The "airplane incident"

So, as a parent, you never want to see your kids get hurt. You especially don't want to see it witnessed by a busy crowd at Starbucks on a weekday morning.

Poor little Aaron this morning, went running into Starbucks, metal jet plane in hand, to grab his usual box of milk from the refrigerated section when he tripped and fell. Unprepared, he didn't even have time to protect himself and he face-planted into the ground, and into the airplane. There was blood everywhere.

We were able to put ice on it right away, but nothing could console him - even the free chocolate frappachino and cake pop they brought outside to him. He eventually calmed down and asked for a scone and some milk, so we sat outside and threw pennies in the fountain and had our scones and "coffee". I finally got a close up of the damage when he went to sleep for his afternoon nap.

I have to say, as parents, we have a tough job in that while you know you can't protect your kids from everything, you still feel like you should. I was reminded at how fragile our little ones are, even when they can be so tough on the outside, and also how resilient they can be. They heal fast too, right?

Casa de Mariposas

We have recently been invaded... by Butterflies!
(Beautiful Painted Lady Butterflies courtesy of Insect Lore (http://www.insectlore.com).)

Jonathan received a Butterfly house with a coupon for 5 caterpillars for his birthday. We, of course, immediately sent away for them and received aforementioned caterpillars about a week later. We spent the next week watching them grow and make a mess of their tiny container and then overnight, they all climbed up to the ceiling, hung upside down and made their chrysalids.

We pinned them into the Butterfly house and about a week after that, they all hatched leaving us with 5 amazing butterflies. (They guarantee at least 3, so we felt we did an extra special job taking care of them.) Instructions state you can keep them and feed them every day, or if the temperature is above 55˙F, you may release them into the wild. Jonathan wanted to keep them, but after about 4 days of me making a cup of sugar water and putting it in their house drops at a time, I encouraged him to let them go. The last picture is Jonathan's last butterfly making her way into the wild. He was happy and sad to see them fly away and determined to drag me to Home Depot where we could find a flowering bush that butterflies like so next time we can release them to a nice spot just for them. :)

I imagine we will be ordering more soon as it really was quite amazing to watch - even for the adults! Jonathan is convinced that butterflies are God's coolest creations.

Go Padres!

First of all - A big Thank You to the Bergstroms for giving us their Padres tickets for this game; it's always a treat sitting so close to the action on a beautiful sunny San Diego day.


It was Aaron's first baseball game (at least that I can remember). He did great, being 2 and having that short attention span, and he still made it through the last inning. Jonathan liked trying to find the players who were on the field or up to bat in the program and reading their names and positions.

We had a great time at Petco Park and loved watching the game from close up. Best part... Padres won!!

Birthdays and Cakes

Someone turned 7 last month!

Jonathan had two birthday parties - lucky little man. :) One at the house with family on his actual birthday (May 19th) and one on Saturday at Pump It Up with all of his friends and family too.

It amazes me how fast our kids are growing up. Being 7 was met with much excitement and having Grandma and Grandpa Small come visit for his birthday was the topping on the cake.

He is such a clever, intelligent, loving, and social boy and we are so lucky to be able to see him grow and learn and become more and more incredible each year. He is looked up to by his brother immensely and he is very sweet to him (most of the time). Happy Birthday Jonathan!



A sample of the Fishy themed cupcakes that I made for Jonathan's birthday party at Pump It Up. They were super easy to make and fun, too!

New Years Resolutions

I saw that we haven't posted anything since July of last year!! Wow, we are really bad at keeping up a Blog. Maybe this year will be better. Jonathan's class spent the first week back making New Years Resolutions. He came home with a paper boy's head, party hat and all, and written underneath was: "My New Years Resolution is... Be nice to my family" So simple, yet so hard to do for a 6 year old with a rambunctious little 2 year old brother. I don't know what my New Years Resolution is this year, but I guess I just want to be better somehow than last year; it doesn't really matter what is better as long as there is improvement somewhere. What is your resolution?

First Snow Day of 2011

Early one Saturday morning, we decided to go play in the snow at Big Bear. Between closed roads and our bad memories, we finally found a fun place to slide downhill and build, quite possibly, the best snowman ever.


Jonathan called him Mr. Snowy and was very sad that we had to leave him there. Some tourists were so smitten with Mr. Snowy, they even took their picture with him.


