First Hunt of the Season

Egg hunt, that is.  Dan and Ben's school had a PTA fundraiser last Saturday that was a pancake breakfast and egg hunt.  I'm always looking for activities to keep us occupied on the weekends, so this was right up our alley.  The kids were separated into age groups for the egg hunt, so Dan and Ben were first up at 8:15.  They had a great time, finding their quota of 10 eggs each and then eating the candy immediately.  Hey, don't judge me--they washed down their breakfast candy with plenty of pancake syrup.  Mother of the Year!

You can see from these pictures that we really do live in the country.  The school is called San Pasqual Union and it's K-8, with a preschool attached.  The interesting thing is that this school is the only one in the district.  So the principal is also the superintendent.  The vast majority of the kids are from our neighborhood (or the really upscale neighborhood just up the road), so it's almost like a private school, but still public.  I wish we were going to live here longer because it is a fabulous school, which are few and far between in the San Diego area.

New House Tour

Hmmmm, wasn't it just about nine months ago that I did a tour of a different new house?  Such is the life of itinerant renters like us.  We had signed a three-year lease, but the owners unexpectedly received military orders back to San Diego, so we had to find a new place to live.  Luckily for us, a wonderful house in our same neighborhood opened up and we jumped on it.

Like the previous tour, Hannah is in some of these pictures, but she's much more mobile than last summer and it was hard to get her to stay in one place for very long.  She's in the one green thing that she owns, in honor of St. Patrick's Day today.

Enjoy the tour!  (Full disclosure: the housekeeper, Graciela, came today, which is why the house looks so good.  Our new landlords feel bad that Zach is gone, so they've offered to pay for Graciela twice a month while he's deployed.  Yes, please!)

Hannah's room, at the top of the stairs.  There's a full bathroom attached, which also opens into the hallway.

Master bedroom.  Full bath and walk-in closet to the right.

You can even see our old house from the balcony!

Dan's room.

Guest room/Ben's room.  We're still working on getting the boys to sleep in the same room.

View of the formal living room (we call it the library) from the stairs.

Front door.

Formal dining room (still need to get some chairs!).

Play room, just to the left of the front door.

Eat-in kitchen.

Family room.

Awesome backyard.

Come on over--the water's freezing!

Back of the house.  Balcony is off the master bedroom.

Front of the house.  The double garage door is on the fritz, but I usually park in there.

Sam's birthday party

DISCLAIMER:  If you are snake- or spider-phobic, DO NOT look at the pictures in the post!  (Aunt, I'm talking to you.)

Last week, the boys were invited to Sam's birthday party.  Sam is in their class at preschool and he turned five.  They live in our neighborhood so we walked over on Friday afternoon.  All the invitees were boys, but three sisters (including Hannah) were in the mix.

The entertainment for the party was a reptile lady.  The boys were in heaven!  She probably had like 15 different types of reptiles--snakes, spiders, a scorpion, a blue-tongued skink, turtles, and some others that I'm forgetting.  She would hold up a reptile, explain a little about it, then let each kid touch or hold it.  If the kid didn't want to touch that particular thing, she told him to cross his arms and she would skip him.  Dan and Ben touched everything, of course.  Ben even let her put the tarantula on his head.  Something might be a little off with that boy....

After hand-sanitizing, we ate pizza and fruit and cake.  The boys all ran around the backyard and the playroom and just had a great time.  Hannah and I got a chance to hang out with the other moms.  All in all, it was a great afternoon!