7 Billion and Counting

Check out this interesting video from National Geographic. It's not too long :)

I convinced Mom to come out since we've been told October is one of the better months to visit.... lots of sunshine and no rain.

We went to a place called Point Lobos, my favorite spot we've been to so far. It's a state park with lots of hiking and the girls did pretty well all things considered. C fell on her face like 15 times, but didn't seem to mind. The hike went right along the shoreline and was breathtaking. I just love hiking and being in the outdoors.

We also went for a beautiful drive down Highway 1 to a place called McWay falls. Yeah, that's a waterfall on the left in the following picture. It was a teaser though, because although the beach was beautiful to look at, it was off limits! Notice Ben was posing in his swimming trunks all day, but never got to take a dip :(


Mom classically closes her eyes.

The picture of paradise?

And this was a separate occasion at Pfeiffer Beach. Doesn't Ben look studly?
Em thinks her dad is pretty studly too.

Day at the Wharf

The wharf is just a mile or so from our house. It's fun to go down there and try out all the free samples of Clam Chowder and blow 8 bucks on a small bag of salt water taffy. Last time we ran into this guy...I tried to get Em pumped up about the bird, but she just quietly observed with her classic dead pan expression. C, on the other hand, is very demonstrative when it comes to showing her feelings... here she's checking out the sea lions. Isn't she cute?What she was looking at...
Sea lions are actually kind of cool... they are really smart and the navy trains them to do missions like detect underwater mines. And they have a very loud bark. Em is good at imitating it. Sometimes we can hear them barking from our house. Really.

Check it out!

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/29/the-shaping-of-mitt-romney-a-look-at-his-faith-journey-2/?hpt=hp_c1

This is by far the most positive article I've read about the LDS church and Mitt Romney. It seems that most articles on the subject misconstrue the Mormon faith by taking its history and doctrine out of context thus painting a biased and unfair depiction of the church. So cool to read something that actually sounds like my religion.

My least favorite thing about the military has got to be moving. We have moved the past three summers (plus an in betweener!), two of those moves being overseas. Moving has got to be one of THEE, if not the most, stressful things in life (even when they do all the packing for you!)

So, since we're special and moved from Poland we've had three shipments come over a six week period... one by plane from Poland, one by boat from Poland, and one by big rig from our storage in Virginia.

The thing is, I always forget what a pain it is until I go through it again. Last night I was SOOO excited for our shipment to come... couldn't wait to finally get all our stuff. And now tonight after a long day of opening boxes, sorting through our stuff, and our house being in complete upheaval.... I'm super duper ornery.

All our furniture arrived from Virginia in this bad boy

And this was our next shipment by plane from Poland.

So, this morning while cleaning up breakfast I was excited to hear what I thought was our moving truck... our final shipment that embarked from the Baltic Sea, sailed across the Atlantic, docked on the East coast, and came by truck across the country. Ben went out there, but lo and behold, the truck parked right in front of our neighbor's house. Apparently they're new too. A few minutes later, we heard another large truck coming down the street, sure it was ours. But, alas, it parked behind our neighbors moving truck. Apparently their neighbors are new too! Finally our truck came, but by then there was no more room on the street. Just another day in the life of a military community I guess.

Ours is the one with the wooden crates partially hidden behind the white truck.

Some parts of unpacking are kind of fun. It's like Christmas on steroids. You open all the stuff you treasure and love and have missed. Like my Polish pottery. But then, there's other things that just make you cringe when you open the box. Like Ben's Star Trek collector's edition of Pez candies. Where the heck do I put that? Or 50 cans of Hunts Tomato Sauce that I over ordered in our dry goods shipment, and which, of course, expire next month.

My headache (not C of course!)

And of course, all the things we were excited to get, like Halloween decorations and Ben's shoes (he's been wearing super uncomfortable dress shoes to school every day), we have no idea where they are. Everything is boxed or wrapped up and it is quite the process to go through everything.

And in other news... Ben impresses us all by blowing the biggest bubble of all time. So big that Em got freaked out and ran into the other room. Ben was dang proud of himself, and signaled for me to get the camera. Yep, that's my Benny Boy.

Discoveries

Part of the fun of moving to a new place is discovering all the great things the place has to offer. Casa Verde beach is not too far from our house... we went with our neighbors the Browns.

One thing I love about our neighborhood is all the playgrounds...

Caroline is fearless... she goes to the highest top slide and throws herself off every time. She's so light weight she goes flying down the slide.

Em refuses to go down the slide without Caroline and me, so lucky me I get in on all the fun too.

A couple weeks ago we went for a Sunday drive down Highway 1 to Big Sur. This is a picture of the highway we drove down (I got it off the internet).

We got about this far when we realized we were almost out of gas. Our trusty GPS (refer to my earlier entry) told us there weren't any gas stations for another 20 miles, so we turned around and headed back to Carmel 10 miles back from where we just came. While Ben was filling up the car I noticed a rather good looking guy come out of the store and get into the vehicle right next to ours. He was sporting some tattoos and looked really ripped. Then Ben came out all excited, "Mindy Girl! Did you see who that was? It's that one famous guy... Colin, shoot I can't remember his last name!" "Colin Farrell?" "Yeah! That's him!" Even though Ben initially couldn't remember his name, he swore on his life it was him. So, we pulled out of the gas station and headed back down the highway and he followed right behind us! It was sweet. This is the picture I took from the back of our car. That's him driving the SUV! So, yeah, for like 30 miles Colin Farrell got to stare at the back of my sweet 1999 teal Toyota Corolla.
A picture of the handsome guy driving behind us. Isn't he dreamy? Almost as dreamy as my Benny Boy.

A few miles down the road we found Pfeiffer Beach... the pictures make it look more fun than it was.... it was cold!!
We were just playing on the beach and again, some lady went out of her way to come over and insist on taking a picture of us. It's hilarious. Really, though, the people here are so nice and laid back. So different from when we lived on the east coast.

This is why we need a Smart Phone

Ben and I are the first to admit that we are behind the times. We've been wanting to get a smart phone for some time, but just can't quite make the plunge since we're super cheap and love our $50/mo. family shared plan we're on right now. Love it. But, it sure would be handy to have the internet in your pocket.

My super cool flip phone. Don't be jealous

Case in point: last night we were driving home from a fun weekend in San Francisco (more on that later) and we were all starving. We had our hearts set on In-N-Out Burger, and there's like a million of them in California, right? So, we typed in In-N-Out in our GPS and a bunch came up... but it was hard to figure out which were on the way home and which were not. We started out on one, but it took us off the beaten path, and we grew increasingly frustrated with what we thought should be something rather simple. This is when we needed the internet. So, several miles down the road Ben finally just said, forget it, and clicked the first In-N-Out that came up on our GPS. It was a little ways off the freeway, but by this point we didn't care. We were well on our way, when Em announced she had to go "number 1." The thing with a 3 year old, is they give you like no warning. One moment she was happily watching her DVD player, the next she was kicking and squirming and crying that she had to go "number 1" right now! So, we assured her we were really close to the In-N-Out, could practically smell the burgers, and peeled into the parking lot of our destination, "Zipin Out Auto Repair" What??? Dang GPS! Ben didn't care, he yanked Em out of the car and she peed in their bushes. Serves them right. We eventually did make it to a bona fide In-N-Out Burger, but man, a smart phone would have really paid off that night. Or maybe we just don't know how to use our GPS.

Em at the real In-n-Out

In San Francisco