"It isn't how much time you spend somewhere that makes it memorable: it's how you spend the time."

The second half of our California part of the trip was spent in the bay area. We spent a few hours that Wednesday we left Santa Rosa with a Missouri friend of mine, Jana, who had recently moved there. She has the cutest little 8 month old daughter, Allie, who was pretty much afraid of Evelyn. I guess Evelyn can be kind of upfront and intimidating to a wee one like that, as well as to kids her own age J silly girl…..anyway. It was fun to visit them and enjoy a few hours together. I don’t see her much, just keep up with blogs and facebook.

After that we headed over to my Aunt Denise’s house where we spent a few days visiting with Grandma Rose, Aunt Denise, Uncle Daniel, their two girls, Sydney and Raven, and then Michael came up to visit us as well. Evelyn didn’t have any trouble adjusting here. As soon as she saw the girls she was up and running and playing and was so happy. They loved Evelyn and were so glad that she was more mobile this visit! Last time we saw them was last July and Evelyn was just crawling.

So Evelyn spent her time playing with the girls and I got to spend time with Denise and Grandma Rose, which was wonderful. We didn’t do much except hang out and talk and such like that, which was perfectly fine with me. It was nice to sit and relax and enjoy good company, while Evelyn was distracted and playing with the girls, before we headed off to our next slightly more chaotic part of the trip, Utah. But that’s for later. Then Michael came up Friday and Evelyn had some of her time split between the girls and him. He and Terrie got Evelyn an Easter basket full of little goodies so she enjoyed opening that, eating candy, and playing with toys. She was also excited to find someone new to blow bubbles with. She’s not very good at making the bubbles yet so I have to do them, which gets kinda old fast. Thank goodness for grandparents, right? J

I don’t have much else to say right now I guess…this weekend has been busy and I’m kinda worn out and too tired to go into much detail. But I did love seeing the rest of my California family and visiting them in beautiful San Ramon. So thanks again guys! I miss you a lot!

Raven, Evelyn and Sydney....these girls are so cute and so fun!

One day Sydney dressed up in her princess costume so Evelyn started to take off her clothes cuz she wanted to dress up too. Luckily they had a dress that fit her and she proudly pranced around in it for quite awhile! She would spin in it and dance and it was adorable. Looks like I have a new sewing project up ahead! Also means more fabric shopping.....darn! :)

Now that is one bratty little princess face!

And the next minute, cute as a button!

Sydney and Raven are starting to do some modeling/acting so I took a couple head shots while I was there. Such a beautiful little girl!

Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles!

Aw, so cute!

Opening her Easter Basket, oooo! :)

"I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."

Luckily for me Evelyn is a pretty wonderful traveler. Half the time she slept on the plane and the other half I kept her distracted with books, coloring, stickers, and Toy Story. :) We had a looong nearly three week vacation and I can’t believe it’s all over! I had a wonderful wonderful time visiting family and friends in California and Utah. The first place we went was up to Northern Cali to see Auntie Annie and the Bidia family. We were only there for a couple days but it was fun to be with them and see the new area they live in! Emily and Jeremiah came out with me and Evelyn so of course we ended up doing some thrift store shopping. Emily was in heaven. :) There were some good thrift stores though and I got some cute shirts :) We also got some yummy burritos from the taco wagon down the street and hit up Target (I went to Target SOOO many times during my trip! I love that store!)

Anywho…on Friday we went down to Santa Rosa with the Bidia’s to spend Easter weekend with the rest of the Bidia familia. Along the way we stopped at a yummy gourmet cupcake shop, per Emily’s request. It was one that had won one of the competitions on a show called cupcake wars and boy were they good!!! They also had these whoopie pies that were AMAZING!

So we got to the Bidia’s but I actually spent Saturday with my Santa Rosa family, mostly Terry and Auntie Mona. We went to see Auntie Pat, who was in the hospital L. We went up and saw her pretty much every day we were in Santa Rosa. Being in the hospital sucks and visitors are always a happy distraction so we were glad to help :) Evelyn took a little bit of time warming up to everybody but eventually was fine. She got better and better throughout the whole trip which was good. Saturday night we went out for pizza with Aunt Mary, Aunt Beth, and Uncle Mark from dad’s side of the fam. They were the only ones from that side we saw but it was good to see them.

Sunday was Easter of course, which we spent with the Bidia’s mainly (we went and saw Aunt Pat that night again). They made a yummy Easter lunch, where I filled up on my favorite California product…sourdough/French bread! YUMMMMM! Then we had a little Easter egg hunt with the little kids and I also took some pics of Evelyn and Jeremiah in the vineyard which turned out SO cute! Evelyn was being a bit grumpy so I only got like two pics of her smiling but they still turned out cute. Jeremiah hammed it up though, he loved having his picture taken!

