Labor Day

Labor Day in our family equals getting together at Cherry Hill with the Hendricks side, lining all of the grandkids up on the wall and attempting the impossible-getting them all to look at the camera at the same time. (Don't even think about smiles-the planets would have to align for that to happen.)

So here are the annual torture pictures! (Just kidding! I'm really grateful to Karen for taking the pictures and posting them, because I, of course, took my camera and didn't even get it out of the case.)

 This is our whole family. And getting everyone in our family in one picture together really is a feat. I think the last time this happened was before Audrey was even born. In fact, maybe our wedding! The boys may hate it, but I would say once every seven years is not too much to ask! (Again, getting all the adults to look at the camera and smile is as hard as getting the kids to look at the camera.)

Sleeping Beauty

The road to baby #2 has been a tough one for us. I won't go in to a lot of detail, because we are just so grateful for where we are now. Again, I had a perfectly crafted plan to run a marathon last summer, and still get pregnant just in time to have a baby this spring. As happens so often with my best plans, I hadn't taken into account all the factors.... like God, and His timing. We had two miscarriages that have forever changed my perspective on a lot of things-pregnancy, children, life plans etc. After the second miscarriage in March, I told Josh that I wasn't sure what to do because I didn't want to put off running all summer because we were trying to get pregnant, but I also didn't want to sign up for a race that I couldn't complete. However, I thought having a goal would take my mind off things. As luck would have it, a couple weeks later I got a call from a woman in my ward who said that they were looking for one more person for their Ragnar team. The timing was perfect, because even if we got pregnant immediately, I would only be about 10 weeks along when I ran Ragnar. Then I could have my ultrasound right before the race to make sure everything was still going well.

A couple weeks after I found out I was pregnant, I was SURE that I was headed for another miscarriage. I had been feeling all the symptoms for weeks, and then all of a sudden, they just... stopped. And I have been down this road A FEW times, so I thought I knew all the symptoms. 

I had a friend tell me to go in for my ultrasound just a few days early, just to put my mind at ease. When I got to the doctor's office and they asked me how many miscarriages I have had, I had to stop myself for a minute, because I almost added this pregnancy in without even knowing the outcome yet. But on June 6th, when I was almost 8 weeks along we still had a heartbeat. I don't know if I was excited or relieved, or just really flabbergasted. I guess I don't know anything. When I think there's a baby, there isn't, and when I'm POSITIVE there isn't, there is. So I ran Ragnar, and scheduled the official ultrasound for the week after, so that we could check on baby-post jarring.

 Josh has told me for a long time that he wanted to wait until I was 20 weeks, to announce that we were pregnant. That all sounds well and good in the middle of the winter, with your first pregnancy, when you can hide your bulging belly pretty well, but on the second pregnancy, in the middle of summer, when I can only wear shirts and t-shirts, it's harder to hide. Plus, keep in mind, that by the time I was 20 weeks along with this pregnancy, I would have been pregnant for 40+ weeks in the past year. And with each pregnancy, I gained some weight, and lost less of it. So I was already bigger than my normal weight. When I was almost 17 weeks, we couldn't hide it anymore, it was starting to get ridiculous and people were figuring it out on their own.

Josh's brother and sister-in-law announced their pregnancy by just leaving a picture of the ultrasound on his parent's fridge and making letting the family figure it out for themselves who the baby belonged to. Josh has said for awhile that that's how he wanted to announce our next baby, but when his other brother announced they were pregnant just a matter of weeks before us, it was a done deal. We had to leave an ultrasound on the fridge. On August 3rd, we took family pictures at his parents' house. Josh snuck the picture in the house-but "Mr. We're waiting until 20 weeks" couldn't wait 15 minutes for his family to find the picture themselves. He started mentioning it the first chance he got. I tried to convince people it wasn't me, but the possibilities in the family are slimming, so it was pretty obvious. However, we are excited that our little one will have a cousin about a month younger. (Who are we kidding, we all know that I will go longer than full term, and my sister in law will have her baby early-so they'll probably be even closer than that.)

