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This will be short. We got home Thursday evening and have been busy ever since (no transition from vacation to life for me!). I have so much to catch up on though, so hopefully I can do that soon. But for now I just wanted to check in and say hi and let anyone that might have wondered know that we got back fine. I have to say, California is beautiful (in some places...other places not so much), but Washington is GORGEOUS. I forgot how much so.

The San Diego Temple (last of the catch up)

So this is the last of what happened a few weeks ago and I'm trying to think if there's anything to mention from the last week. Mike's been gone most of it, and we've been pretty boring in his absence, so I guess not. Wait! Actually, a really really fun thing I did was just yesterday! (that's my mommy brain for you!) I got to see a good friend that I hadn't seen since high school! For those that know her, it was Cressa (C.J.). Mike took our camera to Monterey, so I had to buy a camera at the grocery store last minute and the pictures need to be (gasp!) developed before I can put them up! We spent about 3 hours hanging out at her place and at the pool there, and the time just flew by! I would have wanted to stay longer but all the kids were getting tired out and so we couldn't visit much anymore anyway. We plan to get together one more time before we have to leave, and this time Mike will be here to meet her and her family.

Speaking of leaving...our time here is quickly coming to an end and the thought of coming back is very bittersweet. I want to come back because I miss our house, our family, our friends, and just...my life! I miss my callings at church, my paper route, and having Adrienne at school because I am forced into a routine which makes my life more productive. I love the Fall. In the Fall I feel the way a lot of people do at the New Year...like it's a new beginning. I love the colors of the Fall, and the warmth before it gets chilly. I love the anticipation of the approaching holidays. So, those are the good things to look forward to. On the flip side, I am going to miss Mike like crazy, and although I like Fall, I don't like Winter. I get SAD, and I am never quite sure how bad it's going to be until I'm there. Plus I have to face some of the stresses that I put on hold when I came here (that I won't go into). It's nice to be here in the sun, and I love this community, and that will be sad to leave. I hadn't mentioned how convenient it is here...there's an Albertson's just two blocks away. Although I try not to abuse it, there's also a Burger King, Taco Bell, and KFC two blocks away also (we probably eat at one of those places about twice a week). So life can be pretty simple here if there's not much going on...I clean, go to the pool, go to the grocery store, and we watch T.V. It's been a nice break, but I also feel like my life is just on hold right now. I want to get back and make headway on the projects at home, and to figure out what my next move is...whether it's to find a way to work at home, get a job, go back to school, or something else! Anyway, sorry about all this rambling! This was going to be a quick post and look what it turned into!

So, onto the pictures. The San Diego is my most faaaavorite temple! It is so gorgeous. I tried to show some of the details of it in the closer up pictures you'll see. Adrienne didn't feel like getting out of the van (she stayed with my mom), so you'll just see Colette in some of them.

More catch up...

Today has been such a lazy day. Mike has been at a car thing in Monterey since Thursday night. The place has gotten pretty messy in his absence, and instead of clean up like I should (he'll be back tonight), I'm doing this!

So, I was going to write about the week my mom and dad were here, but there's actually not a whole lot to write about because they spent most of the time at my Uncle Rex's, working on some projects, and in Mexico getting some dental work done. But we did work in a few fun things. One of them being going to see Wall-E at that cool theater on base, only I didn't go because I had a headache. But I think everyone else had fun.

Thursday the kids and I, my parents, and my Aunt Ann and Uncle Rex went to see my aunt and uncle's horses (Mike was working swing, so couldn't make it). That was really fun...there are pictures of that below.

Friday my mom went with me to the Temple because we both needed to buy some things at the distribution center. I have pictures from that day too, but they'll be up in the next post.

Saturday my parents came over and we went in the pool, then walked to the boardwalk here in Coronado and had lunch. My parents left later that day and were back in Bremerton Sunday night!

