23 Weeks

Today I'm 23 weeks pregnant!  The fact that I am pregnant has now been noticed by strangers, so I guess that means I'm officially a real pregnant lady.  The belly is starting to get in the way of things like putting on socks and picking stuff up off the floor.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do when it actually is ginormous...

Let's get the icky stuff out of the way.  The pelvic pain is giving me the pregnancy waddle already at times, which some people find hilarious.  Whatever, it hurts to walk, ok?  The indigestion and reflux are still very uncomfortable, and now I can add squished lungs to the squished stomach.  Yay.  I sometimes feel sick and laying down is the only thing that makes it somewhat better.  Plus I'm tired so I want to lay down anyways.  Yes, I know I'm pathetic.

The babies are kicking like crazy!  I always try to figure out what limb I'm feeling, but never can.

Christmas was so great!  I can't believe that next Christmas we will have BABIES!!!  I got lots of cute maternity clothes as gifts and so I decided I had better start breaking out the new wardrobe.  Most of them are still too big though.  My mom picked me out an adorable diaper bag.  She has good taste.  Blake even got his own baby-related Christmas gift from me.  I think he likes it. :)

Another gift I got were a few books about twin pregnancy.  I'm reading the book by Dr. Luke right now, and I'm finding it very interesting.  It wants me to gain A LOT of weight.  I have been unsure if I was gaining too much because I've gained more than most people with one baby at 23 weeks, but this book makes me feel better that my body is doing what it needs to be doing.  And there's the fact that my regular pants still fit.  Side note: What's the deal with all the pregnant ladies telling random blog readers how many pounds they've gained every week?  I don't really understand the draw, but maybe that's just me.  Something really cool I learned from my book is that twins actually develop faster than single babies, so if they were all born at, for example, 30 weeks, the twins would do better than the single baby.  Twins' growth in size also slows down sooner than a single baby's would, which signals to the body that the babies are done cooking and it's time to start labor.  So that's one of the reasons why twins are almost always born early and are considered full term at 37-38 weeks.  I still have lots left to read and learn, and I'm excited!  This book makes me feel like I'm in control and that I'm learning all the secrets to keep my babies as healthy as I can.

One Year Ago: The Big Move

One year ago today, we said goodbye to life in Hawaii! 

We woke up early to pack our last few belongings in our suitcases, sweep the floors one last time, and give the place a once-over to make sure everything looked perfect.  I had spent the last two weeks painstakingly packing, deep cleaning, repairing holes in walls, and a million other things to make sure that the apartment looked better than how we found it.  Blake helped where he could (mostly moving furniture out and some repairs), but was extremely busy with work, so most of it was left to me.  I was proud of my work.  Before we knew it, it was time for the rental company to come do their walkthrough.

I was nervous as I waited outside for Blake to finish.  I spent my time playing with our mongoose, Squeaker, for the last time.  Our next-door (actually, more like behind and next door?) neighbors had taken quite a liking to him, so they agreed to take him on after we left.  He lived outside and didn't really need to be fed, so we really didn't change anything for him when we left.  I like to think he misses us a little bit though...

When Blake was done with the walk through, he told me that the lady was not too happy about what she saw.  I was floored.  It looked so much better than when we had moved in.  In fact, we even fixed things that were broken and holes that were in the walls when we moved in.  I was upset and angry, and let tears fall down my cheeks as I thought of all of the work I had put into making that place look amazing.  If I was having any reservations about leaving Hawaii (not likely), they were definitely gone now.

"I hate Hawaii," I told Blake.

"Yeah, look at those jerks, making you cry on your last day here."

The only thing to do when you are feeling a huge lack of faith in the humanity of Hawaii is to go to Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha for some shave ice.  It is really the only place I felt like we really got a glimpse of what aloha is all about.  Uncle Clay likes to get to know everyone who comes to his store and he just radiates the aloha spirit.  Everyone who works there is always super friendly and nice.  Not to mention their shave ice is made with natural flavors and is thus divine.  It was a good way to end our Hawaiian life and begin a new adventure.

