New Baby Update

This little guy is already getting way less attention than his big brother. Poor kid. I'm sure he'll get over it someday in therapy. Despite the lack of blog devoted to him I am VERY excited for this new little baby to come! And not just because I'm getting large and uncomfortable.
Another pregnancy has gone perfectly smoothly. Am I really that lucky? I keep expecting my luck to run out at any moment and find out that something has gone tragically wrong. But besides my iron being low, everything is as it should be.
I wish I had more information to give you about the baby. All I know is it's a boy, he has all his body parts and a wonderful heartbeat, likes to kick and squirm, and he's probably the size of a small cabbage (17 in. 2.9 lbs). The due date is still December 16th, but at my last doctor's appointment she kept talking to me like it was still November 28th. We'll see...
I think now is the time to place bets. When will he come, how big, etc. Will was two weeks early and weighed 7 lbs 4-ish oz, and labor took about four hours. Please leave a comment with your guess, and the winner will receive the baby's umbilical cord nub! Just kidding...I'll think of something much more appetizing.
Also as far as names go, we're thinking about Caleb (a little too popular right now), Elliot, Trent, and Max.

Lake Taco Adventure

We were planning on getting back from L.A., moving back to Stanford, and then taking a little family camping trip when out of the blue someone from church offers to let us stay in their Lake Tahoe condo for the week! An offer like that just can't be passed up. So we postponed moving and headed straight for Lake Tahoe, or Lake Taco as Will likes to call it, with our friends the Conti-Browns.
Our accommodations were spacious enough for the two families, and located very close to a nice beach on the south shore. This beach had everything we could have asked for. A great view for the adults, pretty clean sand despite the effort of the ducks, and a playground for the boys.

They're still young enough to not know the difference between a real shovel and pail made for the beach, and a simple glass a spoon from the kitchen. They loved the sand and playing in the freezing cold water. I didn't even want to put my feet in the water, and Will was laying down in it!
The older boys were also crazy enough to get in the water. Seriously, I only saw one other kid attempt to get in the water. They had a great time with the Frisbee out there, and Peter swears that it was refreshing.
Will and Gabe always had a car in hand. A lot of tears were shed over the cars, but we managed to get them to share some of the time.
They're still buddies, actually best friends according to Will. It was cute to see how excited Will was to see Gabe every morning.
We made one hiking attempt. We hiked on the Eagle Falls Trail and didn't get too far, but found some beautiful scenery, and gave these guys a chance to throw some rocks in water.
We packed a lot of activities into our last day. We started out pretty early for a canoe ride. Well, it was mostly a ride for me since the guys did most of the paddling.
Will wasn't a huge fan of the canoe ride, but enjoyed dipping (numbing) his feet in the water. We tied the two canoes together for more stability and fun. It also allowed Peter the chance to take another dive into the lake. He said the middle of the lake was more numbing than refreshing.
Then we drove around the lake up north to take a gondola ride at the Northstar Resort.
It turned out to be six gondola rides total. In two of them we were safely caged on all sides, but the last one was just an open seat! And we took our two year-old boys! I think they could sense our anxiety as we firmly held them down on the seat because they didn't try to fight it.
We saw a view of Lake Tahoe from one of the lifts, and enjoyed watching the mountain bikers take on the trails. I had no idea ski resorts catered to mountain bikers in the summer. There was a ton of bikers at Northstar that day.
Here's the view from another side of the mountain. It was great up there. In some places it was so quiet all you could hear was the wind.

The very last thing we did on our trip was play some great rounds of tether ball.

Lake Tahoe Video

L.A. Weekend Getaway

We've been married four years! To celebrate this year we planned a fantastic four day trip to Los Angeles. We planned and re-planned, and ended up cramming many, many activities into our time there. We also landed some sweet deals thanks to priceline.com and Groupon.

First up: Hotels
We purposely procrastinated booking hotel reservations and ended up with some very nice deals thanks to priceline. The first two nights we stayed at the Hilton in Glendale/Northern Los Angeles. We had to stay in a non-smoking room on a smoking floor which was bearable, but probably only because the hotel was busy with all the Stanford football players! We walked in to the hotel and saw people wearing Stanford shirts, and the hotel staff had tags that said "Welcome Stanford". I was a little confused for a bit due to my complete lack of knowledge about Stanford sports.