I separated these posts according to the folders that the pictures were in, so this will seem random along with the horse pictures (and it's also why the temple pictures aren't on this post), but I made these for my parents. They're my evil concoction...evil because they're so easy. They're mini smores pies:

The girls had Burger King on the way to the horses, here they are in the crowns they give out there:


My Aunt Ann giving the girls the rules.


Adrienne petting Cheyenne


King Edward


Colette on Robin


This horse was blind in this eye. I never knew that a horse's pupil isn't round, it's weird looking.




That's my Uncle Rex walking with Adrienne and Cheyenne



This shot is just to show how open the scenery is (that's me on the horse, but you can't see very well)



Another one to show the scenery


Colette and I on Cheyenne...Colette kicked me off shortly after that

My aunt and uncle were great with the kids, and they even gave them horse shoes as souvenirs!

The Utah trip...details

This is going to be long and a lot of writing, so I hope it's not too boring. Hopefully the accompanying slideshow in the previous post makes up for it.

A little background about me and Utah...when I was 1 we moved from Ellensburg, Washington (where I was born) to Salt Lake City and lived there until I was 3 or 4 when we moved to Cedar Valley. We lived there until I was about 8. We lived for a short time in nearby American Fork and Lehi respectively when I was 9 before moving to Gig Harbor, Washington when I was 10 (my 10th birthday (8/25) was celebrated at a park when we were between houses in Utah and Washington). I missed Utah for the next few years and still considered it home until I started junior high. We went back to Utah as a family when I was 12 and that was the last time I'd been to Cedar Valley and seen my old best friends Sally and Josie. Then I went back to Utah for three summers when I was I think 13, 14, and 15 for Academy for Girls at BYU (it's about 2 weeks and it's a summer campy kind of thing). I hadn't been to Cedar Valley, Provo or Salt Lake until this trip a few weeks ago. When I was 18 I went to St. George (technically 17, I turned 18 a few days after arriving) and spent a quarter at Dixie College. I really love it in St. George, I find the red rocks calming. So I hadn't been back to Utah at all for 11 years, when in the past I'd returned there often.

Okay, so...that night that I wrote from the motel lobby (it was Wednesday 7/30), I don't know if it was clear that I drove alone with the kids from San Diego to St. George (Mike had to stay behind for work). So when I got sick, I really was in trouble because there was no one else. But, we made it there just in time and by the next morning (Thursday 7/31) I felt much better. But my luck hadn't turned up just yet. I was looking forward to a morning of fun for the kids to prepare them for another long drive. We were going to go have breakfast, then come back and let the kids play at the playground at the motel until it was time to check out. I went to load up the van first thing so we wouldn't have to worry about that and could just check out when it was time. When I got out there I saw that there was a procession of ants going from a bush into the sliding door of the van. They were all over, not just in one area, and there were hudreds of them. I guess even though it was a bad thing, the good thing out of it is that I found out about it first thing in the morning so I had time to deal with it (and before it got blazing hot too...it was already at least 90 degrees at 9:00 in the morning.). I couldn't even work out how I was going to deal with this on my own, so I went to the motel lobby and enlisted some help from their maintenance guy. An hour of vacuuming later we were on our way to breakfast. When we got back I saw there were still several ants in the van (I think they were coming out of the vents). So I went back to the motel lobby and ended up getting some bug spray from them because I didn't want to have ants popping up on the long drive and having the girls freaking out. The kids did get to play for a bit, but only about 15 minutes worth.

Before we headed out of town for Provo, we stopped by the St. George Temple and said hello to our friend Kaye Bair (which was calming after a hectic morning). Then I drove around St. George taking the pictures you see in the slideshow, and we were on our way up to Provo.

So the drive up was pretty good, and when we got to my cousin Randy's house my parents had just gotten back there as well, so it was perfect timing. (I hadn't met Randy and his family before, so it was nice to have my parents there too since I'm shy. My parents had been helping my sister Calyn get ready for the wedding. Thursday was also Calyn's birthday) They have a really great house for kids, so it was nice to let the kids unwind a bit before we were on to the next thing. The next thing being going to Mike's sister Kristine and her new husband Alex's house. I really wish I'd brought the camera along since they have a really fabulous view. We had dinner with them and visited for awhile, and then went back to my cousin's and shortly after that we went to bed. I was amazed that Kristine's and Randy's houses were only five minutes apart!

