Going Camping

My family loves to go camping. My parents have a great trailor and we always have a lot of fun. Our favorite spot is Lodgepole. My grandpa led the construction crew who built it and so my family grew up going there. While we were in Utah in August, my family all met up there for the weekend. Andrew and I joined them in the morning because I decided that 8 months pregnant and camping were not going to go well together.
One of my favorite things about camping is the breakfast. It just tastes so much better when it's cooked over a propane stove.

Seth enjoyed his breakfast as well.
Rachel had a lot of fun camping and wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty.
Kadin has become an expert at taking care of the fire. He kept us warm and toasty the whole time.
Have you ever played the game Zim zam? So much fun! It's the same idea as tetherball but you have a tennis ball and paddles to hit it.
Check out Seth's hair. Classic.
More zim zam fun.
Kaylee and Rachel wanted to pose for a few pictures. They are great little models.
We decided to take a day trip up to Strawberry Reservoir. It was apparently spawning season and so the reservoir would be full of Kokanee salmon.
Andrew takes good care of all the nieces and nephews while we are all out. They love him!
We couldn't find a lot of them in the reservoir, so we went to the fish hatchery where we would know we could see more. We finally found a lot of them. I was so surprised to see so many!
During the spawning season the salmon turn from silver to bright red. I'm guessing it is to make them more attractive.
The baby wanted to see the fish too.

We then came back to the campsite and started a fire for roasting marshmallows. I love roasting marshmallows!

Andrew made his extra crispy.
Kadin kept the fire going for us.
Andrew was pretty worn out by the end of the day.
It was a really fun camping trip, as always. I can't wait to go back, when I'm not pregnant!

5 months old!

I want to do a more detailed post, but just thought I would share this cute face with the world!

I Won! And you have a chance to win too.

I never win anything. I enter giveaways on blogs all the time. And I never win. But a couple weeks ago, I won. Well, it technically wasn't a giveaway, but I still won something. I have been following the blog Cinnamon Sticks Boutique for awhile. She makes absolutely beautiful and unique jewelry. Occasionally she asks for volunteers so she can make sample jewelry for her shop. One night I logged on to my google reader and she had a post asking for a volunteer. I quickly replied, hoping that I was the first to respond, but knowing that I most likely wouldn't be. But within a few minutes I heard back from her, I was the first!! I was so excited! I anxiously waited for my necklace to arrive, and the other day it came. Look how cute it is!

I absolutely love the 2 small pearl droplets and the heart stamped circle. It is perfect. I have worn it everyday since I got it. (I just realized she has a much better picture of this in her shop. I didn't want to steal her picture, so if you want to see it, click here.)

She has so many cute things in her etsy shop. You should definitely check it out here. I wish that I had known about her shop when I had Andrew order me a necklace right after Gavin was born. I got it from another online shop, and while I do love that necklace, I kind of think the lowercase g looks too much like a j. And so I feel like everyone thinks his name is javin. (and that would be weird)

For Valentines Day Andrew ordered me one of her cute initial key chains. I am excited to get it.

Anyway, she is doing a giveaway on her blog right now! All you have to do is go to her blog and leave a comment with your opinion on a good earring color combination. Easy! Click here.

Thanks Canela for the beautiful necklace!!

San Francisco here we come!

A few months ago Southwest was having a great sale on their flights. My sister and I decided to find a fun city and meet there for a little vacation. Both of us could get great deals to San Francisco, so we chose that. My parents also decided to come along. We love San Francisco. It's such a fun city with a lot of things to do. So we were excited to go. We also got tickets to see "Wicked" while we were there, so that made it even better.

The week of the trip Andrew was in New York for business. He had a big deadline coming up and found out that he would have to stay in New York through the weekend. I decided I would still take Gavin and meet my family in San Francisco. I was nervous about flying/travelling with him alone, but I really needed a vacation.

We flew out on Friday night and met my mom, dad, sister and niece at the airport. Although one of the great things about SF is the very accessible public transportation, we decided with the car seat that we should rent a van. So we rented the van and drove straight to our hotel. The city was beautiful all lit up at night. We stayed at the Holiday Inn at Fishermans Wharf. Our hotel had a great location, close to everything! We were all really tired so we went to bed, ready to get going in the morning.

I first had to try on Gavin's hat that I brought in case it was cold. He wasn't too happy about it though. (and yes, we are still wearing Christmas pajamas)
We woke up Saturday morning and went across the street to a cute little cafe for breakfast, "Joanies." It ended up not being that great, but we had fun anyway.

