Our Trip to California

This past week we went on our first real family vacation. We went to Oceanside California, where Wes' parents have a condo right on the beach. They have this condo every year at this time, and we've been once before, but this time was really fun because we got to relax, and just have fun on the beach the whole time.

We left last sunday and drove to Las Vegas. We were a little worried how Oakley would do with the long drive, so we broke it up into two days. I also found a great deal at the Stratosphere for $24 a night, which was great, I thought. The best part was that we didn't have to pay extra to go up in the stratosphere, so we took advantage of that, even though Oakley threw a fit because we had to stand in line, and the people there didn't know what they were doing, but that's another annoying story.

Once we got to the top it was great. Oakley went right over to the window and climbed up on the little ledge to look out. The only problem was that it tilts outward so he was kind of stuck. This picture looks like Wes is pushing him, but he's just making sure he didn't fall.

Oakley loved it up there. He ran around and around. He also loved sitting on the edge. He would walk over and just sit down on the edge, or on some metal box, or whatever he could find. It was pretty funny. It was nice cause it let us get some good pictures of him actually sitting still for once.

On Monday morning, we left Las Vegas and drove straight through to California. Oakley slept for almost 3 hours in the car so we didn't dare stop, we just kept driving. It was nice. We got there around 1:00.

This was the first of many beatiful sunsets from our balcony at the condo.

Every afternoon we went out and spent a while on the beach. Oakley loved digging in the sand for the first 10 or 15 minutes, and then he got bored and wanted to walk back to the condo and into the street. Why is it that kids only want to play with things that they can't, like walking in the middle of the street? Anyway, it was still fun.

The weather was beautiful every day. As you can see by the blue blue sky in the background of this picture. That's our condo in the back also.

So this picture makes me laugh so hard. Somehow Oakley got sand just above his upper lip, so it looks like he has a 'Hitler' mustache, if you know what I mean.

Oakley and I have been watching these "Signing Time" videos for quite a while that teach you easy sign language, and the only signs he would ever do were 'more' and 'please', but for some reason on this trip he started do way more signs. This is a picture of him signing airplane. He would do this every time he heard an airplane or helicopter fly by, which was often because there's a military base just up the coast.

Aunt Margo always has to burry someone in the sand, so this year it was Oakley. He wouldn't hold still long enough for her to do the whole body, so his legs had to do.

This is our attempt at making a sand castle. I dug a big whole and made a drip castle, which you can sort of see at the bottom of the picture, and Oakley just liked destroying the castle and sitting in the hole.

This is a pelican that was "guarding" the garbage can on the pier. It scared me, but almost bit a lady who was throwing away her trash. Too bad I didn't get a picture of that.

We are pretty lucky, cause our Condo is the closest one to the Oceanside pier on the south side, so we got to walk down it many times, and see it from our balcony. Here are our adventures down the pier.

Our condo is the big white one right in the middle.

This was pretty fun. Notice the letters 'K' and 'O' on the beach. Well I guess they put those there so that the surfers can see when they are gettting too close to the pier or not. If it says 'OK' then you're ok, but if it says 'KO' then you're too close. Well, Oakley's initials are KO, so I thought it was cool, and I took a picture.

Oak, meandering down the pier.

Oak, throwing a fit on the pier. He sat down and frowned, and then just layed down right in the middle of the pier. It was kind of funny, cause he wasn't crying, he just layed there.

We had many walks along the beach. One night after the tide had gone out we found some cool stuff in the sand. I found a whole bunch of whole shells, and we found a live sand dollar, which Oakley is holding in his right hand. It's little tenticle things were still moving. This is another funny sign. If you can't read it, it says 'Tsunami Evacuation Route'. Well, we were walking east, away from the ocean, and we just thought it was funny that they had to post a sign to let people know that they needed to go east, away from the ocean, instead of west towards the water. Hopefully it saves someone's life some day. :)

Wes' sister April and her kids came on thursday, and Oakley enjoyed having someone to play with in the sand. This is his cousin Scooter.

Another funny thing that happened, was that Oakley was sitting on the beach, and he leaned forward to get something and totally face planted into the sand. It was all over his face and hair. It was pretty funny.

One afternoon a few of us went on a bikeride down the beach. It was fun cause we got to use those old bikes that have the handle bars that come way up, and the brakes are the backwards pettle ones. It was fun.

Oakley and his cousins chowing down on some popcorn in the condo.

It's a tradition on the last night that we're there to go out on the pier and eat at Ruby's Diner which is at the very end of the pier. We had to wait a little for a table, so Oakley took a seat on the stairs out front and showed us his touchdown skills.