Aaron had a fun time discovering the snow and we all miraculously stayed dry and warm in our new snow clothes. There was an amazing sunset view from the mountains which we enjoyed.
Hopefully we get to go to the snow again soon!

Do you ever get emails from people who honestly mistake you for someone else?

Every once in a while I will get a random email from someone who thinks I am someone that I am not. Normally its someone is easily confused with the interwebs and is looking for the grandson. Most recently I got an email from someone at a legitimate PR firm who apparently thinks I am an officer at a company that is coming out of bankruptcy. Obviously I cant and wont just let this go. Read the thread (thus far) below.

======================july 13, 2010======================================
from Sandra Sellani
to tom.tooma,
tom.joyce,
jennifer,
Brett.Braun,
date Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 10:38 AM
subject talking points


Team,

These are the talking points that we discussed in yesterday's meeting - please let me know if there is anything that you would like to add/change.

· The TLC Corporate Bankruptcy in (date) has hurt our good name. We are their largest franchisee, a separately owned, profitable company.

· In order to emerge from bankruptcy TLC Corporation was purchased by two private equity groups; neither have backgrounds in the health care industry. The original TLC board has disbanded and the new board of directors has five members from those private equity groups. We don’t’ know the direction they will be taking but we know the direction we have always taken in Southern California. Rather than deal with the uncertainty of TLC Corporation, we want to continue to be true to our model and core philosophy of partnership with eye doctors throughout Southern California, because that partnership is in the best interests of the patients we serve. That has always been our philosophy and always will be.

· Dr. Tooma started the business with this philosophy since 1993. That’s why more eye doctors refer their patients to us than any other laser eye center in Southern California. The name has changed, but nothing else has. We are the same company we have always been – same surgeons, same employees, same procedures

· Our vision always has and always will be one of partnership with eye doctors.

· Our new name is (name). (comment about new name)

We will spin these messages to each individual audience,but I want to make sure there is agreement on the basic messaging.


Sandra


===========sent 7.14.2010 12:08pm=========
from Sandra Sellani
to tom.joyce,
tom.tooma,
Brett.Braun,
doug
date Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:08 PM
subject trademark


I found a trademark attorney who will register our tagline, check the three names we like, and register the one we want for a flat fee of $1700. I've started the process and will keep you posted.

--
--
Sandra Sellani

============sent 7.14.2010 12:16pm======================

from Doug
to Sandra Sellani
cc tom.joyce,
tom.tooma,
Brett.Braun
date Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:16 PM
subject Re: trademark

Hi, Thanks for the update. I think $1700 sounds good. Does this
price also include registering the Internet domain names?
========================================================
note, at this point i wanted to know what their names are so was trying to get them to tell me by asking what their domain names should be.
============sent 7.14.2010 12:35pm======================
from Sandra Sellani
to Doug ,
Sandra Sellani
cc tom.joyce,
tom.tooma,
Brett.Braun
date Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:35 PM
subject RE: trademark

No, but once we have the name, I'll just by the URLS - they're pretty cheap
about $15-20@.

Sandra

============sent 7.14.2010 12:39pm======================
from Doug
to sandra
cc Sandra Sellani ,
tom.joyce,
tom.tooma,
Brett.Braun
date Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:39 PM
subject Re: trademark

Great. Lets just make sure the domain names we want are available as
we are going through the registration process. Do you have a
preference on what those names should be?

============sent 7.14.2010 12:48pm======================
from Sandra Sellani
to Doug Small
cc tom.joyce,
tom.tooma,
Brett.Braun
date Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:48 PM
subject Re: trademark

hide details 12:48 PM (21 hours ago)

I just bought URLS for our top two favorite names and I bought two variations on the names in case people use the traditional spelling of the names rather than the more modern spelling. Whatever name we don't choose, i think we should still point toward the main URL becasue they're great names and i think we should keep them if they're available. The whole cost of this is $45 and we've got those names locked up for as long as we want.

Sandra

============sent 7.14.2010 12:49pm======================
from Sandra Sellani
reply-to sandra
to Doug
cc Sandra Sellani
tom.joyce,
tom.tooma,
Brett.Braun
date Wed, Jul 14, 2010 at 12:49 PM
subject RE: trademark

hide details 12:49 PM (21 hours ago)

I just took the names and added "centers" to the end of them - they're all
available. The names with "group" after them were not available, but dens'
mean we can't buy them at some point.

s

==================================
dang. i was hoping they were going to tell me specifically what their domain name or company name was going to be. Hopefully more to follow.