The Best Visit Ever. EVER!

Kendall came to town about a week after Carp. It was awesome to ahve her visit with her two little girls. IT was great having Kendall here again. I should really look into moving to Washington : ) I was so glad she booked tickets for a week! Yeah! The pictures are posted in reverse order from the actual order of events. Deal with it.

Kendal took these first three photos . . . I cna't remeber when. But aren't they great! she took these awesome shots in the first go and I have about a bajillion on my camera, not one of which is half as good as these. Go figure.















I love that she got Frankie licking Emery's hand!











Kendall and Elise by the water in Santa Barbara (it's acutally carp again. Easy to get to from teh fwy, no waves, perfect)







Clara hanging out on the blanket. Man were we prepared with gear! Blanket, towels, 2 chairs, cooler, bag of snacks, sunshade, two umbrellas, baby powder to get sand off, boogie board to haul it all up and down the beach. We got so many stares. I'm not sure if its becuase we were in my mom's Lexus or becuase we both look super young to have three young kids. Maybe we were just smokin' hot. HAHahahah! ; ) But we serisouly got stared at every time we went out.





Emery fell backwards on the blanket right after Kendall put sunscreen on her head so all the sand on the blanket stuck to her head! HAhahahaha! I thought it was cute.







We went to the Park and Elise got distressed about something. I can't remember what, but I was glad i took a bunch of photos! Hahahaha! THere' a whole sequence that's pretty good.














Clara spent most of hte time at the Park in the stroller. She was a little lopsided so I pushed my wrap in around her for some support. She was pretty happy though with the links to entertain her.






WE went swimming in my mom's pool. Elise liked to be spun in circles on the floatie thing







Emery and Clara in Kendall's double stroller. Elise walked most of the way at hte zoo, which was pretty small and weird. . . but still good. I'm so distressed I let clara drop that cow wrists rattle she has in her hand. she LOVED those little toys brittnie gave her and she dropped it 50 feet before we left the zoo (through the gate) and I realized it the second we passed the stupid gate. Now I cna't even find the pig rattle! PRobably buried in moms toy bins somwhere. ehhhhhhhh





Elise with a cheetah ( I think) in the background.











Emmie on a toy that has a really annoying song, but she didn't make it play the song, so that was nice. She seemed to like the spinner toy






Kendall and Elise at dinner.


Also, thanks to Kendall, I've started using cloth diapers in my g-diapers! Woo hoO! Since clara's in the mediums now, the cloth diapers fit if you fold them in thirds "hamburger" ways. Since she mostly pees anyways, I can save a truckload on the flushable inserts by just using cloth ones at home and the inserts for trips! Yesssssss! Although, she has, to date, pooped twice in the cloth. Once when mom was watching her becuase i was dead asleep and once when I thougth she was just farting. Oops! : )

Also, while kendall was here my mom's AC broke and so did her washer. THey fixed the AC but the washer broke the night before Kendall left. So we stayed up late talkign and wringing out her soapy clothes that had been soaking for a while. Mom wouldn't have known about it except I tried to empty the cooler from the beach and it slipped and crashed to the ground making the loudest noise I've ever heard at 2am. I felt bad, but I basically made mom get a new washer. (I don't really feel bad now though becuase hte new one is AWESOME!)

Post-Carp: The Laundry Aftermath

After everyone went back to their respective homes on Saturday (except for TYler, he went to Japan and I stayed home) mom and I started the laundry generated by carp. And by laundry I mean the bedding from everyone's stay, the beach towels and blankets, and other miscelaneous items that found their way into the piles of 'whites' 'colors' and 'darks'.


Frankie felt it neccessary to climb ontop of the clean laundry pile and have herself a little lookout nap.

Clara felt it neccessary to have a nap with her bunny rattle. She was holding it when I put her down and when I came in to check on her this is how I found her.

Carp

Carpinteria this year was fun. Mostly becuase we were acutally able to go-woo hoo! Enjoy the following photos from day one, day three and the very last night (all the rest are on the memory stick up in my room, that explains he shortage of Martins and Snyders in this photo-recap. SOrry guys!)

The three boys loved jumping over and running away from the waves


















Luke wanted to go boogie boarding I guess. He dragged the board all the way from the canopy







To the water. Chris took him out a little later.








Nate helped Jake catch a wave. ERika was obviously terribly excited about that.







He caught a few more and seemed to really enjoy it! I wish it wasn't so blurry though, its on "Take-a-bunch-of-pictures-when-I-press-the-shutter-button" mode so they're not as sharp as normal.



Tyler took Erika and Nate's boat out



































The ocean shortly brought him back in.








My absolute most favorite picture EVER of Mark! I have no idea what he was so crushed about, but I think that face is perfect!





Tyler went out in the boat again and chatted with Chris nad Nate while they were body surfing.






Chris boogie boarding. A seemingly innocuous activity.
TYler getting ready to get back in the boat. Again a seemingly innocuous activity. . .






Until they see one another.
Chris charged and tyler blocked. I'm not sure who won. I have more photos of the encounter, but its a bad angle. The boat's blocking everything.






My second most favorite picture of mark! BOTH feet off the ground! Complete with shadows!






Erika and Lisa with Luke, Lucy and I think Mark in the background.








Clara sucking her thumb








The first "test shot" of the family photo.







Fosters!





















































It took me six tries and what I feel was a significant amount of direction and instruction to my parents to get this shot. I think its pretty darn good. (If you don't, you would if you could see the previous five I took).




Tyler showing the nickles how to make sand balls (I think)










Lucy seemed to really like Clara. "Baby Clara!" "Baby go pee?" "Baby eating!" She seemed to be fascinated with clara. I like that her cousins like her from such a little age!






Jake wasn't as fascinated by Clara as Lucy was, but Clara sure seemed to be intrigued by him! : )





Lots more went on, of course, but this concludes my Carp POst. I"m so glad we were able to go! And it was cool of my parents to get us the trailer. Sure beats camping out in a tent with a baby!

EnRoute to Japan

As the title of this post would suggest, we are currently en-route to Japan.

Really it just means we're homelss vagabonds who gratefully accept any roof anyone is willing to offer be it house, RV or new house. We're not picky really.

Acutally, Tyler is already in Japan as of today. I however, am still sporting the homelss vagabond/couch surfing persona with my daughter in tow. (I'm really just at home in my old bedroom, which is not as weird as one might think.)

Carpinteria was awesome and was made complete by rented RVs, matching T-shirts and a family photo. Nothing like having 14 kids aged nine and under at the beach (4 of them 2 years old). I have boatloads of pictures, but not right now.

Everyone left to go back to their respective homes on Saturday so all is quiet on the western front (literally) for now. But stay tuned for those matching t-shirt family photos! (not to mention action shots of the ocean giving tyler hte what's up while he was in the NIckle's inflatable raft--its awesome).