HAPPY FOURTH!

Happy Independence Day, and happy fourth month of life to our little 'zee!! I can't believe she was born 1/3 of a year ago. Holy moly. More about that later, but she lucked out and had a pretty awesome four-month-birthday.

The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. Last year, it was kind of a bummer. "Morning sickness" (AKA all-day-every-day sickness) inhibited all of our usual festivities. We were reduced to running out to buy toilet paper (and some food for Chris), when most people were standing in the street to watch fireworks from the top of the hill we lived on. Which made driving and street parking an adventure. The day wasn't all bad though, we did get to watch Where Eagles Dare, which is awesome and makes you feel all American and stuff! 

But I digress...

This year it was much more fun having Daisy out of the womb. Our life and hearts are so much fuller now that she is here to accompany us on all of our adventures :)

We started off with a lunchtime barbecue with our dear friends in Redwood City! It was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the company top-notch.

Sophia and Annabella - Daisy's new favorite friends (and chew toys)

thanks for this shot, Shari!

And then we shuttled ourselves across the Bay for tacos with my fam (not pictured but it was the most patriotic Mexican food you've ever seen, I assure you). We also watched the first half of Independence Day before heading out to Pleasant Hill for fireworks. Because that is the one day a year when it's pretty much guaranteed that movie will be on TV somewhere. And aliens + America = quite the winning combination.

We love 'merica.

We also love dressing patriotically (my shirt is actually an American flag made up of the names of all 50 states. and Chris calls Daisy's outfit her "picnic table dress". holla!)

And of course, the only photo where Daisy graces us with her gaze and Chris and I have AWESOME facial expressions is also the only one that turned out super blurry...

On to the fireworks! Daisy LOVED them. Totally transfixed. I guess our little adrenaline junkie adores explosions and loud noises too. Should we be concerned about this? 

Props to Chris for how well this one turned out!

my heart was kind of a puddle by the time this was all over.

After this show was finished, there was another one about three miles away and just slightly to the left of the one we had just watched. So while we waited for the crowds to clear out of our general vicinity, we chilled and watched a second set of fireworks! Daisy was so stoked. She couldn't stop talking. It was precious. 

After fireworks we went back to my family's house, ate some pie and ice cream and finished watching Independence Day, then ended up staying the night because we were pooped. 

All in all, I believe it was a successful celebration of our American freedoms :) I am so grateful to live in this beautiful country. 

Monterey Bay Aquarium

About a month ago, Chris surprised me with a day trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium! We live about a two hour drive away from Monterey, and the journey out there is absolutely beautiful. California is a pretty place, there's no denying it. We drove the entire thing in our spiffy new Honda CRV, as a matter of testing her road-tripping capacities of course, and I must say she is a keeper.

As for the actual content of the aquarium...two thumbs up from us!! Here are some pictures, because my grasp on the English language is not at its' peak tonight:

 itty bitty jellies!

 baby sea turtle!

 Jellyfish exhibit NUMBER TWO! With psychadellic Hendrix-esque music blasting the entire time. I was stoked. If you couldn't already tell, I kind of love jellyfish.

 these little guys moved FAST. which is weird for a jellyfish. but they looked rubbery and bounced around like crazy bouncy balls and were super fun to watch.

 the octopus was feeling shy today :(

can you spot the crab???

Anyway, I pretty much only photographed jellyfish, because I love them and also because my phone died. But luckily I wasn't the only one documenting our adventures that day....

 Chris brought a sketchbook along! :) I love his sketches.

And okay, I guess we both kind of love jellyfish.

There were a lot more awesome things in the aquarium - apparently they even had a Mantis Shrimp in one of the exhibits! We went on a quest to find it, but failed, because apparently it was in the kiddie "Coral Crawl Tunnel" that we didn't venture into because we thought maybe we were too old for that business and also we were taking turns wearing Daisy.
Speaking of Daisy, she looked pretty darn cute, but in the only picture we remembered to take of her, she looks kind of stoned [it was just the sunlight, I swear!]:

Our little explorer is still kind of upset about how the sun gets in her eyes.

Anyway! We both loved it. I think Daisy even enjoyed it - especially the super long nap she took in the sling...the aquarium lighting was dark and the sling was cozy so she was a pretty happy camper.

We'd love to go back to downtown Monterey and explore some more sometime - it looks so interesting! Unfortunately we were so beat by the time we finished the aquarium, all we had enough energy for was to pop into a cinnamon roll bakery that was on our way back to the car and grab a couple rolls. Which were extremely delicious, by the way.

Those were the days. What a great way to celebrate Chris' last week of freedom before heading back to work. [he ended up having the entire month of May off, due to film schedule shifts, and we were able to use the rest of his "paternity leave" and hang out with him every day! It was soooo nice. So so so nice. Sometimes I miss those days, but I'm glad to have a schedule back again too :) ]