The next day, my brother blessed his baby. So I got permission from his wife in advance to tell everyone at the lunch afterward.

 My mom had told me that she needed another picture of Meili because she had an empty frame. So I gave her this picture. She looked at it and passed it on to my sister without saying anything. (I know she was thinking "Why did Kaleena give me such a crappy picture? (Not crappy, just the lighting's a little weird, and Meili can look better.)) My sister looked at the picture and smiled. Then I pointed out that my mom hadn't noticed. So she looked again. As I said, at that point, it had gotten pretty obvious, so when we were talking about it after the fact, my mom said, "Yeah, Dad said earlier, "Why does Kaleena have a baby bump that she's not saying anything about?" No way we could have waited till 20 weeks. That day in our ward, people started asking Josh about it as well.

Our next surprise came on August 29th. In my family there are 9 grandchildren and 8 of them are girls. Plus, we already have a girl, so Josh was sure that we were having another girl. And I think he had kind of talked himself into wanting another girl. For some reason, I just really felt like this was a boy. I have no motherly intuition whatsoever, and I kind of thought Meili was a boy too. But, I don't know. I just felt like it was a boy. Plus, I've been way hungrier with this pregnancy. So I was hoping there was a reason for that. And at our 15 week ultrasound, the doctor said the heartbeat was a little bit slow. 

So the night before, Josh and I made a bet...

 And I won.

I wish we had a picture of the very first image the tech pulled up. Because there it was, clear as day... Boy parts. This baby, so far, is opposite of Meili. The tech had to search for her gender the entire appointment, but this baby is proud to be a boy. And whereas Meili moved the whole appointment, this baby was just kind of content to sit there. Therefore, we didn't get a ton of great pictures of him.

We asked Meili what we should name our baby, and she said "Cinderella." So we said, "What if the baby is a boy?" (Before we knew the gender) And she said, "Sleeping Beauty." So here is our Sleeping Beauty Anderson. We are so excited for you to be a part of our family!

San Francisco

August 19th-23rd, we decided to take a trip to San Francisco with my parents. It's one of the few places that I've been that Josh hasn't and I LOVE San Francisco. It's usually pretty easy to convince my parents to go on a trip-especially if it involves cooler temperatures in August, and Josh isn't going to pass up a vacation where he can see 2 baseball games in one week. (Especially if he finds out about super cheap airline tickets.) So off we went!

 The flight was just long enough that Meili could enjoy it, but not so long that I had to stress about how to keep her occupied.

 We did get her a new set of horses for the trip. Can I just say, "Money well spent!" She loves them and it was so cute seeing her set them all up on her tray table.

 We wanted to spend as little time as possible in Oakland, since I keep hearing about how it is the third most dangerous city in the US. But, we at least had to see the temple. And Josh loved it. He said that was one of his highlights of the whole trip. 

 Talk about the perfect location!

 Finding a dog statue on temple grounds is rare. Maybe that's why Josh was such a fan.

 That night we went to an A's game. If I didn't record this story for future posterity, Josh would be mad. So here goes... We stopped at a Burger King to get some food, and Josh noticed a man standing in line. He said that because he was wearing a Boys and Girls Club shirt and had a young man with him, Josh thought he seemed like a good guy. (I think that you don't talk to strangers in Oakland, end of story. But whatever.) Josh started up a conversation with him, and asked if he knew a good place to get cheap A's tickets. The guy hesitated, and then said, "Well, how many do you need?" It just so happens that the Boys and Girls club gets free nose bleed seats all the time, and he had some back at the office that he was willing to give us for free. So we ate our food, and he went back to the office, came back, and gave us free tickets. And Josh had a smile on his face for the rest of the day!

 It was a good game, but we left a little early, since it had been a long day already. Of course, we missed the A's winning with a walk-off homerun. Oh well!

