The calm before the storm

Today is our last day of "calmness" before a crazy next week (and a halfish). Tonight my Grandma Rose is coming down from San Jose to visit Evelyn and me. She's super excited and has been wanting to come down ever since we first got here. She's going to spend a couple days with us and then on Saturday we three girls are driving up to San Jose to see Grandpa Dan and Aunt Denise and Cousins Sydney and Raven.

Sydney and Raven are my two little cousins and I think are around 3 and 4. I'm not the best with keeping track of all the little kids ages but oh well :) Grandma Rose shows them this blog every time she goes to their house so they already love Evelyn and can't wait to play with her. They are going to Disneyland next month and told Grandma Rose that if I don't let Evelyn go, then I'm just mean. :) Cute little things.

Anywho. After we go see all them, Evelyn and I are headed up further to Santa Rosa to visit all the fam up there, including my Grandma Fredrick, some of the aunts (my dad's sisters), Annie and her fam when they get there, her mother-in-law, and then a bunch of fam on my mom's side, which includes my birth mom and sister Katherine! Evelyn's gonna be meeting a LOT of new people, that's for sure. It'll be fun though and I'm so excited to go! I haven't been back to that part of CA since I was like 17 or something like that.

We'll be up there til next Friday which is when we'll make the long trek back down here to SoCal. This time though we'll have cousin Carmen with us, who is braving a trip across America with the Bidia family to come visit me! :) Well half way across anyway. We're excited to have her come though and plan on doing some fun stuff with her while she's here! Magic Mountain here we come!

Here's your pic of the day. Now that Evelyn is crawling she's discovered that we have a tiny little living space and needs bigger ground to crawl around so lately she's been trying to escape :) She loves to be outside so every time I leave the door open for some nice fresh air, she tries to get out.

"Tennis, what a racquet!"

Mark's been getting out of class pretty early, 4-4:30ish so I've been trying to think of things for us to do besides sitting around watching tv or going to the beach and getting burned :( So while browsing through Target (which there are like 10 Targets to every 1 Wal Mart out here, which is pretty weird but awesome cuz Target's I love Target!) we found some tennis racquets on sale, and since there is a tennis court right next door to where we're staying, we decided to get some!

I've only played tennis once but I loved it and Mark likes it too so this is our new thing! It's a pretty decent work out too and Evelyn did great the first time we played. She loves being outside so she just chilled in her stroller, played with her toys, and watched us. We really aren't very good but it was fun and we did improve a little bit in the hour we played!

We also got a couple card games to play while we're inside...just cuz they're easy and quick and no small pieces for Evelyn to find and chew on.

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending, against all hazards. And it is our duty to defend them...

against all attacks." --Samuel Adams--

First of all, they need to let me put as long of a title as I want on this thing! I hate when I find a perfect quote and it's too long...frustration!

Ok now...this post is just to finish up our Memorial Day Weekend adventures! As you've seen from my previous posts, Saturday we did shopping and swimming followed by an AMAZING dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, Sunday we went to church and went on a lovely walk on the beach, and Monday we went down to Long Beach and met my birth dad and his wife at the aquarium and spent the day down there!

The aquarium wasn't too bad, smaller than I was expecting so that was a little disappointing but it was still fun to see all the animals and fishes and such! Probably our favorite part was seeing the seal/sea lion's do there little show, they're so funny!

She was just....what IS that?!?!? So fun to watch her discover new things!

Then it was fun to see all the colors of fish and all the weird creatures. My favorite was this dragon seahorse...SO weird!!!!

And then all our "Finding Nemo" friends were there too...

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude!!!

Fish are friends, not food!

Just keep swimming!!!

After the aquarium we walked around the harbor for a bit and then ate an amazingly yummy dinner at Famous Dave's BBQ, which is now my new favorite BBQ place! SOOOO good and SO much food! Overall it was a very fun day and it was great to see Michael and Terrie. They love seeing Evelyn! IT was also great to get out of our little area for a while! I've never been in this part of CA so it's fun to explore it and enjoy all it has to offer! It was especially nice to have a "long" weekend and do something fun with Mark! We're kinda bummed that the 4th of July is on a Sunday this year cuz that means he doesn't get any extra days off for the holiday! :( Such a bummer....

Here's a few more pics from the day...

She was so tired!

Mark petting a sting ray

Lieutenant Dan! Ice Cream! (This is Mark's favorite quote from Forrest Gump and this is his and Amy's favorite "Forrest" impression :)

My sweet little girl!!!!

Well, I smell T-R-O-U-B-L-E!!!

Yesterday I put Evelyn down for a nap, which she was being particularly stubborn yesterday and was refusing to take naps despite how overly tired she was. For those of you who don't know, she sleeps in her playard bassinet, which is up higher than the regular playard part and easier for me to get her out of in the middle of the night cuz it's just right there. So I peep in to check her and this is what I see.

I was just like, aw crap! Not good. She's been rolling over in there which is a difficulty when she's being stubborn cuz she just rolls over and gets up on her hands and knees and just cries and works up a sweat and it's pretty sad.

Then while she cries she has to stop and take a yawn break...she looks like a little lion when she yawns, such a big mouth!

Isn't that the sadest, cutest thing?

Anyway, we went in there and watched her play in her bed for a bit. She was doing complete sit ups, getting up on her knees, and then even getting up on her feet almost. It's a good thing her bed's right up next to ours! I'm thinking it's almost time to put down the bassinet and just let her sleep in the playard...onto the next phase of sleeping I guess!!!