Stanford Volleyball

Derrick and I went to our first sporting event at Stanford even though we've been here a year now. Our building sponsored the activity of going to the Stanford Women's Volleyball game. We only could stay for the first 2 games since Derrick had homework and Stanford won both! I love volleyball and it was fun to get that hour of fun in on a Saturday night.

Lucky Baby

At 11 weeks pregnant our baby is already getting lots of love. First, for our 1 year wedding anniversary Derrick's gift to me and the baby was a stuffed animal lamb that plays sounds for the baby to sleep to. I've already decided that I want a lamb themed nursery and Derrick knew that will be perfect for it.

Second, my grandparents sent us a nice card and some money for the baby's first piggy bank. Invest that now and by the time he or she reaches retirement it could be a lot of money :)

Third, today in the mail we just got a package from Derrick's family. They sent little onsies with great pictures on them. Two BYU shirts (yep, our kids are going to grow up cougar fans), the Simpsons, Dwight from The Office and a Dilbert.

Yosemite Trip

We just got back yesterday from a 4 day trip to beautiful Yosemite. The first day there we drove around the valley floor and did an easy hike to Lower Yosemite Falls. There was no water this time of year but it was still a nice hike. We also stopped at the visitors center and planned out what we wanted to do on the trip.

Since we stayed in cabins that had electricity we brought our lap top and watched movies at night. That was always a relaxing ending to activity filled days.

On the second day there we went on a hike to see some big sequoias. Here's one that people can walk through.

This is crazy too. One of these trees fell down and you can see the roots and how broad the base is.

After that hike we drove and stopped at Tenaya Lake. I couldn't believe how clear the water was everywhere we went. Later on in the day, on our way back, this is actually where we stopped, made and ate our dinner.

The next adventure of the day was a picnic lunch and then another hike up to Dog Lake. There we saw frogs and deer. Derrick skipped rocks and I actually caught on video him getting like 10 skips in a row. The only thing is that I was holding the camera sideways and we haven't figured out yet how to rotate a video so maybe when we figure that out we'll put it on here :)

Thursday was our big hike. We didn't go all the way to Half Dome but we went half way and saw two waterfalls. The first was Vernal Falls.



Here's Derrick at the bottom pool of Vernal Falls.

This was what we climbed up for 2000 feet of elevation. Yeah, my legs were jello on the way down. I kept praying they wouldn't forget how to work :)

The second waterfall was Nevada Falls. Here was the view from the top. I swear all of this looks better when you're actually there.


That night we were planning on going to the Awahnae hotel dining room for dinner that night until we got there and saw that each plate was like $50. Yeah, that's not in our budget. We heard it was pricey but we didn't know it would be that much. We ended up going to Yosemite Lodge's sit down restaurant. It was great food and more reasonably priced.

We didn't take any pictures the last day but we just biked around the valley floor and then headed home. I had episodes of sickness everyday we were there (I even threw up the morning we went on our big hike) but luckily I was able to do the activities we wanted. Derrick is really helpful and understanding. I'm very grateful for that.

Baby on the Way

Today I had my first appointment with a nurse practitioner to find out how me and our baby are doing. Now that we know the due day we're going to start spreading our good news. I'm due April 11th, 2009...good time to have a baby I think. Here's a picture of the first ultrasound. When I saw it on the screen it was moving it's little arms and legs and the nurse said, "You have an active baby there." I also was able to see and hear the heart beating. That was way cool. It really was so neat to see my baby. It finally makes me feel pregnant (even though I have been pretty sick some weeks). We're really happy and excited for the next few months.

On Labor Day we did a beach trip starting at Half Moon Bay. We walked out to the water and Derrick walking in it for a bit while I sat down, watched him and ate Gummi Bears. After that we pulled out our kite and played with that for a bit. There wasn't too much wind so it was hard to get it to stay up but we did have a little success.

After spending a little time there we drove north on Highway 1 up through Devil's Slide. The coast was amazing. We stopped at one more beach that was small but beautiful.

Lastly, we were hungry so we stopped at a mexican restaurant. It was terrible! Both of us agreed that we would never eat there again. Oh well, one bad thing in a great day isn't too bad.

1 Year Anniversary

On August 25 we celebrated our 1 year anniversary by going out to dinner at a nice restaurant called Sundance. There was a famous golf player there named Fred Funk and he was signing autographs for some workers. He must have owned that Bentley that was in the parking lot when we got there :) Our waiter found out it was our anniversary and gave us a rasberry tort cake on the house. It was absolutely delicious! He even sang to us when he brought it out. After that we went to Hollywood video and rented Shadowlands. It was pretty good--true love story about C.S. Lewis. We had a nice evening.