Then the next morning (Friday 8/1), another surprise was that my friend Brandi's house was only about five minutes from my cousin Randy's house as well! What a small world (I was using a GPS the whole time, so I didn't really know where I was going until I was going). That day was extremely busy and tiring but also a lot of fun. Brandi and I met up and went to Liberty Park in Salt Lake. We had lunch, the kids went on some rides, then Brandi needed to go. There were a lot of things to do at Liberty Park, but we were limited on time. They have an aviary, lots of playgrounds, paddleboats, a swimming pool, tennis courts, maybe more that I've forgotten. After Brandi left we were going to go to the aviary but for whatever reason we didn't and the girls just played on the hill for awhile and then we left for the next thing.

I should mention that it was 102 degrees that day, but I didn't know that until the end of the day when someone told me. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't know because I probably wouldn't have attempted to do as much as we did and had us holed up. I've had heat stroke before and it wasn't fun, I wouldn't want to be responsible for getting my kids sick. At our next stop I started getting worried about just that and was pushing water on the kids like crazy.

The next stop was the Salt Lake City temple in Temple Square. (It was tour of the temples week --- we had been to the San Diego Temple on the Sunday before we left, but I didn't get pictures that day. Then St. George and Salt Lake's.) We walked around and went to my favorite part of Temple Square, which also happened to be the most relief from the heat all day...the Christus statue in the visitor center. After we'd cooled off enough we walked back to the van.

Next up was my niece Marque's wedding! My poor sister and parents were a wreck when I got there. They had been working so hard in the heat and none of them thought they would make it to the wedding because they just wanted to collapse. But they pulled themselves together, and it was a beautiful time. I saw a few people that I hadn't seen in such a long time, so it was really great. But unfortunately after such a long day leading up to the wedding the kids were ready to go after only about two hours at the wedding. We grabbed our dinner on the way home and headed back to cousin Randy's. We visited with his family for a little while and then we hit the hay.

On Saturday (8/2) Randy and my mom had a meeting in Salt Lake, so my dad stayed with me and we went to visit my childhood town Cedar Valley (Audra, I was going to call you, but we didn't have enough time!). It was so cool to be back there. I really expected more change so I was happy with what was the same. There were some sad changes, but the most important things were the same. Mike grew up in Silverdale, so the girls get to see in person all the places attached to Mike's childhood memories, but they had never been to my childhood places, so it was really special for me.

So then my dad and I drove to St. George...it was really nice to drive with him and talk about things. He told me all about life on the farm in Moses Lake and the different crops they grew, his parents and their life in Vernal and my grandpa's involvement in the dinosaur discoveries there, and his pioneer grandparents. I love learning about all that stuff.

In St. George we spent the evening with Kaye and some other people (my mom and Randy beat us there) for another meeting. So we got to spend the night at Kaye's after all (she was the one I was going to stay with the first night when we went to the motel instead). We were going to drive from Provo to San Diego in one shot on Saturday, but Mike ended up working through the weekend so there was no rush. And I sure am glad because it would have been P-A-I-N-F-U-L to try to do it all at once. Sunday my parents and I pushed off from St. George and had a nice drive back to San Diego. They had the girls in their car and it made things so much easier for me because Edward slept so much better.

And...that's pretty much it! It was so great to be back. It was like I missed the place so much but didn't realize it until I was there! The downside was that it all felt very rushed and again, my being on my own with the kids, it was exhausting. I'm happy I was able to hit the most important places, but there are still a lot of other places I would have gone.

In the next post I'll have more pictures and talk about the week my parents spent here.

The Utah trip!

I'm going to write some more about some of the details of the trip later. But for now, here's a slideshow. There are 100 pictures here, so there was no way I was going to upload them one-by-one onto a post on here. Even doing five at a time on picasa took a long time!

