One Year Anniversary

Today marks the sad one year anniversary of Pat's passing.  It was such a tragic experience and I know everyone still misses her as much today as last year at this time.  Maybe even more so.  I think about her all time and wish I could tell her what Enzo is doing and how great he is.  She loved to hear any little detail no matter how mundane.  For months after her death, Enzo would do something noteworthy and my first reaction was to call or email her right away.  I also want to tell her about the house we bought and all our plans to make it our own special space in this fantastic forest.  She once told me she didn't understand why someone would buy a house in Bonny Doon that didn't have an ocean view, but I'm confident she would have loved our house and land.  She would marvel at all the sequoias and fruit trees and would be impressed with what I do with their bounty.  I miss her gentle yet effective influence on Jake for my behalf when Jake misbehaved.  Every time I see clam chowder on a menu I think of her because she would always order it if it was there.  I would always laugh whenever she told me she didn't like a particular food, like marzipan, then would eat it without knowing and love it.  I miss her excellent and thoughtful gifts.  I'm glad to have her handmade toddler clothes and the quilt she and my mom made for Enzo is an amazing piece of art.  There is so much that reminds me of her and so much more about her I'm not writing about.  It would be impossible to mention something about all the lives she's touched and things she's done.

She told me many many years ago (before Jake and I were even thinking about getting married) that her greatest fear in life was to die without having a grandchild.  With great relief she lived many years beyond her prognosis and was there every step of the way at Enzo's birth.  I feel honored that Jake and I were able to make one of her greatest wishes come true.

So these are my experiences and thoughts about Pat.  It was hard to write this because I'm sobbing through it, but I wanted to get some of my thoughts down for posterity.  Today we took her ashes to the beach in Davenport and stopped for pastries at a bakery she liked on the way home.  Two new flowers in our yard bloomed today - some kind of crazy looking wild pink poppy and a blue hydrangea.  There was a meteor shower last night. Maybe that means something, maybe it doesn't.  But I'd like to think she's thinking about is too.

Two Videos

#1

I forgot to publish these with my last post.  The first video was from two weeks ago and Enzo just started pointing out Turnip's body parts.  You'll notice Turnip has stitches on her nose from the removal of a growth.  I took the stitch out last week and she's doing fine.  I'm just hoping more growths don't start popping up.

Dog Anatomy

#2

Enzo loves pretend food play and we finally bought him his own little sandwich making kit.  You'll hear him making "tomato toast" for mama and dada.  And if you listen closely, after I ask for a carrot sandwich he says "carrot is yuck on a sandwich"!  

Making Sandwiches

Grateful

5.1.14

Grateful for spring rolls!  One of my favorite summer foods to make.  These had buckwheat noodles, avocado, cilantro and mango with a sweet and hot dipping sauce.  I would eat them everyday if I could.

5.2.14

Grateful for radish butter canapes.  Baguette, butter, radish and salt. Another favorite summer snack.

5.3.14

An impromptu visit to San Fransico.  Grateful for Trouble Coffee and Coconut Club, where I had the best cinnamon sugar toast in my life, as well as grapefruit juice and a fresh coconut.

5.4.14

Grateful for raspberry picking with friends.

5.6.14

Grateful for Pink Puppy's friendship with Enzo.

5.7.14

Grateful for pretend food play so that I can hear Enzo say "hammishes" (sandwiches) over and over.  

5.9.14

More rose petals.  Grateful for the gorgeous scent and color on these ones.

Grateful for a patient dog.

5.10.14

Grateful Turnip tolerates playing dressup with Enzo.

 Grateful that Turnip enjoys being "painted" by toddlers.

Grateful for a wonderful Mother's Day!  Took the kiddos for a wagon walk to play at the school's playground.

Grateful for flowers from Deborah.

Grateful for the gift Enzo gave me, a bird feeder he made at school!  

5.14.14

Grateful for these amazing flowers!  I don't know what they are (maybe petunia?), but I love them so much.

Grateful

4.19.14

Grateful that my mom saved the clothes she made for us.  (Could he get any cuter??)

 4.20.14

Grateful we crossed "burn pile" off our list.  Jake spent 6 hours on it.

Watching said burn pile at a safe distant.  So happy to be home with his doggie.

 Same day.  Dinner with two friends visiting from Europe.  No picture of friends (I'm the worst!!) but I got a snap of the pie - chocolate espresso torte with an almond oat crust.  The whole meal was vegan and gluten free and was fantastic.  

4.22.14

Grateful for roses.  I've never really liked roses before (thought they were too old fashioned), but now that I have a few scraggly bushes, I love them.  I've been drying petals for weeks using various methods.  

My love continues with this roll on perfume I picked up.  I loved the packaging and it smells wonderful too.

Trip to Michigan April 9-18th

So far behind blogging and the more I've been putting it off the worse I feel!  After we got home from Michigan we hit the ground running with work and home projects and I haven't really gotten back in my groove of posting.

First off I want to recap our trip.  It's been our first trip back to Michigan since Jake's mom's memorial back in June 2013.  Enzo was a mere 18 months old and most of the family hadn't seen him since then.  This trip felt really special because it was the first time I felt that our family has seen him as a real legit kid - not a baby.  He's talking, inquisitive, asks for things, has preferences, plays with toys imaginatively and likes to read books.  All the big kid stuff!  He was a perfect angel on this trip (until the plane ride home with just me and him) and I think he impressed a lot of people.  Nothing makes me prouder than having a good kid people actually like!

One of my main motivators for visiting Michigan in April was to go to Passover.  It's been..well...I don't even know how many years since we last celebrated.  Maybe in college?  Anyway, it's been a while and it was quite a celebration!  Thank you so much Cindy for hosting!  I didn't get any pictures of the family so please send some my way if you have any.

Looking dapper for our plane ride out of San Jose.  We got many compliments on the rideable suitcase and fedora.

Our first stop was in Grand Rapids, where Enzo's Baba had lots of cool places for us to visit.  Here's Jake feeding our child to a T-Rex at the animatronic dinosaur museum.

Bubbe happily feeding cake to the boy at the party at my mom's house on Sunday.

On our way out the door to Passover.  This is Enzo's first lollipop.  

We made sure that Uncle Sheddy and Enzo got some good quality time together this trip.  He took Enzo to the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum  and afterward we all went out for a milkshake.

Reading new and ancient books with Bubbe.

Morning tv time with Tweet's famous smoothie and peanut butter toast.

Out to brunch with Ezra and Cindy.

So tired towards the end of our trip.  We ended up making him a floor bed because he kept rolling off any cushion we put him on.  Pink Puppy has been his constant bed time companion lately.

Out visiting friends with Tweet.  Came home with an Easter Egg which he was really excited about.  Looks skeptical in the photo but he wanted to look at it constantly.  We brought it on the plane with us and he kept wanting to check on it.

This is not all that happened but just a few highlights.  Of course the trip was not long enough to see everybody and I never get enough pictures of people.  The trip home was pretty rough - just me and an overly tired homesick toddler.  There may have been tears at the airport (and I don't mean Enzo's!).  We had a really wonderful time and I'm ready to do it all over again in July!