Most people have a pet name for their baby before its born and Monique and Josh chose Colonel Sanders. It started out as a joke (well, I think so anyway...) that if they name the baby Colonel Sanders, maybe the whole family would get free KFC chicken for life. Then it stuck and even the gift registry has the baby named as Colonel Sanders. :D So, what other kind of baby shower (or baby party as we called it) could their be other than a KFC themed one!? Monique and Josh are both the sweetest people who would never expect or ask anything of anyone and I think they were pleasantly surprised by what their friends came up with. We made onesies and instead of using the typical baby stencils and wording, we made everything with a KFC theme to fit the parents. It was mostly the girls making these and we had fun doing it. Kris put a great book together for the couple with pictures taken by everyone through the years, only changed a little to fit the theme. One of them was eating chicken or sitting or dancing with Colonel Sanders in all the pictures - it was clever and hysterical! The picture for the cake was one chosen from the book and you can see everyone's shocked and humored reactions from it. Another, but lesser used name for the baby was frog, so even a frog baby diaper wreath was homeade! Last but not least - no one else will appreciate me adding this to the blog, but since I made the morph with a free software I downloaded, I had to show everyone of my creation. What we expect the baby to look like based on the parents faces morphed together!
I decided to run America's Finest City (AFC) Half Marathon on San Diego's HOTTEST day! It's a great route with some beautiful views and Kristin and Wil came in town to run it too, so that made it extra special. Did I mention how HOT it was? When I came into the finish, I saw Scott with Greg who finished before me. I gave Scott a huge, wet hug for meeting me there. After the race, Kristin, Will, Scott and I went over to Coronado and had lunch and some really yummy ice cream at the Hotel Del. I think that's the only reason Kristin really wanted to go there, though she said it was for the views too.
A couple of weekends ago, I headed back to the South to meet up with my cousins from the Sacramento area and visit our Papa in a small town an hour and a half north of New Orleans. We spent a night in New Orleans first and had a nice, cajun dinner and sightseeing around the French Quarter. I was really excited to see Dana and Wil again, but was especially excited to meet my new little cousin, Dana's daughter Sadie June. I was on my last flight thinking about how excited I was to meet her once the flight landed, when all of a sudden I heard a baby crying. Next thing I knew, I saw all of my family on the same flight as me, traded seats and held little Sadie through the whole flight, instantly bonding with her.
After a night on the town, the next morning we got up and went to the famous Cafe Du Monde for some great coffee and beignets. On the walk back, we saw the beautiful New Orleans style with the lush ferns hanging over balconies and a horse and carriage waiting for takers at Jackson Square.
We next drove up to Kentwood to spend a few days. I snuggled in a chair with my Papa just like when I was a little girl. I also snuggled up with little Sadie and LOVED having her so close to me - she was the sweetest little thing ever! She loved just looking around at anything she could see moving. You can see in the movie below how far she could even reach her head back to watch the fan.
One day we took a drive a couple of miles over to Brittney Spears' house. She grew up in Kentwood (when she wasn't traveling around trying to be made famous by her mom) and had a house built here after she got famous.
Other activities included looking at tons of old photos, Wil and Kelly (my new best friend) riding around on the riding lawn mower, and some good old card playing (I'll buy that card).
It was really nice to spend time with family and remember where I can from.
We went up to the Channel Islands off the coast of Ventura/Santa Barbara last weekend and visited and camped on Anacapa Island. I didn't even know these islands existed until Marie, my new French friend asked if I wanted to go. Funny how it takes someone from half a world away to make us realize what's in our own back yards. On the boat ride over, there were lots of dolphins jumping all around us and chasing our boat to be playful. We also had a sea gull following the boat, showing us a preview of things to come. Note - some of the best pictures I will show were taken by Marie, so I need to give her the credit (the sea gull is just one of them).
Once on the island, we immediately realized that we would be surrounded by sea gulls. There were hundreds of thousands of them all over the island with their cute young ones.
There were some really beautiful views all over the island as well.
We camped for a night with only 2 other groups of people, but we were not lonely because of all the birds. They settled down at night, but woke up and started making plenty of noise at about 5AM. If you want to get an idea of the sounds, take a look at the video below.
We went snorkeling because we had heard that was supposed to be really good here. One thing it definitely was was cold! The water was probably close to 60 degrees - even very cold in a full wet suit. We did get to swim with tons of kelp forests and sea lions! The underwater pictures are not the best quality, but the one of the sea lion looking up at me is my favorite - so cute! Okay, the one of Marie is cute too (see Scott in the background completely freezing without a wet suit!) You can hear the sea lions in the background in the video and should be able to see them in one of the island shot pictures.
Birds and sea lions were not the only creatures on the island - I had to include my masterpiece picture of the ladybug with perfect colors - I'm not bragging or anything. ;-)
We were supposed to catch the 11:30AM boat back to the mainland, but there was a communication error and the boat left without us. We had to wait 4 hours for the next one, but no worries. We read, I snorkeled again and ... I took a little nap.
The company was so sorry about their mishap that they gave us a full refund of our whole trip! A very fun weekend and now I want to visit more of these islands.