 On Tuesday we decided to check all the "sites" off our list. We went to Fisherman's wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard street,the "painted ladies" (houses from Full House, and finished off the day with China Town.)

 Meili would have been satisfied most of the trip with just chasing the birds. One of these days she's gonna catch one I tell ya!

 It was kind of foggy like this the whole time we were there, but the weather was still pretty nice.

 So funny story. It was so crowded to park by the painted ladies houses, that my dad and I just decided to jump out of the car really fast while Josh, Meili, and my mom circled the block. My dad asked me to pose for a picture, and when I got my camera back ...

 This was the picture he had taken. Do you see me in that picture? When I asked my dad, he pointed to that asian boy in the plaid shirt.

 So this is the second picture he took. Right... now I see the resemblance.

 As cool as Lombard street is, I just can't for the life of me figure out who would choose to live there. It seems like a nightmare to me.

 In China Town Meili got this little umbrella, which we then had to convince her not to play with the rest of the day, and a little Asian outfit. (Her name is Meili. How could we resist?)

 Then we ate dinner in China Town-which I would not necessarily say I recommend. 

On Wednesday, we went to Alcatraz.

 My mom told Meili that we were going to ride on a ferry and Meili said, "I get Tinkerbell!" From then on we had to call it a "Ferry-boat," to avoid any confusion. I think she still liked it, even if she didn't get to ride Tinkerbell.

 The American Cup just happened to be the day that we took our ferry ride, so we got to see some pretty cool sailboats.

 Someday I will get a picture of Meili in her sunglasses, where they are not crooked. But still cute right?

 Alcatraz was cool, but as usual with me, I left with more questions than when I came. So now I need to read some books and learn a little bit more about some of the stories. Also, Meili fell asleep in Josh's arms on his hike up to the building, so that changed our plans a little. The biggest downside: apparently, it's fly season.

 D Block, or solitary confinement. Josh went in one of the cells, for a few minutes while they turned off all the lights. He agrees that he would probably go nuts.

On Thursday, we decided, rather last minute, to take a drive to Santa Cruz. I'm so glad we did, because I think that was a highlight for a few of us.

 Meili, of course, loved all the mechanical toys, and playing arcade games.

 Then we played on the beach for a few minutes. I was so excited that I could finally let her run and do whatever she wanted, and I didn't have to tell her not to touch something, or not to walk over there. We could just play!

I think she and I could both live pretty happy lives as beach bums!

 I don't know what it is about this child and horses, but real horses, fake horses, big horses, little horses, they are her happy place!

 Half the reason I was in favor of going to Santa Cruz, was so that Meili could get a nap on the hour and a half drive back. Let me ask you; the child was EXHAUSTED the entire trip, going to sleep later than usual, waking up earlier than usual, falling asleep in her daddy's arms. But do you think she slept in the car on the long drive back like we planned? Of course not! Instead she talked and talked and talked and sang and talked and sang some more. I started laughing and crying from exhaustion on the third round of "I looove balloons! I love balloons! I love them, I love them, I looove balloons." (If you're thinking of the tune from Elf, you're on the right track.)

 Thank goodness for the slide at the Giants Stadium so she could run off a little more energy.

I knew that San Francisco weather is no Southern California weather, so we all came to the game prepared with our jackets. We did not come with our parkas, and winter hats, and gloves which we apparently should have, because it was freezing! Meili stayed warm in Josh's jacket though. And because she was finally all tired out, we could all sit back and enjoy the game a little. (Until our toes almost froze off.)

We left Friday morning.

A few more details I want to remember. Meili called our hotel, our "show and tell" and called the elevator, an "alligator." So every time we were in the car, she would say, "Are we going back to the show and tell and ride the alligator?" Can she just stay this cute forever?

One of her highlights, which we didn't get a picture of, was her air mattress. I brought it for the purpose of her sleeping on it at night. That was not what she had in mind. Instead she used it to barricade herself or other people into/out of rooms, to jump on (of course), and her favorite, was putting it on top of our bed and watching tv.