Bummer

A man backed into me in a parking lot today. *sigh* Everyone is fine - but it was a bummer.

(Not my beach cruiser in the reflection. I'm holding that for my neighbor because it's his wife's Christmas present.)

Don't Expect a Christmas Card From Us

I am a bit of a humbug when it comes to Christmas cards. I don't see much point in printing off pictures and giving updates to people that I see or keep in touch with on a regular basis. Anyone who cares to be updated on our lives can read this blog and get much more information than a card would give them. There are a handful of people who are an exception to this statement. That handful of people MAY actually get a Christmas card from us one year. But probably not this year.

At Thanksgiving I had hopes of getting a decent family picture taken, but as it goes each Thanksgiving, my children were sick. We still went out with my Mom to get pictures, but I didn't dress everyone in their "holiday" or "picture" attire because I really didn't expect it to go well. Ryan had super red cheeks and puffy sort of eyes. Katie's nose was raw from wiping.

I'm not saying we didn't get a cute picture or two. Consider this your Christmas card from the Bayles Family. We'll try again for a decent family picture later. Have a Merry Christmas!

O' Christmas Tree

Wow, Ryan looks pretty short next to his pal Ethan. I never noticed before.

Book Lover

I am posting these pictures, not because they are great pictures, but because they say a lot about Katie right now.

First, notice that she is no longer in a crib or playpen as she used to be. She officially figured out how to climb out of it and I figured that I didn't want to fight her to stay in the crib just to fight her later on about staying in a bed. So, we just went to the bed. This one actually belongs to our neighbor but we're borrowing it because Ryan isn't quite ready to sleep on the top bunk.

She does get out of it, but doesn't try to leave her room. (I put up a little kid gate just to help remind her that she needs to stay in the room.) I don't mind if she gets out of bed because they don't really have toys in their room - only books. I will say that last night she woke up in the night crying and bawling for me, but never got out of her bed to come find me.

The next thing to notice (but how could you miss?) is the myriad of books that she insists on sleeping with. She doesn't give us much trouble going to bed at night because she REALLY enjoys flipping through a bunch of books until she gets tired and falls asleep. We'll read to Ryan in his bed 2 feet away, but often Katie prefers to go over and look at books on her own.

She also carries them around all over the place. She usually has at least 4 books at a time and asks me to read them to her every 30 minutes or so. She is anti-discriminatory and will flip through big books or small books or board books or whatever. She also carries around that blanket with her all over the place. That just started.

The Power of Advertising

Katie Singing "Mr. Peanut"

Here is another song. When she sings it at first - she misses a line which I put in parentheses. Don't get too confused.

"Here's Mr. Peanut sitting on the tracks, (his heart was all a flutter, when along comes a chugga chugga) choo choo train and SPLAT, peanut butter."

Katie singing "Jack and Jill"

It was nighttime so the picture quality is poor - but I did it more for the audio anyway.

If you are unfamiliar with the nursery rhyme:

Jack and Jill went up the hill, to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling after.

I have two other videos to post but it took a long time to download and I am feeling impatient tonight. I'll try again later.

Gingerbread House

I love these goof-balls. This was our little FHE project on Monday.

Sea World Saturday

Last Saturday we visited Sea World for the second time this year. It rained non-stop on Friday and had a high of 59 degrees Saturday so we expected it to be cold and possibly rainy. It rained only once for about 15 minutes. It wasn't too bad, but enough to get all the bleachers soaked so we all got stuck with wet bottoms for a while.

Some highlights of the day:

Katie got to touch a dolphin. She REALLY enjoyed that but was pretty mad at me when I helped her touch the bat ray.

Gee, from this angle it looks like I must've really flung her over the edge to get close enough to touch one of those guys. Nevertheless, one got close enough to us.

They had fun playing with the puppets and things in the gift shops. Somehow we managed to stop and "play" at about 4 gift shops without one meltdown. I don't think the kids even asked for anything ever.

Shamu.

A goofy looking picture of our kids on our lunch break. Ryan insisted on wearing shorts the entire day (even though it was cold enough for me to wear a sweatshirt and coat). I was only able to convince him to wear his jacket while it was raining.

When we got back from our lunch break, we noticed Jack Hanna. He had just finished up a presentation and was handing out autographed 5x7 glossy pictures of himself. Ryan got up on the ledge right in front of him and was passing by him to check out the camel. Mr. Hanna handed a picture to Ryan and Ryan looked at it with a "huh?" kind of expression and looked back at Jack Hanna. I prompted him, "Say, Thank you." In a nice and enthusiastic voice Ryan said, "Thank you." and walked back over to Derek and I. "Why did he give this to me?" We got a pretty good kick out of that.

And of course, the dolphin show.

Don't Cry Over Spilt Milk

I don't really think I want to talk about it.

Not the instigator, but she was an accomplice.

Recovered Quickly

The bug in our house only lasted for 24 hours. The kids are back to normal and having a blast. I couldn't have asked for a much better sickness.

Sick kids

I'm grateful for daylight savings time because my kids were up all night throwing up and I was glad to have one extra hour. Ryan had a fever but seems to be doing a bit better now. Katie is not so good. She's pretty listless and has thrown up 5 times. I hope it doesn't last.

Photographer and editor: Derek

New York City, 9/27/07 Thursday

First of all, we appreciate the kind words about our pictures. As a general rule, we are like any other people who take pictures. We get some good ones, and we get some not-so-good ones. Sometimes the good ones are mine, sometimes they are Derek's - we're pretty even. Derek's are generally more artistic, in my opinion, and he does a lot of landscape ones. I am more of a people photographer.

