I've been waiting for this!

Kendall's hair is FINALLY long enough to put into pigtails! The best thing about it - she actually LETS me do it! She looks so grown up to us now.

My blogging might be a little limited after this post. Kendall and I are headed off to Indiana for a few days to visit my best friend, Kellie. And when we get back, Grant's parents will be here for about another week.

Not San Francisco

So, we found out while we were in San Fran, that there's redwoods basically across the Golden Gate Bridge at Muir Woods. We weren't planning to go there (since we didn't even know about it), but once we found out, we put that high on our list.

It was pretty incredible! Muir Woods is just a small little place, but has some incredible trees. I was so glad we made the time to go.

John Muir, the conservationist whom Muir Woods is named after, had this to say about this particular place (keep in mind that he travelled all over this region):

This is the best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all the forests of the world.

San Francisco in Pictures

I won't bore you with all the details, but we're back home now, and we had a fantastic trip!

We did all the normal things - Alcatraz, cable cars, Chinatown, Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, and all sorts of other things.

We have arrived!

We are in San Francisco for the next few days! I was dreading the drive (6+ hours), but it was more than okay. Kendall did awesome, and it went by pretty fast!

Here's a few pictures...the first one was from our little picnic lunch in a Jack-In-The-Box parking lot in a place that I don't even think was a town. It was somewhere along I-5 between Bakersfield and nowhere. They didn't even have real grass...they had turf. And it was so hot outside the turf burned Kendall's barefeet. It seriously had to be around 100 degrees!



Sleeping Beauty...



And here's our first real glimpse of San Fran! It's such a beautiful city - I love it already.

Movin' and Shakin'

Well, last night, we experienced our first earthquake.

I was sitting on the couch, browsing the internet. Grant was in the recliner, talking to his brother. All of the sudden, I felt this kind of faint shaking - which, at first, I thought someone in the parking lot near us had their bass up really high. Then, it wasn't a faint shaking anymore. Our whole house was moving! I jumped up off the couch, because we have this picture collage over it, and I thought they were all going to fall off.

Grant was kind of smiling at first, but then he jumped up, too. We kind of just stood there for a second, and then I ran upstairs to go get Kendall.

Then it all stopped.

It only lasted about 10-15 seconds, but the amount of thoughts going through my head made it seem much, much longer.

So, I've heard different reports - some say it was a 4.7, others say is was a 5.0. Whatever it was, it was enough to scare us pretty good! In a sense, I'm glad I felt it, and that it wasn't substantial enough to cause any damage. But in another sense, it got me thinking about "the Big One," and how I hope it doesn't hit while we live here!

The epicenter was in Hawthorne, which is only about 15 miles away. Considering alot of the quakes in SoCal don't really hit right in Los Angeles, I think this woke alot of people up. Several people that have lived here most of their lives said this is one of the worst ones they've felt - probably just because of how close it was.

Grant's leaving for work now, and Hawthorne is just down the street from the base (remember that hotel we were staying at before we moved into our house last year? That was in Hawthorne). Makes me a little nervous, but I know he's in God's hands.

We didn't feel any aftershocks, which is great, because I don't know if I could've handled them.

Anyways, the good thing about this whole experience, is that I know I am not the least bit prepared for a bigger one. So, I'll be doing my homework, and getting a kit ready so next time we will be prepared.

San Diego Fun

Megan invited us down to their neck of the woods to celebrate Andy's 30th birthday. So, we headed down there on Saturday.

We had such a great time! We met at their house for some lunch and spending time getting reacquainted. When we were making plans for this, we had counted on going to the beach, but the weather ended up not being so great. So they had the great idea of going to Legoland an hour before it closed, because it's free after that time. So we went, and had a great time. Kendall was so extremely tired, thanks to her lack of a nap that day, but once she went on the train, she couldn't stop laughing and smiling.

After Legoland, we went back to Andy and Megan's for dinner. I cannot say enough great things about Megan's hostessing skills. Not only did she make us a delicious "big sandwich" for lunch, but she made (MADE) four (FOUR!) pizzas for dinner. Not to mention the homemade strawberry birthday cake with homemade strawberry icing for dessert. I'll be honest...I was a little disappointed that the ice cream wasn't homemade, and she didn't have birthday candles, so she had to use a tea light. But I guess we can let all that slide.

Joey and Kendall played, and we got to meet baby Hannah for the first time! She was so cute and sweet, and apparently, loved the football hold.

Shortly after dinner, we had to make our way back up to San Pedro. But we had a wonderful time! We realized that it was this exact weekend last year when we met up with them for the first time after we moved out here. We'll have to make it a yearly tradition to get together on Mother's Day weekend.