That night though the Bidia’s had to go home so we said goodbye and I stayed at Aunt Pat’s house with Auntie Mona and spent time with them for the next couple of days. I was so glad that my visit coincided with Auntie Mona’s visit, I hadn’t seen her in years so it was wonderful to see her! So we spent most of our time with Mona, Terry, Mitch, Marcus, Katherine, and we’d go see Aunt Pat every day. They all loooved Evelyn, which who could blame them. One night they sat and watched her for at least an hour, she had a ball and would through it to different people and was being very silly and VERY cute :).

We left Santa Rosa on Wednesday. Auntie Katherine graciously offered to drive us to San Ramon cuz the car rental was going to be ridiculous priced. But that was great cuz we got more bonding time with her and since we rarely see any of the Santa Rosa fam, all the extra time together was great! So overall that part of our trip was wonderful and fun and amazing :) I miss all my Cali fam and am so glad we got to see them! I have more pics I want to post but it isn't letting me upload any more than this right now so I'll try posting them later. Happy Sunday everyone!

O Rise and Shout, the Cougars are out Along the trail to fame and glory.

I know it's not football season and I'm not actually in Provo but it's the first quote I could think of for Utah so there you go :) But I am in Utah now...my fun adventures to Cali are over and now I'm off to visit more friends and fam! I got in yesterday and am staying with Amy and Calvin for part of my trip and Whit down in Provo area for a couple days. I'm so excited to see her and Maria!!!!!!!!!!!! I looooved being in Cali and seeing the fam, don't get me wrong but now I'm here and excited for here! :)

I won't be posting on anything specific til I get home though so sorry no pics or anything. I'm just posting a quick update here while we're having a quiet minute here at Amy's. Tomorrow we're going to see Maria and Whit and go down to Provo for a couple days, see friends, shop a bit, and help get ready for the main event on Saturday! It's gonna be great!

Anywho, Evelyn is doing great, getting much more used to meeting/remeeting people and has been having fun getting lots of attention from everybody. My suitcases definitely are gonna be more full, mostly cuz of presents she's gotten from people! We're having a grand ol' time though and will be sad when it's over...although a little glad too, I'll be back to sewing (I've got another handful to stuff piled up from blogs from the past couple weeks on top of the stuff I already have! And some new fabric to use too!) and hopefully I'll get back into a scrapbook vibe cuz I've got lots to scrapbook from this trip! Love you all and miss all of you!!

"Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better."

Well it certainly has been a long time since my last post, I can't believe how fast moving/traveling went and now we've been in our new place for almost two weeks! I won't tell you all about that just yet though. First off is traveling, and what an inconvenience that is! Especially when it's accompanied with moving...ugh! But everything has gone fairly smoothly so I can't complain!

We left California Friday the 30th right after Mark got out of class and drove straight through to Utah, which of course took a bit longer than we wanted so we ended up getting there at like 2am. So tiring! We spent Saturday in Utah, packed up our Budget truck with all our stuff, and spent some time with Amy and Calvin which it was great to see them again, even for such a brief period of time! Sunday morning we headed out and drove and drove and drove and drove some more until we finally got to Missouri Monday afternoon. It was so good to be home, especially after such a LONG drive!

Everyone, of course, was excited to see Evelyn and how much she's grown since May. We spent a lovely two days with the fam and headed back on the road Wednesday night. This drive was long but definitely better than driving from CA to MO. We got here on Thursday afternoon, went straight to the housing office, saw our house, signed papers, and we were in! So we're here now, ALMOST all settled in and things are going pretty good! But that's pretty much all I can say for now, I still have stuff to put away and organize and take care of so I gotta get that all done before I can do another blog and show it all off! So til then!

Oh, and of course, here's some pics of Evelyn from the trip!

I can't remember now why she was making this face but it was pretty funny

How sad is this???

Happy girl with the vampire teeth!

She kept falling asleep with her legs sprawled out like this, so funny!

See? Again with the legs

Mark was singing and Evelyn was covering her ears....I'm not even lying! She seriously was, so cute!

If you can believe if, this is the only pic I took in Missouri! Tani is such a ham!

"Palm trees, ocean breeze, Standing by the clear blue sea, Hot air, Sunkissed hair, Endless summer, Take me there"

Well the time has almost come for us to leave California! We've had so much fun here and are very sad to leave. The weather has been wonderful (well it's been a bit cold the past couple days but oh well, how many people can complain about cold right now? :), we've been to a lot of fun places, seen lots of family, made some good friends, and it's just been great! I can't believe how fast its gone by, seems like yesterday we got here.

For our last weekend we didn't do anything to crazy. We went back to Point Dume and took some of the trails on top of the cliff and walked along those for awhile. It was pretty neat though cuz this time we actually saw seals and we saw a lot of dolphins. We saw 7 or 8 while we were driving along the coast and then from Point Dume we saw about 6 playing in the water. It was so neat! They were jumping and swimming around and it was fun to watch them. Unfortunately a stupid helicopter came around and scared them away. Lame!

