This is my real life!

We are finally settling into our life here in Santa Barbara and let's just say we are very happy. While walking along a secluded beach cliff close to my house watching dolphins swim and pelicans dive, I have been known to exclaim, "This is amazing and I'm not even on vacation! This is my real life!" Come visit. You'll see what I mean.

Speaking of visitors, we had a very special visitor, Aunt Seesa (as Amelia calls her), for the past 2 weeks. It was awesome. And since Lisa is the photo-journalist queen of the world, I have about 500 pictures to prove just how awesome it was! Unfortunately my blogging time is limited these days...so you are getting an overload of pictures with less dialog and you'll have to check Lisa's blog for more.

Beach Life

Okay, so I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures of us on beaches from the past couple of weeks. They are all within 15 minutes of my house.

Family picture

Struggling to hold Amelia still for the family picture

Sisters are the best.

I am so lucky to have such an amazing, sweet, sensitive, kind, loving, full of common sense and non-dramatic (very valuable in my life :)) sister. We shared a bed all growing up - even when we didn't have to - and we used to get ourselves in trouble laughing too loud after we were supposed to be sleeping. During this trip we almost got ourselves in trouble laughing too loud in church! I love you Lisa. If Matt didn't miss you so much, I'd try to convince you to move in with me again.

El Capitan State Park

Refugio State Park

Lisa and I explored this beach one morning and this was one of those "This is my real life?!" moments. We saw 7 dolphins, scores of pelicans, an otter, a sea lion, a sand crab and only 4 other humans! It was so beautiful, exciting, and peaceful.

Sandspit Beach

This is one of the beaches right by UCSB campus

Um, so those buildings you see in the corner of this picture. Yeah, that's campus. Go Gauchos!

Walking along the cliff above the beach ON campus.

This is also at Sandspit beach park. It's foggy in the background, but that is actually the ocean right behind us (that metal thing is a pier). So Amelia can swing and bang things to her hearts content, and afterwards I can take a walk along the beach boardwalk.

Aunt Seesa

Santa Barbara Zoo

Amelia fit right in with the monkeys :)

Birthday

We celebrated Lisa's birthday on the 9th with In N Out burgers and birthday cake

But of course, being the nerdy nutritionist, I didn't just make her any old cake...I had to stick a vegetable in it! Last year Amelia had zucchinis in her cake, Andrew had pumpkin in his and now Lisa got BEETS. It turned out delicious and I will definitely be adding beets to my cakes more often, but don't be scared because you'll never know! You'll just think it is a perfectly moist chocolate cake. Yum!

Kids

And finally we have some great pictures of the kids. Thanks Lisa for documenting my life for me!

Okay, for the record, William is still the sweetest baby ever. In his baby blessing, he was blessed that he would be a joy to his mother...and that has proved so true already! He is such a little sweetheart and I love every minute of being his mom.

Amelia loves him too and she is always very sweet to him. When he fusses or cries she pats his head (fairly gently, usually just missing poking his eyes out, but with zero malice) and says, "It's okay baby!"

Here she is singing Patty Cake to him. I love this picture because you can see how big William is! He is in the 90th percentile for his age and Amelia has always been around the 10th! I think he is going to catch up to her soon - he is such a big baby!

Running, running, running, running!

When I was pregnant and Amelia was climbing all over me, wanting to be held, sitting on my lap, snuggling, kissing and being on top of me all the time, I remember thinking, "How and where is this new baby going to fit around here?" Well, here's the answer!

Amelia hasn't moved over one bit for the little newcomer. We're just a trio instead of a duo now!

The Santa Barbara Festival was going on the first week we got here so we went downtown and enjoyed some good Mexican food, traditional dancers and bands.

We got ice cream afterwards and Amelia ate her whole ice cream cone, of course.

And this video is the aftermath of staying out until bedtime plus a whole ice cream cone.