Mom, we definitely don't post all of our pictures. Here's a list of the numbers of pictures we took each day.

Sun. 299, Mon. 172, Tues. 180, Wed. 153, Thurs. 66, Fri. 243, Sat. 53

In our opinion, Friday was the best picture day so hopefully you like our NEXT New York post.

Thursday we planned for the Museum of Natural History all day long. It didn't open until 10:00 so we decided to spend the morning really enjoying Central Park.

We went to the turtle pond and it was true to it's name. The small turtle kept swimming in front of the large one and getting right in her face like they were kissing. Probably some mating ritual but it was amusing to watch. The big one would just swipe his face away with her big front flipper (if that's what you'd call it). He kept coming back for more.

Are you familiar with the Bugaboo strollers? This is the Bugaboo Frog and it is all one stroller with a bunch of attachments and setups. I'll admit, they are pretty dang cool and very smooth to push (I only know because I saw one at a boutique in Oregon and pushed it around in the store.) Keep in mind that it is a single stroller so it is nothing, if not impractical, for a parent with more than one child. Also keep in mind that the BASIC setup (without the bells and whistles and attachments) is over $700.00.

I started noticing quite a few of these strollers the first day in New York and was flabbergasted that so many people would own such a posh stroller. Then as the week went on I realized that a Bugaboo in Manhattan is like a BMW or Lexus in Orange County. They are so popular there that they become ordinary. After pointing out so many to Derek in just a few hours, I decided to keep a count of them. Central Park, of course, had the highest volume of strollers. We spent an appreciable amout of time in Central Park on two different days. On one day in just over 2 hours, we counted 24 of them. Our official count for the week was 71 Bugaboo strollers.

We headed on over to the Natural History Museum once it opened up at 10am. We spent all day there and really enjoyed it. As it was closing, we realized that there was an entire half of a floor that we had missed somehow. Darn it! I loved the space show, it was very well done.

This place was PACKED with dinosaur bones. We took a million and a half pictures for Ryan, but we'll spare you. :)

Derek and the Stegasaurus.

Check out the size of this Sequoia. It's like an orange on a toothpick. If you click on the picture you can get an idea of how old this thing is.

After it closed, we headed over to Pepe Verde's for some authentic Italian. Looks ordinary, but mine had spinach and ricotta cheese and I really enjoyed it.

Then we went over to the highly acclaimed Magnolia Bakery and picked up a cupcake for each of us ($2 a piece). They were tasty but VERY rich. After a few bites I had Derek finish mine. I'm not much of a frosting fan and this was some serious frosting folks. The ambiance in the bakery was pretty fun and they had some great looking things.

We saw Les Miserables that night and I REALLY enjoyed it. I was familiar with a lot of the music but didn't really know the entire story beforehand. The performers were outstanding, and it was very moving to me. Admittedly, I got all teary eyed more than once. I was not disappointed.

We got back to our hotel that night and Derek came across this newspaper which listed its opinion of the 10 most overrated dishes in NYC - including Carnegie Deli's "Woody Allen" and the Magnolia Bakery cupcakes we had just partaken in. We both got a good laugh about that. I would agree, they were both a bit overrated, but we were glad, nonetheless, to have tasted for ourselves.

New York City, 9/26/07, Wednesday

Wednesday we started the day off at the Empire State Building. We were told to get there early to avoid long lines. So we did. No long lines whatsoever. It wasn't cloudy at all, but it did seem a bit humid or something. Anyway, once we got to the top we realized that it was a little hazy. Here are some shots in a few directions. You can see Central Park in some of them.

Notice all of the water towers on top of the buildings.

Looking uptown.

Downtown shot. I seriously felt deprived of the twin towers. It was obvious to me that I was missing something.

We stopped in to a little place called "Brooklyn Bagels" for a bite to eat and were not disappointed. CHECK OUT the amount of cream cheese they loaded on these things. It was perfect, and the jalepenos were a nice touch. I crave these now.

We stopped off at Macy's. It was WAY too huge to be any fun for me. I don't like shopping in a place that is completely overpriced and has such a large selection. It was just too overwhelming. We walked through it, saw these old school escalators, and left.

Here's Central Library. It was SO pretty inside - all marble and gorgeous. Too bad they just don't make buildings like that anymore. I got myself a library card and we used the internet for a short while to try and get tickets for the Daily Show again. No luck.

Statue at Rockefeller Center.
We missed the ice skating by just about 2 weeks. Dang!

We did a NBC tour and got to check out the set for SNL. Good times.

Fun and random mailbox.

Here are some pictures of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
We were totally excited about the Carnegie Deli. We stopped in, didn't even look at the menu - just ordered a "Woody Allen." We had seen the menu online before the trip and it said "Lots of beef and lots of pastrami." Sounded good. We ordered from Take-Out unknowingly so they wouldn't let us eat there. We hopped on the subway to Grand Central Station, found a table, and unwrapped our highly anticipated "Woody Allen."
ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

This was no sandwich - it was a practical joke! Look at those wimpy slices of rye. There isn't even any mustard or lettuce or tomatoes or any sauce. This sandwich cost us practically $20 and all it is is a pile of animal flesh between a sorry excuse for bread. Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed.
They also took pride in the fact that they made their own pickles. I LOVE pickles but I could not stomach these ones. To me it tasted as if they smoked them in cigarette smoke. No thanks! Next time, I think I'd spend a little more time checking out the menu.