We’re still finding bits of sand in nooks around our house, but we’re back from six glorious days in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  My parents took us to the land of timeshares, swim up bars, and wide open beaches and I don’t think any of us wanted to come back.  Certainly not Jake.  He’s plotting his return.

I read some great books, did a little writing and took lots of photos.  This post is for the photos…

I have some very important work to do here:

Dad is cool:

They make the same look:

Already knows to pose for the camera:

Whoa!

Why do we have to go home again?

I love flickr and digital photography and the fact that if you hate looking at vacation photos you totally could skip this post and not miss a thing.

Ah, Cabo.

For the next week, we’ll be here:

(edit: so I broke a big web rule and just linked to a photo.  Sorry. I’m still on vacation but I promise a post on Monday.)

I doubt I will be blogging. But come by, you never know. I do know I will be drinking a lot of these:

I know my Orthodox readers won’t be shelling out any dough for this service, but I thought I’d inform the general Christian public that if you get raptured there’s now a company out there to make sure your friends and family get an explanatory email.  Yes, you read that correctly.  There’s a company that stands to make $40 from every believer in the rapture out there.  Youvebeenleftbehind.com is there for all your post rapture emailing needs.

Here are just a few juicy morsels from their website.  Take them as you wish:

“Programmed and run by Christians, for Christians “  I guess that means they didn’t outsource to Hindus in India?

“We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.”   No off the grid team building exercises I guess.

“You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing “God Bless America” at baseballs’ seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing”   I remember how my church at the time doubled.  I still have never heard a baseball crowd sing anything but the national anthem or  “Take me out to the ball game”.

If you’re interested in the historical Christian perspective on the rapture, the end times and the whole Jesus coming back business, check out this podcast:

This is where we’re at folks.

I did, however, have an extremely productive afternoon and was able to poke around on the internet after I got some work done.  Here are a few things for you to look at while we’re still battling molars and a cold and a general lack of sleep.

Anna Marie Horner. I wish I was more coordinated with the thread and the needle and the fingers.

NY Times Modern Love.  I’ll be blogging more about this tomorrow, hopefully.

The Belief Blog.  There are a lot of things I want to think about on here.  Very sacred and the profane sort of stuff.

The last time I posted about Audrey teething, we had a week from hell and got nothing but big white spots under all of her gums.  This round, I’m really hoping for some teeth.

To complicate toddler teething matters,  I think she has some allergy that’s making her eyes puffy, she spiked a 102.7 degree fever this evening and she will eat only blueberries or things masked in bites of blueberries.  She’s winning the discomfort lottery right now, I tell ya.

Right now, she’s moaning every 20 minutes or so but not quite crying enough to wake herself up.  We’re open to any tips and tricks at this point–we leave for Cabo a week from today.  I want these stupid teeth to make an appearance but I REALLY want her not to be working on a case of bronchitis.  Sigh.

Lots of fun things happened at the end of the week, I may even blog about them.  It will have to wait for tomorrow when I’m pretty sure I won’t be at church due to my potentially contagious, highly irritable baby girl.

Now that the car-induced week from hell is over, we’ve been buzy making up lost fun.  I was inspired by SAJ to make Audrey a daisy chain crown.  We didn’t have any daisies so I used yummy smelling sweet peas from our garden.

This lasted for a few seconds.   She was much too busy enjoying a special treat– JUICE!

Those Trader Joe’s juice boxes must be super powered because Audrey quickly decided that the ground was not the place to sip apple juice and squish mommy’s favorite flowers.  She needed a new perspective. It was time to climb.

So, that was the beginning of a whole new world for us.   Audrey can officially hoist herself up onto everything.  No table, chair or light switch is safe.

The light switch game now provides hours of entertainment around this place.   I’d much rather have her be entertaining herself with full access to my tables, counter tops and upholstery than the days when she needed my constant attention all. the. time.

Things are good around this place.  I’ve been busy with freelance writing work and Audrey’s busy growing up.  We’re both happy

On Tuesday, we took the VW to a local mechanic who fixed the leak so we had him also replace the timing belt, a slightly overdue piece of regular maintenance.  We thought everything was great until Wednesday morning when there was a very large puddle underneath my car.   Now we were out $400 from the belt and needed to trade it in.  I spent the next couple of days driving the OJ Bronco from test drive to test drive.

I found a lovely little Ford Escape for a great price and was all set to go pick it up.  Jake goes out to fill up the coolant, pops the hood and there’s no fluid missing. The giant puddle that threw my week off was from the sprinklers and we both felt really, really stupid.

Since my car is in good shape, I’ll be driving it for a while.  Then we’ll sell it to a private party and just disclose it’s past.  We really do need to move to a small SUV for child gear hauling purposes but it’s hard to give up the 29 or so MPG I get in my car.  So, if anyone is looking for a lovely commuter car that’s very fun to drive, or has a student that wants a 1st car that’s much cooler than a Civic, we have a:

2000 Volkswagen Passat
GLS, 1.8 Turbo
103 K Miles (or so)
Leather Interior, 6 disc CD & Cassette

Let me know if you or anyone you know in the So. Cal area is interested.  We’ll put in on Craigslist at the end of the summer.