Our last night we stayed at the Marriott in Santa Monica. They have some giant furniture in the lobby. After driving through dirty, busy Hollywood this place was so peaceful and clean! We took advantage of the pool and hot tub here. Don't worry, I didn't cook my baby. I sat on the step and made sure most of my body was out of the water and freezing.

Activities
We bought season passes to Universal Studios the last time we were in southern California in March. We got to check out the 3-D King Kong ride during the studio tour, and every show they had playing. We tried to get a picture with Homer and Marge, but the guy taking the picture was iPhone inept so all I have is this dorky picture with Dora I took for Will. We missed Will a ton, but gratefully were able to leave him with Nana and Papa in Brentwood.
We got free tickets to a taping of a new sitcom for ABC called, "Better With You". We had to get there by 4:00 and the ticket said to expect it to take 3.5-4 hours. About 11 PM we were finally dragging ourselves back to our car. That's right it took 7 hours to film a 20 minute TV show. It was actually very enjoyable for the first few hours. They had a stand-up comedian perform to help keep our spirits up, and they fed us pizza. It was really fun to see the different parts of the set, and how all the different groups work together on the set. They were just really slow. But while the security guard was ushering me to the bathroom I walked right by three of the younger stars of the show. My first brush with fame:)
The next morning we headed up to Griffith Park. The movies 500 Days of Summer, and Yes Man inspired my planning for this trip. The girl in Yes Man heads a jogging photography group and they meet at the observatory in Griffith Park. This park is HUGE and was donated to the city by a rich man named Griffith in the late 1800s. It houses the L.A. Zoo, a big cemetary, the Hollywood sign (seen behind us), the observatory, the Greek Theater, and probably many more things I don't know about.
The observatory has some great, free exhibits on telescopes, the Sun, our solar system and galaxy, etc. You could spend a lot of time looking at the exhibits, watching a movie in the planetarium, and enjoying the view from the roof.
Unfortunately we had a great view of some city smog. It was still beautiful although slightly asthma inducing:) Britton thinks L.A. is the next Mexico City.
We headed out to Santa Monica next and enjoyed some shopping at Santa Monica Place, the busy outdoor mall. We got some nice shoes, and watched the crazy street performers.

Santa Monica Pier is not too far away from the outdoor mall. We actually didn't do much here. Just enjoyed the walk, the view, and the lack of smog.
On our way out we stopped by the Los Angeles temple. It's amazing how close it can be to Santa Monica Blvd, and yet SO incredibly peaceful. We got to see the new visitor's center which had been closed for renovations for the last three years! The displays are very high-tech and inspiring. I admit I had to leave the service area because I just couldn't keep the tears in check. Pregnancy hormones... But they had some really sweet stories about people serving their neighbors.

Food!

I love Groupon. We found some gems of restaurants in some of the most unlikeliest of places thanks to Groupon. And at at least 50% off! First up was some really gourmet Peruvian food right in the heart of L.A.

Mo-Chica is located inside the Mercado La Paloma. Britton got the ceviche of the day, I ordered the potato salad of the day, and we shared the Lomo Saltado. It's prime beef fillet with red onions, roma tomatoes, and french fries. I wish I could do the dishes justice, but all I can say is that the presentation was beautiful and it tasted so so good.

We spent one evening at Gonpachi, a Japanese restaurant in Beverly Hills. The setting was beautiful. There was a Japanese garden outside, and the rest of the large restaurant reminded me of a Japanese castle.
I ordered the weird food like seaweed salad, which Britton actually tried as you can see below! I like seaweed salad. They had these amazing Japanese skewers which were cooked over a special kind of imported wood giving it a rich smoky flavor.

The last Groupon restaurant was Annisette Brasserie in downtown Santa Monica. I had to try my first pate. It was way better than I imagined, but I think it was mostly enjoyable because I was slightly ignorant of what it really was. Besides that, I had some amazing french toast. I'm not sure if French toast is really French, but they did a gourmet job of it. Britton had a tasty breakfast croissant with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.

