Camping with a baby

When it is a high of 60 and a low of 40 degrees outside and you are on
the California coast camping in sand dunes you start to think to yourself..."Why did we agree to go camping?"

We have become pretty good friends with Cadence's parents since I have started watching her. And since we are good friends, we do stuff together...like go along with them on a camping trip. We thought "What a great thing to do to kick off our summer vacation!"










side note: Brett finished up his first year of medical school last Friday. We haven't gotten all of his grades yet from the last tests, but we know that he passed with flying colors. So he will be starting his 2nd year of med school in August some time. We are so proud of him!

Now back to my camping story.


We got all of our gear together, packed up enough stuff to last us a week, although we were only gone for 3 days and 2 nights. We stuffed our Jeep to the limit and took off to the beautiful area called Bodega Bay.

Camp was set up on the side of a sand dune, which by the way is not the best place to take babies that are the least bit mobile and like to put things in their mouths. We ate great food, drank a little and had a good time...until

At 8:30 pm our friends thought it would be a great idea to watch the sun set on the beach. Well the sun had pretty much set by this point, but they still wanted to go, so we packed up the sleepy babies into their backpacks and headed for the mile long hike in the sand dunes to look at the water. I took this picture the next day of the hill that we "hiked" up. You can't really see it, but the hill which is made up of all soft sinking under your feet sand is about a 50 - 60 % upgrade. I practically crawled up it and needed to stop at least 5 times to catch my breath and to tell my body that it couldn't quit on me now, it had to wait until I got to the top.

That was the beginning of the mile long hike, the other hills that we had to overcome seemed like mounds of dirt compared to the first one. When we got out to the ocean it was all dark, there was about a 15 foot drop to the water, it was freezing with a strong wind. The babies woke up as soon as we got there and we stayed all of 30 minutes. I was dreading the trip back, not because of the time it would take, but because of that hill we would have to somehow manage to get down without falling head over heel. I voiced my opinion about this and they suggested that we take the LONGER but SAFER route back. It contained more switch backs and took only 5 minutes longer but it was FLAT! No hill no mound nothing! Oh how I wanted to curse them for making us go over the mountain on the way in, but then I thought "Look at what you just did, shut up and be proud of yourself." So I kept quite about my frustrations and enjoyed the rest of the hike back to camp.

That night Brett got sick, we don't know why but he was sick for the rest of the trip. So that slowed the rest of us down. But we still had fun. The following day we drove to another beach near by and let the girls play in the sand. They loved it. Cadence tried with all of her might to eat it, but we were too on top of her for her to succeed. Chloe being the opposite had fun playing the sand but had no desire to eat it. Such a good little baby.

Besides going to the beaches, eating food and Brett getting sick, we enjoyed yummy smores, horse shoes, bad mitten and being scared by the raccoons who were way to brave for their own good. (They really wanted our food whether we were there or not.)

I think that we have a few more trips planned with Marie and Dallas to go camping in other parts of the state. I can't wait to see what other adventures lie ahead.

She is...

CRAWLING!!!!!!

I hope you enjoy this video of her doing her newest trick.





She also enjoys walking with major assistance and is trying to pull herself up onto everything, but isn't so great at it.

Extra time

So when you drink a bunch of coffee in the late afternoon, it tends to keep you up fairly late. I have never really had this problem until tonight. It might be that I am staying up with Brett while he studies for his tests that start tomorrow. He is testing all week long. The one nice thing about that is....This is his last block for the year. He is done with his first year of medical school as of this Friday! We will have the entire summer together to take trips, vacations, and just have him be a true part of the family now, not the guy in the other room studying.

Anyways, since I am up, I decided to update you on what has been going on. I am mostly doing this with pictures, just because I love to look at them. Truly not a lot has been going on. Every week I go to the park, on a walk, swimming of some sort, and have picnic lunches with the mom's group and my neighbor. I have been keeping pretty busy with all of that.

This is my last week watching Cadence full time...or at all really. Her mom is done with school on Friday as well so she will finally be able to spend some good quality time with her baby for pretty much the first time in Cadence's life. Scary! And I say that because Cadence is so active now. She is walking like a pro, getting into everything, climbing on couches and falling off of them. She never stops moving. Even though she is so active, she is a doll to be around. I will miss seeing her daily.

Oh my gosh I haven't updated you on Chloe and her bedtime drama. The other week, Chloe was waking up every 30 minutes. I was getting frustrated with it and had had enough of it. So after the 3rd time of her waking up in the night (it was 10 pm) I just let her cry. She cried for about 45 minutes and finally put herself back to sleep. She didn't wake up until 7:30 when I went in to get her. And that was that. She has been sleeping through the night ever since. I guess it was just time for the both of us that she sleep through the night. Now we have to work on nap time. Here is a picture of Chloe during her "nap time". It is safe to say that she did not go down for this nap. But later on that day, both her and Cadence took 3 hour naps. It was great!