We made our way to the airport and saw a rainbow in the sky, as if Hawaii was telling us goodbye.

"Goodbye, and good riddance!" we said in return.

Then onto the airplane and leaving it all behind forever. What an incredible time we had in Hawaii.  It was one of the most difficult experiences I have ever had, but we learned a lot and got to experience so many things we never would have if we had stayed in Utah.  Our life in Hawaii is such a distant memory now, but it will always have a little place in my heart, even though I would never move back there again.  We might bring our kids there someday, we'll just have to wait and see.

If you want to see the part of the story where we arrive in Utah, read it here: http://blakeamanda.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-christmas-eve-surprise.html

22 Weeks

Merry Christmas everybody!  There's something special about being pregnant during the Christmas season and feeling a sort of connection to Mary.  This week was fun because Blake got to feel the babies kick for the first time!  He thought it was so cool.  A few days later my mom felt them too.  She gave them a little nudge and got a big kick in response.  I told my sister to come feel them, but seeing my stomach move by itself was too freaky for her, haha.  I feel them all over the place all throughout the day, especially in the evenings.  Sometimes I am mean and poke them a bit to get a retaliation from them.  It's just the coolest thing!  They're my little buddies that I bring around with me everywhere and they are always reminding me that they're there.  I do wish I could tell which one I'm feeling where. 

My belly button is now officially gone.  It will probably become an outie soon, or as my mom calls it, a turkey timer. 

I have gathered up pillows (and maybe stuffed animals) from all over the house and arrange myself a little pillow fort in our bed every night.  It has really been helping me sleep better, although I still do feel tired most of the time.

Now for the not-fun stuff.  I have the craziest indigestion and reflux, along with still feeling sick to my stomach.  It's not pleasant at all.  And these extra hormones are causing my pelvis to start loosening already.  It is getting pretty painful to walk at times, especially later in the day.  I'm just being extra careful to not overexert myself and make it worse (by avoiding things like putting on pants standing up and moving my leg out to one side...)  I feel like it's way too early for this to be happening.  Oh well. 

I had Blake take round one of my maternity pictures this week!  I have a pretty non-maternity dress that will probably not fit very much longer, and since I was already getting dolled up for the family Christmas Tea Party I figured I might as well take some pictures too.  I know it's early, but it never hurts to take more pictures.

My mom and I found some super cute stuff for the nursery!  We bought adorable fabric and are going to be making everything for their cribs starting sometime after New Year's.  It's a big project, but I have time.  Although sometimes I feel like I have very little time because they might be here in March.  There sure is lots to do and buy and decide on and learn about!

21 Weeks

I'm so pregnant!  There is no denying it now.  Even though I'm not actually big enough for most of my maternity clothes to fit yet, I keep going through the fear cycle of 'how am I going to make it 17 more weeks if I keep growing this fast?'  I did wear a maternity top for the first time on Saturday.  I suspect that soon I will give up my pride and bust out the whole maternity wardrobe.

I think my nausea has been completely replaced now by food upsetting my stomach and/or making it hurt.  Is that the same thing?  I dunno.  It isn't after every meal, and some days are much better than others, but I can still expect to not feel great at some point of every day.  And I'm still very tired.  My doctor says by this point I should probably give up on hoping I'll snap out of the feeling sick thing.  Oh well. 

Speaking of the doctor, in case you missed it, we confirmed last week that we are having two boys!  Let the nursery planning begin!  Blake loves to refer to 'my boys' and say things like 'my boys want meat' (which my family thinks is hilarious.)  The doc also said everything looks fantastic.  I have no signs of labor and they are growing nicely.  I am so grateful that everything has been going so well!

Prenatal exercise is so great!  Yes, it's super hard to make myself do it, but since I've kicked it up to about 4x a week my aching back and hips have felt like 80% better!  It's kind of a miracle.  Now to keep myself motivated...

