Quater of a Century Old

My 25th birthday was great! Brandon and the kids took me to Johnny Carinos for dinner. The next day, Brandon took me kayaking on the bay. It was sooooo cool! We saw sea otters, seals, and a mom and baby dolphin. It was so awesome. The dolphins were definitely showing off. We were to busy watching them swim around us to take a picture.

This is the largest kelp forest in the world!

4th of July

Today we had a BBQ with Brandon's Mom and Jack and the Taylor's. It was a beautiful day for the most part. The fog rolled in later in the afternoon and we were afraid we wouldn't be able to see the fireworks. We went to Soldiers Field on Post to watch the fireworks over the bay. It was a lot of fun but really cold. It is crazy that on July 4th, we were all wearing jackets and bundled with blankets.

This picture is just for Brittany :)

Happy Birthday Grandaddy and Brady.

Brandon's Graduation

Brandon's Graduation was this past week. It is nice to have his Mom and Jack here this week. For an update, Brandon is going into a post DLPT class for the next 12 weeks. We will be here for even longer than we thought but are really happy he got into this class.

These are two of Brandon's teachers.

A Little While Longer

It looks like we will be in Monterey, CA for a bit longer than we thought. Brandon took his big test last week. The scoring of the test is really weird and hard to explain, so I will just say that he did not pass the listening portion of the test(he got a 1+). He did well on the speaking and reading. A lot of different things could have happened becaues of this, but we were very lucky. Brandon has been moved back into the class before him and will have another chance to take the test in 6 weeks. He has this week off, then starts back up next Monday. Now that he knows what to expect from the test and knows exactly what to work on, I think he will do fine. We were very excited about the fact that we were about to move on, so in that aspect it is difficult. Brandon is also very frustrated because he knows he understands the language. I guess we could be stuck in worse places, right?

Berry Pickin' Fun

This last weekend we went to a berry picking farm and had a great time. My cousin Becca told all about her family's berry picking fun on her blog, so we just had to do it. We picked blackberries and strawberries and they are soooooooooooo good. Jacob picked the blackberries for a while, but then had more fun wandering around looking at everything. We went over to pick strawberries next. There was no picking involved for Jacob. He just followed us down the rows eating as he went. After we picked, we played. The farm had an area for kids with an old tractor and some hay bails. It was a beautiful day to have a picnic and let the kids play! Thanks Becca for a new family tradition (hopefully)!

Zoe was constantly trying to look around me.

Two seconds later she strawberry and dirt all over her face.

Thanks to visiting Mimi and Pawpaw, Jacob was waiting for the tractor to turn on.

Chill Out

You would think we never feed her.

A couple of days ago we found out how much Zoe really likes strawberries. When Brandon was with the kids, he said Zoe disappeared into the kitchen for a little while. It was the same day I had gone grocery shopping and the strawberries were in a bag on the floor. After a little while in the kitchen Zoe happily came out with a red ring around her mouth. Brandon said that half of the strawberries were on the kitchen floor with one bite taken out of each of them. Now whenever she spots them in the fridge, this is what happens.

Father's Day

For Father's Day we went to Natural Bridges State Beach. It was a bit too windy and cold to hang out on the beach but there was a great hiking trail. Jacob found a stick to walk with and had a great time leading the way. Zoe hitched a ride and almost fell asleep on me. We had a great time and loved how well the kids slept that night!

This bridge used to be three bridges in a row but due to erosion it now stands alone. The rock out farther in the water was the connection of the last bridge back in 1900 and the other bridge was to the left.

Zoe kept that hat on for about 3 seconds...max.
Look at my handsome guys!
Pretty flowers.

My favorite spot on the hike.