blogging from my iPod.

I can't believe I never thought to try this before. I can actually blog from my iPod. It's like blogging from a computer except it's smallr and harder to type on. Still, most of my 'lounge' surfing is done on this this thing, so I'll have to try this again

Octopus Story

Elias drew us a story this morning. He bought this special lined paper that has space at the top for drawing pictures and lines at the bottom for writing a story. Today it was just a picture.

This is a story about an octopus in a cave. The cave is all the little circles with the line around them. Below the octopus is a mother crab giving its baby crab to the octopus. I'm not sure why the mother crab wanted the octopus to have its baby crab, but they're all smiling so it must be all right.

Airport Elias

Elias wakes up every morning with a story. He'll tell the story for as long as you let him, sometimes it is coherent, most times it rambles on and on. This morning he told me a story about an airport. Airport E L I A S.

Elias wants to build an airport in Tucson called Airport ELIAS. He also wants to build another airport in San Jose and one in the Verde Valley. This way whenever his Grandma Su wants to come visit, she can just go to the airport in the Verde Valley, get on a jet plane, and fly to the Tucson Airport ELIAS. Elias' airports will not have tickets. They are free to all. Each plane holds 100 passengers and there are LOTS of planes. Instead of tickets, Elias' Mom will be at the counter and hand out Hop N' Horseys. As a side note, this means that his Mom won't need a computer while at work.

Why an airport in San Jose you ask? That one is for Jocelyn. Anytime Jocelyn wants to visit she'll say "Elias! Elias! Elias!" and then her Mom will say "Ok, we'll get in the airplane.". Then Jocelyn's Dad will be the pilot and his Mom will be the copilot and they'll fly their jet plane from San Jose to Airport ELIAS in Tucson.

Every day is a busy day for my son's mind!

Bumwing

A few weeks ago we ordered the kids a bunch of caterpillars for their butterfly net. They come in little jars with food to eat and they quickly get fat and lazy. Then they migrate to the top of the jar and form a chrysalis. At this point you take them out of the jar and attach them to the butterfly net, then wait for them to hatch into butterflies!

Elias really enjoyed this whole process and learning about the butterfly life cycle. We read books on butterflies, talked about butterflies, looked at butterflies outside. Then, after a few weeks they finally hatched and we had live butterflies! Unfortunately, one of the butterflies came out with a crumpled wing. He had some bum luck and it just didn't form correctly. When we went to release all the other butterflies into our yard on a warm sunny day, Bumwing couldn't fly away. He hung out on the grass and flowers for the first day and Elias was sad that his butterflies were gone.

Wasn't he excited to find Bumwing waiting for him on the flowers the next morning! For the next 3 days Elias spent virtually every waking moment with that butterfly. He danced with it, built it a house with flowers and fruit to keep it well fed and told it story after story. He carried it around with him everywhere. He also learned some lessons on things butterflies don't like to do, like be stuffed inside plastic bottles (eek!) I would go on runs with Eva or trips to the store and ask Elias if he wanted to come.

'No Thank You.' he would say without turning his attention away from Bumwing.

Sadly, Bumwing passed away last night. Elias brought him inside because 'The wind is too rough for him', but I think it was too late. Elias will miss him.

I have arrived

I have arrived fully into the land of parenthood. We purchased a minivan this weekend. With a 3rd kid on the way that puts us with a family of 6. Our current Subaru Outback is filled to bursting with the 2 carseats and Sam. Luckily Sam is fairly smallish so she fits (albeit squished in there). But with another car seat on the way it wasn't going to work, so we took the plunge and purchased a minivan.

We sent out feelers to various dealerships and trolled craigslist to get an idea of the used vs. new market. On Saturday we hit a couple of dealerships armed with various price quotes. The first dealership had a year old 12k miles Toyota that we really liked, and the price was around what we were expecting. We couldn't bring ourselves to purchase it without looking around though, so we left the offer on the table and travelled to another dealership. The second dealership had the exact same van (except in white instead of silver) with a better certification for $1,000 less. We talked them down a bit and then bought it.

It's pretty neat! There is a ton of room. It's worse gas milage than our Subaru but not by much. We're both really excited about being able to go into town when the family is visiting and only take one car. And of course being able to cart Elias' friends around will be nice. Hooray for minivans! :)

Dinner Table Conversations

We were sitting at the dinner table the other day and Eva was hungrily pursuing her food. The following exchange occurred:

Kristin: "I love how she smacks her lips when she's going after food."

(The sound of a small hand slapping a face)

Us: "Elias, why are you hitting yourself?"
Elias: "I'm smacking my lips!"

heh heh.

Running is a terrible way to lose weight.

I just got back from a little Christmas day run. I've been running instead of riding for a number of reasons. It's fast. It's easy to set up (just put on shoes, stretch and go). And most importantly I can take my daughter in the jogging stroller and put her to sleep for her afternoon nap. She loves the ride and my son rides along side me with his bicycle. It's great!

I thought that running would be a great way to burn some calories as well, but boy was I wrong. 30 minutes of running = barely 400 calories! 400 calories? That's one lousy mocha. My bike rides to work and back were 1500 calories for a mere hour and half of effort. If I tried to run for an hour and a half every day my body would collapse on itself and I would devolve into a boneless mass of jelly.

I jest of course, running has actually been really enjoyable. I'm hoping that I don't run into classic runner problems (like destroyed joints) if I'm only doing it for a half hour at a time and I intersperse it with bike rides. I'm also hoping that years of bike rides has strengthened my knee muscles to an extent where I am more resilient. Only time will tell. I'll have to keep an observing eye on my aches and pains. :)

And I guess I need to start biking again if I want to maintain my diet of 4000 calories a day. :)