Our New Little Swimmer

We have started Mary in swim lessons. She loves it. I think we may have a fish on her hands, a fish that doesn't like to get her face wet. So we are working on that part. The instructor, Amber, has gotten her to blow bubbles in the water and get a little of her face wet. So we are working on it. It's only been one lessons so far, so we have more to go.

She even was brave enough to do some wall walking. So proud of my little girl. I think she had a super death grip on the wall, but she did it.

weekend of cousin love

Since Thursday, 17th, we have had Brianna (14) and Stephanie (13) over at our house. These are Kevin's nieces. Mary and Teresa have loved having them here to play with. It has been a help to have the extra hands around. We mainly stayed home. It is kind of hard to do teen age things with Teresa. On Saturday Kevin took the girls and Mary to the Natural History Museum. Mary got pretty scared at the dinosaurs, but they had a good time overall.

It was very nice to have them come stay and play with us for5 days.

Mary got to help the girls make cup cakes. Yum Yum. I think Brie ate most of them.

We got Mary to takes naps in the middle of the day with the girls on the couch.

A Year and A HALF

HOLLY SMOKES, my baby is already a year and a half. That is crazy. She is growing so quick. She walks, runs, dances, and already has an opinion. She knows her yes and, definitely, her no's. Yes, she has learned to say no, and what it means. Every day she has a new word we hear. She is at a fun age right now, still all cudly and lovey. She gives the best hugs. I just love her so.
That is definitely a mommy smile below!! That's my girl!!

Ojai Wine Festival Fun

Sunday we had a fun day helping out Christian Lazo Winery at the Ojai Wine Festival. Christian Lazo is a winery we are wine club members of in Paso Robles. We found out they were going to be pouring in Ojai, which is an hour from our house. I sent them an email and they got us in free so we could help them out. It was good we good we got in free because we had to bring Teresa, which made it hard to taste wine. Kevin helped out most of the day at the booth while I tried to keep Teresa happy.

She was very happy playing in the box of ice and white wine.

Kevin was quite happy pouring/drinking wine for a few hours.

Teresa had not taken a nap all day. I walked off any wine I drank trying to get her to go to sleep in the stroller. FINALLY at about 3:30 she passed out, hard, as you can see below.

Baja Trip Continuation Story

Well most of you know how our trip began, if you read my previous blog. If you have not read it, please go back and read that one first and then come and read the continuation of our trip to Baja.

So, we make it to the house, finally. The next morning we wake up to a beautiful day. The sun is out, the tide is out, and a breeze is blowing. It’s going to be a much better day. This is the view from the porch of the house. Not bad! Bathing suits go on, sunscreen on, and we are off to play in the sand. Well, the kids did not want to. They are so weird. We were in the wonderful place and all they wanted to do was play in the house. Really put a damper in my relaxing time in the sun. Ok, so I deal with it. I ended up getting an hour or so in the sun a day while Teresa took her nap. It worked out. I am not as tan as I would be normally, but I’m still tan. By the end of the trip I could get Teresa to play on the porch and Kevin got Mary to like swimming in the ocean. She was a fish in the sea. She would bug us each day to go swimming. The tide was really extreme for the week, so we could only go in around 2:00 or so, when the tide was high. Now she likes the water and we will take her to get swim lessons so she can go on the boat with Nana and Papa.
We took rides on the people mover, the VW bus my dad made into a baja bus. It was super fun to ride in. The girls loved to ride in it. As you can see Mary is all ready to go with her bandanna on her head! Kevin and I mainly took the jeep, we brought down. My parents brought down the buggy for them. Lotsa room for everyone to have fun. So, fun rides to other camps and to town for a day. We took the broken hitch to town to get it fixed. We did get it fixed so we could tow the jeep back home.
So things are going good, so we thought. Linda decides she is going to go take a ride on her quad. She goes out with the key to the back of the house and there is NO quad there. HOLLY CRAP! Just the thought I had when I did not see the jeep behind the motorhome. So we are all now trying to figure out the last time we saw it sitting there. All we can figure is that someone took it while we were all in town. So Linda tells the owners of the camp and she files a report with the Mexican police. Hopefully it will be found.
Ok, so hopefully this will be the end of our bad luck. We keep on going with our week. Soaking up all the fun in the sun we can. Saturday rolls around and we need to pack up to leave the next day, such a sad day. We wake up Saturday and finish our packing and roll out about 9 in the morning. My mom drives the jeep the 2 hours, or so, to Mexicali though all the rough detours. We then stop and hook it back onto the motorhome and proceed to cross the border. Thanks to all the new fun roads it took us 5 hours to get to the border, which normally takes about 2 ½. It felt like we had been traveling ALL day. So we get across the border and get to Cocos for lunch/dinner. By then it was almost 3:00. By the time we were done it was almost 5. Now we are off to Morongo for the night. We make it to Morongo. My sister and her husband were going to proceed home so we said our good byes and they were off again. We get settled in the parking lot for the night. Some of us head over to the casino. We have to do something while we are there. Ha Ha! While we are there my sister sends a picture to my mom of a flat tire. Another HOLLY CRAP! So they get a flat tire on the trailer they are pulling the VW bus on. Great, the adventure is not over yet. Luckily Matt is able to figure it all out and they got home safe. Needless to say, we did not feel lucky enough to gamble after that, so back to the motorhome we went to go to bed.
The next morning we are up and heading back home. Thankfully there were no more adventures to report. We all made it safe and sound home. It was an eventful trip. In between it all, it was fun. What’s a vacation without stories???
Below are picture, out of order. Explanations with each of them.

