Here’s a picture Brian snapped yesterday (“her last day as a one year old” I told everyone we encountered). Isn’t she lovely? Do you also hear the Stevie Wonder song in your mind right now?

Here she is on her 1st birthday:

And here she is when she was just born:

I baked a pink three-layer cake for Laurel’s birthday dinner. It is a tower of strawberry/cream cheese insanity. I’ll make sure to share some photos on here later!

Kim rides 3 days a week at this lovely north county farm. Oscar and Laurel were very comfortable on and around the horses. Lucky for them, Kim had arranged for rides on a sweet old pony named April. Kim kept offering rides anytime they want. Don’t be surprised if we put our house up for sale and move closer to April!

I am still working on my 7 minute mile. Just this morning I tried for an official record of my run, but for a second time made it in 7 minutes, 20 seconds. I can do the 7 minute mile on the treadmill, but on a track I am clearly struggling. I am determined to make it happen on a track and will be proud to share my news here as soon as I meet this goal.

Easter Sunday was pretty much the same weatherwise. I went to the effort this year of buying Easter clothes for the kids, something I have never done before. Having a daughter and the opportunity to buy pretty dresses is very satisfying. When Brian heard that I had Easter clothes in mind he started to worry that I was going to make him dress up, too. He was off the hook this year, but next year I’m thinking that matching bow-ties for the boys will be just the ticket!

My mom and dad are holding my grandma’s hand in this photo. Sunday, March 29th was a day that we honored each of them. It was my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary and it was also the last day of my grandma’s life. She suffered a major stroke last week and our family came to her bedside to tell her one last time what she meant to all of us. It was a joyful and emotional celebration of her beautiful life. Alice Mae Priest was 82 years old.

My parents have spent the first 40 years of marriage working on their careers as educators and coaches, getting us three girls to become self-reliant, and entrenching themselves in the Murphys community. They are now reaping the rewards of the many years of hard work with my mom’s retirement and my dad’s semiretirement from teaching, grandkids, and the establishment of “The Spice Tin”. It is my mom’s dream to run a spice shop in Murphys and my dad is partnering with her 100% in making it a reality. What a beautiful tribute to their life together The Spice Tin is already. I’m so proud of their loving and supportive relationship. The Spice Tin has a blog. Add it to your RSS feed.

Finally, The Full Catastrophe has just celebrated its 1st birthday. My intention for this site is to document milestones in my family’s life. I love comments and feedback from readers, so please don’t be shy. The strange thing about keeping this blog is that the people who read it really keep me going. It is also very therapeutic to just sit and write every now & then. While I don’t have tons of energy for regular posts lately, I do feel proud of what I’ve done so far and more ideas of what to share in the future. In fact, I’m getting ready to try a 7 minute mile on the record. I better not hurt myself!

This is actually our second getaway in recent weeks. I’ve been meaning to write about our trip to the desert for a while now. I haven’t got to it partly because Brian hasn’t had a chance to edit his photos from the trip, which would be nice to share here (No pressure though, Shug…you’ve got a lot of projects right now). So anyway, I knocked numbers 1 & 50 off the list when I surprised Brian with a weekend in the Anza-Borrego desert to enjoy the wildflowers. On the day of our trip, a babysitter showed up and I told Brian to grab his camera and get in the car. After a stop in Escondido to experience Peterson’s Donut Corner, we drove into Borrego Springs. There we found an awesome 6 mile hike to an oasis and waterfall and then settled into the quirky and fun Palms Hotel at Indian Head. This was my first trip to the desert, but not my last.

We’re getting quite used to regular vacations from parenting responsibilities. A big thanks must go out to Brian’s mom, Vicki, for being our generous overnight babysitter. We owe you a nice dinner, Vicki.

Hana & Cora are delightful girls and we’re scheming with their parents to see them again in the summer in their neck of the woods.

I continue to chip away at my 100 things list. My friend, Benita, says it is ok for me to cross off #100…I think she’s right. After talking to some people about it, I have decided that I am a fairly comfortable snorkeler (#22). Last but not least, I saw a bad driver get pulled over last week. Sweet sweet satisfaction and goodbye to #99! I have just decided that I’m going to see about running that seven minute mile (#7). Stay tuned.

After I’d finished editing the video and showed it to Oscar, I asked him how he was able to jump from room-to-room so quickly. He responded simply “magic”.

Browsing the pictures on the little screen on Matt’s camera, we able to determine that the card belonged to a family and had about a year’s worth of pictures including a little girl’s birthday, a wedding, and the birth of a baby boy (luckily, there were no pictures of the actual birth). Once we realized what we had, I decided I was going to make it my mission to return the card to the family that had lost it. It would have been pretty easy had their name or address been embedded somewhere, but all we had to solve the mystery was about 200 pictures of them, their friends and their family.

When we got back to San Diego I loaded the card into my computer and started going through the photos in detail looking for any clues that would help. The first thing we noticed was that, in one of the pictures of the family’s newborn son we could make out the ID badge of one of the nurses from the hospital. A quick Google of the hospital name told us that the hospital was in Lincoln, Nebraska. It would have been nice if we’d discovered they were from some small town somewhere, but Lincoln still has a population of 250K. Didn’t quite narrow it down as much as I had hoped.

There were a number of photos of a young girl’s birthday and we assumed that the girl must be the daughter of the camera owner given that she was in so many of the pictures. One of the pictures of her birthday cake revealed that her name was Addie. In another picture we found Addie’s name on what to looked to be the scoreboard of a minor league ballpark. The text on the scoreboard was a birthday message for Addie and included her last name. Now we were getting somewhere.

We had the final piece of puzzle when eagled-eyed Anna spotted the father’s name embroidered on a Christmas stocking in the background of one of the pictures. With his first and last name as well as city and state in hand we consulted the almighty Google and were pleasantly suprised to find the family’s phone number and address come back as the first hit (you should Google yourself sometime to see what personal information there is out there).

I dialed their number and spent a few minutes talking to the wife of the man we had Googled. The card was indeed theirs and, much like ourselves, they had spent Christmas in Kauai. She was quite grateful to hear that someone had taken the time to track them down. Mission Accomplished!

So, make sure you leave a file on memory cards with your name/address or at least leave enough clues on there that someone will be able to track you down if you lose it.

Laurel reaches out to Oscar and says “Hey Bro, how would you like this very special case of the common cold for Christmas?”

Being a present-loving four year old, Oscar quickly reaches up to accept Laurel’s gift of an upper respiratory infection and responds, “Thanks, Laurel! I’ll take your cold if you take some of my pink eye.”

Then they both roll around the floor laughing at their poor, pathetic parents who are now broke from their 5th doctor’s co-payment in four weeks.

We wish you a merry Christmas and a germ-free New Year!
Love,
Anna, Brian, Oscar, & Laurel