Alcatraz

On our final weekend in California we finally made it to Alcatraz. We had wanted to go there the entire time we were living there. We went with our good friends the Wilde's, the Holland's and the Roberson's. Of course it had to be rainy and cold the day we chose to go, but we think it only added to the experience. Mina lost a sock on the walk over to the ferry so Inge let her borrow her mittens to wear on her feet. It made her look very much like a monkey and Dru loved it. It was fun riding the ferry over to the island. We really enjoyed our time learning the history of the old prison. Probably the coolest part was that we had recently watched, "Escape from Alcatraz" and we got to see the cells that those particular prisoners stayed in and escaped from. We watched the movie again when we got home that night.

The Wilde's, the Holland's and the Jorgensen's.

We got yelled at for asking our friends to stop on the ramp and take a picture of us getting on the ferry.

Mina was being a bully again.

But, Ethan fought back.

Mina had a lot of fun on the ferry ride, but got a little concerned the closer we got to the big prison.

We saw a beautiful rainbow!

About to start the tour.

Standing next to a cell. So tiny.

Of course Mina fell asleep in the middle of the tour. Anything interesting puts her to sleep.

Dru and Mina sitting on the pot.

One of the fake heads and holes the prisoners dug.

Where the escapees dug their holes to to climb up and escape.

Mina wearing Inge's mittens as socks.

After our tour of Alcatraz we took a bus over to Chinatown in San Francisco and had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. On our way to the bus we happened to find Mina's missing sock all wet and cold on the sidewalk. As we were getting off of the bus a bunch of people starting coming in through the exit and before I knew it the doors shut before I got out and the bus started taking off. Dru had to run along side it and bang on the windows to get the driver to stop and let me off. How embarrassing. Then we went on a search to find a place to eat and I don't know how it happened, but all three times we went to Chinatown we managed to pick the same restaurant to eat at. We didn't know it was the same one until we walked inside each time. There must be something very appealing about that restaurant. It was pretty good. Mina happened to soak her diaper so much that it leaked out all over her pants. So, we had to change her in the middle of the restaurant and luckily Ethan brought an extra pair of pants she could borrow. She fell asleep after that. At the end of the meal the restaurant gave us all some green tea ice cream. I don't care for it, but Dru likes it and apparently so does Ethan. Dru chanted "green tea, green tea, green tea" to Ethan while feeding him spoonfuls of the ice cream. Ethan was just cracking up at Dru and gobbled down that ice cream. It was so cute.

Ethan chowing down on the green tea ice cream.

That was our day. A wonderful, wet and cold day with some good friends. Mina was wonderful in the car. Didn't cry a bit which gave us hope that she would be good on the long ride to Texas in a few days.

If you would like to see the rest of the pictures of our trip, click on the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010647&id=116900049&l=947d07a47c

Texas

We're back in Texas. We made it here late Friday night. We weren't supposed to have arrived until late Saturday so we surprised all of our family. It was fun. We're glad to be back, but just need to get Mina on Texas time so that she's not up until midnight every night.

Mina's first love

Mina's best friend her whole life has been Ethan. She loves to play with him. She is 6 weeks older than him and you would never know it by how big Ethan is. He's gotta be big so he can protect her, right? He likes to put his arm around her. It's so cute. However, because Mina is 6 weeks older, she has had a little extra time to learn some skills that Ethan hasn't quite mastered yet. Like, when Mina learned how to grab toys, she would take everything away from Ethan. Ethan, being the nice gentleman he is, would let her and just find something else. Well, Ethan knows how to hold on tight now and to stand his ground. Lol. Now Mina knows how to army crawl pretty quickly so she gets to go explore while Ethan watches. He tries really hard to scoot along with her and I hope he learns to do it before we move. How cute would that be to watch them scoot around and explore together???

These are pictures from when we babysat Ethan last week. Ethan is such a stud so cute putting his arm around Mina although sometimes he got a little frisky. Lol. They were making us laugh so hard. Babies are so funny and just so much fun to play with and watch. Mina will really miss the first love of her life. Hopefully our families will be able to get together periodically over the years. We'll miss them.

