Weekend in Wenatchee

The last days of the honeymoon

The next day (after having gone on a nostalgia tour the night before of Paul's hometown and getting burritos... and all important stop) after spending the night at our hotel right on the beach :) we went to the Monterey Aquarium (for free - Paul's friend used to work there so he had his friend Pedro come let us in the back door... I'll vote for you Pedro!). I got to touch an manta ray thing (not really a manta ray but you get the idea). We watched them feed the sea otters... that was adorable. One of them came right up to the window and pounded his toy on it... very very cute!

Then we went on 17 Mile Drive; a 17 mile drive through fancy houses, swanky golf courses and along the ocean. It was sooooooo cold and windy... but we got out at all the important spots, including Pebble Beach. That's a fancy golf course for those of you who are as clueless as I am.... and I felt SO underdressed. Oh well.

The next day we had planned to go skydiving... would have been so cool! But it was raining and apparently you need to be able to see the ground when you jump out of the plane, so our appointment was cancelled. I had said a prayer the night before that if it was a dumb idea for us to go that Heavenly Father needed to let us know in no uncertain terms. But the rain wasn't enough for us. Paul proceeded to call every single town up the coast between Monterey and San Francisco to find out it any of them were planning on doing jumps, we finally found one in Holister CA (not really as cool of a surfer town as you would think by thy way... really just a lame farm town no where close to the ocean!) we got there and it started raining as we pulled into the airport. I told Paul that this was our final sign... if we ignored this one we weren't getting anymore warnings. So we cancelled our appointment and we're alive! Happy day! Still planning on doing it someday... so stay tuned.

I got a calling!

And my mom's response to it was "well somebody has to do it..."

Any guesses?

Did I mention that my mom is scared of teenagers?

That's right... 14 and 15 year old Sunday School teacher. Hmmmm... could be really fun right? Just calls for lots of treats, bribery and games!

Owl in Our Neighborhood

The other morning Paul mentioned that he thought that we had an owl in our neighborhood, he thought he had heard one while we were sleeping the night before. I thought that was pretty cool... till I heard the same owl later that DAY... odd. And I kept hearing it ALL DAY LONG at very predictable intervals... Turns out my neighbor has a fake owl sitting on her porch that turns its head and hoots all day long.

Hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo... 2 second pause... hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo... 6 second pause.... hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo... 10 second pause. Repeat 1000 times = a recipe for driving me CRAZY!

Day 4

Day 4 started in Paso Robles where we had a Mexican breakfast with Paul's uncle (also not a Mexican). Burritos for breakfast... who woulda thought! Actually Paul does it frequently at home... not Mexican my eye! ;)

Then we started the long drive up the coast to Monterey. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! The first part of the drive was through part of the California wine country and I have this HUGE thing for vineyards... were I not LDS I totally would have gotten married in a vineyard. I LOVE them, think they are so pretty! And where there weren't vineyards it was just beautiful lush and green... like Ireland.

On our way we saw a sign for Hearst Castle... being all about touring homes (especially ones called castles) I insisted we go. So we did! (good husband). It was amazing!

The story about Hearst Castle for those of you who don't know is that it was built by William Randolph Hearst, the Hearst family being incredibly wealthy due to media (magazine etc publishing) and he was bored and build a ginormous house on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. In it he stored is millions (now billions) of dollars art collection ranging from Italian monastary church benches to statues from King Tuts tomb. All displayed next to each other with nothing in common but Mr. Hearst liking them all. He designed the house(s) to look like an Italian village... part of it was never finished but all in all it was amazing. And all the famous people of the time spent time there... Charlie Chaplin, umm.... can't think of anyone else. But all the rich and famous of the 30's and 40s hung out there. One really cool thing is that he also had a zoo with all sorts of animals, most all are gone now but supposedly you can sometimes see zebra grazing along side the road. We didn't see any. These are some of the pictures... our camera was running out of batteries (and guess who forgot the charger... that would be me) so we didn't take as many as we wanted to.

From there we drove up Highway 1... long, windy and beautiful. Loved being able to always see the ocean. We stopped and ate at this little restaurant and I loved that the sign told us which way the llamas were... we didn't see any of those either :(

Day 3

Day 3 was downtown LA day. Ok maybe not DOWNTOWN LA (no gangs and muggings) but pretty darn close.

