Travel Sleep

On Christmas morning we got up at 4AM to catch a flight from Santa Barbara to Cedar Rapids. It didn't take Braedyn long to fall asleep on the plane to some of his music on his Zune. He did great travelling this trip and we're hoping he'll do as good on our 17 hour flight to Manila in Feb.

On our return flight home we had no problems in Cedar Rapids or Denver even with the possibility of snow, however Santa Barbara's perfect weather let us down as a thick fog rolled in and forced our plane to divert to LAX. When we got there United Airlines pretty much just left us high and dry to find our own way home. In the process of finding a rental car Braedyn found a nice cozy bench to sleep on. We ended up renting a car and making the long drive home.

Nurseries

Carpinteria is in an agricultural area and thus there are a lot of nurseries around here. Many of them have what amount to botanical gardens to show off many of their plants. We've been visiting a few of them in search of an outdoor firepit, but have really been enjoying checking out the plant life and the many other interesting things that they have.

Rincon Beach

We had a near perfect day just before Christmas that we headed to Rincon Beach for. Someone had built this amazing sandcastle there that we checked out for a little while, but the destructive side of Braedyn was wanting to lay seige to the castle so we moved on to the tidepools that were created from the low tide that day.

 
 
 
 

Karate Kid

We couldn't quite capture it on camera, but Braedyn would stand on this log and raise one foot up with his arms in the air doing the Karate Kid move and then jumping off of the log with a kick and a 'hi ya!'.

 
 

Naptime

Braedyn wasn't wanting to go to bed for his nap eventhough he was exhausted. Then Dori decided that a nap looked like a good idea.

 

Toro Canyon Park

Horsing around after our hike. There was a nice grassy area to run and play in at the park and then we headed back to the car.

 
 

Dune Jumping

Another day at Carp beach jumping off of the sand dunes.

Toro Canyon Park

After our hike there was a cool rock outcropping that we checked out. Braedyn got to do his first gap jump!

 
 
 
 

Toro Canyon Park

At the top of the hill that we hiked to there was a nice little gazeebo overlooking the orchards on the hillsides. We stopped here for lunch and a few pictures.

 
 

Toro Canyon Park

I'm doing a little catchup on the picture posting here... On December 20th we headed to Toro Canyon park nearby for a short hike. The park is really nice and is close to Carpinteria. It has good parking, nice playground areas and some really fun woodsy areas for exploring. There was a nice little hike that we did up to the top of a hill that overlooked the ocean and some avocado groves as well. Come to find out later, there was also a good amount of poison oak around there, Braedyn ended up with a pretty nasty rash on his legs for a few days.

 
 
 
 

Happy New Year

Well we made it through another year again. We made it back home from our Christmas trip to Iowa, although we got rerouted to LAX because Santa Barbara was too foggy to land. Here we were all worried about snow in Iowa and Denver and then it's Santa Barbara weather that throws us for a loop. Oh well. We ended up grabbing a rental car from LAX and driving home. We we're going to rent a car in Santa Barbara anyhow as our Prius decided to not start the night before we left on our trip, we made it to the airport after a frantiv call to a local taxi service. The drive up was certainly foggy, but we made in good time since it was late on New Years eve. We gave a ride to another guy who was on our plane, it turned out he lived in Afghanistan working for an NGO, so he had some interesting stories to entertain us on the ride. We made it home safe and Braedyn was a little trooper the whole time.

We're looking forward to the coming year. We have lots of friends and family coming to visit and some trips planned to go see others. Come visit us if you don't have plans to yet! Braedyn will be starting pre-school in March after he turns 3. Dori will be turning 6 this year and is starting to like the beach more each time we take her. Not too much else planned for the year and no big resolutions here besides working on our tans and getting Talisha surfing. Happy new year to all, we hope to see you all this year.

Here's a picture from our New Years day outing to Rincon beach in Carpinteria (it's still foggy).

 

Our Blook

This blog started out as somewhat of a half hatched notion of a good way to share a few pictures when Braedyn was born. A lot of our friends and family were spread out across the world and we wanted to share our joy with them in someway. It's ended up being an ongoing photo journal of our lives and especially of Braedyn's life. It's also ended up being our main photo album as we don't print a lot of pictures to make albums with. And with all the time and effort we have invested in the blog it always seemed like duplicated effort to create a photo album. Well one thing that has been on my mind to do for quite some time is to figure out a way to print out the blog in a nice format so that we do have a way to keep it around to flip through. About a year ago a friend of mine, Ben Martens, at Microsoft showed me a book that he just had made of his blog. So I set out to write a little piece of software that would suck in every blog post and then format them all correctly so that I could print our blog as well. I made the mistake of telling Talisha about this idea about a year ago and she has been excited about it ever since. Well the first installment of our "Blook" is now completed (by the time this posts Talisha will have received it as a Christmas present). I sent off the entire first year of our blog to Lulu.com for publishing in a hardback, 8.5" x 11", full color book. It is 635 pages long with over 1200 pictures in it. And guess what, you too can buy a copy! Just go to http://www.lulu.com/content/5177449 and order yours today. I think you get a discount if you order 10 of them! Anyhow, it will be nice to see how this turns out. Unfortunately it's a bit expensive to experiment so I'm not sure how the formatting will look until I actually get the first copy, so I'm sure there will be some improvements made in the formatting module of my code for next year's installment.

Oddly enough the picture on the front of the book was taken in Hawaii in 2006, not Carpinteria, since Braedyn was only 7 months at the time. Apparently the beach way of life had a pull on us before we even knew Carp existed. Funny the twists and turns life takes!

 

Merry Christmas

Well another year has come and gone and we find ourselves enjoying the excitement of the Christmas season once again. This time through the eyes of a toddler with a first realization of what a big deal Christmas really is. Even though we've celebrated Christmas in a different state every year of his life, Braedyn has rolled with the punches and is just enjoying life. Our latest adventure has brought us to Carpinteria, California where we are amazed every day at how blessed we truly are. The weather and beaches here are great, the people and the friends we've come to know are amazing, the church we've found is beyond a blessing, work is good, and having fun outdoors hiking, surfing, biking, or just playing with friends and family is what we enjoy the most. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect situation here and we thank God daily for the blessings he's given to us.


The biggest bundle of blessings we have is out little ball of joy. Braedyn has also been loving the move we made. He's always seemed more in his element in the outdoors and this is the perfect place to do that. You'll find him playing on the beach, exploring tidepools, throwing rocks in the creek, running around the playground, swimming at the pool or following daddy around on a hike, when he's doing these things, nothing can ruin the day. He's also been involved in other activities since we moved here like Kindermusik and Art class where he has really come out of his shell and just loves singing and playing drums or guitar and cannot get enough of painting and drawing. The only thing he hasn't been able to do yet that he wants to is to go surfing with Daddy, he's working on the swimming part first.


It goes without saying that Talisha and I are happy about our decision to move here. We feel like this was something that was really meant to be and that we were brought here for a purpose. The chuch that we have gotten plugged into here in Carpinteria has really challenged and encouraged us in our faith. The people we have met through the church have made us feel really welcome and we are just blessed to have met some great friends already. Talisha has kept busy with hauling Braedyn around to his classes as well as working out and continuing to be involved in MOPS. Michael's work keeps him pretty busy although when the waves come in there may be some longer lunch breaks taken. Although it's an adjustment moving from big cities to a small town of 14,000, where you will run into someone you know no matter where you go, we've been enjoying the small, beach town feel and haven't had too many Mayberry moments.

So thanks so much to all our friends and family for tuning into our blog for another year! We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and we pray God's blessings on you in this season of Christ's birth. We can't wait to see each and everyone of you as soon as possible.

Kindermusic Santa Barbara

Well another Kindermusic semester is over. Braedyn really had a lot of fun this year with Miss Kathy as the instructor. He got a lot more involved in the class than he has in the past and had a lot of favorite songs and instruments. He knows pretty much all the words to all of his Kindermusic songs now, and pretty much all the other music he listens to as well. He amazed me the other day by singing a reggae song of a local reggae band out of the blue. The music is on his Zune player and he's just picked up the words. We don't even know the words, so now we just ask Braedyn what the song says...

 
 

Couch Fort

A favorite activity at night before bath time around here is to take all the pillows we can find and build a big fort on the couch.

 
 

Spaghetti Kisses

Enjoying some spaghetti with Mommy!