Sick little baby Mina

Mina has had an on and off cold for the past month and a half. We took her to the doctors a couple of weeks ago and they just said that yeah it's a cold and nothing to worry about. She'll get better. We were never very worried. She was always her normal self and nothing seemed wrong other than she has just been congested and had a runny nose. I ended up with a painful sinus infection on Thanksgiving day and ended up taking sudafed to clear it up. I think that that helped Mina clear up too. Haha. But, since I've been better Mina has been congested again. Today she had to go in for her 6 month check up and shots, although she is 7 months old now. We asked the doctor if she thought it would still be okay for her to get her shots while being a little sick. She checked her out and determined that she was, indeed, just suffering from a cold, but also had ear infections in both ears. I never would have guessed it. Mina must just be one tough cookie. The doctor also determined that it was still safe to get her shots. Dru and I watched as she screamed while getting 4 shots. She calmed down pretty quickly after I picked her up to comfort her. Poor girl. We picked up her prescription for the ear infections, ran a couple more errands and then came home. I didn't know if she would like the medicine or not, but I do remember as a kid myself loving amoxacilin. It tasted like bubble gum. Sure enough, Mina loved it. She would not let me take the syringe out of her mouth and started crying when I did. She's so funny. Hopefully she'll be feeling better soon. She's napping now. :) In happier news, Mina weighed in at 18 pounds 3 ounces and is just about 27 inches tall. She remains in the 50 percentile for her height and the 75th for her weight. Chubbo. At her last doctors appointment the nurse was a tad worried about her head growth. It had dropped down from the 75th percentile to the 35th. Lol. I think she just measured wrong because today she was back up at the 75th percentile. All in all, she is a healthy, growing and happy baby.

Mina has been army crawling for about a month now. She gets up on all fours occasionally to rock a little bit, but as soon as she sees something she wants, she drops to her belly and is off. She is very quick. She loves to play in the entertainment center and pull out all of her videos. She also loves Dru's Xbox and all the cords that go to it. We've had to put blankets up to block her from getting to everything, but she knows how to lift the blankets up and look to see whats under there. She's pretty smart. She can clap her hands now and will give you a low "hi 5." She gives big open mouthed drool filled kisses and likes to play with our hair. If there are toys on the floor and other random household items or just random items, she will ignore the toys. Her favorite things to play with are the covers for her bottles, cell phones, cords or drawstrings on our clothes, this little laminated card of Dru's and her pacifiers. Mina has hated pacifiers her whole life. She likes them now. But, not to suck on them. Just to play with them and chew on them. She will not suck on them. She goes to bed every night at 10. If you put her to bed before 10 she WILL wake up at 10 only to be put back to sleep. Luckily, though, she sleeps until 6 or 7 every morning, wakes up to eat and then goes to sleep until 8 or 9 and, if we're lucky, 10. Going to bed at 10 is about the only consistent thing in her life, though. I never know when she is going to take a nap or if she even will. Sometimes it drives me nuts, but she really likes to play by herself for good periods of time, so I never have to hold her all the time. She laughs... occasionally. You have to be extremely entertaining and ridiculous to get her to laugh, unless you're a little kid or a dog. It's getting easier to make her laugh as the days go on, though, and I love that. When meeting new people she stares at them for a few minutes, and then when she decides she likes you she will start smiling at you and find something to do to show off especially if she's eating. Which, by the way, she does love her food. She loves any kind of fruit, but HATES green beans and tolerates peas. We have to alternate bites of fruit and green veggies in order for her to eat the greens. I have a hard time telling when she's full because when I feed her fruit it seems as if she will never stop eating. She just loves it. Pears and sweet potatoes seem to be her favorite so far.

Basically, we love our baby. She is wonderful and I can't imagine life without her. We can't believe she has been in our arms for more than 7 months now.

