some more september tidbits...
sorry for the slack job of blogging this month. i have no excuses. i look at your blogs daily. :) here's what we've been doing for the second half of the month!
we were part of the "end of an era" as tawni calls it...the los altos farmers market came to a close for the year this week. we've thoroughly enjoyed our thursday nights strolling down the street eating samples of strawberries, raspberries, plums, nectarines and peaches...and ending with corn on the cob (you'll never see ryan happier than when he's eating this particular corn on the cob) and local indian food. yum! 'til next year...
leah has play dates three times a week while i teach piano. in return, i babysit three different kids during the week as well. meet nora. she is a doll. and leah showed her where her belly button was this week.
leah kept it real by texting all her baby friends on daddy's blackberry...all while staying stylish with her bling. (i know, she needs a haircut...)
leah and jack were entranced by sesame street the other day. it was hilarious.
and then they kissed. ew, gross...kissing cousins!
and i don't want to talk about this...but i will. yah, i got a collection notice from a qwest bill from 5 1/2 years ago! apparently, just before i got married, i called qwest to change the phone bill from my single's apartment to my landlord's name (qwest does have proof of this). the new tenant called a few weeks later to change it into her name. BUT, my landlord never called to accept it into her name or change it to the other girl's name. so....all summer, it stayed in my name and 1) the new tenants didn't pay it or 2) they didn't get the bill because it was addressed to me (and not forwarded on). SO...i got a bill for May-Sept 2003. and because my landlord never called, legally, it is my responsibility. aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh.But, the following video makes all my cares go away at the end of the day...yay for leah!
See. Her preferred brushing position is on daddy's shoulders. 
We were successful in our attempts at a real ponytail. Love it! And love those curls! She's such a girl...she always finds her beads to wear. 
We have enjoyed a few smoothies thus far. I swear Leah drinks more than I do. Notice the beads again. 
We are trying to help Leah learn to eat with utensils. Some attempts are more successful than others, as you can see. 
Some of those eating attemps lead right to a bath. She enjoyed her very first bubblel bath this week. I'm not sure that she loves the bubbles to play in...she mostly loves to eat them. 
We've also enjoyed spending a lot of our time here: in time out. Leah has taken up new hobbies of HITTING, THROWING and BITING! You can't tell from this picture because I had to take it from the front room, but she is completley throwing a tantrum: screaming, pulling her hair, thrashing her body everywhere. She hates time out. That's a good thing. 
The Winchester Mystery House is a house that used to be owned by Sarah Winchester, the heiress of the Winchester Rifle fortune. She had a daughter die at 6 weeks and her husband died of tuberculosis. She was told that their deaths were caused by the spirits of those killed by Winchester Rifles, so to appease the spirits, she needed to build this house. As long as she was building, she would have life, but as soon as she stopped, she would die. The legend says that you could hear carpenters hammer 24 hours a day from 1884 until her death in 1922. It grew from an 8 bedroom farm house to a 160 bedroom mansion. At it's tallest, it was 7 stories high and is now 4 stories high. Some of that continuous building was pretty ridiculous, as you can see...what else are you going to constantly build for 40 years!?! (As you can see, I used my sweet self-portrait-taking skills learned in China a lot on this little excursion...hope you don't get sick of my ugly mug.) 
Sarah Winchester was only 4'10'', so lots of doorways are really small. Remember: I'm only 5'7''.
2. smoking. i hate it. but 99% of china loves it. i'm so grateful for the non-smoking laws in california and utah. i think it is the most disgusting habit ever and i do NOT understand why anyone does it. it's gross. and i hate it. 
3. chinese characters. don't get me wrong. they're beautiful and i'm sure some people understand them. and no, i'm not one of those people who goes to a foreign country and thinks they should speak MY language. i just wonder why they had to create a language based on 60,000 characters rather than 26 letters. come ON people. ryan says they were at the top of the tower of babel. 
4. brooks adrenalines. again, don't get me wrong. i do love these running shoes...for running. i just really missed wearing my cute shoes. 
5. typhoons. i understand they can be very dangerous...but it was bad timing. level 8 means everything in hong kong shuts down. kind of a wasted day. oh well...it'll be a good story later on. 
6. squatty potties. don't be deceived. i'm smiling in the picture below because i wasn't actually USING the squatty potty i'm standing over...and it was a clean one. i just didn't know that yet. being a girl is so not fair when it comes to these things. i've been traumatized for life. my running legs did come in handy, though. 
7. UMBRELLAS. my number one hatred of china. i thought i hated umbrellas at BYU. people get them out for two drops of rain and don't really know how to hold them without gouging others in the eye...but BYU doesn't even compare to china! first, the majority of people were about a foot shorter than me, which means their umbrellas really were gouging me in the eye. second, they got them out for ONE drop of rain. and third, they kept them out through torrential rain storms (like the one below on the great wall...you just can't see the rain...i promise it was there) when the umbrella no longer has a purpose. rain is coming at you from all directions and dripping off the umbrella and drenching you anyway. JUST PUT THEM AWAY! if i'm ever the ruler of anything, there will be rules about umbrellas. 
and now for the things i LOVE:
