Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

As we start hearing back from schools about Tracy's applications, we find our selves still working with decisions. Actually, Tracy finds himself trying to make the decisions about what he wants for the future. Me I'm just around for support and to occasionally state my opinion.

As of now he's trying to decide if he actually wants to continue onto a PhD or jump into the workforce. He's strongly considering teaching high school science. Teaching has always been his passion. The PhD would make it so he could get a job at a college or university, but he says he'd be just as happy teaching in a high school and just keep on doing his research and field work in his spare time. He does know one thing he doesn't want to be at a large university, so that narrows things down a bit.

We've been looking into teaching license procedures for the State of Utah and job openings there. Focusing on Utah because, hey, we love that place and it is best place for a paleontologist to be, plus a few other reasons. I may convince him to start some licensing paper work. If he chooses to teach high school, he has to start taking classes to get a teaching certificate. He can still get a job and do this thing called Alternate Routes to Licensure, where he gets approval from the State Education Office to teach while working toward his license.  So once he make a decision on what to do he'll be ready to apply for jobs.

But there could be other jobs available, so I guess we just don't know. Oh, and we still need to hear back from some of the schools. Ahhh! It would be nice to know now what he'll do and where we'll be. Oh, well, for now we just wait and see what happens and Tracy will work to finish his degree and write his thesis.

Hopefully, we'll know soon! Sometimes the unknown drives me bonkers. Okay, I'll breath and try not to go crazy and just focus on enjoying our home here. Who knows I may not be here very much longer.

A Weekend of Fun, Fun, Fun!

What a weekend we have had. It started on Friday (of course), which happened to also be Valentine's Day. We packed up our suite cases and headed to L.A. Tracy had a conference to attend. It was just a short conference with an opening social Friday night, presentations all day Saturday and a field trip Sunday. James and I just came along as well.

Friday night we all were able to go to the opening social. James struggled a bit because he didn't want to be there. We were able to find something that they had there as snacks for him to eat. Tracy met a lot of them people attending the conference. It was a small one, so it was an easy task. Then we checked in to our hotel and went out to find some dinner.

Saturday, Tracy left early for the day to attend the conference. James and I took our sweet little time getting ready. We found Wall-E on T.V. and instantly he was hooked. We finally (around 10) started heading to the Page Museum where Tracy was at.

If you haven't ever been or aren't familiar with the Page Museum, I'll give a little description (and the link). It is located at the site of the La Brea Tar Pits. The Page Museum is where they house all the finds from the Tar Pits. L.A. has take the area around the Tar Pits and turned it into a grassy park called Hancock Park. It is also the location of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Now back to the fun stuff. ;) We have been to the Hancock Park before so I knew a few places we could play at before meeting Tracy for lunch. Our first stop was the outdoor art piece call the Levitated Mass. James loved it.

He looks so tiny.

Looking up at the rock.

Being cute.

We then headed over to the next outdoor art piece called Urban Light. The Urban Light is near the main ticket booth for the Museum of Art. On our way there we were stopped by on of the security guys and he told us about the NEXGEN membership. Kids with the pass get into the museum for free, plus one adult gets in free too. And the cost of the membership? $0, that's right FREE! How could I pass that up? So we signed James up and got my free ticket for the museum. But first photo shoot at the lights.

I kept missing him.
Got a hand this time.

His back!

He's completely gone.

Finally got him peeking around a light.

 It was getting close to lunch, so we went over to the Page Museum to wait for Tracy.

He chased the pigeons.

In front of the Tar Pit. Ah, he has horns! 

Then learned how to roll down hills.
We had a bit of an accident, involving me taking my turn rolling down
and James with out me seeing moved right into my path.
He went down with me on top of his feet and ended up with a bit of a sore ankle.
He wouldn't put any weight on it for a while and limped most of the rest of the day.
Opps. Sorry, Bud.

