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.

Fun in the Park

A couple from church that live here in San Pedro told us about this really nice park that's near us. I've been taking Kendall to it, but Grant's never been. So, Sunday afternoon we decided to go.

A nice feature of the park is this kind of canal that has ducks and geese. I'm not sure what the park people are doing with it, but only a small section has water in it. Hopefully the whole thing will have water soon, because that will only make it nicer.




Anyways, Kendall LOVES the ducks! She'll just stand and watch them for the longest time. There's also these squirrels that basically come right up to you begging for food that Kendall loves to watch.

There's also a nice gazebo at this park, that's sometimes used for weddings. From here, you get a pretty good view of the port.



And then there's me, in all my brattiness, refusing to smile for a picture.



Honestly, there's no real point to this post. I just thought it was time for an update.

It's HOT....

Really hot. Like, temperatures in the mid-90's hot. Like, no cool breeze from the ocean, mixed with no A/C hot. Get it? IT'S HOT! Really, I'm not complaining, because I'd much rather be hot than cold - it gives me an excuse to eat popsicles. And who doesn't love popsicles? But this is just unexpected for mid-April, you know?

This is how Kendall stays cool...

If I had to choose....

Up to this point in my life, I'd say this is my favorite picture.

Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter. I know we did! We had a wonderful church service, a great Easter lunch (with hand-breaded fried okra that was pretty awesome), naps, and an Easter egg hunt for Kendall. Here's some pictures...

Egg-A-Licious

Kendall had her first Easter egg hunt today on base. I was SO impressed with the whole thing - they had filled Easter baskets that they were giving out for free, cute little Easter egg candles, an Easter bunny to take pictures with, bouncy castles, hot dogs and chips, drinks, and the actual hunt! We almost didn't go, but I'm so glad we did. The problem is, it was right smack in the middle of Kendall's nap time (which is why we almost didn't go), so at some points, she was just over everything. But, she really enjoyed herself.

Here's some video. And for those of you who think Kendall never breaks down, here's proof!

Good Friday

I was doing a little online searching and saw this link to the Billings Gazette that intrigued me. I thought it was well-written, and said things that I have trouble expressing sometimes.

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/04/04/features/life/45-easter.txt

In time for Easter, consider Jesus
By NIKI KLEINSASSER
For The Gazette

Consider Jesus. Hebrews 3:1 says, "Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus." This scripture was originally written to the Jews, but it pertains to us even today.

Consider Jesus. According to J. Vernon McGee, "The Greek word translated by our English word "consider" conveys the fact of faithful attention, giving of time, and perceiving thoroughly with the mind." Consider means to examine, to ponder and to think about, in order to understand or decide.

An apostle is one who is sent on a special mission. Jesus was sent from God as a messenger; but he is also a high priest. The high priest represents man before God. So Jesus was sent by God, and he represents you and me before God. He is our advocate.

With Easter fast approaching, let's consider Jesus. His sole purpose for coming to Earth was to die for you and me so that our sins may be forgiven. He gave his life so that we may live. After three days, he rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of God, the Father, as an advocate for us. He knows what each and every one of us is going through. He was tempted and suffered just as every other man on this planet. The only difference is that he did not sin.

Consider this, the United States of America is flailing at best. The national debt is at an all-time high, unemployment is out of control, the family unit is falling apart, and morals have been thrown out the window. The American government has given protective constitutional status to the murder of several million innocent unborn children. Some states have now legalized same-sex marriages. We are defying God as a nation and as individuals. It is time we get on our knees as a nation and as individuals and ask for forgiveness. It is time we consider Jesus and make a decision for him and for what is right.

I challenge you to consider Jesus this Easter season.

Niki Kleinsasser is a board member of Tree of Life Wesleyan Church in Billings.


Published on Saturday, April 04, 2009.
Last modified on 4/4/2009 at 12:21 am

The Alien Baby is Back, Baby!

Check it out ----------->

More Details

So, I'm just about 12 weeks along now. This time around (also with Kendall), I didn't think I was pregnant.

I had taken a pregnancy test on either a Tuesday or Wednesday, and it came back negative. No big deal. Well, I went to a doctor the Friday after that to talk about some things that were going on with me, and he said he wanted me to take a blood test to see if I was pregnant, because I might be. I have to say, I was a little annoyed that he was saying this. I really wanted to be pregnant, but after getting that negative just days before, I knew I wasn't, and here he was getting my hopes up.