Getting ready to move

Since Dru is all finished with his language course, he hasn't had much work to do and a lot of time off. We are trying to visit a lot of the places we have wanted to while living here, but haven't had the chance to yet. The last weekend in November we went to Santa Cruz to the boardwalk and to the Mystery Spot. We have been to the boardwalk before but we went during the summer when it was very crowded so we had a lot of leftover tickets for the rides. We wanted to use them up. We did. It was very fun. We brought along Dru's friend, Devin and it was very nice to have him there so that Dru and I could ride a few rides together. Mina was so good the entire day. She sat in her stroller most of the time. We gave her a bottle to feed to herself and along with all of the people and cool things to look at she was happy as could be. After we finished up at the boardwalk we went to the Mystery Spot. Supposedly it's this mysterious place that defies the laws of gravity. It was very cool. You walk with a tour guide in a group up this mountain just a little ways to this cabin that slid down the mountain years ago. The tour guide gave some demonstrations. The coolest one was when she laid a board flat down in the window of the cabin. Because of the steepness of the mountain side and the cabin that was not level anymore it appeared as if one side of the board was higher than the other. But, she put a water level on it to show that it was indeed level. However, when placing something round on the middle of the board, the ball would roll to one side and it was the side that appeared to be higher. She even pored some water on the board and sure enough it ran off the "higher" side. It was neat. She took us inside the cabin and did a few more demonstrations. It really played with your mind. I got so dizzy walking in there and almost fell down a couple of times. Mina fell asleep in the middle of it. Dru was carrying her in our front carrier and she even stayed asleep as Dru volunteered and helped out with one of the demonstrations. Funny girl. It had been a long day.

Mina chilling in her stroller at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

Dru and me on my favorite ride at any amusement park.

Wheeeee!

Mina at the start of the tour of the Mystery Spot!

Dru doing the matrix with Mina.

It was so weird.

Dru helping with a demonstration while Mina slept. Haha. In this picture he appears to be much taller than the person on the other side.

In this picture everyone appears to be the same height. Pretty mysterious. Lol.

Dru is standing on the wall. He really didn't even have to hold on.

Stand up straight, Dru! Oh! You are! Weird!

This past weekend we went to a mall. A real mall. The only mall within a reasonable driving distance of our house. It was in Salinas about a half an hour away. There is a lot of gang violence in that town and total this year there has been 26 gang related murders so far. We were very disappointed by the mall. It was tiny and not a good selection of stores. We didn't buy anything but lunch. I guess we didn't miss out this past year and a half. The fun part of the trip was that Michelle and Ethan came with us. Mina loves playing with Ethan and they had a lot of fun trying on the silly hats and headbands in Claire's. Well, Ethan didn't try on the girly things. We went to their house for dinner and a movie. Mina had a ton of fun army crawling all over their house and checking everything out. Ethan really wanted to crawl around with Mina and he tried really hard to, but hasn't quite gotten it. He'll get it soon.

Ethan and Mina are the cutest flowers you ever did see.

So now it's our final full week here in Monterey, CA. We are trying to get anything and everything washed up before Wednesday night because the rental people are coming to pick up our washer and dryer. Tomorrow morning the movers are coming by to check out how much stuff we have and then they come on the 15th to pack us up. We've got to get everything we want to take to Texas with us packed and out of the way before then. Dru does his final out processing on the morning of the 17th and then we are out of here. It will be both a sad and happy day. We're very sad to leave this beautiful place and all of our wonderful friends, but so happy to be back to a familiar place with lots of family!

Daddy and daughter

We went to Dru's friend's wedding a few weeks ago in Pacific Grove's, Lover's Point. Dru likes to scare the crud out of me by climbing out on the rocks to get hit by waves. While he didn't climb out on the rocks in the water, he did climb up on some rocks while holding Mina. It scared me and I told him to get down, but couldn't help but admire how beautiful everything looked. Mina staring out at the vast ocean with her daddy holding her "safely." I snapped a picture to capture the moment and then made him get down. We're going to miss being able to drive just a few minutes down the road to see these amazing sights.