Had lunch then headed over the art museum for the afternoon. They have a children's area where kids can make their own painting, so that's where I took him first. He had no interest and wouldn't even let me take him out of his stroller. So we immediately went to explore another part of the museum. One of the workers at the Children's area told me about a display called Metropolis II that James would probably really enjoy. But we had to wait till 2:30 (an hour away) to see it in action. Meant we had time to kill. I found the Greek, Roman Art hall and we walked around there. I totally geeked out. Definitely will have to go back san kid and enjoy it more. Plus see more of the museum. James the whole time kept reminding me that we needed to find Metropolis II. We did make it over to the building where it was and found the awesomeness around 2:00. James was in love. I then told convinced him to go outside for a snack and we'd come back to see it on. They only run it for an hour at a time a few times through out the day. Once it turned on James was in complete heaven. Cars racing around on tracks and several electric trains going around; how could a kid not love that. I got several pictures of it, but here's a few.

James had to stay for the full hour it ran. Then we walked back to the hotel and waited for Tracy to finish with his day. One sec James was playing, the next he passed out on the floor wrapped in his blankie.

Once Tracy came back to the hotel, we started decided what to do for dinner. We had settled on the Cheesecake Factory, but once we got there and learned of the 1 1/2 hour wait we changed our mind. Luckily it was in a outdoor shopping mall area, so we had other choices. Tracy choose the place closest to the Cheesecake Factory, called The Fat Cow. Totally had some of the best food ever. I'm still dreaming of the burger we shared and the pizza was just excellent. Oh, and James' Mac 'n Cheese was just as delicious. He even ate almost the whole thing. (He's pretty picky about his mac n' cheese, same as I.) Afterwards, Tracy looked up The Fat Cow and learned it was one of Gordon Ramsey's restaurants. Wow! No wonder it was sooo good!

Sunday, Tracy decided to skip the field trip part of the conference, since they were just checking out mammal stuff at a Cal State in Fullerton. He's not that interested in mammals. So we made it a beach day, but first we had to decide what beach we wanted to go to. We did decide to check out a light house, Point Vincent Lighthouse. So cool!

We drove past LA's shipping yard and Long Beach. Saw the Queen Mary and kept on heading south. Tracy was thinking about going to Hunting Beach, but then decided to just keep on going to our regular place, the Balboa Pier in Newport Beach. We have a restaurant we've been eyeing on Balboa Island. The easiest way to get there from the beach was to take the ferry. The restaurant is just a block off the ferry dock. We made it a new adventure and walked onto the ferry instead of driving. Once we got over there, we discovered that the restaurant was closed for remodeling. :( We ended up taking the ferry back across, then walking around a bit looking for a place to eat. James suddenly had a request to eat on the bridge (the pier) which meant we'd be eating at our regular place Ruby's. Still Delicious and Fun!

On the Ferry!

We played for a bit on the beach then headed home.

Monday, we packed an overnight bag for my Valentine's Surprise. (I know it seems a bit over kill with the fun we already had so far in the weekend.) But Tracy still needed a break. So I guess he planned it just about has much for himself as for me. I had no clue as to where we were going until about an hour before we left when I started getting things together to go.
So my surprise? Was a night at the Beachcomber Motel in San Clemente. We had been eyeing the place, since we first stepped foot in San Clemente. It looked like such a nice place to stay. Needless to say I was excited to go on our mini Valentine's Day vacation.

James checking out the view.
The ocean is seriously right down the cliff.
(This picture doesn't show it too well.)

Playing at the beach before dinner.

We had a delicious dinner at Fisherman's Restaurant, right on the pier just as the sun was setting. Of course it was a cloudy day, so there wasn't a nice sunset. Still loved eating right above the water. We didn't have our nice camera at dinner and our cell phone don't work too well in low light.

The next morning, Tracy got us breakfast from The Beach Garden Cafe and brought it back to our room. We ate breakfast on the porch and enjoyed the view of the ocean. Then packed up our room and headed down to the beach to play. We played and played and played, had clam chowder from the Beach Garden Cafe for lunch (best clam chowder ever!) and then headed home.

Inside of the room.
One the right next to the sofa (fold out bed) there's a small kitchen, fully furnished.
Perfect for making your own meals.
You can see me getting our snack out of the fridge. ;)
The door on the left is the bathroom. Small but sufficient.

