The 'Wood

Bright and early this morning (or, more accurately, dark and early, since it was 5 am), I braved the crowds at Target to get a $25 mixer. Thank goodness no one else seemed to want the same thing I did, because I really didn't have to deal with the crazies in the electronics department.

Later today, we hiked the Hollyridge Trail, which takes you close to the Hollywood sign. Driving through certain parts of LA, you can definitely see it, but I wanted to get close to it. So I found this website that had a very detailed explanation of how to get there, and how to follow the trail (it's actually really funny, if you read the trail description).

Driving to the trail took about 45 minutes, and as we got closer, I realized how smoggy the day was. We've been having really clear days, but this wasn't one of them.

Anyways, we got Kendall packed up in her backpack, and off we went. Right after we went up our first hill, we could see the sign. As we walked, we got closer and closer. I like how Kendall's looking at the sign in the picture with all 3 of us.






Part of the way up, hikers and horses share the trail. The smell was lovely.



Also on the trail, you could look out and see the Griffith Observatory, which really wasn't that far away. I think we'll try to hike there sometime, too. In this picture, you can kind of see the blue dome of the observatory. Like I said - smoggy day.



And if you look really closely in this picture, you can see downtown LA.



Forty five minutes was pretty accurate. It took us almost exactly that to get to the top. Once there, we were looking down on the sign, from behind. I really wish the day had been clearer, because the view would have been incredible. The sign is actually fenced off, and has security cameras all around it, so we got as close as we legally could.





It was such a cool hike, and Kendall did great - only getting cranky as we were going back down. After the hike, we went to In-N-Out Burger so all-in-all, it was a great day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Some Cuteness

A long time coming

Grant likes my hair long. I promised him a while back that I would grow it long for a while. That was maybe 2 1/2 years ago.

That seems like plenty of time had passed. I warned him on Sunday that I had made up my mind, and that I wasn't sure when it would be, but it would be soon, so he should just come to terms with it. "Soon" probably came a lot quicker than he thought, because yesterday when he came home from work, he seemed kind of shocked.

Unkie John

Today, Grant's brother John, starts his journey to Iraq. He'll be deployed for about 6 months. He was supposed to have gone the day after Ryan died, but obviously, it got postponed because of that. We're so happy that we got stationed at the same base he was at (again), and even though our time together is getting cut short, the time that we've been together has been great. I'm so happy that he and Kendall have developed a really special bond, as seen in these videos.





We'll miss you, John! Be safe, and come back soon!!

Pensacola

Well, I'm finally getting around to putting up pictures from our time in P'cola. This posting will mainly be centered around the time with Pinky and Susan came.

Susan is from the Gulf Coast, so the beaches and the scenery was nothing new for her. But Pinky had never been to this part of the South before, so we had to take her to the beach. We walked out on the pier, that I had never even been out on before (the pier I had been on got wiped out by a hurricane back in the 90's). It was a super windy day, but beautiful.

Here's a picture of me, Kendall, Pinky, her unborn wind-baby, and Susan.



This was also Kendall's first time to Pensacola Beach. She, like Pinky, was fascinated with the pretty water and the soft sand.




After the beach, we headed to a popular restaurant - McGuire's Irish Pub - for lunch. This was my favorite place to go when I lived there, and Grant would take me there every year for my birthday. All three of us got the fish & chips, which were fabulous.



Back at my parents house, Kendall liked playing with Pinky's wheels, while my niece and nephew were trying to get her attention.



And here's Susan, getting in some last-minute play-time with Kendall before her and Pinks headed back to Albuquerque.



I've said this before, but the fact that they came all the way to Pensacola during that time meant so much to all of us.

I'll be available for autographs later...

Once me and Jennie Garth make our TV debut together on Tuesday, you'll all be kissing up to me, I'm sure.

Okay, here's the explanation...