After that we went down to the beach for a bit and walked a bit more down there. Mark went up into the cave we saw last time cuz he wanted to see how far it went but he didn't go too far. We had fun though and enjoyed going to the beach for the last time! Good thing we're in the Navy and will be by the coast 95% of the time! :)

After we got back from the beach we went to the theater on base and saw the Prince of Persia, which I thought was pretty good. Evelyn slept almost the entire movie which was great. Then Sunday we went to church and afterwards Terrie and Michael came up to see us one last time before we left, which was great! They had lots of fun playing with Evelyn and she liked having someone new to play with too.

So that pretty much sums up our last weekend here. I've been packing, organizing, and getting stuff ready to go all this week so nothing really to say about all that! It was a bit cool the beginning of the week but today has been nice and sunny and 65 and wonderful! I'm really gonna miss this mild weather, especially when we get to Mississippi :( Anywho...I gotta get back to packing now. This will probably be the last post for awhile, til we get to Mississippi and get internet anyway. So hope you all have a good next two weeks or so! Ours is gonna be busy, busy, busy!

You're dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway. --Walt Disney--

“To all who come to this happy place; welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past...and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts that have created America...with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world.”

--Walt Disney, Disneyland dedication speech, July 17, 1955

What Mark and I didn't know on Saturday was that it was Disneyland's 55th anniversary, which attributed to the busyness of the place, although I don't know how different it was from any other Saturday. There were a lot of people though! We went to the park around 9, left around 12:30 for a break (Auntie Denise and her fam/friends were having a bowling b-day celebration for one of the other little girls so we met up with them so she could meet Mark and also so Evelyn could have a break from her stroller), then we came back and stayed at the park til 10pm!

Right as we were leaving for our lunch time break we noticed a big crowd at the beginning of Main Street. The President of Disneyland was rededicating the park or something like that for the 55th anniversary. This is a pic of him below.

They also had one of their top security guys come speak because he also happened to be one of the first kids to run across the bridge at Sleeping Beauty's Castle on that first day. It was neat to hear him relate his experience from that. We didn't stay for the whole ceremony so I don't really know what the president had to say.

Here's a few pics of us by the opening gate and Sleeping Beauty's Castle. I do have to apologize for the lengthiness of this post...I knew it would be long starting out but didn't realize it was gonna be this big!

These two were actually taken when we were waiting for the bus at the hotel. Evelyn and Mark were blowing raspberries and seeing who could do it better :) It was just funny

We of course, had to go on Pirates again, this is us waiting in line. Evelyn did fairly good, still didn't like that mist part but never cried so that was good. I loved seeing all the pirates on the ride though, especially Captain Jack. They did such a wonderful job on him, he looked so lifelike!

We tried to go on rides where Evelyn could ride too and the good thing about Disneyland is that there are a lot of them! We took her next on the Toy Story ride. It was an interactive ride where you use a laser gun and try to get points by shooting Zurg's enemy targets. I was holding Evelyn so it was hard for me to get very many of them so Mark totally kicked my butt pointwise (see pic below).

This was taken while we were waiting in line for the Haunted Mansion, which Evelyn also went on. I think she was a little spooked on that one, mostly because it was so dark but she still did good, just tensed up a bit. It was a fun ride though!

We didn't catch the main parade but we did get to see the Dance Celebration one. It had a lot of characters and lots of dancing so it was fun to watch. We did see a lot of characters that day but unfortunately didn't get to have any pictures taken with them :(

For dinner we had made a reservation at the Blue Bayou, which is in the New Orleans part of the park and also right inside the Pirates ride! It was such a cool atmosphere and I really enjoyed it. The food was a bit expensive but was really good and it was just something fun and out of the ordinary to do and probably won't have many chances to go there so what the heck! :)

We had them take a pic before we left but you can't really see the cool background cuz it's so dark.

One of the shows was the Enchanted Tiki Room, which was also a lot of fun. The best part was watching Evelyn, she just loved it! She was fascinated by the birds and flowers and everything and just stared the whole time.

Another ride Evelyn LOVED was the "It's a Small World". She doesn't look too happy in this pic below but she did really like it. She just kept looking around at all the little people and was enthralled. I thought it was neat with all the different nationalities and such but it was so looong! Got a bit annoying after a bit but still fun to go through and look at.

That night we found a spot in New Orleans to watch the night show, Fantastmic. It's a show in Mickey's dream where the evil witch from Sleeping Beauty tries to take over but of course, good conquers evil and all is well. It was a fun show with lots of characters, fireworks, water effects, and lots of other things. They even had a pirate ship come through with Hook and Peter Pan fighting. Very cool.

We were gonna watch the fireworks but unfortunately "prevailing high winds" ruined that for us. We were disappointed though cuz they have an awesome firework show! We saw a little bit the night before when we were driving back from the train station but didn't stay out to watch it cuz we thought we would see it Saturday but oh well! Guess we'll just have to go back another time :)

We had a wonderful weekend though and I'm so glad we got to do it before we left and I'm really glad Mark was able to enjoy it with us! Evelyn was such a trooper and did so well for being cooped up in a stroller most of the time! I really do look forward to going again when she's older. Hopefully we'll be able to go to Disney World next time to mix it up a bit!