Gretchen loses another tooth!

Gretchen lost her second tooth last night. Yeah!! She played with this one so much that it was tipped sideways in her mouth for a few days. I guess she got tired of it and decided to have her dad pull it out.

The Tooth Fairy stopped by our house last night and gave her a whole dollar for her tooth. How lucky is that?

San Fransisco

Aaron and I had a chance to take a quick trip to San Fransisco over the 4th of July weekend. Aaron has been there 2 or 3 other times, but this was my first time. We stayed in the Marriott down by Union Square. Shelby and Gretchen went to Island Park with Aaron's parents for the weekend and the following week.

We left on Thursday and stayed through Sunday afternoon. Here are some of the highlights.

1. We got to ride the SF rapid transit, called BART, to and from the airport. It was really noisy, but it was easy.

2. We walked from Union Square all the way down to the warf. It took us a couple of hours. We were looking for a place called Mama's for breakfast, but by the time we got there the line was too long.

3. We walked through Chinatown. I swear I didn't recognize most of the fruit/veggies in the stands along the way. That part of town smelled weird as well. We looked for a little buddha to buy for the girls, because we call them buddha, but weren't able to find one. I have a couple cool pictures from this walk.

4. Our first full day there (July 4th) took us to Alcatraz. The day was beautiful and about 65-70 degrees. The island was really interesting. The coolest part of me was when we walked in to the dining hall and listened to a park ranger talk about the life of Al Cappone. He had about 90 minutes worth of history on that guys life. I also like listening to the audio tour and the real inmates and prison guards that walked us through the parts of the prison. The audio tour told us about the two prison breaks and even took us to the cells where the action took place. In one of the breaks, there were mortars dropped on prison hall and you can still see the divots in the floor. In the other break, the men created fake heads and used the handle of spoons to chisel tunnels from their cells into the utilities section of the hall where all the pipes and electrical wires run. they launched a search party, but never found them, though Alcatraz boasts no successful escapes. We were told these three guys were believed to have drowned in the water trying to get back to San Fran. the water is really cold and it has lots of hard currents.

5. We ate SF breadbowls with yummy tomato soup for lunch at Boudins bakery on the warf. We rode the cable car back to our hotel and missed the 4th of July fireworks because I wasn't feeling very well. There were probably 300,000+ people on the warf that day and I'm not all that sorry that we didn't stick around. I can imagine it was a pain to get back after the fireworks were over. We ended up napping and then going over to a Japanese restaurant for sushi and teriyaki beef. We heard the fireworks, but even though our room was on the 28th floor, the fog had rolled in and obscured our view completely. We went to bed instead.

6. One other side note on this first day. I started spotting on Thursday night, but it seemed to go away throughout the day. Needless to say, I was very worried, but we still had a good time anyway. The spotting went away completely by Saturday. I also went the doctor on Tuesday after I got back and had the baby checked. Everything is fine.

7. On Saturday, we went down to the warf again and spent most of the day there. Aaron got his street side crab cake and calamari lunch and I snacked on SF sourdough pizza. We walked to Ghirardelli square and out on to the public pier. We watched people fish and pull in crab pots. If we had more time, we probably would have done that ourselves. We also walked to Lombard street, which was quite a steep hike. We were going to take the cable car, but it was packed, so we decided to walk instead. Lomard street is pretty cool. I'll include some pictures of that too. That night we went to the Giants / Dodgers baseball game. The stadium there is one of the prettiest I've seen. The garlic fries are to die for and the fans were crazy. I was surprised at how many Dodgers fans there were and they all traded barbs back and forth. Aaron even got into it a few times. It was all around a fun night.

8. On Sunday we took the bus to Haight / Ashbury and walked around. It was pretty early and most of the shops weren't open, but we still got a feel for the area and saw some pretty funky places. We went into a skate shop and bought Shelby some stickers for her new skateboard. We also stopped into Amoeba Records which has the widest variety of CDs that I've ever seen. Lots of marijuana references in the store names and lots of hookah bars and stores that sell hookah equipment. One of the coolest things I saw was on most of the wood telephone poles there were thousands and thousands of staples where people have posted concert announcements. I took a picture and will include it in this post.

9. We went back to the hotel and took the cable car down to Little Italy, which is kind of by Lombard street and ate at a wonderful Italian restaurant. We sat in the sidewalk tables and watched the people play at Washington Square park and watched people going to church at St. Paul - Peter church. I'm not sure if it was the atmosphere or the food, but everything tasted fantastic.

More pictures below!

Gretchen's First Tooth

Gretchen lost her first tooth on Saturday, 7/19. She had been hanging on to that tooth for weeks and finally got tired of it flapping every time she took a breath. She asked Aaron to pull it and it took very little effort to get it out.

She has two other teeth loose, but she is too chicken to play with them to loosen them up.

Oregon Reunion

We just returned from the Harris family reunion, held in Newport, Oregon over the week of July 14th. I'll have to post pictures of it later, but here's a run down on the events of the week.

1. The drive was REALLY long. We went up to Island Park to pick up the girls, who were staying with Aaron's parents at the cabin. We spent all day Friday and Saturday morning there. We left at about 11:45 am and headed back down through Pocatello to get to Twin Falls. and on to I-84. We reaches Baker City at about 6:00 pm and spent an hour or so with Nel, Jon, Ken, Jami's family and Grandma. We went to mom's grave and let the kids explore some of the the headstones for my relatives buried there. We took off from Baker and drove to Penndelton and arrived at about 9:30. The kids were restless and dying to run around. We got them in jammas, but Gretchen didn't go to sleep until after midnight. We left the next morning and drove the rest of the way to Newport. The Oregon coast is beautiful. We arrived at about 6 pm.
   
