Three Happy Years

On April 29th we celebrated our 3 year Wedding Anniversary! It has been a great and fast three years. For our anniversary we went to San Jose and stayed at the Hayes Mansion. It's a mansion that was built in 1905 for the Hayes family, then was later bought by the City of San Jose who turned it into a hotel/resort and conference center. We loved it.
We also went to the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. It is also a mansion, but a much crazier one. It was built on for 38 years on going 24/7 because Sarah Winchester felt that she was haunted by the people that had been killed by Winchester guns, and a psychic told her that she had to never stop building on the house, or else she would die. Crazy house with windows in the floor, doors leading to walls, stairs going to the ceiling, and all sorts of other eccentricities.
It was a wonderful weekend. We look forward to this next year.

Florida in February

I know, I'm a little late, story of my life. Our trip to Florida in February was wonderful! We spent time in Miami, Orlando, the Everglades, Key Biscayne, and Key Largo. We went to Orlando for a couple of days and went to two of the Disney parks. We went to the Epcot center and loved the World Showcase. We did a lot of eating at the different countries, and enjoyed learning about them. We also spent a day at the Animal Kingdom and got to see some really cool animals, ride fun roller-coaster, see the Nemo musical and take a safari ride.
While in Miami we visited a lot of people from my mission. It was so great to see people that I knew, taught and loved doing so well in the Gospel. We walked around down town Miami, and I got to show Stephen all the places I loved.
We also went to the everglades to see the alligators, took an air boat ride, watched an alligator wrestler, and I even got to hold a baby alligator.
One of our last days there we went down to Key Largo and went snorkeling. Neither of us had ever been snorkeling. We enjoyed it. Stephen in particular. We snorkeled over a live coral reef, and got to see many beautiful fish.
It was a wonderful trip, and I'm so glad we got to go.

Merry Christmas!

For Christmas this year Stephen and I wanted to do a family (including our dogs) Christmas picture. What fun that was! We got a little taste of what it will be like taking pictures with kids. Out of like 25 pictures, not a single one turned out right. Molly (the black one) did great posing, but Honey (the tan one) doesn't have the posing down yet. In most of the pictures she was looking backwards at Stephen, or trying to bite him, or looking at me, or trying to run away. So no Christmas picture cards for us this year. We do love our dogs. I took this picture of them for an ornament for Stephen. I am amazed at other people's pictures.

Junipers are gone! (well... mostly)

Yesterday Dad and Stephen spent the day getting rid of the junipers covering our house. We think that they are very ugly, so we're trying to get rid of them. Yesterday they cut them down, and pulled out some of the bushed on the side of our house. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks they will get the stumps out.

Newport Beach Trip

Last weekend we took a trip to Newport Beach. There we stayed at this beach home on Balboa Island. The home belongs to the family of one of Stephen's friends from school, Brandon. We stayed with two other couples, Brandon and Natalia, and Jared and Aubrey, both from Stephen's program. Friday after we got there, we went to this cool fish restaurant, than walked out on the pier. That night we also went to the local hoppin' spot, Dad's Original Frozen Banana, and got delicious frozen bananas. Saturday we spent a wonderful day hanging out and going to the beach. Stephen tried surfing and Chelsea boogie boarded. It was so much fun playing in the water thanks to some wetsuits of Brandon's. We are so sold on wetsuits, they just make things better. That night we took another trip to get frozen bananas, good stuff. Sunday we got to go see the temple there. It's about 3 years old, very beautiful. Different from a lot of the other temples. We really loved our trip to Newport, and had a hard time leaving. Vacations are so much better than work!

Chelsea's new hair! Well, hair cut that is. Chelsea grew her hair out and cut it to donate to Locks of Love. Here's her new do. After looking in all those hair magazines where the girls all have that funny no smile look, she just had to take one.

Living Happily

We moved into our house a little over a month ago, and are loving it. We've been working on the yard, and organizing inside the house. The day we got the keys to our house we also got a dog from the animal shelter. Her name is Molly and she is a black retriever mix. She is a little less than a year, and we love having her around. She is fun to play with, and good company for Chelsea during the day. She is still a puppy so she does enjoy digging and chewing up our hose, but we still love her.