San Francisco Zoo

Last Saturday we went to the San Francisco Zoo with my cousin Jeannie, her husband Lee and their son, daughter-in-law and grandbaby. It was such a fun day! The weather was typical San Francisco weather for this time of year (foggy and hovering around 60 degrees with the occasional sunshine breaking through) and we all got sunburned! With the weather the way it was, I didn't even think to put sunscreen on me or the kids. Declan was covered the entire time, so he managed to dodge that proverbial bullet, but Claire got some nice pink on her nose and cheeks. Amazingly, this is her first sunburn ever. Thankfully it wasn't that bad!

Claire was in heaven practically the entire day. She loved all the animals, but went berserk when she saw the train that goes around a portion of the zoo. She is in love with trains and could hardly stand the fact that she had to wait in line to get on it. In fact, we almost had a meltdown as we almost made it on the train, but were stopped at the last minute. Thankfully, there were a few spots left and we made it on, otherwise we would have had the worlds greatest freakout, toddler style. She loved the train ride and wanted to go on another one as soon as we got off, but unfortunately, we only had enough free passes for one ride. I think her all time favorite animals were the monkeys (mo-kees) as she couldn't stop talking about them after we left! We bought a season pass, so we will definitely be going back again soon!

Thanks Jeannie, Lee, Grayson, Bree and Avery for sharing the day with us! It was a blast!

I had NO idea that anteaters were as big as they are! This thing was massive!

I wish I had a video of her jumping up and down as she saw the train coming, it was so cute! She and cousin Jeannie became best buds at the zoo!

They had a "kids zoo" where there were goats and donkeys, horses, geese, ducks, llamas, meerkats, prairie dogs, owls and a bunch of other things I can't remember right now. Claire loved the goats and I even got some food that they ate out of my hand. It felt so funny!

They had signs like these all over that you could take your picture underneath. Claire was a hair short though.

This little guy did not want to be stuck in his carseat, so as soon as we unbuckled him, he rolled over and stuck his head out. Silly kid!

Flamingos are so cool. They are a lot more orange than pink though, which kind of surprised me.

The baby Giraffe!

These poor kangaroos looked bored out of their minds!

Koala bear! She was tiny! I seriously wanted to take her home with us, she was so cute. Then I saw her massive claws and decided against it.

Lemurs. They are so loud! They would get in fights and you could hear it on the opposite side of the zoo! They were all like a bunch of brothers teasing and annoying each other. It was rather comical to watch. I also had "Move it, Move it" running through my head whenever I looked at them.

This guy was GORGEOUS. I don't know that the picture does him justice!

Penguins are also extremely loud. In case you were wondering.

Mama and baby tiger!

We're Still Alive

Oh hey! Yeah, we're still alive. You might not believe that since the last post I did was in May and it's August, but hey! We've been busy! I can't believe how fast this summer has gone by. A lot has happened since Dallin graduated on Mothers Day and I will try to fill you in on all of it in (somewhat) chronological order!

MAY

We got to enjoy time with family after graduation and Dallin continued to work for his dad, lining up contracts for summer harvest in the Willamette Valley. We went to the beach and OMSI over the Memorial Day weekend and it was beautiful weather! Declan turned 5 months at the end of May and continued to be his sweet, happy self. He started to roll and would get himself nice and stuck in all sorts of awkward places! I also started feeding him solid foods, starting with oatmeal cereal. He LOVED it and devoured every bite. I doubt we will have trouble getting this kid to eat, unlike his older sister! We moved Claire from her crib into a big girl bed in May as well. One night she stayed in her crib as nice as you please and then the next night she was climbing out! We decided to avoid potential injuries and just get the bed. She adjusted to it marvelously but we still keep a child proof lock on the inside to prevent escape. That made and still makes for some pretty hilarious knocking and dialogues from the other side of the door. My favorite is her knocking and then saying, "Good mawning Clow!" (Good morning Claire) She says this morning, noon and night. It doesn't matter what time it is! All in all, May was a great, eventful month!