2. The two houses were vastly different in quality, but both had great views. Dad, April, Nel and my family ended up in the older house and the rest stayed in the newest house. We didn't spend a whole lot of time in in the houses, so it was an ok situation. The girls spent a few nights over with Jami's kids and had a great time.


3. Monday morning, Aaron and I took the girls out on a deep sea fishing trip. Unfortunately the ocean wasn't being nice and we spent the 5 hours in 10-12 foot swells. I spent most of the time throwing up over the side of the boat. :-( Gretchen and Shelby slept some of the time. Shelby made it to about the last half hour and then started throwing up. I believe that out of 8 fishermen on the boat, 5 of us were throwing up. Not a good day for us land lovers. Aaron fished the whole time. We caught one fish, but with the help of the deck hand, we ended up with 5 fish in our bucket. We also threw in 2 crab pots and let them soak for the 5 hours we fished. We pulled those in on our way back to the dock and had about 18 crabs, 10 of which we were able to keep. They cooked them right there on the dock and cleaned them up for us. Aaron, Dad, April, Nel, Jami and Leslie had a feast when we got back and said it was some of the best crab they had ever tasted. I think Aaron spent 20 minutes making a crab sandwich. We took home 5 of the 10, I believe and they are now in our freezer. We also brought home the fish they filleted for us. That night, we went to Ken and Deb's rental house and had a big pizza and kareoke party.


4. On Tuesday, we walked along the channel in front of the houses and looked in tide pools and found a ton of starfish. Later we went to town and bought a crab pot and bait and went to the public pier and crabbed until about 5. Ken and Kareen's boyfriend (Jason) were there with us. We all caught some crab and starfish. The girls stayed back at the house and played the Wii. At 5 we went to South Beach state park for a hot dog roast. We played on the beach. Getchen and Shelby got soaked. We ended up taking Gretchen's clothes off and she ran around in her jacket and a beach towel. Thank heavens Grandma April had a towel in her car. We took family pictures and went back to the houses to get some rest. Nel was leaving the next day to get back to Baker in time for work on Thursday. So, everyone came over to our house to say goodbye. Hillary announced that she's having a baby in February (yeah!) and everyone gave Nel hugs. I was sick the whole time and went to bed right after everyone left.


5. On Wednesday, we went back out to the pier, with the girls this time, and spent the whole day crabbing. We caught several star fish and a few crabs. Shelby played with the starfish and Gretchen ran up and down the pier chasing seagulls. We saw the harbor seal a few times and lost our bait bag once. I guess that seal liked the cans of tuna and cat food we were using. (Ken swears by the mink he had in his bait bag to keep the seals away. I guess it worked because his was never taken) We gave away the crabs to Ken and the Nagels. We drove up to Otter Creek and saw the Devil's Punchbowl. The tide was out, so there wasn't much punching happening in the bowl. We walked, instead, down to the beach and spent an hour or so exploring the tide pools and rocks there. We gathered for dinner that night (just the Harrison family) at Georgie's Beachside Grill. It took us 2 1/2 hours to get seated and get our food. We were all so tired after that. The food was pretty good though. (At least mine was. ) The girls slept over at the other house and we went to bed kind of early.


6. Thursday was packing up and moving out day. We were on the road by 10. We stopped off at the historical lighthouse, which was what Gretchen wanted to do while we were there, but it was too cold to do much site seeing. Instead we got on the road and headed to Boise. With a quick stop in Baker City for dinner and to say goodbye to Nel and Jon, we hit Boise at about 11:00.


7. We drove all day on Friday and got back to Lehi at about 5. Talk about exhausting. I am so glad we had Saturday and Sunday to recover. I swear I unpacked a few things and layed around the house the rest of the day on Saturday. Shelby did mow the lawn, which was like a hay field. The cat was very excited to see us and Ashes was glad to be home too.

Here are some of the pictures. I'll try to get a link out to my photobucket page so you can see all of them.

First Post

Well, I am going to try out the blogging thing. I am hoping it will act as sort of a journal for our family since none of us are very good at physically writing things down for posterity.

Some updates to begin:

• I, Chan, am 16 1/2 weeks pregnant and feeling pretty good these days. I still have evening sickness once in a while, but I'm over the really yucky stage. I am starting to walk at night to hopefully help get me into shape before and after the baby. I have no more fat clothes, so I need to get back down to my original size before I go back to work.
• Aaron successfully put pipes on his '07 Harley Softtail Custom over the weekend. I'll post some pictures when I have them uploaded. He did a great job for someone who isn't really a handyman, and I was very impressed with how well he did. We went for a ride and it sounds awesome. Maybe I can get a sound byte as well and post that.
• Shelby met a new friend, Jessica, who lives across the street from Aaron's parents. Aaron's dad is watching the girls 3 days a week, while I go into the office. She also started mowing the lawn every weekend for $5 and has already bought a new skateboard and a set of knee, wrist and elbow pads. She has been working on several tricks since that purchase.
• Gretchen is a bike riding fool. She loves to go up the neighbors driveway, which is really steep and ride down as fast as she can. She has lots of playmates in the neighborhood, so she's always busy.
• Aaron and I are flying to San Francisco on Thursday and staying until Sunday. I can't wait! We have tickets to Alcatraz and to the Giants vs. Dodgers game. I'm sure there will be plenty of seafood for Aaron and lots of fun.
• The girls will be going to Island Park, ID with Grandma and Grandpa Jenkins for the weekend and staying the next week as well. We will go pick them up next Thursday to head up to Oregon for the Harris family reunion.