Our Sunday

OK. I know I just posted an entry a few minutes ago, but really, this CANNOT wait. Or rather, I will not let the craziness of this upcoming week (which starts tomorrow!) prevent me from sharing this gem of a blog post.

Today we went to Norway. Or Scandinavia. Or Middle Earth? I'm not really sure where we were, and I'm not sure the people who we were there with knew either. All I know is that for the past month I have been driving past a very elaborate banner advertising the annual Viking Festival, and after a small amount of googl-ing, I quickly realized that I NEEDED to be there.

Little Mar has been under the weather, having come down with her 1st 'common cold' as a result of her insane birthday weekend last week (post coming soon), so we didn't check out the festival on Saturday. This morning, though, she had a little more pep in her step, so we loaded up and headed North (how appropriate) to meet some Vikings, or 'Pirates' as we explained to Marlowe- she wouldn't know the difference anyway.

I have to say, initially, the festival was more than a let down. Not because it didn't seem authentic, and not because it was half-assed (which it wasn't), but because it was a HUGE rip off. We spent 14 dollars just to walk through the gates, which was beyond insane. Once inside, it didn't get much better. There was TONS of ridiculous crap for sale and all of it was beyond a scam-$150 for a wooden cup? $20 for a 2 inch 'fairy house'? What does that even mean?-luckily Elgin and I are not suckers, nor are we in the market for cups or mythical real estate, and Marlowe is not yet/will hopefully never reach the obnoxious begging-for-everything stage. But despite feeling a little robbed, we sucked it up and decided to try and get our 14 bucks worth. We ventured up the 'Northern Path' Where we encountered a lovely couple who were sampling out their DELICIOUS Viking Soda Bread with honey butter...

MJ and her 'honey bear bread'

Further up the 'Northern Path' was the Viking campground

Normally El is the beard-iest man in town, but alas, not today- there's just no competition when you bring 'braided beards' into the picture. so. many. braided. beards.

These Viking chairs are smart, awesome, and seem to be pretty portable.

We tried them out, though Marlowe almost fell.

When Marlowe ran from the Viking Chair to the Toad 'Stools,' I realized we had left Norway and arrived at Middle Earth.

A round, armored, Viking warrior barreled himself down the path while we were sitting on the Toad 'Stools.' Marlowe and I were hot on his trail (he's up there in the distance).

The warrior led us to a booth where a man was *literally* peddling animal pelts-and people were buying them! I was tempted to buy this little number. Not really, but the lady standing next to me was seriously considering it. When the Viking salesman spotted Mar and started giving Elgin advice about her dating years, we bounced. "Plant a cactus under her window now, so it can grow by the time she's a teenager!"

I didn't know cacti flourished up in Scandinavia...

Our 14 bucks were totally justified when we stumbled upon this guy.

And then, a few seconds later, this happened...

Our court-side seats did not disappoint.

The look says it all.

The winner was a lady-Viking, very forward-thinking, these Vikings.

Just some Viking warriors posing for photos and a trio of orange 70s era break room chairs.

Marlowe spotted this bounce-house through the masses. Where on Earth can you find a Viking-themed bounce house, and why was this not one of our options for last week's party?

I don't mean to poke fun at the Viking people, and I hope I haven't insulted anyone in this post. The point is, we felt ripped off in the beginning, but the experience turned out to be (kind of) worth it in the end. We will probably not visit the Vikings again next year, but they will be back if you are interested in seeing this for yourself!

Now do you see why I couldn't wait to post this?

Hodge Podge

(Actual post date: 9/25)

Well, so much for updating twice a week like I had resolved to do when I fired this thing up. I'm not lacking material, in fact, my 'blog post ideas' list has gotten a little out of control. It's just so hard to find to time to sit down and do it, especially when there is so much ELSE I could be doing! But I find myself right now with a few minutes to spare, and as long as I can capitalize on opportunities like this one I know that all hope is not yet lost on the life of this bloggy.

Since I didn't get a chance to post throughout the past few weeks (I can't bring myself to admit that it's almost been a month!), I'll just say that it was cra-zay! I'm going to do a series of short(er) posts about the most notable events, assuming that is, that I can remember them.

Here's the first one:

One Thursday afternoon a few weeks ago, our power went out. We were in the middle of an insane heat wave, and I figured the old wiring on our house got too hot, you know, since I'm an electrician in my spare time. The heat had obviously gotten to my head at that point. Well, it turns out that it really wasn't our too-hot, too-old wiring because the entire county of San Diego was power-less also. All this really meant to me was that classes on Friday were canceled and I couldn't cook the dinner I had planned.

It was actually kind of exciting, and luckily, we still had several hours of daylight left which meant I could rummage through the house for working flashlights and a battalion of candles-also a good reminder that I should put together an emergency kit because this task took WAY longer than it should have! We are (thankfully) not used to 'emergencies,' if you can even really call this one, and I found myself instinctively/embarrassingly assuming that we'd be foraging for our dinner. Then, two seconds later, we remembered that our propane-powered barbecue was not affected by the lack of electricity, so everything would be just fine.

We headed over to El's parent's house, which is only about 5 minutes away, had a spectacular al fresco dinner, and Marlowe/El spent some quality time on the swings together. Yes, El's parent's have a vintage playground swing set on their property--if only the view wasn't so crappy...

After our dinner, we headed home and got ready for bed since there was nothing else to do/nothing electronic to distract us. It was a nice quiet reminder that:

1. we can survive without the modern day convenience of electricity, at least for a few hours.

2. it's a good thing to 'unplug,' spend some quality time with the fam, and go to bed when the sun tells you to.

Our Crazy Life

The last two weeks have been nothing but pure pandemonium. I found out two Mondays ago that I had been accepted to graduate school, and classes started the following week. We had less than 7 days to completely re-arrange our entire lives, which among other things included: me quitting my job (on the first day back to work, yikes that was awkward), completely re-working our finances, getting MJ into a preschool that we approved of, and me putting this blog on the back burner! It was chaos- it still is -but this is a chaos that I welcome with open arms and am more than happy to deal with because it means that I have FINALLY been given the chance to achieve my goal of becoming a Speech/Language Pathologist, and that's just what I'll be in two years! Now the task is to find the balance between being a Mom, wife, and student.

That being said, my biggest goal throughout my experience in this grad program is to get my crap done ahead of time so I can avoid missing out on fun, mundane family and friends stuff- the stuff I love most! With one week under my belt (though first weeks are always pretty easy), I feel as though I have been able to stick to my resolution. In fact, I did more with friends and family this week than I have in awhile.

One of my favorite activities this week was when we scooted down to Cardiff on Wednesday night to share some dinner with friends who were camping...

This is what we had to work with; the picture is deceiving because the waves were HUGE! Low tide is the best time to let little kiddos run free!

This photo is actually from a different beach day, but it encapsulates who was there and what went on this past Wednesday. I have just inspired myself to do a post about our beach time this summer...coming soon!

After the sun went down, we climbed up 100 stairs from the beach back to campsite (Marlowe: "I climb up MYSELF!" and she did). Then we started to cook our feast!

Then, when it got REALLY dark, the babies had a rave.

My hope for this long weekend is that: I'll be able to get everything done for school, I can cook some good food for my family, see some old friends, and maybe, a big maybe, blog about some of it!