And now for the best part of this week.  Not only am I feeling the babies move many times a day, but I have actually SEEN them kicking my stomach a few times!  It is the most incredible thing!  A few weeks ago I was feeling sad because I didn't really feel connected with my babies and wondered if I was doomed to be a horrible mother who didn't love her kids.  But as soon as I really started feeling them it was just the most wonderful thing.  I love these silly little babies and every time I feel them move it makes me smile.  I don't know what my boys are doing in there, but it sure seems like they're having fun.  I feel them all the way from way low in my stomach to right by my ribs.  I can't even describe how freaky and amazing it is to watch and feel something punch you from the inside.  It sure makes me feel better about the not-fun parts of pregnancy!

Gender Reveal!

Guess what?!?  We know the genders!  It's been a long time since we 'found out' the genders for the first time, and then later we found out that the babies might have changed their minds.  Today, we got our definite answer.  So, without further ado, here's our gender reveal party and their real genders!

We had everyone take a pin to cast their vote.

These guys guessed two girls

Two boys

And everyone else thought one of each.  To be fair, we voted for what we thought it was before we found out.

 And then we cut the cakes..........

Yep, that's right, we're having twin boys!!!  We are so excited :)

20 Weeks

Sorry about the white on white

Here we are at the big two-oh and I am feeling larger every day!  Before I was pregnant I wondered what it felt like for your stomach to grow.  Well, here's what it's felt like for me so far.  Usually I feel totally normal (aka nothing at all.)  Sometimes, especially towards the end of the day, it kind of feels like when you have eaten way too much and your stomach is bulging.  Occasionally there are minor cramps or small pains down in the lower abdomen.  It is also a little bit itchy (which I combat with lots of lotion.)  I'm sure these things will change (or increase) as time goes by, but if you were wondering what it feels like to grow a preggo belly, now you know.

I am now pretty certain that I've felt the babies move!  I'm still not 100% convinced it's not just stomach rumblings, because my tummy sure is angry a lot, but it's in the right area and that's gotta be what it is!  Blake was pretty excited to hear that.  I think he is jealous that he doesn't get to feel them yet. :)

This week was definitely better than last.  I feel like the nausea is slowly but surely improving.  My stomach just gets upset really easily, so I can count on feeling sick after most meals.  I'm finding I can now handle spinach mixed in with other, non-vegetable things, like on a sandwich or in a smoothie, without it making me want to die, so I'm taking advantage of that.  I'm also starting to feel more hungry than usual some days.  These babies are working up an appetite!  I think it's really funny to say 'I'm eating for three now' instead of the usual eating for two joke.  At least that was my excuse for trying three different kinds of pie on Thanksgiving.  I'm a terrible person, haha.

I didn't have as hard of a time emotionally this week.  I am feeling a little more level.  We were also able to visit the temple, and that always helps me feel peace.  It was our first time in the Ogden temple since the dedication, so that was a good experience.  I think adding some prenatal yoga into my exercise routine has helped too.  Thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions on Facebook of what videos they liked!  I won't pretend like I have been super great about exercise.  In fact for pretty much the whole first trimester I could barely get out for a mile-long walk a handful of times because I was so trashed.  But I've been working back into it since the start of the second trimester and I know that it will help me keep the aches and pains at bay for as long as possible.  I am kind of missing the feeling of a really good workout though.  These pregnancy exercises don't really get you sweating and gasping for breath haha.  I do know that it is especially important for me to not overwork myself though because of the higher than usual risk of preterm labor.

This week is a big one, because tomorrow we should be able to FINALLY know for sure what genders these little jellybeans are!  I am glad that I've had these four weeks since our last appointment to reset my expectations from the genders the doctor told us a couple of appointments ago.  I was feeling pretty lost after the last appointment when he said he wasn't sure anymore and was leaning in a different direction because I have a hard time letting go and accepting change!  But I feel like I am ready now to be happy with whatever the ultrasound shows us.  Feel free to leave your guess here or on Facebook if you feel like it.  Two boys, two girls, or one of each?

19 Weeks: We're Halfway Done!!!

My sad attempt at disguising my now very visible bump.  What? You actually wanted to see it?  Okay fine...

Oh my gersh I'm huge!

