Wedding Dancer

My cousin had a gorgeous wedding in July in Camarillo. My cousin looked amazing, the location was beautiful, and the weather was perfect. We had an amazing time. Makenna really liked the wedding too. She stayed up way past her bedtime and was such a party animal:-) She loved the dance floor. She decided to go out and start dancing with everyone out on the dance floor and I will have to say that she does have rhythm. Hmmm...only 9 more months and being potty trained before she can join a dance class. I have a short video of Makenna dancing. She was actually out dancing for like 10-15 minutes at a time but of course as soon as I pull out the camera she stops. I also apologize for the poor lighting; it was outside at night time with a camera that doesn't do low light well.

Yard Shenanigans: The Beginning

Toby has been faithfully working in the backyard and front yard since July to get sprinkler systems, drainage, gas, and electrical lines ready for our yard. Thankfully he had the help of Bill (a family friend and electrician), Jim (the knows-how-to-do-everything man), and Jason (the brother-in-law with all the hardcore tools). They trenched the backyard…

They pulled all of the electrical, put in all of the drainage pipes, and then filled in all of the holes. One of the days Makenna decided to help Bill with the electrical…

Or rather play in the dirt, which she rarely gets to do. (Makenna has a mean mommy that doesn’t care if the kid gets dirty but dreads all of the extra laundry hassle)

Next step was the dirt hill being removed by the contractor, leveling the dirt, and putting up the block wall. All of this was taken care of by the contractor. But by taken care of by the contractor I mean that he delegated that responsibility of the hard manual labor to someone else and he showed up for the checks:-) We have also gotten concrete in all around our house…Yippy!! No more having to walk across dirt to get to the trashcans, constant mud in the tracks of my sliding glass door, and one step closer to completion:-)

Our poor front yard took a beating with the contractor’s bobcat tractor going back and forth from the driveway to the backyard. Although, I will have to say that Makenna loved the bobcat tractor being in the backyard and would constantly look out and say “truck, truck, meow”…hehe. She also thoroughly enjoyed when the cement truck was in front of our house. For some reason she has a thing for trucks right now.

The retaining wall, new fence, and decorative side on our house have been removed and now the contractor’s work is completely finished. Now on to the parts that I can help with. More fun to come…I will update when we are finally done with the yards.

Oh...I do have to put this in quickly. Since we have been making multiple trips to the hardware store Makenna has used her imagination to keep herself occupied.

A sprinkler can apparently double as a microphone:-) Who knew you could have so much fun at the hardware store.

Car Ride!!

I just had to share this with you, a little late, but better than never:-) I have been asking Makenna lately to find a toy to bring with her when we go on “car rides”. She knows what this means now and so she diligently goes and chooses a toy. I sometimes have to hurry her along in her decision making or else we would never make it to our destination. Well she usually had been grabbing books and her beloved baby doll and bringing them in the car. But the other day this is what I turned around and saw her bringing into the car with her…

In case you can’t see it very clearly she decided to bring her tambourine and maracas. I guess I will need to start specifying what is an appropriate car toy and what is not…hehe. But at the time what could I do, I giggled, snapped a picture, and we got in the car with her wonderful noise making toys. Luckily after about 2 minutes the instruments fell out of her hands onto the floor.

Since that day she hasn’t tried to bring the noisy toys in the car again; I suppose they weren’t much fun when the fell to the floor. She has however tried to bring her doll stroller several times.

California Coast Vacation

We were so excited to get to go on a much needed vacation. My cousin was having her bridal shower in Santa Maria so we thought that would be a great time to start to our vacation. So on Saturday Makenna and I spent the day at a bridal shower tea party for my cousin. We wore our tea hats, that is until Makenna decided that not only did she not want to wear her hat but also didn’t want my sisters, mom, and I to wear ours either. So the hat idea was short lived but we had a wonderful time. One of the other little girls at the bridal shower was so cute and took Makenna under her wing. Makenna wouldn’t hold my hand but gladly offered it to the little girl to help her around the house. It was so cute!

We had a fun time seeing my cousins, aunt, and uncle and getting to spend a little time with them.

Our next stop was Pismo Beach. We of course went out to the beach where it was pretty cold and dreary but it was Makenna’s first experience with the beach and it was hilarious.

She didn’t like the sand to get on her feet so she walked on her tippy-toes until she couldn’t stand it anymore and made us wipe off her feet and carry her the rest of the time.

We then decided to head to our hotel which was wonderful because it had a separate room so we could watch television and look up directions for the next day while Makenna got much needed sleep without being disturbed.

On Monday we continued up the coast where we stopped at San Luis Obispo. We first picked up a pail and shovel so that we were prepared for our next beach stop and then headed into the downtown area. We went to the Mission San Luis Obispo which was just ok. It wasn’t as large as some of the others that we had been to before but it did have a small garden area where Makenna enjoyed being out of the stroller and running around.

After that we walked a few streets away to the San Luis Obispo Children’s Museum. We had a fantastic time…and so did Makenna:-) The third floor of the museum had a toddler area where they had tunnels that she could crawl through,

a small reading area with appropriately sized seating,

a train table, and a xylophone (Where Toby learned to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). After it was about lunch time for most people, and the museum was cleared out, we went down to the second floor where they had a pretend city area with a diner, fire truck, doctor’s office, stage, and Makenna’s favorite: the grocery store. She had a great time putting fruit and vegetables into her shopping basket and pushing it all around.

Then she enjoyed going to the diner and sweeping.

She didn’t really understand the whole serving others thing but she did like to sweep the floor; that will come in handy back at home:-) The first floor had a water table, dinosaur dig area, bubble machine, and outdoor play area. We didn’t spend too much time on this floor as it was a little too advanced for Makenna. I have decided that I am going to be looking up where places like this are around us because we had such a wonderful time. To make the drive seem shorter we headed next to The Museum of Natural History in Morro Bay. It was wonderful because we were pretty much the only ones there. It allowed us to not have to watch Makenna as carefully and let her explore. Throughout the museum they have this rock that tells you the history of things and Makenna loved this because you pick the rock up like a phone and listen.

She stood and listened to almost all of them and actually waited for them to stop talking before she would put the receiver down (amazing!!). Her favorite part of the museum though was this little plastic chair that was meant for being an audience member at the puppet show.

But since nobody was there anyway she got to push the chair all over to her satisfaction. She also thought that the puppets were pretty funny.

It was a small museum but the perfect break that we needed before hopping back in the car. We headed up to our hotel in Cambria were we enjoyed walking across the street from our hotel onto the beach and Makenna got to try out her new pail and shovel.

It was a success, even though the Moonstone beach that we went to was mostly rocks, that didn’t deter Makenna.

Tuesday we headed up to San Simeon to see Hearst’s Castle. I had been here as a child and remembered how beautiful it was and it didn’t disappoint this time either. It was a bit difficult though because they expected that you would be quiet and listen to the tour and that just won’t happen with a 1 ½ year old in the group. They are also very particular about where you stand and how far away from the group you are allowed to wander; so I didn’t feel like I could really move too far away from the group with Makenna. A few times the tour guide’s assistant came up to me and said, “Let’s take her to look at the flowers over here”…hehe. Makenna actually did really well considering that she wasn’t allowed to eat, drink, get out of mommy’s arms, or be too loud. That is a tall order for an 18-month old. On the tram ride back down the hill Makenna fell asleep which was good because the highway 1 that we needed to go on to get to our next destination was closed and so we had to take the long way all the way around to the 101. After the llloooonnnnggg drive we finally made it to Monterey and decided that we need to get out to the beach and run off some energy before bedtime. Makenna this time would not even touch the sand with her feet and would stick out her feet in front of her and fuss if we tried to set her on the sand.

She did however enjoy sitting on the blanket with daddy and shovel sand into her pail.

Wednesday we spent mostly at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. They have so many wonderful exhibits there. Makenna got to touch some of the sea plants and animals at the touch tank,

made crayon rubbings of ocean animals, and ran around through all of the other exhibits.

We saw the jelly fish,

the sea horses,

and lots of other stuff:-)
Makenna was getting sleepy by that time and we only had one section left so we went out of the aquarium to try to find something to eat and give Makenna her lunch. Makenna ate her lunch and then fell asleep so we decided just to go back into the aquarium and finish the last section while Makenna slept in her stroller. Unfortunately that plan didn’t work out too well because the section that we had left for last was this absolutely wonderful kid’s area. Being the great parent’s that we are, we decided that we would wake up our sleeping toddler (I think there are parenting books that say that you should never do that…oh well:-) and endure her wrath for a bit just so she could have fun playing in her element. After about 5-minutes of wondering whether we did the right thing by waking her up she found the slide and was in heaven.

They had an area to dress up like a sea animal so Makenna dressed up like a clown fish.

Then we went into the toddler area where Makenna loved playing with the fish and water spouts at the water table.

She would have played at the water table for hours if we hadn’t pulled her away. I guess we need to look into getting a water table for her to play with when we get home too. We finished up our day by going to the Dennis the Menace Park. Makenna was still a little too young for most of the exciting features of the park but they did have an area that had play equipment for her sized people and at the very end we of course had to take a walk onto the train.

On Thursday we went to the Monterey State Historic Park but it was so cold and we ended up there early before any of the places for the day had opened. We walked around as much as we could and it allowed Makenna to run off some of her energy and for Toby and I to get some good ideas for our backyard plants.

Then we headed down to Point Lobos State Park because we had missed that when we found out that highway 1 was closed, so we decided to do that next before another drive. Well we had hoped that it would be someplace that Makenna could walk with us on the trails but unfortunately poison oak was rampant and so Makenna had to be held while we hiked.

So hiking didn’t last too long: 1. Because Makenna was getting tired, 2. Because our arms were getting tired of Makenna, and 3. Because again it was cold. We did two hikes which were beautiful and allowed us to get the idea of the area and then we hit the road to Union City to visit Jeff, Rebecca, Jeffrey, and Pierce (Jeff is Toby’s oldest brother). We got to go out and spend some time with Pierce playing at the local park by their house. Makenna had a great time playing at the train table that they got out especially for her.

On Friday we all hopped into the cars and headed up to the Oakland Zoo. The zoo was fun but the part that Makenna liked the best was the otter exhibit. One would think that she would enjoy watching the cute little otters swimming under the water, floating on top, and eating their food, but no…she liked the exhibit because it had water and had a little step up to the glass that she could stand on. It was so funny because every time the otter would come by she would be oblivious to it or turned the other way.

There was also a little area where kids could climb on all kinds of bugs so Makenna took a liking to climbing on the spider web.

She couldn’t really do it herself yet but she wanted to try to be like one of the big kids that she saw climbing. We got to see lemurs, monkeys, chimps, orangutans, giraffes, frogs, snakes, bears,

warthogs, hmm…I am sure that I am missing some but you get the idea; we saw a lot of animals:-) We had an awesome time!

Then it was time to say our good-byes and wait for Makenna to get sleepy enough to make the long 7 hour drive home while she slept. So we arrived home around 1:00am glad to be in our own beds, but sad that our vacation was over.

Silly Girl Playtime

These are some funny pictures that I got of Makenna playing. I wanted to share them with everyone.

Playing the guitar (Ok...Playing with the guitar case while laughing at herself in the mirror.)

Singing about her paper towel roll (One adult's trash is another baby's treasure.)

How do these headphones work again? (She is no longer allowed in Toby's computer room without supervision:-)

I will magically make my head disappear. POOF!!

Enjoying her lego throne.

Baby-In-The-Box

Box-On-Baby

Walking in Mama's Shoes.

Beautiful Gardens

Toby's and my favorite thing to do is go to the gardens together. We have both enjoyed this since we were first married and have been to most of the gardens in the San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Orange County areas. But of all the gardens, our favorite is the Huntington Library. It has been several years since the last time that we went and so we asked my grandparents to go with us, knowing that they too love the gardens.

Our first stop was to the "Children's Garden". It was the most fun place, and would have been even more fun had I known that it wasn't so much of a garden as it was a water area:-)

Makenna loved the little fountains that squirt water and laughed so hard when the drop hit her on the head.

Makenna loved splashing in the water and was so sad when we left the area; I am sure that she could have spent all day there.

Next time I will come prepared with a bathing suit and a change of clothes...hehe. After the children's garden we went to the conservatory where there were all kinds of tactile stations to learn more about seeds and plants. Then we were all ready for lunch so we went to the little cafe and ate our lunch there.

Next stop was to the "Japanese Garden" which we had never seen before. One of Makenna's favorite things to do was hold two people's hands and then when we said "1, 2, 3" she would pick up her feet and swing. The only problem was that she liked it so much that she kept wanting to do it and gave up all together putting her feet back down and decided she liked to just dangle.

We walked all over the gardens. And by "we" I mean that the four of us adults walked and Makenna preferred to be carried by her Great Grandma:-)

Makenna took a particular liking to the dirt (even though there was more grass than there was dirt) where she was so proud to show us the tree's seed that she found.

She also enjoyed scooting back and forth on the bench when we stopped to rest.

And then we let Makenna run off as much of her energy as she could in the open grass areas. Actually, Toby took Makenna to run around in the grass while I sat and relaxed for a few minutes on the covered sitting area.

We had a wonderful time with my grandparents!