I look very angry in this picture. I'm not sure why.

We then walked over to the Del Monte Cannery. It was pretty dead, so we headed over to Ghiradelli Square. We had fun looking in all of the shops there.

We then went in to the Ghiradelli Chocolate Shop and Cafe where we had delicious ice cream sundaes.

Gavin was so hungry he ate both of these sundaes.

We then headed to the hotel to get ready for the play. Because I had to feed Gavin, we were rushed for time. But we luckily made it just in time to get to our seats.

"Wicked" was awesome! It was at the Orpheum theater, which is a really cool old theater located in Union Square. The cast was great and it was a great show. We had a fun time.

My dad was great to stay back and take care of Gavin. I think they had a lot of fun hanging out.

After the play we headed over to Fishermans Wharf for dinner. We went to "Sinbads" which is one of my dad's favorite places. It is a cute restaurant right on the bay. We had a great view of Oakland Bay Bridge. The food was also great.

Gavin had fun sitting in the booth.

After dinner we were all exhausted so we went back to the hotel to get ready for another fun day.

Sunday morning mom and I stayed at the hotel while Gavin took his morning nap. Jonyce, Dad and Kaylee drove out to Oakland to Mariposa Cafe, a gluten free bakery. My niece has celiacs disease (as does my sister in law and brother in law) She can't eat anything that has gluten, basically anything with wheat. So when we find places that have gluten free food, we are always excited for her. Kaylee was able to get some delicious food, including a cinnamon roll.

Mom and I walked over to another cafe for breakfast. It was the Pergimonn cafe. It was absolutely delicious!! We decided to share some oatmeal and one of their "world famous" waffles. It was AMAZING! It came with this topping that we thought was butter, but it ended up being a type of whip cream. It was so good.

We then all met up at Pier 39.

We had a fun afternoon walking around, shopping, eating and just taking in the sites.

One of my favorite treats at Pier 39 is the mini donuts. They are fresh, hot and delicious.

We stopped to look at the seals.
Most of the seals have left the Pier. It was sad to only see a few of them there.

We were able to get a pretty good view of Alcatraz.
We were able to watch a fun magic show while we were there.
He was able to balance this stool on his nose.
He could also juggle.

All in all, it was a great show.

After Pier 39 we headed down to Boudin Bakery for some dinner. We had a delicious bread bowl with clam chowder in it.

We then took a drive down the windiest streeet, Lombard Street.

After a day full of fun events, we were ready to go back to the hotel to relax. We had found a cute cupcake shop at Ghiradelli Square so we picked up a few cupcakes for dessert. They even had gluten free cupcakes!

It was a fun night eating cupcakes, swimming, watching the Super Bowl and just relaxing.

Monday morning we had to get all packed up and ready to go before we left the hotel. Gavin slowed things down a little bit as we had a few diaper incidents at the last minute. This picture was taken before we could get extra pants and a sock. Just after I took this picture he had another "incident" that slowed us down even longer. Poor kid!

We then headed back to the place that mom and I had breakfast the day before, Pergamino Cafe. I had been dreaming about that waffle, and I needed one more before we left.

Gavin was anxiously waiting for his waffle.

Now that I knew that wasn't pure butter, I felt a little better about slathering it all over my waffle.
Someone got a little tired during breakfast, and Grandpa was willing to help him get a little sleep.
After breakfast we headed to China Town. Mom, Jonyce and Kaylee took a tour of the fortune cookie factory. They were able to see how they made the fortune cookies and put the fortunes inside them. Mmmmmmm.... delicious.

Of course while we were there we had to take a ride on the historic cable cars.

Dad was once again left with Gavin duty. Gavin loved all the time he got to spend with Grandpa.

The cable car ride gave us a great view of the city and the bay.
The final thing we did in San Francisco was to go to the Golden Gate Bridge.

We drove across the bridge.

Once on the other side, we got out to take pictures. It was pretty windy, but it was still a great view!
We were lucky that it was a clear day so we could see everything so clearly.

Just in case ...

After driving across the bridge we had to head to the airport. We stopped at In N Out for a quick dinner before we got there. But once we got to the airport, it was time for Gavin to eat.

We had such a fun trip, Gavin was so sad to have to say goodbye to everyone.
He loved having everyone around to hold him and take care of him.
We had a great trip and were sad to go home. But we were excited that we were able to have our very own row on the airplane. Gavin travelled really well too!

Despite Andrew not being there, it was a lot of fun. Although I don't think I will be taking any more trips without Andrew's help for a long time.