Hooray for being halfway done!  With a normal pregnancy you'd be halfway by 20 weeks, but since my doctor said they only let twins go 38 weeks that means we're halfway at 19!  That is so weird because I really just started getting big.  I'm still getting used to the whole looking pregnant thing (though sometimes I feel like I just look fat, which I know is ridiculous, but I can't help it.)  No strangers have commented on it yet though so that's good.  I don't particularly like attention from strangers.  Unfortunately, I'm told twin babies will pretty much turn me into a celebrity in public... yay. 

One weird pregnancy symptom that I keep having is that I choke on nothing! (Or maybe my own spit, I dunno.)  Like I'll just be sitting there minding my own business and suddenly I'm choking and coughing and gasping for breath for several minutes and wondering if this will be my last experience on earth.  It's happened to me quite a few times since I've been pregnant.  Yesterday's episode was particularly embarrassing because it was during church.  Thank goodness the class hadn't quite started yet, but I sure felt ridiculous making terrible sounds with my face red and tears welling up in my eyes.  But in the end I didn't die so everything's good.

The nausea still gets pretty bad, especially in the evenings, but I think it may be starting to lessen just the tiniest bit.  Maybe?? Please?!?  At least I've started to be able to re-incorporate a select few of the foods from my no-fly list (still can't handle salads though, for which I feel super guilty.)  I am also very, very tired lately, and sleep isn't going quite as well as it used to.

The backaches and hip pain have already begun.  I am so looking forward to that increasing over the next 19 weeks.... not.  Luckily I also discovered that the yoga ball my parent's have feels AMAZING to sit on and they are letting me borrow it!  Yay! 

I'm trying to come to grips with the reality that my body is going to grow extremely huge.  It is really scary.  Go look at pictures of women 38 weeks pregnant with twins and then tell me how you'd feel about it.  I always thought I'd be one of those people who didn't get super huge with pregnancy, but that dream has been pretty much nuked.

You might be able to tell that this has been a hard week for me emotionally.  There's a lot to take in and process, and I'm not exactly as stable as non-pregnant me.  I just feel sad and cry sometimes.  Sorry to put a downer in here, but I do want to keep this real.  Emotional roller coasters are part of pregnancy, and life isn't always butterflies and rainbows.  Here's to hoping this week is better.  Maybe the Christmas season will cheer me up.  I do love Christmas time. :)

On a lighter note: The babies are around six inches now from head to hiney, meaning I've got a whole foot of baby in my belly!

Fun fact of the week: The babies are now getting covered with lots and lots of vernix, that icky white goo that is all over them when they're born.  Apparently, it keeps the amniotic fluid from pickling their skin.  I didn't even make that up. 

18 Weeks

It's freezing and there's snow outside, so I'm taking pictures inside.  Probably from here on out.  Sorry.

My belly sure is growing fast these days!  I am feeling quite large, which I know is sad because the expanding has just begun.  I weigh the most I've ever weighed in my entire life right now, so take it easy on me, okay?  Today I decided it was time to pack away my clothes with structured waists and shirts that are getting too short.  I still have tons of non-maternity clothes that fit just fine though, and I can strangely still button up all but one pair of my jeans just fine.  I have my maternity clothes stored in the other bedroom until I actually need them.  It still freaks me out how my belly gets way bigger throughout the day, and then in the morning it's smaller again.  So weird.  (I take my belly pictures in the middle of the day, so it's kind of middle ground.)

A quick note about the nausea and vomiting: nausea is unchanged, and vomiting is back to it's once-weekly pattern.  How fun.

I'm starting to have some pain in the tailbone area.  My mom says that might mean I'm carrying in my back.  I told her with twins I'll probably be carrying them EVERYWHERE haha.

I bought my first baby clothes this week!  I got a set of onesies and then a set with a onesie, jacket, and pants.  I'm not planning on buying much, but I really wanted a few pieces that I knew I would absolutely love.  There are some really ugly baby clothes out there.  We also purchased some cloth diapers!  We bought a small stash so we can try them out and see if we like it.  They have great re-sell value, so even if we decide we hate it we should be able to recoup about what we spent.  We hope it will work out, because it will save us SO MUCH MONEY on diapers.  Really, the amount of money you need to spend on diapers for twins is INSANE, and we are looking for any good ways to save money that we can possibly find.

