Zoomars

On Saturday Clint, Clark and I went down to San Juan Capistrano to check out Zoomars. I had never heard of it before, but what a nice little treasure. For me it was mommy heaven. Relatively safe environment, aside for him getting bit by an animal, I felt very comfortable there. There was a caged in "arena" for rabbits and guinea pigs. This was our favorite because we could pick up any of the animals there and pet them. Clark got pretty comfortable with this little white guinea pig who was friendly and didn't mind Clark holding him unless Clark squeezed him a little too tightly.








As we walked around and pet the animals I realized that they were very gentle.

They had two Zedonkeys. Zoe and Zeke. They are a cross between a Zebra and a Donkey. I think Zedonkey sounds dumb so I named them Zonkeys. :) I've never seen one before, but they were very friendly. I was worried that they would be a little aggressive with being fed but they very gently took the carrots. I felt relatively comfortable with Clark feeding them without too much of my help.


They also had some Llamas that despite them pinning their ears back, they liked being fed. In the same pen as the Llamas they had an Emu who let us pet it. Fun!

To end our adventure at Zoomars we got to see the train go by. Clark hasn't seen one or been on one before. Originally I had wanted to ride the train down there and back but it wasn't going to work so well. So we decided to just drive this time. Thankfully right when we were leaving a train pulled into the station and we got to see it drive by.

Bye bye Crib Ceremony

Seemed like Clark was accepting the transition with ease so we had a bye bye crib ceremony this morning. Clark and I took apart the crib and did a happy dance to celebrate his graduation to the new bed.

Happy Dance


Last night I put pillows on the floor in case Clark fell out. My neighbor has suggested it and seemed like valid advice. When I came home from book club I asked Clint if there were any problems and he said, "No, but the kids has WAY too many pillows."
I was a little confused because I didn't put any pillows IN his bed.
This is what he had done after I tucked him in:


Also for about the last month, the trend has been for me to put a blanket not only on Clark but on his trash truck too.
Today at nap, when I tucked him in, he had the trash truck on his right side with its own blanket, and his gorilla on his left tucked into the same blanket that was on him.
This is what I found when I checked on him today:

Big Boy Bed

Clark and I bought his big boy bed today. I went to the library and got a book about staying and sleeping in his new big bed.

Clark and I picked it up today and put it together. He was very helpful, mostly. :)
He was all excited until I put his mattress in the bed. Then he got a freaked out look. So we went next door and I borrowed Merrik to show him the bed, which then made Clark much more excited. Slowly he started to warm up to the bed. He hit his hands on it, then started to bounce his hands and eventually half laid on it. Clint, Tavi and I all made a big deal about his bed.
Then we went back outside to wear him out some more. :)

Seemed to work...today...


I realize that this is probably the "honeymoon" phase, but hopefully it will continue to stay easy.

Wait, what am I talking about?! He's 2! There is NOTHING easy about a 2 year old. Just google, "My 2 year old makes me want to drink" and that will give you a good idea in case you aren't blessed with a little demon angel that is 2. :)

Hopefully next week we can take the crib down. :)

Nex Stop...

...South Korea!


Unless the Army changes their mind at the last minute, we are set to go to South Korea in July. I'm VERY excited and so is Clint. Our families on the other hand are not as much, but we all knew our time in California wasn't going to last forever.

We don't know which base we will be assigned to yet. Clark and I have to get command sponsorship to go. Basically a bunch of paperwork making sure that we don't have any health needs that we won't have access to if we do move. Once we get command sponsorship the commander will have to assign us to a base. We hope to be in Soul or the base about an hour away from Soul. The jobs are different. Some are strictly running a clinic, others are just the food mission and some are a combination of clinic and deployment training. Clint won't deploy though.
Part of why we picked S.Korea was so that Clint doesn't have to deploy. I "kind of" freaked at the conversation we had about deployment. (kind of: extreme understatement of my reaction) Maybe, hopefully the idea of deployment won't be so horrible.

We hope to be able to do some traveling while we are there. Tickets to China and Japan are about $400. Same as our tickets were from KS to CA.

Now we have to figure out what household goods will be shipped and what has to stay. They only allow about half of your belongings to be shipped, but they have furniture rental places.

We also will be selling both our vehicles. The word is that Korean drivers are CRAZY!

So we will keep you posted on the progress.

Rainy Day Play

Last week we had a few days of rain. A rare occurrence in Cali. So Clark and I got dressed in our rain gear and headed outside to find some good puddles.

Puddles were a plenty in our neighborhood!





Clark and I found some puddles so deep that the water was running into the top of his boots. He hasn't really gotten the concept of what an umbrella does, but he loved being able to use it.

As you can see from my pants, I had a good time splashing in the puddles too!

Christmas 2011

Wow, I can't believe that it's almost 2012. Thank goodness. The last 6 months have been more difficult then I would have liked. I can say I've had my fair share of hospital visits for my life time. Thank fully not on my part, but for my family. We had Jack's (Clint's brother) brain surgery in August and then about 2 weeks before Christmas my dad fell down the stairs breaking 3 ribs and punctured his lung. That was the easy part. The hospital visit is what almost killed him! Man, don't ever leave loved ones in the hospital by themselves. The staff literally tries to kill you!
Anyways, that's another story, but ties into this Christmas because we were very thankful that he was home, and on the mend.

Here are a few of the good pictures I had on my camera:

Christmas Tree, most of the presents are for Clark. Typical. HA!



Clark with one of his new toys.


Broken Bob and Mental Marge. (Nick names from Santa for the year.)


And here is why those three were the best I had on my camera from Christmas Eve:
The name of the game: Name that object, courtesy of Clark's amazing picture taking skills.






Next game: Who does that food/feet belong to?:




In all seriousness, Clark actually got some good pictures:




Christmas Morning we went to church. It was amazing! Very spirit filled and we got to sing lots of songs. Just my style! Then we went Diane's (Clint's Mom) house.
Opening presents:





The camera thief strikes again!




I'd like to say Clark took these but it was me! I was trying really hard to get pictures of everyone, but Grandma and Jack were to my left and the pictures ended up looking like this even when I tried to shade the lense with my left hand. :p


Clark flying:

Clark playing with his new truck. He broke it shortly after. :( Too bad because he really liked it. The axle broke off the truck from his pushing on it and then it wouldn't roll any more.



Christmas Dinner Table:


More Clark Art: