It's been a busy few days...with Isabella

I've been letting Don have all the fun in posting to our blog. It's my turn now. We've been pretty busy the last week. We took last Friday off to drive up to the Santa Barbara area for the baptism of Isabella, Todd and Liz's daughter. Don didn't want to pay for a hotel, so we camped in Pismo beach. I wasn't too thrilled about the idea, but it turned out to be really quite nice. The campground was great. We were next to the sand dunes which were next to the beach. The first night we were there, we pitched the tent in a hurry, walked across the sand dunes (an adventure in and of itself) and had fun with our camera. We got a couple of pictures of the two of us with the sun setting in the background. I was trying to show off my belly - which has gotten quite a bit bigger! The picture here is one of the better pictures. The sunset was pretty amazing. I do have to say, though, getting up in the cold in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom was not so much fun. Still, we should go camping more often, although how we're also going to be able to fit baby and baby stuff in the car along with our camping gear I have no idea.

We spent pretty much all day Friday getting to Pismo Beach. Then Saturday we were at the baptism, which was really nice. The church didn't look like much from the outside, but it was really nice inside. The baptism reception was at the Four Seasons in Santa Barbara. That was amazing! What a beautiful hotel! There were a few weddings there that looked pretty elaborate judging by the dresses the brides were wearing and by what the female guests were wearing. We got some pictures at the baptism. Here is a picture of Hertha, Todd's mom and a very proud grandma, holding Isabella in her cute baptism outfit.

Sunday we spent in Solvang - a danish town. It was pretty cute as all the buildings were built in the same character, giving it a very European look. Almost a bit kitsch, but not quite. They had lots of bakeries and restaurants. They also had a couple of shops that sold needlecraft stuff. I bought a tree skirt to cross stich with different types of Santa - or actually more like St Nicholas. Will probably take me a few years to complete and I promised Don I'd first finish the knitting I already started - especially the baby stuff I've started to knit. He wants to make sure the baby will have clothes when it's born.

While we were in the Solvang area, Don wanted to see where Michael Jackson lived. So he looked the address up on the Internet and we drove to Los Olivos (very Napa-esque and looked like it had some great biking) and into the countryside and we found the entrance to Michael Jackson's Neverland. It's located right across the street from a school. Did anyone know that? We didn't take any pictures, just drove by. There were no fans hanging out - probably because Michael Jackson is rumoured to be in Jordan as a guest of the King there. That's the info we found on the web. Los Olivos, though, is a cute little town. Too bad it takes a whole day to get there, otherwise we'd probably go there more often for camping and biking.

I think that's all I'll write for now. Have to have dinner and also figure out a good way to let every one view the pictures we took at the baptism. Until next the next post!

(10/09/05 from Tanya: I've deleted all the photos Don placed here. If you click the picture of Hertha and Isabella, it'll take you to more pictures of Isabella's christening)