I'm feeling like it's time to start getting serious about all this baby stuff.  I have so much to plan and do, and I don't have as much time left as I would if there were only one baby.  Decorating and finding furniture for the nursery, choosing a childbirth class, figuring out insurance, thinking about my choices for delivery, deciding what baby stuff we'd like to buy, deciding on carseats (this one is so hard!), and so much more!

The babies are supposedly around 5 and a half inches each, not counting the legs.  Not sure why they don't include the legs, but whatever.  They yawn and hiccup, and maybe even suck their thumbs.  Awwwww.  They are so cute already.

17 Weeks, AKA 4 Months

This week I will be four months pregnant!  How cool is that?

I had my 16 week appointment last Tuesday, and I'm afraid we're not so sure on the gender of 'downstairs' baby anymore.  'Upstairs' baby has not changed on us though.  Twin ultrasounds are extremely confusing.  It is really hard to tell which baby you are looking at, and they were wiggling and flipping around so much!  I thought it was really funny how the doctor kept poking my belly to make them move the way he wanted them to.  He was actually surprised I hadn't felt them yet since they are so active.  I blame it on the fact that my stomach is always rumbling and churning, so I have no way of differentiating what is baby and what is just my stomach.  So I will now have to be patient and wait for my 20 week appointment to know both genders for sure.  Three more weeks.  Wish me luck!  I was pretty happy with what he had told me before, so I'm using this time to prepare myself so I won't feel too upset if it changes on me.

My doctor told me to take vitamin B6 since my nausea isn't going away on its own.  I think it is helping some.  I still have some pretty bad days, but on a good day I only feel sick for an hour or two out of the day.  Hopefully things will continue to get better.  I would really love to feel like a normal, mostly functional human being before I get too large. 

My babies are apparently replacing cartilage with bone this week, which I didn't even realize they were made of cartilage before.  So that's cool.  They're five inches long from the top of their heads to their bottoms!  Although 'upstairs' baby was actually measuring about a week ahead of 'downstairs' baby, so maybe that one's a little bigger.  Who knows. 

16 Weeks

My belly has definitely grown this week.  My mom swears it grew from when she saw me on Thursday until she saw me Saturday.  Yesterday I wore a flowy shirt since I think fitted shirts totally make me look pregnant now.  Or maybe just chubby, I dunno.

I've developed lovely pregnancy rhinitis which makes me sleep with my mouth open and wake up with a scratchy throat.  It's not that bad though.  What is frustrating is that, yes, the nausea is still sticking around.  I am so grateful that it has been almost two weeks since I last lost my lunch though.  So maybe things are looking up???  I am trying so hard to find some magic formula that will keep me feeling good, but I haven't found it yet.  I think I need to face the possibility that I will be one of the unlucky ladies that doesn't ever get over the nausea until they deliver.  It is not an easy thing to accept.  Blake may or may not have come home to me crying on the bathroom floor when I wanted to just throw up and get it over with but couldn't, and didn't think I could do this for five more months.  Pregnant women, are they crazy or what?

I had no idea how hard it would be to pick what stuff to buy for the babies.  I've spent so much time on it and feel like I've gotten nowhere.  I'm mostly tackling car seats and strollers, which are hard as it is, but adding twins into the mix makes it 1000x harder.  That and how our one car is a Prius and thus won't fit really big car seats and strollers.  I think once I get that figured out I will feel much better.

I have gathered up quite the stockpile of maternity clothes thanks to finding lots of extremely awesome sales.  I've got like six dresses or so for between $4-$9 each.  I found a pair of maternity jeans for $6.  And lots of other awesome steals too.  I haven't bought anything that I don't really love or is a basic.  I think I will need one more pair of maternity jeans, since the ones I got have a low panel, but I think they will work for quite a while.  All of my regular clothes are still fitting, but I'm sure that won't be true for long. 

My next prenatal appointment is TOMORROW!!!  I am so excited and nervous, because this is the week he can give us the 100% instead of 99% sure on the genders.  So I'll be announcing what flavors the babies are very, very soon!!!