The porch with James playing on it.

View from the porch.

View from the porch.

Tracy and James playing together.

James adding water to our moat  around the sand castle.

Capturing sweet moments.

So there's a bit of a funny story behind this picture.
James has this small basket ball that he found on one of our beach trips awhile ago.
We keep it with our beach stuff, so he has his own little beach ball to play with.
Today, Tracy was tossing it around.
Soon he had some seagulls tried to pick it up/eat it, thinking it was food.
This lasted probably a good 15 min before they gave up. Silly birds.

So I feel like I got pretty spoiled this past weekend, with spending so much time with my boys. Definitely made lots of new memories. Hope you all had a good Valentine's Day!

4 Years Old

My little baby boy turned 4 years old, yesterday. Where has the time gone?

Birthday's throughout the years, 2010-2013.

He is growing up too fast. Though I do love seeing him learn and do new things.

This is where I take a moment and brag about James. He can write several letters. Pretty sure he knows how to write them all, but he'll only do his favorites X & Q on a regular basis. He loves to draw roads and train tracks. If given a piece of paper, that is usually what he ends up drawing on it. Then he'll start playing with his cars non the paper. James is my shadow all day long. He's always right there where ever I am. He most recently started wanting to help cook meals. He's become quite good at stirring what ever I have cooking on the stove.

My favorite thing is seeing him progress with his gross motor skills. He'll go up and down stairs that have shorter rises than your normal steps with out any help or holding on to the rail. He can remove his shoes and put them on. He can also get some pants on and off, though it takes a bit of a struggle to get him to try. Lately he's been trying to get his jacket on and off (mostly off), so maybe he'll have that down soon. This week accomplished climbing up the big slide on our play ground.

Yesterday, was a very fun day for James. He sure got spoiled. Friday night after he went to bed, Tracy and I filled his room with balloons. A tradition we started last year on his birthday. This year's total was 73 balloons. Would have been 75 but we had one casualty (not fun having a balloon blow up in your face) and one defected balloon.

He prefers to sleep in his reading corner, instead of in his bed.

James woke up and played with his balloons for awhile, which was nice it gave us time to wake up before he came to get us. He soon kept asking where all the balloons came from. Later in the day he told me, "I was sleeping and I woke up and there were balloons every where in my room." He cracks me up.

After breakfast, we went to see "The Lego Movie". It was such a cute movie. James loved it. Legos have become a recent discovery for him. (And a recent rediscovery for Tracy. He was playing with James' Legos last night as I was writing most of this post.)

Then we had his birthday party. We didn't have as many of his friends come that we were hoping for, but it was still fun for him. I probably wouldn't have done one, if he hadn't started saying his friends were coming for his birthday last week. So we threw it together kind of last minute and told people on Sunday they were invited.  It wasn't anything fancy, just pizza, cake and letting the kids play on the playground.

He very proud of his new skill at climbing the big slide at the playground.
Also you can see his sporting his "Birthday Boy" badge.

James and Emery posing for a picture.

Cake Time! He requesting a baseball cake.
I think it turned out fairly well.

He got carried away with blowing out the candles before we got a chance to sing. Silly boy.

He opened the present he got from his friends Emery and Caleb and it was a game. I didn't require anyone to bring presents so it was nice of them to get him one any way.

After the party, James and Tracy went swimming. I cleaned the house a bit and rested. I developed a terrible cold yesterday and it is kicking my butt. Terrible timing cold, terrible. Once they came back in James opened his present from us and grandparents. The video is kind of long.  He kept wanting to open the toys and play with them before moving on to the next present. (Ignore my non matching outfit. I had already changed into pj bottoms. Got to be comfortable.)

We played for a bit. Then sent James up to his room for quiet time. (My efforts in trying to keep with the daily schedule). He usually spends an hour in his room playing with his toys or he's allowed to watch shows/play games on the tablet. Occasionally he'll fall asleep, like today.

This is how I found him when I went to get him.

Then we just spent the rest of the evening playing some more.

We had such a fun day celebrating our sweet, silly, crazy, cute boy. Happy Birthday to James!