The Rollman Empire

It wasn't until 3 years ago when I was at the beach on Isle of Palms did I realize sunsets are not a very big deal on the beach if you are on the east coast. On the west coast however, they are always special because the sun sinks into the ocean. And sunsets in San Carlos are almost always spectacular. About 5:20 every night here people start gathering on the beach or the wall with a margarita or glass of wine, sometimes a bowl of salsa and guacamole too and hang out to watch the sunset. As the photo above proves, it is worth the wait and is quite an enjoyable end of the day / start of the night.

I think Ella and Gramie might have just started a great Christmas night tradition for any Christmas we celebrate in Mexico - A Pinanta ! What better way to finish the day than by bashing a pinanta for another round of excitement and even more candy to prolong the sugar high ! Marie loved gathering the candy and putting it in her bag . JJ , on the other hand , just liked holding and dancing with the busted pinanta . (Side note: I tried to get the tilde ~ over the 'n' in pinanta but as you can see, I couldn 't figure it out .)

Christmas Morning

Dressed up on Christmas Eve. We ate a fabulous meal at the restaurant at the condos and a such didn't have to worry about cooking or cleaning up the meal!

Unfortunately this is going to be short because I left my camera at our community group Christmas party tonight and that had the majority of today's Birthday Boy pictures. I did get some with the really good camera though, so here they are and tomorrow I intend to do a photo montage of JJ's first year! Marie was eager to help JJ open his presents - a little too eager actually. He looked the "Lil Zoomers Ramp" he got from Nana and Papa. Marie likes it too. I have better pictures of him actually playing with it but this shows his face (and big bang curl). And here he is tired after opening the second set of presents. By the end of the day, after being sung to 4 times, he was exhausted. And to top off this special day, he gets to share his birth day with Baby Charlotte Adams! We look forward to celebrating with you in the years to come.

(Note: I am very frustrated with Blogger so please excuse the mis-match of text and pictures. I cannot for the life of me get it to work correctly.) Well my sister, her husband and my two nieces just left. Wow, did we have fun! I don't think Marie has ever played so hard for a consecutive three days straight. I see an early nap and bedtime in her future. Here are the kids having fun... JJ also loves his cousin Callie and his uncle Steve. He even prefer them over Auntie Kit. As for our actually Thanksgiving meal, another wow! It was soooo yummy. I successfully cooked a turkey for the second time in my life and it was GOOD! I brined it in apple cider and spices. I will certainly do that again in the future. My brother-in-law said it was the best turkey he's had, I might agree but I don't want to offend anyone. I also successfully made gravy from scratch. And my sister made an amazing sweet potato casserole. It will definitely be a futur...

Some time ago I read an essay about the American Dream that included a thoughtful analysis of Norman Rockwell's famous Thanksgiving painting Freedom from Want . It went in part as follows: " Freedom from Want ... is especially telling, for the scene it depicts is joyous but defiantly unostentatious. There is a happily gathered family, there are plain white curtains, there is a large turkey, there are some celery stalks in a dish, and there is a bowl of fruit, but there is not a hint of overabundance, overindulgence, elaborate table settings, or ambitious seasonal centerpieces..." No wonder that family is happy. Grateful people are happier and healthier . Pondering the words of that essayist and Rockwell's painting reminds me how, since the days of pilgrims to the days of the family depicted in Freedom from Want , to our family, our society has only increased in reasons to give thanks. No Americans have been more impoverished than the pilgrims, and yet they set ...

So I feel like the cat's meow this morning (where did that odd expression come from anyway?). I, for the first time ever, made pancakes. AND I made them from scratch - no box mix for me. (Don't get me wrong, I am not above box mixes at all, it was just that Marie wanted pancakes and we didn't have a box mix so I jump on the internet and looked up "how to make pancakes from scratch" and voila...) They turned out really well. And I am just so proud of myself for actually doing it, in part because the kitchen was clean and I knew it would result in a mess. And in part because, as many of you know, I call myself the "anti-breakfast". I just don't like breakfast food (except bacon and sometimes sausage) and I detest pancakes. Yes, I detest pancakes. However, the ones I made were quite enjoyable and while I won't be doing it again anytime soon, it is nice to know that I could, if I wanted to. PS - The "cat's meow" is an expression that c...