I went to the lab to get the blood test done. This was around 9 something that morning. They said the results would be back within an hour. The doctor had already told me that if it was positive, they would call me right away and let me know. If it was negative, they won't be in such a hurry to call.

Well, around 10:30 or so, I called the lab, and left a message telling them to call me with the results. I didn't hear anything the rest of that day. I figured that meant it was negative.

Monday morning around 8:30, I get a call from the base. She asked what kind of lab work I had done, and I told her. Then she said, "Well, it came back positive!" I'm pretty sure my first words were "Are you sure?" But I can't really remember, it's kind of all a blur to me. All I know is I was hysterically laughing and crying at the same time, to the point where she was like, "Um, is this a good thing?" To which I enthusiastically said, YES!!!

I was still a little hesitant believing it all until my first appointment, and I saw the litte, itty-bitty bean (to which Kendall either said "ball" or "baby." It's kind of the same word for her, but I like to think she's a genius, and she realized that it was, in fact, a baby).

And with how sick I've been lately, there's really no denying it. Yuck! I was pretty sick with Kendall, but I've been even more sick this time around. Hopefully that will ease up soon.

Practicing...

Baby #2 is due around the middle of October!

Hugs and Kisses

Saturday night, some friends from church invited us over to their house for dinner. They have a 1 year old, named Peter.

Kendall's interactions with other kids usually involves her stealing toys from them, and then completely ignoring them. Not with Peter, though. From the moment they laid eyes on each other, they were each mesmerized.

Peter thought Kendall was pretty cool for walking all around, and Kendall thought his crawling was pretty cool, and reverted back to that for a bit.

They shared really well, too. Peter kindly gave up his favorite toy to Kendall, who held onto it the whole time we were there.

At one point, Peter was standing up, holding onto his mom's leg, and Kendall thought since they were finally at the same height she should just give him a big smacker! Her kisses always begin with kissing sounds when she's still several inches away from her target (kind of like a warning signal). I heard the kissing sounds, and looked over to find her hanging onto Peter, forcing a kiss on him. Well, with all of Kendall's forcefulness, Peter lost his balance and took quite the tumble, hitting his head on a cabinet. Kendall didn't quite understand why anyone would cry after receiving one of her famous kisses! But all was better in just a few minutes. She made sure to give him a few more kisses that night to make sure everything was okay.

I wish we had remembered our camera that night, but we didn't. Just know that it was all very, very cute.

Bakerella, Anyone?

I've recently been introduced to Bakerella's blog. More specifcally, to her cupcake pops. They were so cute from the pictures, that I became obsessed - OBSESSED - with trying them. Well, yesterday was the day, and I was so happy that they turned out!

Just a warning for those of you who might want to try these. Really, they're very easy to make, BUT they're VERY time consuming. Thankfully, I was able to get most of it done during Kendall's nap, and Grandma Betty kept her entertained while I finished them. But they look cute, and they taste great!

So here's a couple pictures. The first one is a batch waiting to dry, and the second one is what it looks like all packaged and pretty.

Bonnie Hunt Show Revisited

So, back in November I mentioned how I would be in the audience of The Bonnie Hunt Show. I never mentioned it again, and was just reminded of it a couple of days ago. Grant's mom is here visiting, and we still have the show recorded, so we were showing her the episode, since she missed it when it aired. Grant was being kind of annoying, and paused it when I was on the screen and took a picture. Do you see me?



Anyways, it was SO much fun, and I hope to do something like that again! The group that I was with (there were 4 of us) got seated in pretty crappy seats (top row all the way in the far corner), but during the segment when Bonnie was in the audience, I actually made it on screen quite a bit.

We walked away with a lot of free stuff, too! They told us before the show that we would, but we didn't know what we were getting until they actually mentioned it in the taping.

The first guests were an injured Army vet and his wife, and Bonnie announced that everyone in the audience was getting a $100 Sears gift card!

Jennie Garth was out next, and she designed a reusable shopping bag, so everyone in the audience got one of those.

Then Raven-Symone was on (remember her as Olivia from the Cosby Show?). Everyone got a best-of The Cosby Show DVD, which is super cool!

I guess Raven is into crafting, because at the end they did a little craft session, and announced that everyone would also be getting a Michael's gift card for $20!

The whole experience was just really cool - I loved seeing the set, and everyone behind the scenes, and just watching everything happen. I really recommend that to anyone who's coming to LA and can fit it in their schedule. There's so many shows taping all the time, I think it's fairly easy to get on one.