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!

Happy Birthday to Me!

This past Friday I celebrated a birthday. The day started off with lots of phone calls from well wishers- thanks to all of you! Lunch was spent (as is tradition) with LeAnn and Lanelle. How lame of me not to bring my camera. I'm just not as good at remembering to do that as so many of you are. Steve took me to Flemmings at the Gateway for dinner and then to the Jazz game! 18th row! I love going to Jazz games and love it even more when they win...which they did, even without Williams and Boozer playing! I'd like to think the game was won in honor of me (hey, a girl can dream can't she?). Steve also brought me this bouquet of flowers...

Thanks, Honey! It was a great evening. Clint and Heather came down tonight to spend the night and on Saturday Heather and I went to a Women's Conference in the morning. Ardith G Kapp was the keynote speaker and she was amazing! What a great lady! Later Kyle and Han joined us and we had a family dinner- homemade Chicken Noodle Soup and Asiago cheese rolls with Chocolate Bundt Cake for Desert. The rolls and the cake were from The Corner Bakery Cafe where Han works and they were delicious.

My Mother sent me a scrapbook that she put together of pictures she thought I might like to have. Some of the pictures I don't even remember ever having done. It was fun to look at them with the kids because they had never seen pictures of me as a child. I really think I was quite a cute little thing but you can judge for yourself...

I'm the one in the middle! What's not to love about that face! This is one of my favorite baby pictures and one of the few I already had. I thought some of you might get a kick out of seeing my senior picture,too so here it is... I think I can here some of you laughing. Sidenote: you could almost call me a redhead. Thanks for the great pictures Mom!

The kids all gave me this picture. It spells our name using pictures...pretty cool ,Huh! I love it!
It now sits above my front door.

Click on the picture to see a bigger view of the individual pictures.

We had a fun game of Loaded Questions before the kids all headed home (except Austin of course). Thanks for a fun couple of days!

Swim update

Yesterday afternoon Layton had a meet at Bountiful and Austin came in 2nd overall in the 100yd Freestyle beating his old time of 1.01:98 with a new time of 1.00:88. To shave off a second doesn't seem like much but it really is in swimming. Great job Austin!

Young Women Activity

My calling in our Church is in the Young Women's organization as a Mia Maid (14-15 yr olds) Advisor.The Mia-Maids were in charge of our Young Women's activity this past Wednesday night and we came up with the idea of making sculptures using rice krispie treats. Rebecca (the other leader) and I made the treats and each class got a pan of it to mold. The rule was that it had to have a religious theme. They had so much fun doing these that I had to post them for you all to see. The Beehive class(12-13 yr olds) with their treats ready to go...

My class busily working on theirs. The object was to work together ( cooperation and communication) so first they had to plan what they were going to make and then who would do what.

The Laurel class (16-18 yr olds) hard at work on theirs. It was so fun to watch them create their sculptures. I was taking pictures so didn't help with any but I did manage to snitch a few remants to munch on while they were working.

Katee, a Laurel leader, displaying her rendition of a pig (if you say so Katee!)

The Beehives hard at work on theirs... and below their finished sculpture. Any guesses on this one?

It's sacrament trays of bread and water of course! Cute little Beehives! Michelle, their leader is hiding in the back.

Next we have the Laurels sculpture. Very creative and the winner ( according to the Young Men).

That's right! It's Noah's Ark. It's hard to see but there were giraffes, snakes, penquins, pigs and hippos with Noah standing proudly on top. Notice Noah's hair and beard!

Last but not least, my ambitious Mia maids whose design was quite complicated...

The Salt Lake Temple complete with a bride and groom!
Not sure what that big red arc above the couple is..an attempt at a door perhaps.

They were a little rushed at the end so the finishing touches never quite got finished. Everyone had a great time doing this activity...much more fun than I thought they would have. Most of the sculptures promptly got eaten by a few of the Young men when we were done.

Kyle and Han came over yesterday afternoon to bring Austin a belated Christmas gift and to tell us that Han got a job! We decided to go out to dinner to celebrate. They also brought this movie... which we watched after we returned from dinner. It was a cute movie- funnier than I thought it would be. Congrats again on your new job,Han!

1st Sunset Alert of the New Year!

Take a look at these pictures of tonight's sunset...

Have I mentioned how much I love the sunset views we have from our back yard?!