We had a wonderful vacation and got to relax a bunch. It was well needed and well deserved. We can't wait to go back next year.

Fall leaves

Oakley got to play in his first pile of leaves the other day. He's been sick with a sinus infection and ear infection and everything else that comes with those, so it was nice to actually see him being himself again. We broke the handle on one of our rakes so we let him use that one. He loves to drag it along the driveway and the grass. But he likes using the big rake too.

He could have gotten lost in those leaves.
He loved throwing the leaves and messing up mom's pile.

Ahhhhh, I'm being attacked by leaves. Get me out of here. Don't eat them!

Bye Bye.

Oakley's name

So one of my friends had a post on her blog about how they came up with their daughter's name. It was pretty interesting, so I thought i would do the same. Our sons name is Karl Oakley McKnight. Karl with a 'K' for all the ladies out there. (My cousin Karl said this once when he was being interviewed on tv about unicycling, and I thought it was really funny.) Anyway, his first name, Karl, is a family name. Wes' first name is Karl, his dad's name is Karl and his grandpa's name is Karl, so Oakley is the fourth Karl in the family. It was actually my idea to have Oakley's first name be Karl, not Wes'. He didn't really care, but I thought it sounded good with Oakley, and once Wes realized his initials were going to be KO, he was hooked. Now for the juicy part. This happened about six years ago, during our first year of marriage. We were sitting in sacrament meeting one sunday, and we were bored. Often times I would open the hymn book and read the stuff in the back, or look through the songs, so we pulled one out and started looking through it. We saw the names at the bottom of the pages and I don't remember which one of us started talking about names for our future children, but we went with it. On page 202, 'Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful' we saw the name Frederick Oakeley. He is the one who translated this hymn. It's spelled a little wierd, but once I said it outloud and respelled it, I actually liked it, and so did Wes. I think he liked it most, because if he ever becomes famous he'll have a built in sponsor. :) Anyway, that's how we found the name Oakley, and we've liked it ever since.

Halloween

This year wasn't Oakley's first Halloween. Last year he was almost a month old on halloween, but this year was much more fun cause he actually got excited about it. Here are a few pictures from last year though. He had a little pumpkin outfit that was cute, and then his costume last year was a tootsie roll. Boy does he look so different then he does now. I don't even remember him looking like this. Good thing we have pictures as proof that it really is him.

For this year's costume, I went to different stores and looked at a bunch of costumes, but I never really found anything that was cheap and that I liked. I finally settled on a $10 lion costume from Walmart. When we got it home, I took it out and put it on Oakley. Even though I bought size 18 months, it still came to the middle of his calfs, and only halfway down his arms, and the hat thing was all flat, not poofy like a lions mane. So I was pretty bummed, but didn't want to look anymore. Well, my sister Katy just had a baby in August, and for one of their parties she made a football costume for baby Kayla. She let me try it on Oakley, and he looked really good in it. He filled it out a little more then Kayla did, so it looked more like a ball. She let me borrow it for Halloween. It was so cute, and it fit our lifestyle and his energy very well. Her baby ended up being a little red chili pepper, which was cute too.

So here are a few pictures.

This one is my favorite of Oakley giving the TOUCHDOWN signal. He kind of picks and chooses when he wants to do it, so I'm glad we got a good picture of it.

Here are all three McKnight cousins. Scooter, Lily, and Oakley with grandma McKnight. Their costumes were so cute, Jack and Sally from Nightmare before Christmas.

Here's another pictures of Oak in his costume chowing down on the candy that grandma Thompson gave him. Our little family. The football player, the football, and the referee.
Oakley and his little 2 month old cousin Kayla. Thanks Kayla for letting us borrow your cool football costume.

This is us leaving grandma's house to go trick or treating. He loved carrying his little pumpkin. He would swing it around, and amazingly none of the candy would fall out cause the whole is pretty small at the top. Although there were many times when he tripped and fell, and all his candy went all over the place. It was tricky to get Oakley to go up the sidewalks to the doors. He just wanted to roam around on the street. So we usually had to pick him up while he was screaming and take him to the doors. Once he was there he was fine, and he would knock on the door.

Here's Oak and his dad wandering down the street. Good thing my parent's neighborhood doesn't have many cars.

Overall, it was a really fun Halloween. I think Oakley sort of figured out what was going on. He knew that the stuff in his pumpkin was candy cause when grandma put it in his bucket he immediately took it out and held it up to me to open. Also, at one door that we went to, they put the bucket of candy low so Oakley could choose his candy. He took one piece and put it right in his pumpkin. That was fun to see that he knew what to do with the candy. Holidays like this are much more fun with a kid. I can't wait till Christmas to see his reaction to all the crazy stuff that goes on then.