Catching Up

Well it seems like this has been a busy last week or so and I have a lot of catching up to do!

First off I wanted to share about our trip to California two weekends ago. It was Aurora's first road trip and her first time out of Arizona (since she was born) and her first time in California.

We left Thursday afternoon at 3:30 in the hopes that we would hit her bedtime pretty soon and that the drive wouldn't be too rough for her since she'd be sleeping. She did really well. We had to stop to feed her twice but otherwise it was an uneventful drive. She fell asleep around 8/8:30 and slept the rest of the drive. But once we got to Aunt Jan and Uncle Nick's she was wide awake - too many exciting new people to look at. So it took her a little bit to get back to sleep. I'm not sure what time we got there - I think it was between midnight and 1AM.

Friday morning we went to Paradise Cove - a restaurant on the beach. Aurora fell asleep on the way there and slept through most of breakfast, but got impatient towards the end. That always seems to happen when there is hot food involved for me :) Fortunately with a lot of helpers it made things a lot easier. After breakfast we went out to the beach and played a little in the waves. Both of us got a little wetter and sandier than I had intended, but oh well - she had fun. It was really cute - Aurora would watch the waves come in, and then when they started to go back out she would bury her head in my shoulder, but then she'd look up again for the next wave. She was smiling most of the time so that was good.







Friday night we went to the Dodger game and watched them beat the Padres! It went OK. Aurora wanted to be bounced for a good part of it and then when she finally fell asleep it was the 7th inning. The last few innings were VERY loud since everyone was cheering and every time people cheered it woke her up. There were fireworks afterwards that she slept through. I would have liked her to actually see her first fireworks, but oh well - it was late.



Saturday we went to City Walk and WOW there was a lot of stuff to keep Aurora's attention. All the colorful stores for one and then there were girls walking around in beautiful ball gowns - they looked like princesses - Aurora was very fascinated by that - I think she will like dress up as she gets older. She tried on some cute hats in some of the stores, tried to drink my Starbucks (that's my girl!!!), and just had a good time looking around. There were also some people break dancing that seem to hold her interest for a while and there was a fountain that was very entertaining too. We went to Buca di Beppo for lunch and their food was amazing! Yummy pesto pizza!





The rest of the trip we had a nice time visiting with family and friends and introducing Aurora to everyone. The drive back was pretty eventful unfortunately. Not because of Aurora though :) We were supposed to leave at 5:30, but due to a mis-setting of the alarm we ending up leaving at 4:30 :) but an earlier start was probably better for Aurora so she could sleep. It was comical because Taylor wanted to leave later and it was this big discussion to leave at 5:30 instead of 5:00 and then we left even earlier :) Then we stopped for breakfast in Blythe and decided to wait until Quartzite for gas, and then the power was in Quartzite! Somehow one gas station had power, but it took 1/2 hour of driving around before we were able to get the gas and then it was packed. But we made it home eventually :)

We got home on Monday and then I had a soccer game that night, Nick had Bible study after work Tuesday, I had a soccer game Wednesday, and then we both had plans Thursday, so we finally got to spend time together Friday. At least it was a 3 day weekend. A lot of it was spent getting ready for Aurora's dedication on Saturday. We had a lot of family come out for that and it was very special. Our pastor said a nice prayer and Aurora made it through with no sreaming and no barfing - we were very relieved :)



And now Nick is out of town for the whole week :( Very sad. Aurora and I are planning on taking it easy this week - I'm pretty exhausted. Partly because I managed to get sick, and partly because we've had a lot going on. I am hoping to recharge my batteries before the weekend. Of course staying up until 10:30 to finish a blog post isn't really helping...