Is it really January?

It's a blurry photo but you still get the idea. The bottom number is the temperature outside and the top temperature is inside. That's right. It's almost 85 degrees outside in January. So weird.

Penny all bundled to go to the beach Christmas day. It was tempestuous.

Merry Christmas

We hope you all have a Merry Christmas! Here's a picture from our Christmas card. We only sent a few out so don't feel bad if you didn't get one.

Some recent stuff

So Marnie gave me the assignment to make a new blog post that had "something cute". I'm picking up her slack until she gets some blog momentum back. How about a little random update, non-chronological:

1) Went Dirt biking after Thanksgiving in California City with the fam and some friends. Penny loved riding the little dirtbikes with me and would sit on them and make motor noises with her mouth. She looks pretty serious in the pictures, but she was loving it. Marnie loved driving our friend's buggy. I told her she can buy one.





























2) We blessed Ginger at church while Marnie's siblings were in town. My mom made Ginger's white dress for the occasion. Ginger didn't cry during the blessing like Penny did. In general Ginger is a better baby than Penny was. Penny was an angry baby. Ginger doesn't scream or puke as much.



















3) Ginger is really fat and learned how to smile. I just commented that "Hi Ginger" is probably the most commonly used phrase in our house these days. Penny says it all the time in a cute little, I'm talking to a baby voice that Marnie and I must use also.





























4) Seems like this month someone visited us every weekend. It was fun having visitors. I doubt this would have happened had we moved to Peoria, IL. We had enough visitors to have visitor statistics. For example if you visit us the chances of being seriously injured are relatively low at about 6.7%. Our little (800 sq ft) apartment was pretty much wall to wall beds.

Marnie's Dad came to visit us and I planned some fun activities for them, one of which was ocean kayaking. We went down to Leo Carillo, a beach down the PCH from where we live. It's a great beach with kelp beds for snorkeling and protected rocky coves and such. Dad and Judy took the kayak out together after some instruction by me. My instructions for returning to shore were essentially this:

1) Do not try to ride a wave in. It will flip you.
2) approach the beach and wait just beyond where the waves are crashing
3a) as soon as the last large wave of a set passes under you paddle furiously to the beach. This should allow enough time to get to the beach and get out of the kayak before the next wave comes.
-OR-
3b) Get out of the kayak, hold on the the back of it and push it into the shore from behind.

Additional intructions- you will get wet and should take your glasses off.

So, they started paddling back in and I say to Marnie, "Oh here they come. Get the camera and film this. This could be good." I edited the video (shown below) for brevity, but this is the dialogue that was caught on the original:

• Marnie- “Here come dad and Judy.”
• Stephan- “I predict… I predict catastrophe, potentially lost glasses.”
• Marnie- “Is dad wearing his glasses still?”
• Stephan- “Yeah I’m afraid so. Hey Jake will you hold Ginger? I’m going to be at the ready here.”
• Marnie- “Man that was a big wave!”
• Stephan- “WAIT!”
• Marnie- “Stephan you can’t stop their momentum now, they’re coming in.”
• Stephan- “Here we go this is it!”
• Judy- “Aaaahhhhhhh.”
• Marnie- “Oh no! We got it on camera.”
• Jake- “Oh lost glasses, oh gosh.”
• Dad- “I lost my glasses!”
• Marnie- “Oh no.”

So. There you have it. Unfortunately we never found Dad's glasses and Judy dislocated her thumb (I did find Judy's sunglasses). They spent the rest of the day at the hospital getting Judy's thumb fixed and getting Dad some new glasses.

I think it's pretty funny given the irony surrounding the whole event. I can't believe we got it on video. There's just no good way to say this, but, man did I call it or what.

Happy Halloween

We went trick-or-treating with some friends last night. Penny was Snow White, minus the black hair. If I'd thought about it more maybe I could have made some kind of black yarn wig. Not that I know how to make yarn wigs. Oh well--there's always next year. And, if she ever stops growing, she'll still fit this outfit next year when she's three (since she's as big as most three-year-olds.) My friend Ditte gave Penny the outfit. She is one of Penny's favorite people, she loves saying her name over and over.

Overall, I think Halloween was pretty confusing for Penny. She didn't understand what she was supposed to do on people's door step. She would say "trick-or-treat" only when prompted. A few of the houses scared her so bad she cried until we left that house. She didn't like the smoke and people jumping out at her with masks on and she didn't know why people kept reaching for her pumpkin basket. A few times as people would reach toward her to put candy in her basket, she would pull it away saying, "noooo," all bratty like they were attacking her. She kept saying "I scared" all night long. By the end of the street, Stephan was carrying her to each of the houses because she didn't want to approach any more houses alone. Poor girl.

Ginger had a pretty mellow evening. She slept the whole time inside the sling while we walked through the neighborhood. She's such a chill baby, most of the time. Last night she slept for five hours, which I hope is a sign of more sleep to come.

Penny's birthday photo shoot

Penny turned two last weekend. We tried to take some cute birthday photos before Church but didn't have much luck. Besides having an incredibly slow camera, Penny wasn't really into smiling for us. She looks ridiculous in most of them, as you can see.

As a side note for those who've been wondering: Penny had her two-year check-up and is the height/weight of an average three-year-old. Penny is officially gigantic, but still cute as ever!