Wildlife in Orange County

"Wildlife" and "Orange County" sound mutally exclusive. In the four years that I've lived in the middle of Orange County I have surprisingly seen a lot of different kinds of wild animals! The picture above is of a bobcat. We were walking home the other day from the easter egg hunt and we saw a bobcat running up the middle of the apartment complex! It was so crazy! I was a tad nervous because Search would make a perfect little snack but it ran up the hill. I did keep my kids close for a few days after that, though! We also saw one last year at a local park just down the street.

We have a new neighbor as well. There is a blue heron that comes to visit the lawn in back of our apartment frequently. The bird is about 4 feet tall and comes to stand in the same spot on the lawn every few days. It is very bizare. Destroy succeeded in scaring it away more than once. Go,Destroy (no scarcasm intended).

A few months ago I saw an owl sitting on a handrail right outside our apartment. Then, a few weeks ago while running I came across two coyotes. The route I used to take (notice the past tense) was up near the UCI observatory and there were no houses around, just lots of weeds and grassy hills. I wasn't so much afraid that they were coyotes but I wasn't sure how many and how hungry they were. So now I run elsewhere. I have also seen deer running across University ave.

I never thought I would see wildlife in Irvine but I have. It's fun to see things that don't really belong anymore but also strange because they do belong, we just kicked then out. How sad. Well, at least Irvine has a couple of wildlife reguges for the animals who are left to live in.

The Easter Bunny

On Easter morning the kids woke up to baskets full of cars and candy. I remember my excitement growing up and finding my easter basket on easter morning so I decided that I should probably start doing baskets this year so that my kids don't hate me when I'm older. Anyways, on the way home from church on sunday Destroy asked who gave him his easter basket. I told him that the Easter Bunny brought it to him while he was asleep the night before. He stopped, looked at me and said, "No, mom. You gave it to me". Wow, I was stunned. There goes Santa, I guess.

You Live and Learn...or not.

In my life I have been stung by a bee twice. That is 2 stings in 26 years... 1 sting for every 13 years. My children, however, have both been stung twice already and Destroy isn't even four and Search isn't even two! Now that's impressive. Despite constant warnings of bee stings, Destroy picked up a bee of the ground last year and was stung. Search was stung about a month ago. Destroy still remembers when he was stung and Searcg will go find the book with the bee in it and bring it to us and pretend to cry. The last few days the boys have been teasing the bees like crazy, even though I have been warning them, and they finally got stung today. Both of them on the same day! After a bout of crying, Searcg went out and resumed his position next to the bush with the bees. What is wrong with my child? We'll see if Destroy is still interested in grabbing bees. The picture of Destroy is right after he got stung. The picture of Search (snot nose) is a few hours after he got stung so he is happily showing his stung finger but he wasn't so happy earlier! Aaron kept worrying me that they might go into anaphylactic shock because it would have been their second sting but they didn't. Now they can get stung as much as they want!

Cabin Fever

I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cabin! My rockstar mom offered to watch the kids while Aaron and I went and stayed in a sweet cabin for two nights/three days in Sunriver, OR. Isn't she awesome! It was so much fun! It was the first time since we had kids that we have been able to get away and have some of our own time. It was just like another honeymoon! The first day we went skiing at Mt. Bachelor. The snow was pretty good for March but when it started raining we decided it was time to leave. When we got back to the cabin we soaked in the hot tub that was exclusively ours. The next day we pretty much just watched movies, read, slept, worked out and did all the things that we can't do with the kids running around. We went out to dinner that night at Boondocks. The last day we drove up to Bend and hiked a bluff in the middle of town and tried to name all the surrounding mountains, and since we are considering moving there one day, tried to figure out where we might live. We called my mom as we were leaving to come back home and she sounded a bit frazzled. Wes had just pulled out all the tissues from a tissue box and screamed as loud as he could in Jeremy's ear while my mom was changing Jeremy's diaper. I guess it was time to come home! The only bad thing was that the vacation could have been a few days longer.

Indiana, here we come!

Today was "match day" for the medical students. It's a day when everyone finds out where they are going to do their residencies. About a month ago, after interviewing at different programs, Aaron submitted a rank list of the programs he interviewed at. He put Indiana #1 so we are thrilled to be moving there! It has a great program for emergency medicine, which is what he is going to do, and what can I say? Cheap housing! We are very excited and we will be moving the first part of June. On the way home from the match Destroy told me that he couldn't wait to see his cousin, Ty. I asked him what he meant because we aren't planning on seeing Ty soon. He told me that we were going to see Deanna, Ty's mom. I laughed and told him that we are going to Indiana, and not to see Deanna. They sound pretty similar I guess.

Photogenic? It must be photogenetic!

We recently got our pictures back that we had taken during Christmas vacation with my family. We had 9 kids, ages 9 and under who we were trying to get to look at the camera. We didn't care if they even smiled, we just wanted them to look normal for them camera! Not surprisingly, even with our great photographer, none of the pictures turned out to be worthy of hanging on the wall. But with a little photoshop, cutting and pasting, I'm sure we can work something out!

Our individual family pictures were even better. We couldn't get our kids to smile for the camera and look normal to save our lives!

Postal Surprise!

The other day I was outside with the kids as well as with my friend, Nancy, and her two kids. We were in the playground with the four kids and were chatting away as usual. After a few minutes we noticed that the two older boys, the 3 year-olds, were missing. We started searching around looking down the sidewalks, out in the grass and in the trees when we heard some thumping noises. We couldn't figure out where is was coming from. Then we heard some giggling. We following the thumping and the giggling towards the mailboxes and noticed that the free-standing parcel boxes were shaking quite a bit. We heard more giggling and came around to the front to find the two boys each stashed in their own parcel box. We had a good laugh and tried to figure out how they managed to get into the top one and how they ever managed to fit their bodies in there. Maybe Destroy thought the Mailman would deliver him to one of his Grandparents' houses!