The Bonnie Hunt Show wants military spouses to be in the audience for their Veteran's Day show. The Spouses Club on base sent out an email to all of us, giving the contact information. I called - and I'm in!!! The show will be taped on Monday, and aired the next day. If you go to the website for the show, it says that Jennie Garth is the guest!!! I'm so extremely excited!!!

An Update

We had Ryan's memorial service, and it was great. Everyone who spoke, the message given by the pastor, the turnout of everyone - it was really an incredible thing! We still can't believe that he's gone, and we're still having a hard time understanding why (medically). But, we do know that God is in control, and He does have a plan for this, even if we don't know what it is.

It was such a special treat to have Pinky and Susan from Albuquerque come. Since Pinky just went through this a little over a year ago with the passing of Brent, she was especially an encouragement to all of us.

Once we get home, I'll post some pictures of our time here. Speaking of that - for those who are wondering when we're getting home, we think we'll be here until next weekend.

Please continue to pray for us, as the reality of this whole situation really sinks in.

Ryan

Many of you already know, but Grant's younger brother, Ryan, passed away on Saturday, October 25.

In case you don't know the story yet, Ryan was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease a couple of weeks ago. He began treatment for that, and had a colonoscopy. It seems that since the colonoscopy, his health really started to deteriorate. He lost 20 pounds in the span of 10 days, and checked into the hospital on Tuesday, the 21st. Nothing seemed to help him, and he kept getting worse and worse. On Friday, he was walking down the hall and fainted. They rushed him to ICU, and that's where he stayed until God took him the next morning.

Grant, Kendall, and I, along with Grant's older brother, John, were able to get on the same flight to Pensacola, and we arrived here on Saturday night. We'll be here as long as needed.

Please pray for the entire family and friends as we're sorting through all of this.

Ryan was 17 years old, and in his Senior year of high school. In his short life, he travelled more than most people ever will. He was finishing up work to become an Eagle Scout. He loved video games. Basically, he was a great kid.

We don't know why God chose to take him so young, but we do know that God is in control.

I wanted to thank Mrs. J and Pinky for their kind words. Also, thanks to everyone else for their words of encouragement whether by email, Facebook, or message board.

Tree Huggers!

This weekend, we went to Sequoia National Park. Instead of boring you all with details you really don't care about, I put together this little movie with our pictures, and a very appropriate song.



By the way, I'll post more about the bears that you see towards the end of the movie. They deserve a post by themselves.

It's a Beautiful Morning!

One of the clearest since we've lived here...

See This?

See the green arrow? That's about where we live (edited to say, the arrow is not at our house, in case you were wondering....). See the first Target symbol? That's the BRAND NEW Target that just opened yesterday (although, the brochure we got about it in the mail said it opens on Sunday, but whatever). San Pedro finally has a Target, and I couldn't be happier. It's not like it's that much closer than the one that I frequented before (see the second symbol), but it is closer, and it's in the town I live in, so that's what matters.



I went to it today - everything was clean and pretty, and they have these new fancy-schmancy shopping carts (although, our shopping cart cover doesn't really fit on it, but I made do). And the people that work at the Starbucks there haven't really got it down yet, because it took them well over 5 minutes to get my Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate, even though I was the only one in line. But that's okay. It was worth the wait.

Splish Splash

A Year Ago...

A year ago today, Grant got a phone call that we never thought we would get. One of our very, very good friends from Albuquerque unexpectedly passed away.

The bad news is - we miss him dearly. But the good news (and really, it's the best news of all) is that he's with our Lord and Saviour! And, we have a TON of great memories that bring smiles to our faces instantly. He also leaves behind a legacy of what a Christian husband and father should be - I have a feeling that Grant is not the only one of the guys from our "Albuquerque group" that looked to him as an example. The same goes for Edie, and her example to all of us new moms.

I really don't know what else to say - I've been struggling to write something all day today. But Megan inspired me with her post, and she stole the picture that I was going to use, so I had to find another funny picture of Brent (which wasn't hard to do). So this is Brent, pointing out Grant's "guns."