Hello World! and 15 Week Update

Hello everyone and welcome to my weekly pregnancy update!  I've been keeping a little pregnancy journal of sorts since we found out we were expecting, and now I finally get to publish it.  If you missed our announcement, you can go see that here: http://blakeamanda.blogspot.com/2014/10/5th-anniversary-trip-to-california.html

So, here's all the big details:

Due date: April 27, 2015, but since it's twins, I will be delivering by 38 weeks instead of 40.  More than half of twins are born premature, so we are hoping to make it to late March through mid April.

When we found out we were pregnant: August 14th.  I was only 3 weeks 3 days pregnant, according to my due date.  You can read about that here: http://blakeamanda.blogspot.com/2014/11/im-pregnant.html

When we found out it was twins: At our 8 week appointment on September 16th.  You can read about that here: http://blakeamanda.blogspot.com/2014/11/september-22-9-weeks.html

Do we know the genders: Yes!  At our 12 week appointment our doctor gave us a 99% guarantee.  I trust him because he was able to tell my sister's gender at 12 weeks as well.  (Yes, I'm using the same doctor as my mom did with her last pregnancy.  Kinda weird, right?)  I will be putting up a post soon about our gender reveal party including a video!

Morning sickness:  Oh yes.  And at 15 weeks it is still not gone.  I am grateful that I haven't thrown up more than once a week though.  It's mostly been nausea.

Baby bump: While my stomach is definitely larger than it once was, it would not be apparent to people that don't know me well.  I have been taking weekly pictures (except weeks 6 & 7 when I was too sick to pull myself together for a picture) so you can see that progress.  As I am in the second trimester now, I expect my belly to start expanding rapidly any day now.

How I feel about all this: I feel so, so lucky to get to have twins!  Only about 1-3% of births are multiples.  I am so grateful that after a wait we are able to have this opportunity.  I like to say it's God's way of catching us up.  I am also very scared and unsure of my ability to survive a twin pregnancy and raise two babies at the same time!  I am doing my best to put my faith in God right now and trust in His judgement and that he will help us make it through.

What this means for Campbell Photography:  I was so grateful to be able to take my first trimester off of work.  I knew that I couldn't do my best work feeling the way I did.  I will be doing photography again throughout my second trimester, and we'll play things by ear for the third trimester.  After that, I will be having a longer-than-usual maternity leave due to there being two newborns instead of one.  For everyone who will support my business during my second (and maybe third) trimester, I thank you, and my unborn children thank you.  ;)

What this means for this blog: I will be posting a weekly update about the pregnancy, and probably backing off some on the other parts of my blog.  I will try to throw in something different every once in a while though.

How you can read my older weekly pregnancy updates: Click on the Twin Pregnancy tab at the top of the blog.  This will show you all posts I've published about the pregnancy.

If you have had twins or multiples recently and have some advice for me, I'd love to hear it!  It's so much harder to find information about twin pregnancy, gear, care, etc.

Okay, I think that's it.  If you have other questions, feel free to ask!  Now, onto my 15 week update.

My Halloween costume.  Mummy of two!

The babies are about 4 inches long each!  That seems so big.  How do they both fit in there?  

I am pretty bummed that I'm still dealing with morning sickness.  I guess you shouldn't pay attention to what normally happens since pregnancy is such a crazy thing to begin with.  Eating pretty much anything makes me feel awful.  Which is weird because it keeps switching between food=bad and food=good (when I had to keep food in my stomach to keep from getting sick.)

My favorite weekly pregnancy update I've read is for this week.  I have at least 5 different weekly updates I get on apps or emails.  I might be a little obsessed.  But this Pregnant Chicken one kills me (love the name Pregnant Chicken btw.) "...(the baby) moves away from light if you beam a flashlight on your belly (I like to think it makes a hissing noise while doing it.)"  That just puts the funniest visual in my head.

5th Anniversary Trip to California!

