Happy Anniversary to US!

We are celebrating our 27th wedding anniversary today! Our trip to San Diego was the real celebration but I just wanted to tell my hubby how much I love him and how grateful I am for the man that he is. He is my best friend and I love the life we have built together. We have been through some hard times and great times together and each have brought us that much closer.
He quite often tells people that I am his queen and he has always treated me much better than I probably have deserved at times. He is amazing and I am so lucky to have him forever as my eternal companion. Love you honey!

Layton High Swim Banquet

Last night Layton High held their 18th annual swim banquet at the Castle Reception Center. I have to say...dinner was not very good at all but the rest of the evening was fun. There were lots of funny awards handed out to various swimmers by the coaches and then they presented awards that were voted on by the team. Coach B remarked that every year the swimmers tend to vote for the ones he would pick so they do pretty good at giving the awards to the ones who really deserve it. Austin was a little surprised when his name was called to receive one of these awards.... He received the "Most Improved Swimmer" award. He really has improved alot over the year and I think this was a well deserved award for him.

He also lettered in swimming and received this certificate for that. To letter you have to attend more than 80% of the practices and all required meets, earn points for your team at meets , have good grades and place at region. We are proud of his accomplishments this year in swimming. Way to go Austin!!

San Diego Trip Part 3

We came back to our room Thursday afternoon and found this elephant made from towels on our bed...just like they do on a cruise - love it! A view of the hotel from the beach. This hotel was a little closer to the beach than most of the others along Pacific Beach.

Friday we took a whale watching trip on the Marietta. We stood right at the front that you see in the picture below most of the time that we were out on the ocean.

I would love to have a sailboat like this one. We passed a few that looked like they would be so fun to try out.

Sea Lions soaking up the sun on a buoy. We saw a few swimming along side the boat. We also had some dolphins checking out the boat. They were too fast for me to get pictures of them. We did see a Gray whale and followed it for a while.

The pictures aren't anything like the first whale watching trip we went on last summer but it was fun to be out on the ocean and see these giants in their natural habitat.

We ate at a restaurant called Anthony's - very good - then headed back to the hotel to warm up. It was a bit chilly on the sea. Saturday after having a scrumptious breakfast at Hennessey's Tavern (they had Captain Crunch French Toast. Sounds strange I know but it was sooo good!) some of us wanted to enjoy walking along the ocean and some of us wanted to go on segways so we split up and met back when it was time to go to the airport.

Steve, myself and Lanelle shopped and walked along the beach, watching surfers, gathering shells and getting our feet wet. I may or may not have seen a wave coming and got my pants soaked to the knees. I love taking long walks on the ocean shore!

Troy, Tony and LeAnn took to the segways and enjoyed riding through a park - I'm not sure where they went actually but they had fun.

This was a fun trip but a little short for me. I would love to go back and check out everything we didn't get to this trip. I don't think it will be too hard talking Steve into another trip...maybe this fall?!

San Diego Trip Part 2

The Sunset view from our room the first night was spectacular. This was the only night we were in our rooms at Sunset so I am glad we saw at least one. So beautiful! Thursday we headed to the San Diego Temple. What a beautiful temple inside and out! It was a picture perfect day,too. I should have reversed these two pictures- the second one is as we were going in...still a little cloudy.. the one right below here was as we were leaving.

After the temple we went to Old Town to check out the new Mormon Batallion Museum.

This is a must see for anyone visiting San Diego. It was amazing and so well done! I learned alot about the Mormon Battalion and what they helped do for San Diego. Here we are inside about to start the tour.

Steve and Troy posing beside a statue of one of the Bataalion members.

The pictures come to life as they tell the story of the Batallion members and their journey. They even walk from picture to picture (just like in Harry Potter)! You move with them from room to room as the story unfolds. It really is quite cool- amazingly well done!

At the end of the tour we had our picture taken and they e-mail it to you.

Then you head outside to pan for gold. This little girl was there visiting and she considered herself quite the expert in finding gold and was more than happy to teach us the right way to pan. She was very cute!

We ate dinner at the "Old Town Mexican Cafe" which was probably the best authentic Mexican food I have had. There were women in a kitchen at the front of the restaurant that you could watch from outside making the flour and corn tortillas. I had a veggie burrito and Steve had spinach enchiladas (see below).

We were entertained by this group while we ate. They were very good even though we didn't understand a word of what they were singing about.

Most of Old Town was closed for the night after dinner so we didn't get to go into too many buildings. There was a band playing at the edge of the town and we listened to them for a bit before heading back to the Hotel for some hot tubbing!!

I might as well spread this out trip out a bit more so tomorrow...San Diego Trip Part 3.

San Diego Trip Part 1

This past week, Steve and I along with some great friends of ours headed down to San Diego for a little getaway. Since I have lots of pictures I am spreading the blog about the trip out over the next few days. We had a uneventful flight down on Wednesday and arrived to partly sunny 60 degree weather! Tony checks out the map as we head out to pick up our rental car. LeAnn and I...

and Steve, Lanelle and Troy...ready for some relaxing!

We stayed at the Pacific Terrace Hotel on Pacific Beach. This hotel was fantastic! I highly recommend it. The rooms (their Junior suites) were wonderful and nicely decorated.

These beds were amazingly comfortable, too!

From our balcony we could see Tony and LeAnn's room. Troy and Lanelle were on the other side of the building.

Below our room was the pool and just beyond that an awesome view of the Ocean!

We left our balcony door open every night, just closing the plantation shutters and fell asleep each night to the sound of the waves rolling inot shore. Everything about this hotel was excellent. The staff were so friendly and helpful. I definitely will stay there again! After settling in, we headed down the beach for a late lunch/ early dinner at Joe's Crabshack and enjoyed a leisure walk along the sandy beach on the way back. There are few places I love better than being near or on the ocean! More to come tomorrow.

1 down, 11 to go...

Even though January is a big birthday month with birthdays for my Mother, my sister Holly and myself along with a few others, it is still a month I struggle with. I guess you could call it after Christmas blues but overall it's a kind of depressing month. The winter blues really set in and I usually can't wait til February comes. Okay truth be told, February isn't much better and I really just want Spring to be here...our little groundhog friend says there are 6 more weeks of winter though...Bah!