(Note to anyone reading the book form of this blog. I didn't want to take the time to upload the pictures into this post so they would appear in the book, but I will probably make a separate Snapfish album for this trip, because it was pretty special with Marque getting married and returning to my childhood town after something like 16 years.)

The Zoo, the apartment complex, and others...

So I'm getting caught up folder by folder, these pictures are from the oldest folder since I last updated:

We got this floatie car for Edward for the pool. He really loved playing in it in the apartment, but not so much in the pool.


It got a hole in it on the second day and hasn't been used since :-P

One night we went to the hot tub because we didn't make it to the pool during the day. Looking above and beyond the apartment buildings I noticed letters appearing in the sky! It was so weird to watch. It spelled out "SEEK THE SIX". I didn't get pictures right away since I didn't have the camera with me at the hot tub. Here they are fading away...


I think the sky-writing was for Comic-Con that was going on that night. While I had the camera out, I took some pictures of the apartment complex.

Our pathway to the pool.


So these are sort of dorky pictures for me to have taken. They're some of the reasons I like staying here (aside from the pool). Overall I love our house, but a few things about apartment-living simplify life. Our mail is just steps away from our front door (our whole married life I've had to drive somewhere to get the mail), and just through the door in this picture is the laundromat. It's not the closeness of the laundromat that makes life easier (although I'm glad it is close and not as far as it is from other units), it's that I can get 3 or 4 loads going at a time and be done with it all at once! I would be more irritated with having to use a laundromat if we had to pay for it, but we're being reimbursed by Mike's employer.

and this simple trash can on the way to our door is convienient for tossing trash from the van on our way in...
...Speaking of trash, I also love that there's a trash room to dump our garbage (see the chute in the picture). At home we have to go to the dump and it can be a big ordeal if we don't keep up on it. (I also love that it says RUBBISH on the chute...it reminds me of my Grandma Dayes)

We have been so lame as far as doing any of the big attractions around here. We had big plans when we first got here, but so far we've only made it to the zoo. We've done plenty fun stuff, like movies, the pool, the beach, parks, etc., so I'm not heartbroken. Plus, hopefully we'll be able to come back in the years to come, so we'll always have another chance. We are planning to do one other big thing, and that's Legoland. I didn't want to do Disneyland this time because I'd be tied down with Edward, and Colette wouldn't be big enough for most rides. I've been to Disneyland twice...at 4 and 14. It was lame at 4 because I was too short for so many rides (It wasn't all bad, I loved the small world river thingy, but I distinctly remember being turned away from many rides).

So, here are some pictures from the zoo. My camera's battery died not too long into it. We didn't stay as long as we probably should have. We didn't see some of the main things we wanted to...Adrienne wanted to see the koalas, giraffes and the pandas. The panda line was ridiculously long, so unfortunately we didn't get to see them. We didn't see the giraffes either, but we did see a whole lot of sleeping koalas :-) On to the pictures...Of course the first one we got is the girls with the flamingos.

At least Adrienne got to be a giraffe.





The girls saw a lot of kids walking around with their faces painted. I said they could get theirs done before I ever checked on a price. I really should have checked on a price!! They already had their choices and Adrienne was sitting on the stool before I asked! The girls were so excited, so I went through with it, even though it was $15 for each of them!! We paid more for the face painting than their admission!






So we had to take lots of pictures to get our money's worth :-) Unfortunately my camera died shortly after this.

I didn't mention that we met up with some friends at the zoo. Apparently we didn't get any pictures of them. It was Mike's co-worker Dave, and his wife Ellen. Ellen has been so great to us while we've been here. She's been like a surrogate grandmother for the girls. And she helped me out when I got sick...TWICE! What a lifesaver. If you're reading this Ellen, even though it's been awhile...thank you again!

Well that may be all for tonight. I have 3 more folders to post pictures from. One of them is A LOT of pictures...the one from the Utah trip. This will probably take me all weekend. So keep checking back!