Norah Can Read!

Well, sort of.

At the Beach

We've been exploring some of our local beaches.

A few weeks ago our friends Brad and Mandy invited us to tag along with them to go check out the tide pools just down the canyon from us at Point Dume. It was beautiful to be down at the beach as the sun was setting, and fun to get to see all the starfish.








Then the next week we decided to check out Leo Carillo beach, which is one we've heard a lot about. It certainly lived up to the hype. Look how beautiful!








A couple amazing things about these two beach trips are A. we went to the beach in NOVEMBER (!), which is still amazing to me, and B. these two beach trips were a real turning point in our plight to get Norah to wear shoes. Apparently the beach is an exciting enough distraction that she forgets how much she usually dislikes wearing shoes and just rolls with it. I'll take it.

'Venturing' Out

Okay, so now that we've been here in California for a few months, it's been high time that we get a lay of the land. So a couple of weeks ago we drove up to Ventura to check it out.

We heard it had a cool little downtown. It does.




What we didn't know was that every other store is a thrift shop.




In other adventuring, we also recently went to check out Griffith Park and observatory. We liked it there. Fantastic view. It's just north of L.A., along the same strip of mountains as the Hollywood sign.

This is the Hollywood sign.

Meanwhile, we also finally made it to my school's zoo. That's right. My school has a zoo.


The layout of the zoo caters more to the students than to visitors, so it was hard to get up close to the animals. I get it: they need to train to manage exotic animals. But despite being slightly disappointing, it still had its highlights.





What did not disappoint was the 'show,' which was a fantastic blend of information, passion, and awkwardness.

So that's it for now, stay tuned for some more adventures to come.

All of Fall in Three Days

Last week we decided to do something very impromptu and fly to SLC for the weekend. It was my friend Tia's 30th birthday party as well as Halloween, so we thought we'd go and join in the fun with friends and family there. Plus, it is still 86 degrees in California and we've had a hankering for some Fall, so we thought this would be a good way to get us some of that as well.

On Friday night all the fam (minus Laura and Bret who we very much missed) got together for some Halloween Eve fun. Poppy and Grandma were in rare Halloween form, and Norah was in heaven with all her Udall cousins around.

At Tia's big bash. It was very fun to celebrate with her and to see and catch up with friends we don't get to see often enough. Plus, the costumes were amazing.

On Halloween we got Norah dressed up and made the rounds.

Leo and Norah. These poor kids, every time we get them together we make them take a billion pictures, but who can resist? Especially when they are in costumes!

Then it was time to go trick-or-treating. The concept of endless candy at every doorstep was pretty lost on Norah (although she did enjoy putting it in and taking it out of her bucket), but getting to be out walking around with all the kids was definitely exciting.

She was loving crunching the fall leaves under her feet, she kept walking back and forth over them.

(Thanks Cannons for letting us tag-along, and Poppy for coming with us.)

It was a great Halloween weekend, exactly what we wanted.

15 months of fun

Okay, so Norah is 15 months old. For some reason this feels like a watershed moment, and we must therefore chronicle. Not that our blog isn't all about her anyway...


First, she loves to read books. It's pretty awesome, especially when she brings a book over to you for you to read with her. It's even better when she's got the book memorized; she'll anticipate the next page by saying the next word or doing the next motion before you get there.


She loves all her little friends. And forts.


She is still a water baby. Bath, pool, ocean, fountains, you name it. They all get her excited. And at 15 months, she now has enough hair to create the obligatory shampoo mohawk.


She is also talking a lot. Most of what she says is hard to decipher, but sometimes she goes on for a while and gets really animated. Check it out:

She's probably proposing effective health care solutions, to no avail.

Here's what we can tell she's saying for sure:

hi, or hey! (high-pitched to low pitched)
mom
dad
dog
ball
no
up
hat
moon (said for both moon and balloon)
ding dong (said "din don")
shoes (said "sues")
socks
books
trucks
banana (na na)
piggy
baby (said "bee bee," whispered)
cheese
bath
bah ba (bottle)
paci (pacifier)
night night (nigh nigh)
thank you (said "da doo")
hot
Plex (the magic robot from Yo Gabba Gabba)
bye bye

Finally, she is cruising. Her special crawl is now officially a thing of the past. I truly think the motivating factor for walking was having both hands available for carrying stuff.

Is it just me or is all this growth happening really fast?