JUNE

June proved to be equally awesome and exciting, starting with Dallin and I taking off to San Francisco for 5 days all by ourselves! We left the kids with my mom and dad (they had the time of their lives!) and headed down to this beautiful city for Dallin to interview with Oracle. We had a great time, missed the kids like crazy, and came away with a job offer! I was (and am) so proud of Dallin. It was a great trip and we loved every minute of it! June was also spent pretty much everywhere but Salem. We were in San Francisco and then we ended up staying in Washington for another week and a half due to a wedding and just enjoying time with family! It was another great month spent with family, looking for housing for our new job and eating a lot of great food! We started Declan on fruits and veggies this month, and once again, he would devour every bite! He did so well with solids! We started realizing it was way easier to hold him while we fed him the solids, rather than have him in a high chair or bumbo because of how active he is. He would hit the spoon away and get food everywhere, so we finally started holding him with his arms tucked away so he couldn't get anything. He's funny that way! Sometimes you have to totally restrict him or he gets out of control! Claire started talking even more clearly this month and would surprise us with all the words she was saying. She was in love with Little Einsteins, loves to color, sing, dance, dress up, and go for walks to the park to ride on the swings and go down the slides.

JULY

July started out nice and easy with our annual trip to Priest Lake with Dallin's family. It was heavenly. The weather was perfect, the water was chilly and we had a blast. Claire rode on a tube behind the boat for the very first time (and LOVED it!) Declan fell asleep at the fireworks (he wasn't impressed) and we ate way too much good food! After the Lake we headed to Yakima for my nephew William's baptism and my entire family was there, except my brother in law, Cory, who was in Spain doing a study abroad. It was so good to see everyone, even if it was just for a couple hours. After that, we headed back down to Salem and started packing and cleaning to move down here to California! Packing was crazy, my kids were AMAZING, and I felt exceptionally blessed. We headed out of Salem on Friday, July 19 and made it down to California on Saturday, July 20. We had a bit of a housing fiasco that ended with some serious prayers being answered and finding a charming townhouse apartment in San Mateo that is about 7 minutes from work for Dallin. It's also a stones throw from a huge mall with a Forever21 and H&M, but that wasn't a deciding factor at all... Ok, yes it was. :) We moved into our new place on Friday, July 26 and Dallin started work on Monday, July 29. Hooray for things working out at the last minute! We felt amazingly blessed and lucky. Claire got a fever of 103.5 while we were house hunting, which was slightly stressful, but it turned out to be nothing! She was still a trooper and so was Declan. He was on the verge of crawling the entire time we were looking for places to live and every time we put him on the floor, he would get up on those hands and knees and rock back and forth! He was actually quite mobile for not being able to crawl. He kind of did the army crawl as much as he could and then just rolled everywhere else. Claire continued to amaze us with the words she was saying. She expanded her vocabulary and started saying words so much more clearly! Her favorite things include "ele-ents" (elephants) "cee-yels" (cereal) bubbles (she says that one really clear) "Decky" "Help-bee" (help me) "ruk-a-saur" (dinosaur) "col-clane" (airplane) "clease" (please) "thank you annie" (thank you honey) "twain" (train) "twuck" (truck) "twumpet" (trumpet) "lio-lin" (violin) "pano" (piano) Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, "rinky-bell" (Tinkerbell) "stow-st" (toast) Woody, Buzz, Louis (Meet the Robinsons) "cwackers" (crackers) and a bunch of other words that I'm not thinking of. She is doing really well at recognizing people and places too. She can identify both sets of Grandparents, her aunt Jen, Rachel, cousins Sarah, Hannah, Rebekah and Emma, Uncles Derek, Devin, Aunt Janelle, cousin Colton (Colty) and Kinley (Kiki). She does really well at recognizing areas, too. She already knows where home is (when we pull up to the apartment, she yells, "YAY! WE HOME!!" and when we are on the way to church, she knows it's near Carls Jr where she gets her "star nuggets" and so as we are driving to church she says, "star nuggets, mom?" to which I reply, "nope, sorry. It's Sunday!" Every time we walk outside she thinks we're going to get ice cream (not sure why) and announces it to everyone.

We're adjusting to life here in San Mateo and we're loving it. We have beautiful weather and lots to do around us. We're just minutes from the San Francisco airport (which two of my 5 siblings have had layovers in the last three weeks and we've gone to visit!) and only about 20-30 minutes from the city. Dallin loves his job, loves his co-workers and is excited to get into the thick of it here soon. So, if you made it this far, congratulations! Sorry about the huge post, but I wanted to get everything in before I forgot it all! I'll try and update more, now that I have a computer and internet access. :)

Oh, and as of yesterday, Declan is crawling!! Crawling. At 7 months. Where in the world did my baby go?? He's too grown up.