To Edie and the kids, I just want to say that we love you and you're always in our thoughts and prayers.

We have a monster!

We have this little inflatable ball (like a mini-beachball), and Grant and I were throwing it around last night, and Kendall was just going crazy! Towards the end of it, I decided to set up the video to record it. It didn't get the total craziness of Kendall, but you get the idea.

Great Scott!

Yesterday, we made our way up to Pasadena. The reason for our trip up there is that I found a high chair on craigslist, and that's where the people lived that were selling it. So, to make use out of our gas for driving all the way up there (it's almost an hour away), we decided to do some hiking. We've been wanting to go to Pasadena anyway, and the high chair gave us the perfect excuse!

I guess God decided that SoCal hadn't gotten enough rain recently (I don't think it's rained since we've moved here - except for a sprinkle or two), and that yesterday would be the perfect day for it to rain! So, no hiking for us. But we went to the Farmer's Market in Pasadena, which was fabulous.




Before we went up there, I wrote down the addresses for the houses used in Back To The Future from imdb.com. I had seen before that most of them were in Pasadena, so we made it a priority to at least find Doc Brown's house. So after the Farmer's Market, on our way to get the high chair, we found it! Apparently it's the Gamble House, previously owned by the Gamble family (of Proctor and Gamble), and is now a museum. It's absolutely gorgeous, and a perfect example of the craftsman style of architecture (which is my fave!).



We picked up the high chair, then started making our way back home. On the way, we had one more stop to make. I had watched an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network, which featured this restaurant called Auntie Em's in Eagle Rock (which is right by Pasadena) that had these awesome-looking Red Velvet cupcakes. So, we went, and I waited in a very long line (maybe 15 minutes) for 2 of these cupcakes. But they were definitely worth the wait. One of these days, maybe when we're actually able to hike, we'll have to try to eat there, because the food looked so yummy!



By the way, I hate this picture, but Grant and I were trying for the longest time to take an artsy-fartsy picture of the cupcake, and I kept telling him to not get me in the picture. Well, he did, and now he's making me post it.

We made it home, and were so inspired by Doc Brown's house that we decided to pop in Back To The Future. Since Grant didn't get to use his new camel-back-esque backpack on our hike, and didn't want to waste the water from it, he sucked it down during the movie.



And this morning, Kendall used her high chair for the very first time. I think she liked it.

I Need....

Megan and Jasmine have already done this, but I was kinda bored, so I thought I'd give it a try. You can go to Google, and put in your name+needs and see what comes up. Pretty funny, except for the R. Kelly ones - I'll leave those out. :)

Kelly needs to keep the drama going
Kelly needs a quivering antennae
Kelly needs her brother backstage
Kelly needs to dump Katherine Heigl - NOW!
Kelly needs a new attitude
Kelly needs a little guidance
Kelly needs a new job
Kelly needs to pee
Kelly needs to stop speaking Italian
Kelly needs a $25,000 mouthpiece

Grant's weren't that funny, except for the first one...

Grant needs wife

Snack Time!

I got an issue of Real Simple that was geared towards families a couple months back. In it, there was a section dedicated to kid CD's that are parent-friendly, and one of them that caught my eye was Snack Time by the Barenaked Ladies - you know, that group from the Great White North that have all the funny songs? Apparently, the band is now outnumbered by all their offspring, so they decided to write some kid's songs - twenty-four, to be exact.

It's great.

Kendall loves it.

I love it.

I highly recommend it.

A Day in the Life...

This video is really for my mom, who hasn't seen Kendall since June, and she's changed so much since then! I like this video (even though it's really long), because it shows everything that she does now - talking, singing, laughing, clapping, dancing, waving, etc.

