Sun!

It is currently 62 degrees and sunny. We have nothing but sun and mid 60's in the forecast for the next week and a half. I love my life. That's all.

Sleepy girl

At some point every night we hear Shayla drop her binkie out of her bed. Either intentional or not.... We aren't quite sure which.The other night Jon walked in to check on her and put the binkie back in her bed and this is what we found

Shayla has always loved lying this way in her bed and would get really frustrated when she started getting too long to sleep this way. She's a smart girl. A problem solver.

We got a good laugh over this. Sleepy baby!

New Years Eve

You may ask yourself how the parents of a 1 1/2 year old spend New Years Eve. Well I can tell you what we did... Thanks to Jon's work we went to a ridiculously expensive restaurant and had a little bit of a night out on the town together. You may be asking what I think a ridiculously expensive dinner is... Well we both choked a little when we saw the bill. It would have been double the cost if we were drinkers. (Another time when I am so grateful that we are mormon!) The only reason it was kind of sad that we don't drink is because they had specific wine pairings for each dish. It is the only time I have ever thought it would be cool to drink just for the experience. Instead we had some nice glasses of sparkling cider. mmmm.

It was a 5 course dinner with 4 desserts. It took three hours to eat and was quite the experience! The waiters timed everything to a T. It was like watching an intricate dance the way they served. First they would place the silverware you would need in front of you for that course, then simultaneously 2 other waiters would place our plates in front of us at the exact same time.

Our first course was an oyster with rutabaga choucroute. It was served on a bed of sea salt. In the lighting it looked a little bit like rice and Jon may have tried a little bit... you didn't hear it from me....

Then we had an Arpege egg. It is an egg that has been lightly poached in it's shell and the top of the shell is cut off in a perfect circle. Then they add a few more layers to it and you eat the whole thing very, very carefully and delicately.

The second course was Ceviche of lobster and sea bream. It was good but the first time I've eaten raw fish. (Well kind of raw. Cooked in Lemon juice) then it had grape fruit and fennel with it. The waiter noticed that I didn't eat my grapefruit and so they substituted it for orange in another course that had grapefruit. They were very observant and very happy to help in anyway they could. We felt like fish out of water! Oh it was so out of our element! but a fun once in a lifetime opportunity.

Our third course was Atlantic stone bass roasted with sesame and hickory nuts
dungeness crab, a bouillon of dried tuna and black tea.
It was probably one of my favorite courses. It was amazingly delicious. And this comes from a girl who really doesn't like sea food!

Our fourth course was Abalone in brown butter, salad leaves from the garden. served with a light puree of smoked lentils. In case you are wondering what abalone is, snail. A large sea snail to be exact. It's about the size of a thick pork chop. I didn't know what it was when I ate it, which may be a good thing since I think I would have been freaked out by the thought of snail. It was pretty good though. One of Jon's favorite's.

Our fifth course was Roast sirloin of wagyu beef served with a potato and truffle croquette and vegetable hash. The croquette was probably the tastiest thing I have ever tasted in my life. When I ate it I think I died and went to heaven. This was both of our favorite meals.

Our first desert was a Champagne jello, raspberries, rose sorbet and lychee. I can honestly say I tasted champagne. It really wasn't that good. After that I didn't feel like I had missed out on anything with the whole wine thing

Then we were served a frozen orange parfait with black sesame ice cream, topped with meyer lemon croutons and honey peanut crumble with citrus supremes
This was a really odd desert. Not my favorite but very fancy and very unique.


Then they served us home made truffles and Petits fours. It was so amazing and I was stuffed by the end of the meal. It was such a great experience.

We got home at about 11, Jon took the babysitter home and we went to bed early. Suddenly when you are the parent of a toddler staying up until midnight jsut doesn't seem that cool. Sorry there aren't any pictures but we didn't want to stick out too much as people who had never been to a place like that. It was fun getting dressed up and going out on the town with my love though!

Christmas Day

We had a relaxing Christmas Day. We woke up when Shayla did and the best part was seeing her reaction when we walked downstairs. She just looked at us like, "What are those toys doing there? They weren't there before!" After a minute she decided she would get out of Jon's arms and investigate.

She immediately went for the shopping cart and tried to drag it somewhere. (My only guess is that she was afraid we were going to take it away. I'm not sure why, we don't take toys away from her.)

I promise you it was like she was trying to keep it away from us though. The other funny thing that she did was sit on all of her toys at first while we opened presents. I guess she thought if she sat on them they would be safe.

You can't really tell in this photo but every time I took out a new toy she would promptly put it under her little tushie. Silly girl. It took awhile to get through all of the presents just because she was so distracted by each new toy. Usually as soon as one was opened she would stand panting until it was out of it's packaging.

A big hit that day was a puppy who barks and walks. She kept picking him up and giving him kisses. It made Jon and I feel a little guilty that she doesn't have a pet. She also likes to stare out the window at all the squirrels around. When one happens into our backyard she stands at the glass door and shrieks at them pointing saying, "That! That!" Cute girl.

Christmas Eve!

Ok so I know that it is January 4th... but I thought I would catch everyone up over the next few days on our Christmas and New Years festivities. Many of you know that we stayed in California this year and had our first Christmas alone. It was relaxing and fantastic! On Christmas Eve we started a new Laudie tradition and traveled into the City to walk around and see the large tree in Union Square.

It was cold (for California) so we bundled up. Yep that's right, bundling in California meant we walked around with sweaters on. I did put a hat on Shayla at least...

Shayla loved the tree and kept telling us stories about it in her Shaylanese. (This is the language she is currently speaking) I was a good Mommy this day and listened attentively.

Jon also listened very carefully as she told us all about what was happening.

Shayla's favorite part of the day though was climbing all over the steps. She did this over and over again. She also liked chasing the pigeons. Luckily they never let her get near enough to them to snap a picture of this part of the day.

We went home and put Shay to bed, had a nice Christmas Eve dinner. And played Santa! For the first time we got to be Santa and Mrs. Claus! It was exciting! It made me so excited for Christmas day! Then we had to wait until the next morning to see Shayla's reaction....