Visiting a great yogi's meditation garden in Encinitas

We visited our old stomping grounds in Encinitas yesterday. Boy do we miss living there. It was great living one block from down town area, one block from the ocean and a couple of blocks from the Self realization temple's meditation garden. It's such beautiful place over looking the ocean with many places to sit among small ponds, water falls and beautiful flowers and eat lunch or meditate. It's the former home of world known yogi Parmahansa Yogananda. We wanted to take Bella there to see the flowers and fish who lives in the ponds. We did explain to her that she needed to speak with an inside voice. She was so excited but kept her cool and actually we ran in to a monk from the temple who smiled at her and said "it's so wonderful to see how full of life she is". What a sweet thing to say and made us feel good about bringing her to a place where perhaps not many bring kids.

Bella and dad checking out the big fish in the pond

Happy girl with sun kissed cheeks

Why????

We have definitely entered the WHY face of Bella life and boy can it be frustrating. We learned that you need to answer the child and never make them feel like asking questions are wrong. OK we get that but she does ask A LOT of questions which usually are followed by.....yes you guessed write more questions. So a conversation can go like this: Mom what are you doing? I'm brushing my teeth. Why? Because I like my teeth clean. Why because if they are not clean they they get hole. Why? Because arrggghhh. This is when you are scrambling for answers and I usually let her know I don't know but if it's important to her I will find out. The other thing is that she constantly talk, even while watching a movie. Right now she loves Finding Nemo and we watched it this week alone about 5 times and every time she asks the same question every time. Since my answers are the same I wish I had a tape recorder giving the answers. Ahhh the joy of parenthood.

I got robbed!

OK... so my hair has been thinning for the past few years. And a few years ago I decided... no reason to hide it... and went to a shorter hair doo...Fredrica assured me that going bald was no big deal and that Sean Connery and Bruce Willis are much more handsome without hair.

I really like my barber in North Park. She does a great job striking the balance between a short simple haircut and making it look good. But.. she went on an extended vacation in Dec/Jan.

By the time she got back, I was quite overdue... when I got there alas she extended her vacation 10 days. I couldn't wait and went to some random place. I think he's more accustomed to cutting hair for the troops than your average Joe.

So no, I am not shipping off to war, just anxiously awaiting Frankie (a women) to get back from her cruise and for my hair to grow out again!

Look what the rain brought

It's been raining like crazy since Sunday night and it's been pretty hard rain, high winds and even thunder and lightning which scared Bella when it woke her up one night. This is the most amount of rain I have experince in San Diego since I moved here 4 years ago. Today we had a little rain in the morning but then it's been clear. I'm recovering from oral surgery again. This is my 9th oral surgery and by God I hope it's the last one. This time has been pretty hard and my recovery slower. After been cooped up inside for days, James decided to take Bella to the zoo to see the new panda bear. This gave me some time to blog and work on healing. I spend some time in the sun outside in our garden admiring what all this rain brought to our garden.

My daisy will soon be blooming and bring more color to our garden

Look at all those buds, my Jasmin will for sure bloom soon. Our friend Michele gave us this one as a moving in present almost 3 years ago and then it was tiny. Look at it now.

I have lots of new broccoli growing after the rain

And cauliflower's

Well... There's Always Next Year

Well... for our family and friends in San Diego, you know the Chargers played miserably in the playoffs and lost... the season is done.

I was so excited to have tickets for the game. I thought we had a chance to go all the way to the Super Bowl... but again we choked the playoffs.

I was in such a bad mood coming home Fredrica was ready to send me back out of the house :-). Oh well, at least I got this cool video of the end of the National Anthem and four F-15 fighter planes flying over the stadium.

Rain, rain go away..... but please come back another day

We don't get very much rain here in San Diego so when it happens it can kind of challenge the day to day activities. First no one here can drive when it rains so traffic always ends up being a nightmare and so was today's morning. We been having strong winds so there is debris everywhere and actually San Diego is having tornado warnings. It's also been super cold (for San Diego) so when I came home in the afternoon it was 68F inside brrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Now on the other hand we desperately need the rain after months of water restrictions due to low water levels. Being from Sweden a much colder climate I love when it's a little bit darker and colder. I don't mind this kind of storms once a month...for a day or two perhaps. It's perfect excuse to stay inside and cuddle which is what me and Bella did yesterday. We baked cookies and watched Finding Nemo for the 10th time.

Cuddle time with tiny feet and blue nail polish;)

Front of our house does not look that bad but there is lots of floods

Our back yard and my vegetable garden needs all this water

Bella's sand crab looks a little lonely out there

Bella is in training

Isabella is the most loving child we know and I think part she probably learn from us but I think part is from our wonderful daycare provider Annie. Isabella has always been the oldest there and been Annie's little helper. Annie is a incredible patient and loving person making her perfect for the job. I think Bella has been watching Annie and off course taken part of her daily love toward all the kids in daycare and now she has forward her love towards her dolls. I've have to say it's impressive to see how she handles all three dolls at the same time and yesterday it was cuddle time so she laid down with all three reading a book to them. Mommy's little angle she is.

Those moments that takes my breath away

We take a lot of pictures and videos of Bella off course but sometimes you catch those pictures which is a direct expression of our feelings at that moment and this is one of those. You probably are going ahhh and ohhh when you see this picture and then imagine what I feel when I see her like this. It makes my heart ache because I love her so much and can't believe she is mine.

On Thursday I got a call almost as soon as I dropped her off at Annie's that she wanted Annie to call me and she wanted me to come. I unfortunately was laying with a million (OK maybe just 20) needles stuck in me for acupuncture. Needless (ha ha ha) to say I was not relaxing anymore and as soon as I was done I called and checked on her. She wanted to come home. After shuffling a few things around, I went to get her. She was happy and healthy but told me she was sad and missed me and just didn't feel like playing. We had a great time together and at nap time she fell asleep in our bed and this is when I caught this moment. It's great to be a mom!!!!!

Now James is a believer too

Since I bought my shakti mat-bed of nails I been spending many wonderful times on it. I love falling a sleep on it and usually waking up an hour later to remove it and go back to sleep. I swear I sleep so much better after I been on the shakti mat. Now James has started using it too. I think at first he thought it was cool but not really understanding how it could make you relax but now he's a believer. Today he fell as sleep in the morning on the mat. I never seen him go back to sleep after being up for an hour. He was laying on it happy as a clam and snoring away.

Happy New Year!!!

We ended the year as great it has been, with food, friends and a lot of laughs. We hosted a dinner for 5 of our friends and we had such a great time. Everything would have been great if all of us had not come down with a cold at the same time. Bella woke up early morning new years eve (3am) so we were a little bit tired and did not make it all the way to midnight. I think being a little sleep deprived made us forget to take many pictures from the party. Oh well. Hope you all had a great time and we wish you all a great 2010!!!!! To all of you who are part of our life as friends, family or just visitors to our blogs we thanks you for making our lives so special.

Preparing dinner with a glass of wine at hand

James did such a good job setting the table. His second calling I think :)