For our fifth anniversary, I wanted to do something special.  I decided that a road trip to California would be super fun and also inexpensive.  Priuses are amazing for road trips, we barely spent over $100 on gas for the whole trip.  Add to that the employee discount we got at our Fairfield Inn, no eating out since we had free breakfasts and a microwave and mini fridge in our room, cheap tickets for Disneyland's Halloween Party, and only a small amount of souveniers, we made off very well on this vacation.  Plus I don't even feel like we had to compromise.  We had a fantastic time.

We left at around 4:30am on Friday the 17th.  I'm glad we did because we were able to make it to our hotel by 3:30pm and had plenty of time to settle in, go grocery shopping, and spend some time at the pool.

On Saturday we started the day with a hike.  We found the Dripping Cave trail, a nice hike that was a good enough workout without being enough to make us hate the next few days.  Later in the day we went to Salt Creek Beach to watch the sunset.  It was so nice to be at the ocean again.

We had our first snorkeling trip on Sunday.  We went to Crescent Bay Beach.  I have to say that I don't like snorkeling in California nearly as much as I like snorkeling in Hawaii.  Maybe we just hit it at a bad time, but the water was less calm, and there wasn't very much wildlife.  We also stopped by the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, which is a place where they rehabilitate injured seals and then release them back into the wild.  They were so cute and fun to watch.

This little orange guy is California's state fish

On Monday we visited Huntington Beach and took a walk on the pier.  It was a very fun little surfer spot.  After that we stopped by the big mall called Fashion Island in Newport Beach.  There is a Tesla showroom there that Blake was excited to see.  It was a huge mall with lots of fancy stores.  We had fun wandering around window shopping.

Tuesday was an interesting day.  We drove to the San Diego area to do some things down that way.  It started out great with a visit to see the 'Disney princess castle' aka the San Diego LDS temple.  It is such a pretty temple.  After that things didn't go so well.  I have always wanted to swim with sharks of the less harmful variety, and I was excited to find a beach in California where you can often do that.  It's called La Jolla Shores and it is supposedly filled with leopard sharks, which are basically harmless bottomfeeders, but sharks nonetheless.  Unfortunately, there were apparently storm surges in California this week due to that hurricane near Hawaii, and the waves here were pretty big.  We knew we could handle them but were feeling a bit hesitant.  We finally worked up the courage to move out into the water.  When we got to the point where the waves were breaking the worst, I got hit by a big wave that pulled my snorkel and mask off to the side and got me a good breath of water.  I already hate waves and so that made me feel upset and slightly panicky.  I got out past the break and calmed myself down mostly, but of course there were still waves coming.  We snorkeled for a while, but the waves were making visibility very bad.  We saw a stingray and a bunch of teeny fish, but no sharks.  After a while I was feeling too uncomfortable with the waves and low visibility and decided to call it quits.  Luckily we made it in to shore much easier than our way out.  So after that disappointing snorkel, we drove to what was supposed to be one of the best tide pools and got there right before low tide.  Unfortunately, the storm surge struck again and we were hardly able to see anything at all.  So we went home defeated and looked forward to the next day, which was definitely going to be much better.

Pretty sure that's an alien

Wednesday was Disney day!  We decided to buy tickets to Mickey's Halloween Party instead of one day passes because they were much cheaper and we still got to be there for 8 hours.  We went early and spent some time at Downtown Disney before we were allowed to enter Disneyland.  The lines were not bad at all and we got to do everything we wanted to do.  I was so happy to be there!  Disneyland is probably my favorite place in the world.

As is tradition, our first ride of the day was Indiana Jones

Dole Whips are the best treat at Disney!

I love Haunted Mansion Holiday even more than the original!

Sally left before we got through the line :(

 

According to California, going to Disneyland will give you cancer.  And so will.... pretty much everything ever.

Blake was excited to get the wait time approximator badge

The Halloween fireworks show!

The shuttle bus back to the car at the end of the day. 

Thursday was our last day.  We were very tired and had sore feet from our day at Disney, so we spent a few hours relaxing and swimming at the pool.  In the evening we went back to Crescent Bay Beach to take some anniversary pictures and watch the sunset.  I think they turned out pretty good for self-timer photos. :)