So I am going to try and go to bed now. Wish me luck and enjoy the pictures.

the kids

So I highly doubt that my sister will post these pictures of her kids and mine. Not because she doesn't want to, but simply because she does not have the time. So I am going to do it for her /me. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Spring Break part 2

Sorry for the delay on this post. Life has been fairly hectic around here. The "twins" have been growing and moving and have changed their sleeping habits on me. I have also been more involved with my mom's group and getting out of the house with my neighbor and her 2 kids. More on that later.

Now to continue with my trip to Washington.

While we were up there we saw my Aunt Sidney, Uncle Lee, and Cousin Manda with her husband Nathan and their adorable little guy Joshua. They came to my parents house for a very delicious turkey dinner. It was really nice being with the whole family again and seeing all of the kids interact with each other.




















We also spent a good amount of time with Brett's family. We went to dinner with them, had his mom over to play with Chloe for a few hours before she had to work, we had lunch together...but the best time we had was watching our nephew Nolan's first t-ball game of the season. He was so cute, I mean very cool out there. I like t-ball, everyone gets a turn to bat in every inning and they get to bat until they hit the ball. Nolan even hit a home run! Ok, so he was the last batter up and they always get to run the 4 bases. But it was very fun to watch.


Now when we go to Washington, we always try and see Brett's Great Aunt Gerry and Uncle Jim. Gerry and Jim are like grandparents to Brett and we really enjoy spending time with them. This trip we went to lunch with them and were able to get in a long talk back at their house. I am glad that we were able to see them. And Chloe really enjoyed her visit as well. Sorry there are no pictures of this visit.

Thanks to my parents babysitting for us, Brett and I were able to get some good somewhat quality friend time in. I went to my friend Alison's baby shower. She is due to have her baby boy any day to week now. She looked amazing! It was really nice that she had her bay shower while I was up there not only so I could be there for it, but it was nice that I could see a lot of my friends at one time. I felt like my time was tight because I wanted to see my friends, but I really wanted to see and spend time with my sister that I haven't seen in over a year. Brett as well got to hang out with his friends alone which he needed. I believe that it was a good stress reliever from the life of studying that he has been living lately.

So on Brett's spring break, the first break he has had since winter, he agreed to come up to Washington with me. While he was on HIS break, and not spending time studying, he spent many days helping my dad break up the concrete decking around their pool. He did not get to lounge around a pool, go golfing, watch endless amounts of t.v. or go and sit in a movie theater on his break. He did hard labor. He worked in the sun, the hail and the snow that we had just to try and finish the job for my dad. He is truly a wonderful person, husband and son in law. I wish that I got before and after pictures of his work, but like an idiot, I did not think of that until I was already back here in California.

Since we had our family together, minus Phil (who by the way will not be getting out of it when they come up in late summer) I made us all take some family photos together. The last time we took one was right before Tracy and Phil moved to Iowa and Ryan was David and Chloe's age. So I kind of sprung it on everyone, but they all seemed to tolerate it pretty well. I think we got some great shots.










I think that is all we did, and if I forgot you and or something I am truly sorry about it. It has been a few weeks now and my mind isn't what it used to be (scary!)

Spring Break part one

This year for Spring Break we headed to Washington. We left our home in California with its 85 degree weather and its ever lasting sunny days and headed to the wonderful spring weather of Washington. While we were there we got snow, hail, rain, sun, and anything the sky wanted to give us on our trip.

So Brett and I are crazy, I will admit to that. We drove 13 hours strait with our baby in the car stopping only 3 times for gas and bathroom breaks. We challenged ourselves to see how long we could go without stopping. Chloe did great in the car. We left late enough in the day that she basically slept the whole trip. Even though she did great on both legs of the journey, I don't think that we will be driving up anytime in the near future.

While we were in Washington, we met our newest (8 month old) nephew David. Let me tell you , the few, and I mean very few photos my sister has put up of him on her blog do not do that boy justice. He is the cutest baby ever!!! I love his little smile. He can light up the room with his big two toothy grin. And Ryan was such a little joy to be around. He is getting so big and so "human like" now. No longer is he that little toddler that I know from way back when. It was such a blast to see him.

I tried really hard to get lots of pictures while we were in Washington, but I failed. I was enjoying the moments too much to run and get my camera out. So sorry, if we saw you and don't have a picture of our visit up there, it was because I was enjoying our visit too much to remember to get a picture of us together. So next time remind me to take some photos.

I really liked seeing how much Chloe and David looked like each other. They seemed to be the same height, weight and oh so cute. He has no hair while Chloe has some. They both have the 2 lower teeth and were both working on getting the upper ones in at the same time. (by the way, Chloe beat David. Her top tooth came in today) They had such a blast playing with each other as well.









Since it is getting late and my baby is asleep ...I should be sleeping too...I will just post these pictures below and hope that you enjoy them . I will write more about my trip another time.