By Slightly Popular Demand

OK, despite my lack of writing skillz--I'm an engineer after all--I am a man of the people. So here goes. I hope this is sufficiently long and boring that no one requests any more posts from me:)

Back in June, John made a reservation for a group to hike Mt. Whitney in early September. As a little background, Mt. Whitney is in the Sierra Nevadas and is the highest mountain in the lower 48 states at right around 14,500 ft. The main hiking trail is about 11 miles to the top and starts out around 8,000ft. John had hiked to the summit two years earlier, but they broke the hike up into a few days, camping about halfway up and then stopping again for a second night on the way down. Then last year, he and some officemates went again with the intention of doing the whole hike in one day. They got about 2 or 3 hours from the summit but had to turn around due to a lot of ice on the trail (it was late September). So John and three other guys from his office wanted to try to do the whole 22 mile hike in a day once again. So I decided to join the group.

I was a little nervous because I knew it was going to be a physically demanding hike. But the altitude concerned me the most. You just never know how the altitude is going to effect you and, with so much work being done above 13,000 and 14,000 feet, it could be a recipe for disaster. So I started training immediately. I mainly ran up and down hills. I could tell a big diffference from the training, but there's only so much this can do for a person living at sea level. The only real altitude preparation that I got was when John and I hiked Mt. Baldy. Baldy is about an hour outside of LA. It only goes up to 10,000 feet, but 10,000 feet is much better than 0 feet.


So we got to the campground at the trailhead two days before the hike. I took this picture above from the visitor center on the day we arrived (Whitney is one of the peaks on the right). This allowed us to get a little more acclimated to the altitude since the campground was around 8,000 feet. Then on the day before the big hike we did a little hike to Lone Pine Lake, which was around 10,000 feet up.

It was beautiful up there. Dave (one of the other guys from the group) and I decided the water was too beautiful to not go for a swim. Not surprisely, it was FREEZING! But it was defintely worth it. It's not every day you can go swimming surrounded by that kind of scenery.



So then came the day we had been anticipating. We got up around 4:00 so we could break camp, eat breakfast, and hit the trail by 5:00. As it turned out, we started at 5:00 on the dot. Everyone was pretty quiet as we hiked in the dark. It seemed like we all just tried to plod along and not think about the fact that we'd still be plodding 12 hours from now. But the scenery was beautiful and the weather was great, so things seemed to be on our side. Here's a picture of John; you can see Lone Pine Lake below him.


Here's a picture of four of the five guys from our group.


After about three or four hours, we were above the tree line. Things seemed to get more and more barren as we went on. After about five and a half hours the trail was pretty much going through nothing but boulders. The view was even more incredible than before; it was strange having such a beautiful view as the backdrop to such a harsh environment.






I was feeling pretty good the whole way. The worst part was when we were just about to summit. It seemed like we were right there, but we never seemed to get there. And each step had to be done with less and less oxygen. But soon we made it!



The sense of accomplishment was great, but knowing we still had to go all the way back down tempered the sweetness. It took us 7:05 to get to the top. We hoped it would be about 5 hours to get back down.



That was our hope...but then...YACK! Dave (the guy in the right in the summit pic) started feeling the altitude, and so he left his lunch up on the summit. That was followed by several more extreme projectile vomits over the next hour or so (I'm sad to say I do not have a picture of this). Unfortunately, the only way to get rid of altitude sickness is to get down. The problem was that he had no energy and was extremely nauseated (which, by the way, can cause problems when you're trying to walk a narrow trail with a 2000 ft drop next to you). So getting down was very slow-going. He was absolutely miserable, and it was a good reminder of why you always have to be careful when you do these kinds of hikes.

But after about four and a half hours, he started feeling better. And eventually we made it down! One of our members had to turn around at 13,000 feet and another got pretty bad altitude sickness, but we made it--14,500 feet and 22 miles. It took us just over 14 hours to go up and down, but we were off the trail before dark which was good. So it was a great experience and a cool accomplishment, but next - if there's a next - maybe we'll do a little camping in between the 22 miles.

