while respecting your patience. I note which photos are Ido's (as if.) Enjoy!

Monteverde Cloud Forest

Ido Photo

Morpho Butterfly Ido Photo

Ido Photo

This is a bug.



Arenal
The view from our room. We are so spoiled. Ido Photo

Arenal volcano- view from our room. Again, we are so spoiled.People come to this area just to see this volcano. If they are lucky they see lava. Some spend weeks and only see smoke rising from the top and heavy cloud cover. Ido Photo


Arenal volcano and wild beasts. Ido Photo


Ella and Audrey on the hanging bridges.
This bridge is 45meters high. Yipes.

Tortuguero

Caribbean town- school children playing soccer. Ido Photo

The flight to San Jose from Tortuguero.
The tracks in on the beach are green seaturtle tracks. We went late one night on a tour to see turtles lay eggs in the sand. It was incredible. The female comes from the water to the dry sand, digs a hole the depth of one of her front flippers, lays eggs, covers the hole with sand, then drags herself back to the ocean. The whole process takes about two hours. The female will lay 100 eggs each time she come to shore. Of those 100 eggs, only one turtle will survive to adult. We were not allowed cameras on the tour. Ido Photo

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a frog eating a ciceda!

Quepos

Three toed sloth only a few feet away. Ido Photo

Helmet Lizard- another rare find.

Poison green and black dart frog

Fungus

White-faced Capuchin

Iguana

Lightning storm from the hotel balcony. Ido Photo


The wild wild jungles of Woodinville
This is what happens when the parents go away for a few days...
Madame, my bantam hen, and two of her babies! We gave away Tranny Anny because he was making a rukkus and waking the neighbors. It looks as though he left a piece (or five) of himself behind. These chicks hatched last Thursday. They are tiny and adorable! I'm not sure if they will be bantam like their mother.

Salton Sea/Dead Sea and chickens

First, I have to tell that one of my hens laid her first egg today! I watched her kick up the shavings in the nest box and fidget around until she got comfy and produced an egg. Now Ido will stop threatening to eat my hens. He insists that they must function in some way, and if not laying eggs ,then they will make a fine BBQ. I won't tell him which hen laid the egg. They all get credit for this one and are safe for a little while longer.


A few weeks ago we went to the Salton Sea. We stayed in an amazing quaint Moroccan inspired hotel a few miles north of Palm Springs. The hotel has 12 rooms adults only (last chance for us!) and the hot springs fed pool and hot tub are open 24/7- and we were the only guests! We had this paradise all to ourselves. All rooms open to the center courtyard overlooking the pool and lounging areas. It was fantastic! Breakfast in the morning was fruit and cheese and pastry- fresh delicious pastry- and all day and night dates, nuts, tea, coffee, fruit, Spanish Cream sherry, Moroccan mint lemon tea, and a few other assorted treats were available for guests. At 5pm each day the staff, consisting of the owner, his partner, and the owner's brother, served Morocco-tinis, red wine, fruit, snacks, and shared stories of their long journey from Las Vegas to Palm Desert. I know, I know, you were expecting a long journey from Morocco. Nope. They have never been to Morocco, but plan they to go very soon.

I just found this great article by Janice Kleinschmidt, so I'll wrap up my description and let her tell the rest:
http://www.palmspringslife.com/media/Palm-Springs-Life/June-2007/Passport-to-Morocco/

We were only there for three days. During the part of the day that we could tolerate the heat and leave the comfy confines of our Moroccan sanctuary, we went out to the Salton Sea. The Salton Sea used to be the vacation destination for people from all over the state of California. Some time over the last century something started happening to the chemistry of the water that was not beneficial to the critters living in the water and the critters living in the city and surviving off of the water. In 1976 the first of two major storms hit the area and caused massive flooding. This is a historical chronology of the area if you have tons of free time: http://www.saltonsea.ca.gov/histchron.htm#period3

Now for the pictures from our trip. Everything is covered in salt, ash, or in an extreme state of decomposition.

Hundreds of Talapia belly up in at the shore. Hundreds die daily.

(My attempt at being artistic using the
Lens Baby on my camera. Ha!)

House Honeymoon Phase

I think we have a pretty swanky pad. We still need to finish a lot of the house for it to be safe for friends and children (Tick Tock! Four months to go until baby time!) but we enjoy it here. When we were searching for a house, we had to push a bit farther out from Ido's work than we had planned. We bought a 30yr old house in the boonies in need of repair and I love it. Ido loves more the idea of it being finished. I'm posting some of the progress we have made over the past few years.

There used to be a wall and closet between the dining room and
living room. I took care of that.

View from dining room into living room:
Before

After

View from living room into dining room. The ceiling was very dark
and covered with cedar boards stained from leaks in the roof:

Before

After

View from walking in the front door looking into the dining room.
This is the closet that I've removed. Good choice? I think so:

Before

After

We added skylights, a new wood ceiling, oak floors replaced the lovely pink carpet covered in dog stains from the previous owner's pet, new lighting, I moved the entryway out eight feet to make an enclosed entry instead of the absurd architect's design of entering the house with only five feet of space between the door and stairwell. It still needs so much work.

Ido's Rebuttal

Merriam-Webster has this to say about roosters:

roost·er (rōō'stər)
n.

1. A person regarded as cocky or pugnacious.
2. A totally fucking useless flightless bird that makes a shit ton of noise every fucking morning at the crack of fucking dawn. If you want one then you're either a farmer or a bona fide helmet wearing drool drooling retard.

And you don't argue with the dictionary people.

Roosters smoosters!

A word of caution for those of you country folk thinking about how *neat* it would be to have a rooster, let me give you a brief summary of Mornings With a Rooster:

The Sun comes up this time of year in Seattle around 5am. If you own a rooster, the Sun is not the only thing getting up at 5am- add yourself to the list. Tranny Anny crows from the first hint of sunshine until I open the coop door. Try as I might, I cannot ignore this sound. I attempted to ignore, cranked up the noise on the white noise generator, tried to convince Ido let them out, but nothing works except for getting myself out of bed to run outside across the yard to let him start his day. And don't start thinking 'that isn't so bad, I'll just go back to sleep after!' Because you wont. Once out of the coop, he rounds up the girls and starts them on their daily worm hunt. This is pretty adorable until he reaches the large cutting of a tree that he loves to preach from. He crows and crows for hours. This is every day, every morning waking at the carpenter's crack of dawn to bend to his will. Don't do it.

On a different note, we bought another fish and more coral! I'm not sure if this guilt purchase from Ido is because he's playing a lot of that new computer game DOTA (I call it DORKA) until 3am EVERY morning, or if it's just Ido being his sweet self, but I'm not going to think about it too much because I get new critters!

Our tank is 120gallons with a 40 gallon sump. We have almost 150lbs of live rock, two fish, many Astrea snails, an evil Emerald crab, two Scarlett hermits, two Blue Legged hermits, a lot of unknown tiny critters, and three species of coral. We started this tank on April 24^th of this year. It is massive and we love it.

Torch Coral