An Anniversary and a Drive By

Six years ago today, I married a man who is so much more than I deserve - funny, smart, CUTE, loving, a strong Christian, and a great leader. I thank God so much for this wonderful person!

To celebrate, we actually went to dinner last night. Since Uncle John is in town now, we asked him to watch Kendall for us. So we went to The Melting Pot, which, if you're not familiar with it, is a fondue restaurant.

We got there pretty early, so there weren't too many other people there besides us, which was really nice. They sat us in this booth right next to this row of windows which looked out onto Hawthorne Blvd. That's a pretty busy street, especially at 5:30 at night, so all the traffic was kind of distracting. Grant asked our waitress if it'd be okay if we moved somewhere else. So we moved to this nice little booth down a hallway, about 20 feet or so away from the windows, but the windows weren't visible to us.

When the waitress came to start our order, all of the sudden, we heard a loud noise, and a shattering sound. Since we couldn't see outside of our booth, we had no idea what it was, but our waitress looked in the direction of the sound, and she said that something hit the window that was just down from our booth. She immediately ran to tell her manager.

Turns out, some idiots have been driving around with a BB gun or a pellet gun shooting out the windows of businesses. The police had warned the manager of it just 2 days prior to this. They told him, because the entire outside of the restaurant is windows, so they were a prime target. Anyways, the entire window was shattered, and made crackling noises for a good hour or so. So, we ended up moving to ANOTHER booth to get out of the way of the window, in case it decided to come crashing down.

The police came, and asked us a couple of questions, and the manager and owner kept coming by asking if we were okay and apologizing. It was all very exciting! We just told them we were fine, and we would tell people that it was just your normal drive-by shooting in LA.

Turns out, they ended up taking $25 off our bill. I had to laugh that they actually put the reason on the bill, so I'm saving this thing to remember our night!



The food was awesome, as usual, and our waitress was great. We found out she had just recently moved out here from Albuquerque, so we talked alot about that.

Kendall was perfect for Uncle John, and since we were way later than we thought we'd be, he even ended up putting her to bed for us. She went down without a fuss! I'm so proud of that little girl.

Surrey with the Fringe on Top

Apparently, that was the name of an old song. Thanks mom for that little bit of trivia!

Anyways, here's the video from our surrey ride. Like I said, we had so much fun. We were passing old people and going places we weren't supposed to. We were little surrey rebels.

Oxnard & Santa Barbara

This past Friday, Grant had to be in Oxnard for something work-related, and decided to take me and Kendall with him. Oxnard is far enough away, that we needed to get there the night before. And we decided to stay Friday night, too, and spend Saturday in Santa Barbara.

We stayed at this awesome resort/hotel right on the beach. The only problem was that the weather didn't really cooperate - it was chilly and cloudy the whole time! But it was still beautiful.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well Kendall did sleeping in the hotel. Sometimes I find myself unnecessarily worrying about things, and she ends up proving to me that I need to trust her more! And thanks to the blackout curtains in the room, she even slept in a little bit, so that was an added blessing.





Friday night, my friend Ange drove up from Orange County, so she could go to Santa Barbara with us on Saturday.

All I can say about our time in Santa Barbara was IT WAS A BLAST! Seriously, we had so much fun. Mostly thanks to the surrey we rented. A surrey is this little bike/cart with a canopy on top. We got the 4-person one, so the three of us peddled, while Kendall sat in the basket on the front for a fun ride. I'll post video of that tomorrow. It deserves its own post.

Anyways, we were worried it was going to be cloudy like it had been in Oxnard, but literally as soon as we drove into Santa Barbara, the clouds cleared, and the sun was out! It ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day!


This picture makes me laugh, because the surrey was rolling back, and we were trying to stop it. Grant's face is hilarious.


This is quite possibly my favorite picture of the 3 of us.







This is just sweet...Grant asked Kendall to hold his hand, and she did! They were like this for several minutes.



After riding our surrey, we drove up and down State Street, which is the main shopping and dining area of Santa Barbara. We ended up eating at this cool little Indian buffet for lunch. After that, we drove to the mission, which we had been to before, but Ange hadn't seen. AND THEN, we went to McConnell's to get some delicious ice cream. Unfortunately for those of you who don't live in So Cal, you aren't able to get McConnell's. It's my favorite ice cream of all time right now...specifically, the Peppermint Stick flavor. For those of you who do live here, and you've never had it, you can buy it by the pint at Whole Foods. Grant doesn't appreciate it as much as I do, but that's okay, because that just means more for me!

So that was it...just a quick little mini-vacation for our family.