7/26 Beach and temple garden

A walk on the beach - beautiful but maybe not as relaxing as we thought it would be - since Cora refused to walk on the sand and made us carry her. ;) We rested in the temple meditation garden after and took some pics.

More beach 7/24

Just hanging out at Hukilau with the family.

Feasting on delicious musubis Heidi made.It was pretty bright out.

Cora and Daddy playing in the water - not her favorite thing but she tolerated it.Sometimes he had to hold her up over a wave so she wouldn't get splashed - although the sunglasses were great at keeping water out of her eyes. Whenever he brought her back down, she would cling to him and pat his back.

Here's a guy much happier in the water than Cora! Just look at the big smile on Marcus's face.

Kaena 7/22

Ryan and John took the Hummer out to Kaena Point and had fun off-roading and spending time together. This top pic was taken at Haleiwa Beach Park on the way home, the rest were taken at Kaena.

Cora's first beach day 7/20

This is the first post I am catching up on from our trip to Hawaii. We wanted to see our family, especially John who now has his papers in and will be going on a mission soon, and also check out a possible opportunity for Ryan in Kahuku. We spent two weeks there and had a blast. Cora had never met her auntie Heidi or her cousins from Hawaii so it was great to see them, just before they went back to school.

This is the first day we took Cora to the beach in Hawaii - she did not like the water or the sand but by sitting with her on my lap on the sand, then slowly transitioning her to sitting on her own, she started playing with it a little, eventually even helping Jason to bury her legs in the sand and make her a mermaid.

St. George

We flew to Hawaii out of Las Vegas, so we got to spend an evening with Grandma and Grandpa Nielson in St. George before we left and a day with them when we got back. It was great to see them both, we love them so much. Here we are with Grandma feeding the ducks at the golf course. It was so hot there, we couldn't believe it! Temperatures in the 110s!

Cora being a cheese at Grandma's house.

Capitol Tour

We arranged to do a tour of the Capitol through the office of Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) where Ryan's cousin Justin works as the Chief of Staff. Christopher and Erin came with us.Chillin' with Brigham.And the Idahoans, or at least the people who have lived in Idaho, took a pic with the statue from Idaho - don't remember his name but our guide described him as a "potato-looking guy," which is pretty accurate I think.Not sure what this pose is supposed to be - we were in the former Supreme Court chambers so I imagine it had something to do with that.

Hanging out at home

These are just some random pictures from our last week at home. Grandma, Aline and her family came out for a weekend right when we got back from New York. It was great to visit with Grandma again and watch her get to know Cora's little personality. We love her so much.

Cora helping me play Plants vs. Zombies - a silly game CW got us all addicted to while we were there.Playing WiiWe had a great time in Virginia and had so much fun seeing Mom, Dad and CW get to know Cora. She loves her grandma, papa and uncle so much and will certainly miss running all around their big house and having so much attention. Thanks Mom and Dad for taking us in and helping us out so much! Especially since I was feeling sick a lot of the time when I was there, and didn't help out as much as I wanted to. We love you both so much!

New York New York

Ryan and I decided to take advantage of our relative proximity to New York and Mom's much appreciated willingness to babysit with a couple day trip to New York City. This is something that we had talked about doing for a long time and we were very excited to finally do it. We drove up one morning, stayed one night in a hotel right next to Times Square (pretty good deal too, $120 for the night), and drove home the following evening. We saw just about everything you could see in that amount of time. The first day we went to the Empire State building and a few other sites and then saw In The Heights, a Broadway show that was conveniently, right across the street from our hotel. It was an awesome show and we loved it - supposedly it's going to be made into a movie so we'll be keeping our eyes out for that.

Here we are at Times Square after getting our tickets at the TKTS stand.

Ryan with a horse cop, posing for us.At the Empire State building overlooking lower Manhattan. Corbin Bleu, the star of our Broadway show, was awesome and super nice. Since our hotel was just across the street from the theatre, we saw all the stars coming out from our window. We decided to walk down to Times Square to see the night lights, and when were walked back he was still out there but the crowd was mostly gone, so we decided to snag a pic with him too. We found out afterwards, from Heidi's and Elise's kids, that he is a famous actor from High School Musical. They thought it was pretty cool that we had a picture taken with him.The first thing we did the next morning was go to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. That was a pretty cool experience. We decided to get all day Subway passes so we could go wherever we wanted - definitely worth it.We stopped by Wall Street and the Stock Exchange.This is a terrible picture of a subway rat. :)Pretty cool sight after lots of other places - the Manhattan temple. We took a very brief jaunt in Central Park - yes there is quite a bit of PDA going on in the background there.Really long Subway escalator.Grand Central StationThe United Nations building.There were a lot of other sights we went to but didn't get decent pictures of. It was an exhausting, but very fun and memorable trip. Thanks so much Mom for babysitting for us!

A Capitol Fourth

Ryan was lucky enough to get two tickets to a rooftop in DC to watch the fireworks on the 4th of July from a patient at his affiliation, so the two of us decided to head downtown to check out the show. I was a little apprehensive about facing the crowds, especially on the Metro, but we were actually pretty lucky. They were crowded, but we were able to get on the first trains we saw and they weren't so crowded that you were touching strangers on all sides - there were plenty of people standing, but there was also breathing room. The building we were on was right by the National Archives and we had a fantastic view of the fireworks - and not only the DC ones, but also all the neighboring cities' firework shows from around Virginia and Maryland were visible on the horizon.On the roof before dark.

Baltimore Aquarium

It's been a while since I've posted any pictures and to catch up I need to start at the beginning of July. Ryan finished his affiliation in Virginia and had a really good experience there. We had a couple of weeks to play after he was done. First we enjoyed a visit with Nicole and her family. We went to the Baltimore aquarium with the boys and Cora loved seeing all the fish. She's always been interested in fish and it was one of the first animals she could identify by name a few months back.

Watching the dolphin show with Uncle Christopher.

Looking at the birds with Papa. (Also one of her favorite animals)Outside the aquarium with the whole gang.

Big News for 100th Post

Well I have a lot of catching up to do here but before I do that, since this is my 100th post I thought I'd share a little news first - old news to family but it may be new to some of my readers. Ryan and I are happy to announce that we are expecting our second baby in late January. We should have some sonogram pictures and hopefully news of the baby's gender in a couple of weeks. We are very excited for our new addition and to see our family continue to grow!