Mom's 'Helper'

More and more, Isabella is able to get around. She is grabbing and moving things. Boy do you have to keep an eye on her!

Yep -- big help with the laundry!


I caught this sequence of Isabella helping Mom (un)load the diswasher...

Cutting board just put in by mom

Here is comes...

Yep... you got it!

So... what's my next plan of attack?

Oh...I can help with that cheese grater you just put here...

First Swing Ride...

We've started exploring the parks in our larger neighborhood. Here is a fun video of Isabella first swing ride...

Exploring all the toys

The rain is finally here!!!

This may be hard to understand for our Swedish family... but boy has it been a long hot summer.

This last week, the heat has finally broke and today we got our first big rain storm (from Canada the weather people tell us).



I'm not sure this picture does it justice... but we had some real dark rain clouds and a good amount of rain coming down. We closed up the green house to keep the heat in.


Here the rain was coming down pretty strong... But as you'll see in the next photo, it sure didn't last long. Literally about 2 hours later we had blue skys.





The weather people talked about this storm for days... what a total let down!

On a positive note, our new house didn't have gutters long the back and side of the house and it didn't have any proper drainage for the water. We just completed the work of getting new gutters and drainage about 8 hours before the storm came. Ah... what timing!

Splish Splash I was Taking a Bath...

Isabella’s favorite thing right now is bath time and she loves her" rubby ducky bath tub".

If we let her, she would stay in there all day.

She is really learning how much fun splashing can be!

Thunder, Lightning, Fires and Mudslides ... Oh My!!!

Last weekend was Labor Day in the USA (a celebration for working people... so everyone was off for a long weekend!)

The Syren family went up in the mountains for a little vacation to escape the terrible heat wave with no end in sight we’re still having in San Diego. We drove up to 8440 feet (3000 meter) to Big Bear mountain.

We had a wonderful cabin. There was a room downstairs for Isabella. Mom and Dad slept upstairs in the loft! It was real cozy.










One reason to go to the mountains was to enjoy some beautiful hiking. Isabella's new early wake up schedule allowed us to get out nice and early!

It was wonderful but we did have some serious lightings shows and rain while there. Two times while we were hiking we had to turn back because of rain. Isabella who never been out in rain loved it and squealed as she got wet. Click here to see a video of us in the rain.

The second time we had gone pretty far so we really got trapped in the rain and had to run back to the cabin. Getting we was only part of the problem. Big pine cones by the size of a large bunny kept falling left and right and we had to run zig-zag to avoid getting hit by the cones which probably would have hurt a lot.



Beyond the excitement, our first morning walk was perfect and this picture really captures the beautify of Big Bear Lake. Don't forget you can click of any of these pictures to see them bigger!



On Sunday, we had lunch at Thelma’s. There was a large motorcycle gang having lunch there as well. Isabella charmed them all. They were all super nice and invited me out to see the bikes!





The day we arrived, lightning did hit and caused a fire. The whole weekend we could see black smoke coming from over the mountain. The freeway we drove to Big Bear on was closed... for 4 days! When we left had had to drive off the backside of the mountain.

Throughout the weekend, there we helicopters going back and forth from the lake over to the fire to dump water. It was quite a show. What we didn’t realize was as the rains came in, this second road got closed due to mudslides! Luckily by the time we left the mudslides had been cleared!

You can click here to see all the pictures and videos from the weekend.

Look Who's on the Move...

Look who’s getting around and having bunch of fun!

Isabella has finally started crawling. After daddy, mommy, Andrea and Jessica all have had been trying to teach her by help her move her hands and knees ... and even getting down on our hands and knees to show her how it’s done... she fnally did it!

What motivated her to finally do it? …….a tv remote control! Daddy put it down on the floor and Isabella saw it and went for it and ever since she been cruising around the house.

Last night, during dinner, she crawled into the bathroom and closed the door. I guess she needed some privacy :-)

Here is August 21st. She is not crawling yet.. but close!

Just 10 days later she is cruising like she's a pro! (August 31st)

And having lots of fun!!!