First we went to Santee Alley in the fashion district, recommended to us by sister-in-law Jenne. It was super fun... even Paul the anti-shopper enjoyed it! Basically it's a 3 or 4 block long alley filled with street vendors with knock off everything; purses, shoes, sunglasses, suits... everything. We both got a pair of sunglasses for 5 dollars. I got a super cute purse. And Paul bought a Nintendo-like game system that had over 100 games stored in it... for his brother Aaron.

From there we went to Chinatown... and let me preface this by saying I was REALLY hoping for a dragon parade and the like. But alas no dragons, it was still pretty cool. We got me another purse, a pillow, and some chopsticks AND ate at a restaurant where Jackie Chan filmed Rush Hour. Food wasn't so great... but Jackie Chan was once there!

And my personal favorite part of Chinatown.... Chinatownland! :) loved it!

From LA we drove north to Paso Robles where Paul's aunt and uncle live. LONG drive! But the Paso Robles area is beautiful! I could handle living in THAT part of California. We stayed at my favorite motel there... funny part was that it was STINKY! It smelled like sulfur the whole time. We had a hot tub/spa tub in our room that was fed by mineral water= stinky sulfur water! Gross! But it was super pretty.

Oh yeah... we're probably moving to...

For Paul's school. We've decided we both feel good about chiropractic school and the grandaddy of all chiropractor schools in in Davenport, Iowa at Palmer College. It would be for about 4 years. If we moved this year we could cut off a year of his undergraduate work. They have an accelerated science program at the community college there. So instead of having 2 years of college here plus 3.25 in Iowa now we will just have 4.25 in Iowa... FUN!

We've been told that Davenport is a city of extreme weather... bitter cold winters and hot muggy summers. AND it's the 2007 most livable city!

Day 2 of the Honeymoon

Disneyland!

Pardon my ugly pregnant looking outfit... it was really cute in my mind when I put it on... without the shoes, flip flops made it way cuter I promise! But I'm glad Paul talked sense into me and had me put real shoes on, I would have been in agony otherwise!

Anyhow enough commentary on my clothing... Disneyland was day 2. It was my first time there and it was pretty darn fun. But I really can't imagine spending more than a day or two there. I think I would go batty! We rode all the important rides... Indiana Jones, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Pirates of the Carribbean (boring!), Haunted Mansion. Ate at pinapple whip at the Dole stand (DELICIOUS thanks for recommending it Hil!) and ate at the restaraunt inside the Pirates of the Carribbean... also quite delicious... and quite expensive. But Paul LOVED it! It was his favorite meal of his life and he would willingly go back to Disneyland just for the food there. (Talk about rave reviews!) Here we are eating...

We deliberately avoided the areas with characters... bah humbug aren't we! But my friend at work really really wanted me to get a picture with or of Eeyore. But after waiting in line for an hour and a half for Splash Mountain we weren't about to stand in line for a picture with Eeyore... so this is as close as we got :)

Then we crossed the street and went to California Adventure... which I think I preferred. It could have had to do with shorter lines and our finally figuring out the QuickPass thing. We went in the middle of the Main Street Parade, meaning shorter lines for us!

We loved California Screamin (super fast rollercoaster) and did some shoot you up in the air really fast ride... don't remember what it was called. And rode the twirly ferris wheel... someone took their seeing eye dog on that one... poor puppy!

And the winner(s) is (are)...

JOSH AND MEAGAN!!

They were the first to discover my secret... I'm blogging again!!!

Honeymoon Day 1

We flew into California (Ontario) got our rental car (a sweet Toyota Corolla) for my husband who LOVES Corollas, but it got great gas milage which was good for those California gas prices! And drove to our hotel in Anaheim.
I saw my first ever palm tree growing in the ground (this picture was a few days later at Hearst Castle):

Then we went to the Newport Beach temple, it was beautiful. But we got kicked out after only a few minutes there.

Next we went down to Newport Beach beach... it was funny because I always ask Paul when we're watching movies or TV shows set in California all the girls are walking around town in bikinis and the boys without thier shirts and he always denies it... WRONG! It was totally true here! No pictures of that though sorry, we did see a sea lion on the beach AND saw a dolphin jumping out of the water. Not bad wildlife viewing for a city beach!

And let me tell you what SAVED us the entire trip... the love of Paul's life (and it's not me) it was his...

IPhone!

The directions on there were a lifesaver!!!!