tomatoes galore

In May we were given 11 tomato plant seedlings and planted them all, assuming that they wouldn't all be fruitful. We were wrong! We now have overwhelming amounts of tomatoes to pick every week (betwee 30 - 50).

And the question often occurs to me, what should I do with so many tomatoes?

Last week, I discovered that you don't have to buy pasta sauce in a jar - you can make it at home! (For some reason, this never occured to me before). So I chopped up onions, garlic, zucchini (from a friend's garden), eggplant (also from our backyard), and about 25 tomatoes - sauteed them all together - added some tomato paste, salt and spices.

And voila! At least 2 gallons worth of tasty tomato sauce!

Yum!

Hannah happenings

With the onset of the college year, life has been crazy around our house and so I've been a bit slow in posting anything. Here is a quick update on Hannah.


She absolutely loves Toby and enjoys snuggling with him (he puts up well with it)...

She also has a cardboard fort that provides hours of entertainment...

She's learned that napkins & tissues are for blowing your nose...

She started her first gymnastics class with cousin Reagan...

that's all from here for now. More to come as we all get some much needed rest!

like mother, like daughter

So I blogged a little while ago about Hannah's obsession with her doll stroller. Maybe she got it from me? Here we are taking a mother - daughter walk in the Burbank airport.

It's pretty awesome to watch your little baby girl grow up and start imitating you!

This is India

This is the cottage we shared with 5 college (and post college) women

This is the lizard that squawked and kept us awake

This is our baby sleeping (um, yes, she's definitely in our bed)

These are some of the kids who loved us and we loved

This is Veda, our cook, who made yummy food and absolutely adored Hannah

This is our team, who worked hard, got along very well and all came back home safe & sound

If you want to hear more about our trip come to our Indian tea on Sunday at 5pm at UCC or check out this blog by one of team members, Beth, bethsekishirothefishingnet.blogspot.com. She kept a very detailed "captain's log" while we were away and has done a great job of transposing it into blog story form.

Celebrating the BIG 3-0!!

Last week my beloved husband celebrated the BIG 3-0! He wasn't so excited about this birthday and so we planned some very fun things to distract him. We left Hannah at my mom's place and headed out to Catalina Island (more on this in a later blog post) for the weekend for some deep-sea fishing.

This is one of the halibut that he reeled in:

Some other fun birthday prizes he received were:

a birthday cake, made out of cupcakes in the shape of a football (thanks to the extended Hill family)

a painted pony statue(?) from my grandparents and a gift certificate to a fishing store from his parents (coincidentally, some friends also gave him a gift card to this same store, it seems everyone knows what his current passion is!) - super excited:

and a car covered in soap & feathers, somewhat resembling a chicken, from ???? (we seriously have no idea who did this)

All in all it was quite an exciting (and messy) birthday!
(it took a lot of effort to clean up all those feathers. he vacuumed our neighbor's lawn twice.)

Donner Lake

After two weeks of intense preparation for our journey to India, just over two weeks enjoying India, and two weeks of enduring horrid jet lag upon our return - I announced to Matt that I was not up to our yearly camping trip to Mammoth. So we settled on another fun mountain location a little closer to home where we could get our fix of water, hilly terrain, and fish! (Okay, so honestly I don't think Matt ever gets his fix of fishing.)

And we headed to Donner Lake to stay at the Robbins' Roost (a Robbins' family cabin). I had never been there in warm weather and was excited to see what it offered when the ground was not covered in snow.

We enjoyed sitting out on the deck. Hannah was delighted that she could climb up in into the lounge chairs all by herself.

She loved imitating Grandma (who so graciously accompanied us for the first part of our trip) by reading books on the chair.

Matt and I stole away to Tahoe City (right on the north shore of Lake Tahoe) for a dinner all to ourselves (thanks to grandma). We went to Jake's on the Lake for a fabulous dinner.



The water at Donner was icy cold (I know because I went swimming in it and almost froze). But we loved the feel of it tickling our toes. The lake was so blue and clear and clean (all things that someone born in LA can really appreciate).

And of course we went fishing. Since we had a grandma to watch Hannah, Matt talked me into spending an afternoon on the pier with our fishing poles in the water. I had the frusterating experience of seeing the fish swimming all around my line and actually knocking into my weight but not biting. Luckily we (or more precisely Matt) caught two fish during our stay at Donner and cooked them up with some butter, lemon and garlic for a delicious dinner!



We had a great family vacation and incurred no major disasters. Thank goodness! (After Toby's fish hook eating experience last year we were prepared for anything.)

And we can't wait to go back!

The Little Stroller that Could

This is the story of the little stroller that could -

.... that could get Hannah to walk, that is!


Hannah has been obsessed with doll strollers everywhere we go. She tries to use them to help her walk, but since they are made for dolls and not one year olds, she seems to eventually end up on her face, arms & legs sprawled out around her. At one store in town she fell so many times that the owner put the doll stroller up out of Hannah's reach so she would stop falling.

And then we found this stroller. Hannah could push it and it had just enough resistance that she wouldn't fall down.

All weekend she's been walking room to room with this stroller, entertaining both her great aunt Lucinda (who was visiting) and myself.

At times she would realize that there was no doll in it and she'd cry for her doll to sit down.

She walked and strolled until eventually she worked up the courage (and leg strength) to let go and walk on her own.

Watch: