San Francisco Trip

I have to say that I LOVE San Francisco! Even though it is only two hours away, we had only gone once before. That was when I was over 8 months pregnant so it really wasn't all that fun. Well, it was, but walking around just made me swell up and I felt so slow...especially walking anything uphill. So it was nice to go and have maya with us ( no longer in my tummy, but in the stroller).
It has been tough doing stuff with Maya since she is so grouchy, but its getting to the point where we are sick of staying at home and want to go out and do stuff, and she is getting happier, so this was her first day trip. Plus I know I am not the only person in the world who has a fussy baby so I just have to buck up and learn how to deal with her.
We left in the morning when Maya went down for her nap so we could travel in peace. It worked for a while but 20 minutes away she woke up and started screaming. We thought-ok that isn't too bad, we can handle it for 20 min. easy, but then we couldn't find parking for less than 30 bucks for the longest time, so it took another 25 min to park-by that time she was one mad baby! On the bright side, we did find parking for eleven dollars! :) -but that was probably the only upside.
Once we got all the baby stuff out of the car (people always told me you have to have a ton of stuff when you travel with a baby-but I had no idea it would be that bad for a day trip. We needed all sorts of warm clothes and a hat and all that because San Francisco can get quite cold.) we went straight over to Pier 39 and went to the Sea Lion Restaurant and had clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl. Ryan pretty much introduced me to sourdough bread because his family eats it all the time, and even though Im not a big seafood fan, I do love clam chowder.
The Blue Angles were performing that day-which is cool because I got to see there show in mtn. home at Ryans house only a few weeks ago, and I think that jets doing tricks is one of the coolest things to watch. The coolest things they did (which both me and ryan missed sadly) but they had one of there bigger planes fly under the golden gate bridge. That is so cool!
Afterwards we did some browsing around at all the shops and I got the cutest San Francisco sweater for really cheap, and we bought Maya an "escaped from alcatraz" outfit. We have decided that will be her halloween outfit. I wanted her to be a lobster but she isn't big enough for the outfit. Then I wanted her to be a tootsie roll, but knowing her-I dont think she would like something like that because she hates having things on her head. So we are just sticking with that. Maybe I can spike her hair with some gel or something and rub dirt on her face...I dunno....
Our last stop was Ghiradelli square where we bought chocolate trolleys (which were amazing) and split a sundae that had cheesecake and strawberries and blueberries. The coolest part of that was that they had chocolate blueberries on top that looked just like fresh blueberries! At that point Maya started crying-I knew she was tired but she wouldn't go to sleep. So after about 30 min of sitting on a bench with her, she finally gave in a took a nap.
We bundled her up in the stroller and started walking back to where we parked-which was quite a ways away, and for those of you who have been there you know how intense the hills can be! Luckily I had Ryan with me so I made him do all the pushing of the stroller while I just had to get myself up the steep roads. Man, am I out of shape...
We accidentally went up 1 road to many so we had to go back down, but it was one of the steepest roads of all...I just though, "how in the world are we going to get the stroller down that with maya in it? she was asleep and since sleep is so precious I couldn't bear to wake her up." We ended up having to go down it with the stroller backwards or she would have flown out and rolled down the hill... So I posted a picture of Ryan going down it with the stroller backwards and me standing at the bottom to show you how steep it was. Near the bottom there was a bush in the way so we had to carry it around that and the rest of the way down. It was great fun.
The drive home was doomed from the beginning....crying from the moment we put maya in the carseat. It was the beginning of her crying for an hour and fifteen minutes on the way home...it wasn't safe to stop anywhere in oakland, so we waited till we got past that and stopped at a Target. She was fine the moment we took her out of the carseat. I was even sitting in the back with her AND she had carseat toys and I know the straps weren't too tight, so go figure on why she hates it so much. If anyone has any advice on how to help babies enjoy the car more...feel free to leave a comment. :)

Funny Picture...

The other day I laid Maya Down on her mat that she plays on and I put her on her tummy so she could have some tummy time. I had some things to do, but after about 5 minutes she started yelling (which she often does, so i wasn't too worried about it) but finally she started crying so I went over to check on her because she actually doesn't like laying on her stomach-and when I picked her up, this is what I found..... she had spit up everywhere!! She isn't strong enough to keep her head up all the time so her face had bopped down into her spitup and she got it all over her face. Ryan was there and as I was about to wipe it off he said, "no wait-lets get a picture!" (how did I not think of that?) Anyhow, it gave us a good laugh, even if maya was mad.

Ryan and Half Dome

A couple weeks back when i was at home, Ryan went to Yosemite National Park and hiked half dome with his friend Jason. Ryan loves hiking, but said he felt out of shape after he hiked that. All I know is that he went a lot faster than if I had gone with him. I am quite the slow hiker-uphill or down. :) It took them 11 hours total to do the hike with a half hour nap up on the top and another half hour looking at the view and taking pictures. There were so many people there doing the hike, which I was surprised at because it looks quite hard (I guess not everyone is like me and some people actually do like a challenge)

On the hike they saw several deer, a bobcat, and a bear-its got to be so nice to escape all the business of life and see so much of nature like that. I have only seen bears at yellowstone park.

Anyways here are a few pictures.

Rolling Over!

Last night for the first time Maya rolled over while I was on the phone with my sister Raili (so she got to be in way part of the experiece). It was so cute to see and since then she has been stubbornly trying to roll over again and again but pretty much always gets stuck on her arm. Its funny because she rolls from back to front- but to help turn herself over instead of using her arms or legs to flip herself over she digs her face into the floor and keeps shoving to pull herself over. She has only succeeded twice but she tries constantly and gets so frustrated when she can't do it! All me and Ryan can do is laugh and help give her a little push over and laugh again as she still is frustrated as she lies on her arm. I love watching babies, they are so entertaining!!!

I FINALLY did it!

Yes, finally did it....I dyed my hair brown-which is of course my natural color, but it has been close to 5 years since I have had all of my hair brown, I usually have lots of blond highlights. There have been times where I am pretty much completely bleach blond. So this was a BIG shock to my system. I have been wanting to do it for some time now because I get sick of having to put hightlights in all the time. All you ladies know what I mean, you get highlights-they look great for about a month and a half and then they start growing out and by 2-2 1/2 months, you cant stand how you look anymore but you try to push it out as far as you can so you dont have to spend the money to get it done...

So yeah, I told My hairdresser Wes (he is my favorite ever!) and he said that he would put in a decently dark color but that it would fade probably a bunch because he was putting it on bleached hair. So the picture is the day i got it done, since then it has lightened a bit but I still like it. 

The funnest part was that I didn't tell Ryan I was going to do it, even though Ryan new me as a brunette when I was what-15? He fell in love with me as a blond (although I am sure it had nothing to do with it) so whenever I said I was thinking of going brunette, he would always tell me it was my choice and that he would be happy with whatever, but I could tell he wasn't anxious for it to come. I wanted to see his "true" reaction so I thought this was the best way.

The day came and after the deed was done Wes turned me around and I was horrified! I hated it, I cried on the way home and looked in the mirror once more and then didn't look at myself in the mirror again for about a day and a half. I guess it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but I just didn't feel like myself at all. I had nightmares about what ryan would say when I got off the plane.

When I went home, I got off the plane and I couldn't see Ryan anywhere. He had to finish an appointment with a client so that kind of took the climax out of the whole situation. When he finally showed up he came up hugged and kissed me, told me how much he missed me and then took Maya and we started walking away. I thought, what????? is that it??? he hates it I know it! So I asked him, "what do you think of my hair?"

He looked at me and said, "yeah, your hair is a bit different, what color is that anyway, cause its definitely not blond ? (in all fairness at the beginning it did have a tint of red" I thought to myself you have GOT to be kidding me....all this worrying for that! he didn't even really notice. I guess that just goes to show that us girls really worry more about our looks than our husbands do. After a bit, he said that he really liked it and that yeah, he could tell a difference. I am really starting to like it and next time I might go a shade darker. We'll see....