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Another week gone

Nothing much has happened this past week. Dru had a few days off. One morning I got up to feed Mina then Dru took her to the Wilde's house for the rest of the morning and I got to sleep really late!!! That was great. We had friends over for homemade pizza and pictionary one night and that was a blast. Wednesday we got to go to the Yoder's house for games and to see their incredibly cute 3 week old baby Griffith. He's pretty big for 3 weeks old, but still tiny and it always amazes me to see a new born and think that Mina used to be that tiny. We went swimming on Thursday. This was the first time Mina didn't really enjoy it. She was really, really tired when we went, though. I got her out and dried her off and she enjoyed watching Dru play around. And, of course, Ethan was there to make her smile. We always go swimming with the Wilde's and I guess we've made it a tradition to have pizza after we go swimming, so we went to the Wilde's house after to make pizza and play some games and ended the night off with some quality "the Office." It was a great day, "I do declare."

Sunday was the Primary program at church. Dru and I teach the 5 year olds and we love our class. I didn't get to sit up in the stands with the class because I had to take care of Mina, but it was fun to watch. During sharing time they had all the kids sit on the floor to watch a movie. Dru was laying on the floor with Mina and one of the boys in our class, Matthew, started being silly and all of a sudden I hear the cutest little laugh come out of Mina's cute little mouth. Matthew got her to laugh so hard and it was the cutest thing to watch. If you know Mina well enough, you know that it is extremely hard to get her to laugh. If you find something that makes her laugh it will only work that one time. She makes you be creative and find something new to entertain her each time. So far, my parents' dogs barking is her favorite thing to make her laugh. Now, Matthew. But, his technique for getting her to laugh did work for me and Dru later that night. Even during our class time, Mina sat and watched Matthew to see if he would do something silly. Sure enough, each time he would goof off, she would laugh. I loved it.

Well, Mina has been scooting all over the place. Occasionally she will get on all fours and rock a little bit, but so far no actual crawling. She can also almost sit her self up from laying down. She does a little more each day. I love that baby.

Aquarium trip

Daddy and Daughter

Dru had this past Friday off so we decided to take Mina to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This was the first time she got to experience it outside of my belly and awake. She really enjoyed it. Had she not been so tired she probably would have enjoyed it even more. We invited our friends Michelle and Ethan to go with us. Mina really likes Ethan. We also invited our new friend Inga. She just moved here from Indonesia and married one of Dru's friends. She is a very sweet girl and the babies loved her.

We got to see the sea horse exhibit, the big shark tank, jelly fish, sea otters, the kelp forest, bat rays, and much, much more. Mina really loved looking at everything. There was one point when we were looking at the jelly fish and a little girl walked up next to us. Mina saw her and turned to her and tried to grab her. She couldn't reach her, but she just kept staring at her and smiling waiting for her to look at her. The girl just would not look at her and smile back. I guess little kids are more interested in the cool jelly fish than cute little babies. There were plenty of other people there that gave her the attention she desired. She really loves to have people smile at her and tell her how cute she is.

Jelly Fish

Staring at the big shark tank.

One of the sharks in the tank.

Ethan napping.

Ethan decided to take a little nap in the middle of the trip. Ethan really seems to like to sleep and if he wants to sleep he will. At least that's how it seems whenever we get to babysit him. It's funny because Mina is quite the opposite. She doesn't like to sleep unless she absolutely has to. If there's stuff going on, she wants to be in the middle of it. Needless to say, she got a little fussy in her stroller because she was so tired while we were there, so we put her in her carrier and Dru carried her the rest of the time with kept her quite happy, because she could see everything. Maybe we'll get to go one more time before we leave Monterey.

Mina just loved this seahorse statue.

Ethan, Michelle, seahorse, Mina and Dru.

The babies were facinated!

Giddy-up!

Well hello giant seahorse.

Dru loves to touch all the sea creatures. It looks like it's Mina's hand, though.

Mina was drooling a lot and her nose was very runny. Poor girl.

Swimming with the fish.

Dru and I have a picture of the 2 of us (3 if you count Mina when she was very tiny in my belly) in this shell the from the first time we went to the aquarium.

The penguins!

I think these were trout. Dru likes to stick his finger in and let them bite it.

Ethan seems a little disgusted by the snot.

If you'd like to see all of the pictures from this trip, follow this link to the album on my facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010262&id=116900049&l=9ede63c8d2