Mama's Lil Helper

Pictures

I should've just put these in the last post, but I didn't, so here they are.

I've been wanting to post pictures of our "view," but it's very rarely clear enough to turn out for pictures.

Except last week. We had several clear days, where you could actually see Catalina Island (literally, the marine layer is so thick on most days, you would never know it was out there). So, try to block out the grocery store parking lot below, and focus on the gorgeous ocean and rare glimpse of Catalina!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

That's about all I can say for us lately. Grant's mom came for a visit. Oh, and Kendall had her first fever for 2 days, followed by a rash, that's apparently Roseola. For those days when she had a fever, she only wanted to be held. I loved that part of it, but hated the part where she was crying, and no amount of holding her made her feel better. Thankfully, she's back to her chipper self.

That's all for now. Just wanted to give people an update on us.

Prison Break

Not that my house is a prison, but I just thought that title was clever.

I might win, "Worst Mother Of The Year Award" for this, and I'm surprised I'm even blogging about it. But I couldn't help but laughing when I saw this (I know that if she had gotten hurt, I would be doing the exact opposite of laughing, but she didn't, so I laughed).

I'm sitting in the living room, doing my internet thing while Kendall's doing her exploring thing. She loves to go in the dining room and play under the table. Well, I noticed that it got awfully quiet, which, as every mom knows, is not usually a good sign. When I went to go check on her, this is what I found:




(Obviously, she's crawling back inside. I wish I had my camera when I first saw her, because she was just sitting out there, checking everything out) I forgot that I left the back door open for Watley (I do that a lot, but usually remember to close it once he comes in. In fact, when she crawled towards the dining room, I even did a mental check and thought I had closed the door). I don't really know how she got out without hurting herself, but hopefully this will be a one-time incident.

It's election time, people!

Forget Obama or McCain. I have a poll of my own:

Who thinks Grant should take a page out of Mr. J's book, and become co-author of my blog?

He keeps bugging me to blog about HIS hiking trip last week. I think he should blog about it himself. He refuses. So, I'm taking it to the blog world to settle this dispute.

Tag, I'm It!

Mrs. J tagged me, but I'm pretty sure I did one of these not too long ago, so I'm asking Grant for help to come up with more quirks of mine:

1. According to my loving husband, I pick things. Like eyebrows or other little things that are out of place.

2. Another one that he tells me is that I watch MTV too much, even though I really haven't been watching it as much lately.

3. When I told him that I don't think the MTV-watching is too much of a quirk anymore, since it's minimal, and that he should probably say that my Bravo-TV-watching is worse, he said that should be number 3. I pretty much watch anything and everything on Bravo. And if you're wondering how I have so much time to watch TV, all I have to say is, thank goodness for DVR. I catch up on everything I miss at night once Kendall goes to bed.

4. I very rarely iron anything. I hate ironing, and will only bring it out if something is really, really wrinkled.

5. Another one from Grant, "I insist on people helping me with dumb online quizzes." His words, not mine.

6. I love cookies. I blogged about this a while ago, but nothing's changed. I can eat cookies all day long.

A Day At the Park

Jen and Maddy, Melissa and Mookie, and Kendall and I had our girls day out yesterday. And what a fun day it was!! We found a totally awesome fabric shop, and then we went to a park for a picnic. The last time we went to a park, was the first time that we all met Jen and Maddy back in May. That time, we went to a park close to Jen's house, and we were disappointed that it was apparently lawn-mowing day.

This time, we went to a different park, but as you can see from the pictures, we're 2 for 2 now with park lawn-mowing days. Kendall and I tried out the slide for the first time. I think I enjoyed more than Kendall did.






Despite the loud lawn-mowing, we still had fun. We're just enjoying our time with Jen and Maddy before they move to New Zealand (!) next month.

Kendall has something to say