This is the sulfur mines. We take a ride out to them. Nothing to see, only smell. It's an excuse to go for a ride and have a beer stop.
This is some of us sitting at the sulfur mines chillin'
The view from the buggy while taking a ride down the road. SO much fun!

Here are mom and Amy riding in the back of the buggy.

Here is Mary getting her hair braided by one of the vendors on the beach. She was so good to sit and let them do it.

And here is the finished product. It was great that day. Her hair is so fine that it started to come out after sleeping on it one night. But since we were camping, we didn't care. She was a braided ragged mess for a couple days. It kept it out of her eyes at least.

Mary showing off an olive shell she found.

Teresa had fun running along the sand bar.

I was a little happy at the camp fire one night.

A Mexican bath

This is the hole the jeep put in the motorhome when it came off.Mary taking a nap on the beach

This is the view of our house from the beach.

Mary liked to be buried in the sand. She had sand in various places at bath time.

Mary had it down with bargaining with the vendors.

Baja Grizwald Family Vacation

So, thanks to the power of technology and wi-fi, I can post things while we are down in Baja. I cannot put pictures on yet, but I can write about it. So, we left Friday afternoon and made it to the border to stay the night at the camp ground. Up bright and early to cross the border to start our adventure, alone. What an adventure it has been so far. We have crossed on our own once, but in a car, now we are in our motorhome pulling my dad's jeep. So we make it through the border no problem. Star going through town. They really do not have cross walks, so they just cross the street where they want and expect you to notice. Well, we almost ran over a Mexican crossing the street. OH JOY! Then driving along we come to a speed bump. One of those that is wide, and not oo tall. Well, there was NO warning for this and we both saw it at the same time and cried out "OH SHIT". Took it as we could and flew over it bouncing. Everything flew around the motorhome. I collected myself, as much as I could, and ran back to look out the back at the jeep. Well, it was still there and moving along as far as I could tell. So I go back to the front and sit down and we are both silent and can't really speak for a few miles. So we get over that and then comes an intersection where it divides. Left, right? which way??? We figure it out, but not in time. Ok, slight detour for a block. We get back on the correct road and we are on our way.
Well, after the earthquake they had, last month, the main road was damaged a little so there was a birt road detour, for 1l6km. Again, OH JOY! So we start down this bumpy dirt road. I'm watching and bouncing. I am Kevin's other eyes and so I keep an eye on the side of the motorhome through the side mirror. I take a look in it and notice there is only ONE shadow, the motorhome shadow. I say, surprised, "where is the jeep?" I fly up and run to the back and look our and the Jeep is GONE!!!!!! WHAT????? I yell back to him that it is gone. He stops in the middle of this dirt road, in traffic. Eventually we do a 20 point turn and turn around to go back to find it, yes, find it. Thank god we find it. A very nice mexican/gringo saw it come off and stayed with it knowing we'd come back for it. He helped us as much as we could. Well, the hitch actually broke in half off the motorhome. So there was no way we were going to be towing it any further. Luckily it still started and so I got to drive it the 80 miles or so to San Felipe. I pulled myself together as well as I could, put on some sun screen (since there is no top on the jeep), and got in and started to drive. It was a hell of a long 80 miles. The first 40, or so, I didn't have a radio. So i sang really loud as many songs as I could think of and then just started making up songs about what was going on. It helped me relieve some stress and calm down. We pulled over at one point to make sure it was all good and then realized where the face plate to the radio was and so I got some music to sing to.
So, then we FINALLY make it to San Felipe. We get gas in both vehicles and on our way to get beer, much needed beer. We stock up with beer and our on our way to the house. I am so happy to get on that little dirt road to the house I tear it up in the jeep and create a huge dust cloud. Life is getting better!
We are here now and things are better. Oh, forgot to tell about the part where at some point when the jeep fell off it punched a hole in the back o the motorhome. Just another thing to fix.
The girls are having a blast. I am already tan, mostly on my left side, from driving the jeep. It's going to be a fun fun week ahead, hopefully with no more adventure like the first one.

ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I started to take pictures of Mary when she falls asleep. She is so darn cute, and sometimes pretty funny. I found these to show off. This first one she was so tired that she could not even get her fingers all the way up to her mouth to suck them.

This next one she is wearing her poodle costume from Halloween last year. she wore it straight for two days.

This next one is just today. I finally got her to relax and she passed out on top of Pooh Bear.