The Many Faces of Abi in April

Abi went swimming!

Saturday night we took Abi swimming for the first time and she loved it! i knew she would since she has been enjoying the bathtub so much. she gets very excited in the water and immediatly lifts her legs and tries to kick and mover her arms, i think she'll be swimming on her own by the end of summer :-)
When she's in the flaoting things she can kick her legs to get closer to you, its pretty funny to watch her work so hard. Here are a few shots with my camera that is water-proof so we can get super close pictures and underwater shots when she's a bit older.

The Bridge to Good Cooking Cookbook!

This post is a little over due but Jolie and I finally finished the cookbook. It took MANY weeks to complete but looks awesome. I came up with the title which i thought was a creative play on words since the name of our church is The Bridge. We designed the layout, typed or copied/pasted all the recipes into an open source page maker program, added drawings from kids at church, and assembled it all (we did have help putting the books together). It took A LOT of hard work and time but we are both so proud of the finished product. We collected over 530 recipes and it turned into almost a 250 page book. All the proceeds of the book go towards this summer's VBS at church.

Amelia's Bridal Shower

On Saturday I hosted a bridal shower for my friend Amelia. She is getting married on July 4th to a great guy named Chris. Josh's sister made the cake and i helped assemble it, kneeded fondont (and ate some too), and then i applied all the white dots, of course the cake was super delicious and looked beautiful when i added real gerbera daisies to the top.

Here are a few pictures of the very hot morning.

Our Backyard

I have been doing a lot of work on our front and backyard. This last Saturday I hosted a bridal shower for my friend Amelia and next Sunday we are having Denise's graduation party so i needed to do a little planting to make the yard a little more inviting. i think everything looks great and really colorful.

I LOVE MY MOMMY!

Now that i am a mom i think more about the relationship that i have with my mom. I pray that as Abi gets older that we will share the same bond that i do with my mom. I try not to take for granted the fact that i have my mom, and that we live so close to eachother. i love spending time with her and want to treasure every moment. My mom is my best friend, my mentor and someone i look up to. i want her to know that I love her and hope her mother's day was relaxing and fun!

Recap of San Francisco

One of the trips that we had been planning to do sometime this spring was head to San Francisco to see some of our friends and family. Abi has never been to SF and we wanted to show her off to some of our family up there.

We weren't sure when we were going to make it up there but we received an invitation to my cousin's wedding and we figured we would take the opportunity to visit the sites and spend some time with family we haven't seen in a couple years.

I took Friday off and we went up early so that we could spend some time relaxing and enjoying the area. We decided to make the best of the afternoon and go to the Aquarium of the Bay. One of the best parts was that we got in for 50% off since we have a Chaffee Zoo membership.

It was a lot of fun and there was quite a lot to see. They have a 300 foot long moving sidewalk that takes you through two different underwater tunnels. The first that was very similar to what is found on the California coastline and the second with sharks, rays, starfish and other various fish.

There was a really cool moon jellyfish exhibit that we got to stare at for a while. We hadn't seen one this big before and I attempted to get quite a few pictures that would hopefully result in some good shots. Abi enjoyed all of the fish and touching some starfish in the petting exhibits.

Here's some pics of the Aquarium:

After the aquarium we decided to go towards Lombard street. It had been quite a long time since Steph had been there and I couldn't remember ever seeing it. It was quite a walk from the top to the bottom and then back up. We ended up going to Coit Tower on Saturday before the wedding and I was able to take pictures from there of Lombard street as well.

In the collage below you'll be able to see 4 photos that I took from Coit tower using both lenses I had with me. The photos are from 14mm, 42mm, 70mm and 300mm on our camera. The big picture is the 300mm from a 1.6 miles away.

Friday night we gave Blake & Rachelle a ride home from work so we could hang out for a bit. Afterwards we got to watch the sunset at Ocean Beach while Steph fed Abi. It was quite a sunset and we hope to be able to go back and enjoy it some more in the future. In the morning on Saturday we enjoyed walking around the Union Square area and going through some of the stores.

The wedding was very nice and quite unique. Both Jacob and Hub were very excited and had a lot of friends join. It was very pretty and dinner was very good. We got to hang out with family from Kansas (soon to be from Texas) that we hadn't seen in a few years. They got to meet Abi and really loved hanging out with her. We're not sure when she'll meet them again, but it was a great time while we could.

We unexpectedly saw some great fire throwers and performers in Union Square on our way back from the wedding on Saturday night. Below are some other pictures from the weekend.

It was a very memorable trip on many fronts and we look forward to spending some more time in SF in the future. Our next trip will definitely include more of Golden Gate park.