Summertime and the Livin' is Easy

Summertime and our time in Brentwood is coming to a close. I realized that a lot of our activities have been documented with Britton's phone instead of our usual camera and I always forget about the pictures on Britton's phone. So here's some catching up.
Britton got the, cue angelic music, iPhone 4... He was so excited when it finally arrived in the store that he walked there instead of waiting for me to pick him up after work. It's a wonderful upgrade since his first generation iPhone was on the verge of death. He passed that phone on to Kelsey:)
The new phone takes pretty good pictures and videos. Here's will playing with his favorite girls at a park. This summer we spent a lot of time visiting the many, many different parks in Brentwood.


We also spent a lot of time taking Moto the dog on walks. Almost every day we would walk Moto and stop at a park. Somewhere along the way Will confused himself with a dog and now stops at every tree and pole to go pee pees.
It's hot here so we also spent a lot of time swimming! We went swimming at the gym, and in Nana and Papa's pool. Will has gotten SO much more comfortable in the water. He used to be so cautious, and make little pansy jumps into our arms. Now...you'll just have to check out the video below.



Living in Britton's home town we've gotten to see a lot of Britton's friends from the ol' days. We got to see a lot of people at the Warren's reception. Here's a picture of Britton, Matt, and Scott and some token children.
For Aileen's birthday we took a great family trip to Angel Island. Will is still talking about it. It's an island in the bay that was used for military and housed an immigration station. We took a tram tour of the island, learned a lot about the history of the island, and heard some pretty bad jokes from our tour guide. It has a great view of San Francisco. I would love to go back for Fleet Week to see the planes fly around from that view. It would also make a really great family bike ride some day.
I just thought this picture was cute. Will tried using chop sticks without any prompting at Oodles of Noodles, a new restaurant in Brentwood.
Labor Day weekend was memorable. Mostly not in a good way. Britton's parents left us in charge of their youngest, Alex. While cleaning out the garage on Saturday Alex was tempted by the old dirt bike, and then the ol' dirt bike owned him. Alex left all kinds of skin on the road outside the Olson house and spent the next four hours at the hospital mending his broken wrist. He's a trooper. His friend Evan shown below was there for the whole hospital experience and most of the weekend. We still made Alex go hiking with us on Monday.
Soon to come...Britton and Renee's weekend getaway to L.A. I'll keep an eye out for any celebrities Hailey:)

Part-time Job

Apparently there was an opening for neighborhood sprinkler inspector and Will heard about it. I've never seen such dilligence in a part-time summer employee before! Except maybe for Britton's stint as a pool boy. Will knows each sprinkler at the Olson's house, and knows which ones need to be pushed back down each day. He also knows his route around the neighborhood and which sprinklers usually require his attention. He even volunteers to check the sprinklers outside of each store we visit in town. The only thing better than pushing down rebellious sprinklers is of course, running through them on a hot day. A cold morning is also acceptable.

Happy Birthday to ME!

Meet Will 2.0. He's faster, smarter, funnier, and better dressed. This year he was completely aware that it was his birthday. He would sing, "Happy birthday to ME!" to anyone who asked. He can also tell you how old he is, but can't tell you his name anymore. If you ask his name he'll tell you, "I'm two!"
This year we stretched out his birthday into two days. We opened presents on his actual birthday and then had a party with cake and ice cream the next day. It was hilarious to see the different reaction to opening the toy presents vs. the clothes presents.



Grandma and Tia were in attendance at Will and Alex's party along with a family from church that we're all friends with.


We decided that Alex and Will might share a birthday, but they don't have to share a cake this year. We made sport-themed cupcakes for Alex representing each sport he plays. His favorite is now tennis! Surprisingly the tennis cupcakes were the only ones eaten. I guess people were afraid of the black frosting.

For Will we designed a Lightening McQueen cake! It was really fun to make, but not the best quality cake I've even made. It included a chocolate cake mix from a box, three Twinkies, two blue M&M's, waxy chocolate-covered donuts, and a whole lot of frosting. But it sure was cute and eaten very quickly. Will was a little sad to see it disappear so fast.

Impersonations

Watch what you say... It will be repeated by this boy and he gives you full credit!