So these are the answer to my Guess Who Photo post. If you haven't looked at it yet and still want to give it a go, there is a post in between the answers and the photos so quickly scroll down without looking at the answers and play along. You know you want to. I also didn't do them in a list form so it wouldn't be quite as obvious if you glanced at them. And I put some space before giving you the answers. No cheating on my watch. Marie: #1, 4, 7, 10 11 JJ: # 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 12 Laura #7

Since my last kid post was exclusively about Marie, this one will be all about JJ. Maybe I will alternate like that, maybe not. Anyway... JJ is a good eater - just like his sister was at this age. He loves muenster cheese and might actually be signing 'cheese'. I think he kind of signs 'more' but he is on the young side for using signs so I am not sure. Regardless though, I am doing lots of signs with him and hope he will follow after Marie in this category too. He also LOVES strawberries. The other day I think I cut up 6 strawberries for him! Six - can you believe that?!?! He can eat just about anything even though he only has two teeth (neither is totally grown in yet). He also has a favorite lovey, like his sister. I don't think Marie got attached to Lamby this young though. When JJ was born, Marie gave him a plush, tan puppy dog when she came to meet him at the hospital. Out of all his stuff animals that is the one I am most fond of. At one point, when he wa...

I have been anxious to do this but needed to collect enough pictures and carve out the time to put it together. So... Guess Who? is in each of these pictures. Your choices are Marie or JJ with one special guest appearance. 11 and 12 are my favorite and probably the hardest but I am happy to report Dan got these two and all of them correct. It shouldn't be that hard but I am curious to see how people do. I have already written out the answers which will automatically post on the 20th with one post in between now and then. If you can't possible wait that long for the answers, I'll email them to you.

As you probably know, we had a deck built way back in... oh, when was that? Yeah I'm not sure but before we posted pictures, we wanted to have it stained, install the lights and get furniture, etc etc. Well we finished all that and I still haven't posted pictures so finally, here are the pics of our not-so-NEW deck. To make it more interesting some are starring my family enjoying breakfast out there a few Saturdays ago back when fall made a sneak appearance. Custom-designed gate (that Laura had commissined for the project - yes, I am the anal) from our new driveway. We know it is a little weird that the deck extends past our house but it makes is very welcoming to guests and we wanted it BIG. A friend's advice was "decide how big you think it should be, and make it bigger." In case you are wondering: Yes there is a grill on the deck. It is against the house to the right of the bay window. Yes, the walkway seen in this picture is new too. As are the three "su...

Pre-school started last week, yes I know I am behind. Here are some pictures from Marie's first day of "school". She had a good time but what she really loved was her dance class. She is taking pre-ballet and tap once a week right after school. She said it was her favorite part of the day. I'll try to get some better pictures of that and post them later this week. She looks sooo different from this time last year - a shy little toddler compared to an independent, determined little girl. Here's the look we get a lot these days. And this is the first day of school last year... crazy! Lamby is still her favorite lovey though and she sleeps with him every night. Bunny is a close second.

I'm turning over a new leaf...mobile blogging. And I think it is really going to increase the number of posts I get done. Quite often I will write out a whole post in my head (like seriously, not just think about the topic but craft the individual sentences) but never have time to sit down at the computer and actually type it out. Not anymore my friends! I will be blogging from my BlackBerry . If there are pictures, they will be lower quality or I will just have to post them later but I'm excited about this new endeavor. And now for my first mobile post: (Warning: Typos are going to be worse than "normal" with mobile blogging.) So I took the kids to Target yesterday and we got lunch there. I planned ahead and had finger food for JJ . However, this was the high chair they had and it was horrible - just way to open *and* it was on wheels. He could move himself in different directions and reach out, grab something solid (like the table) and pull himself toward it. It m...

Monday morning while I was changing JJ's diaper, Marie says " JJ has a bottom." I responded, "Yes, JJ has a bottom." She continued, "And JJ has something... something like Elisha when he goes potty." Then she flitted out of the room. Dan and I got a good laugh, which is not uncommon these days. She says very funny things... like telling Dan he goes to work "to play with the other daddies." I'll try to remember some of them and post smaller items, more often.

So my fourth of July pictures didn't turn out well at all so that is why I didn't post any. And this post is going to be a quick one. First is a video of Marie talking about her pineapple flavored lollipop. You can hear what she calls "pineapple". Another one of my favorite word mix-ups Marie says is coconuts for polka dots. Sometimes they are even polka-nut or coco-dots. And here is a video of the boy crawling. He reminds me of a dinosaur with how loud and direct he is but my mother-in-law suggested a Clydesdale horse might be more accurate. In the last week JJ has successfully crawled up the entire flight of stairs no less than 5 times. (In case you were wondering, yes I am behind him the whole way up.) He loves doing it though and is so proud of himself. Now I have to be very careful about making sure the gate is locked because he likes to sneak over there and shimmy up and he doesn't care if I am behind him or not.

Happy 4th of July from Marie and JJ and their cousins. (We cheated a little bit - this was taken Friday, July 2nd in San Diego but we had to do it then because we flew back on the 3rd and are spending today unpacking, cleaning, doing laundry and having a small family bbq with fireworks to follow. If I get some good pictures of that, I'll post them tomorrow along with some from our San Diego trip. We all had a great time and the plane ride went really well in both directions!)