Trip to Utah

We have not been to Utah since Christmas and we decided to make a trip. Matt, Holly, and the kids just moved back, so we thought we would go see them along with everyone else. Jackie was so excited and counted down the days for the last month. The Rasband kids were so nice and made us a Welcome Home Banner along with balloons, as you can see there are no balloons in the picture, that is because......
After Camille was warned not to let go of the balloons, Jackie took them outside and by accident they decided to float away.
Bye Balloons, this is Jackie being sad about the balloons.....
Next we jumped on the trampoline with the sprinklers underneath, the kids showed me some good tricks. I also went swimming with Cory, July, and Cayman but did not bring the camera with me.

On Friday, I spent most the day with my brother which was a lot of fun just to hang out and talk. We went golfing with Ryan and Scott. Cory played great and well, the rest of us did not. I blame it on the clubs and the heat though. That night we had a fun barbecue at Cory's new house.
Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Candice, Cohen, Ryan, Amber, Spencer, Criscell, Scott, and of course Cory, July and Cayman were there. It was a lot of fun to be able to see everyone. I had so much fun playing with Cayman and twirling her around and making her dizzy, and watching her play on her little car. She is fearless. I was so excited to hear her say my name.

On Saturday we went to Kung Fu Panda with the Johnson's. It was a good kid movie. We then went to a potluck with Jackie's high school friends. It was fun to meet people I had heard so much about. I do have to apologize to Natalie for spilling Root Beer on the table cloth, dumb me.
That night we had Cohen's 1 year birthday party. It was fun and I was glad we could be there for it.
This is how Sunday was spent, just hanging out with the Johnson family. It was a nice relaxing day. We sure do have great families and we love everyone so much and wish we could spend more time together. We love you all!!!

Griffith Observatory

Since we aren't planning on living here forever, we try to go see something new every weekend. This weekend we went to Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, it is located on the hills above Hollywood and offers a great view of the city. Inside it is a basically a space museum. It was pretty cool and fun to do something different.
Us in front of it. We went with our friends Spenny, Nellie, and baby Logan. It was nice to have someone else there to be able to take pictures of us.
One of the views of Los Angeles. Lots of pollution in the air, not quite a clear day.
That little white thing in the back left of the picture is the Hollywood sign. Despite what it looks like in the picture, we were actually really close to it.
That's Spenny in the picture, Spenny and I grew up together and one of our favorite things as kids was Transformers. Needless to say we loved the Transformers Movie. Part of the movie was filmed at the Griffith Observatory, the one scene with picture below is when the Autobots landed, some of them landed by the Observatory. The other scene is where we are standing was when Optimus Prime was looking through the glasses to try to locate the All Spark. This is where they had their meeting. Anyway it was pretty cool to be there. There have been lots of movies filmed at the Observatory, Rebel Without a Cause, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Bond's Golden Eye and here is a bigger list http://www.imdb.com/List?endings=on&&locations=Griffith%20Park%20Observatory,%20Griffith%20Park%20-%204730%20Crystal%20Springs%20Drive,%20Los%20Angeles,%20California,%20USA&&heading=18;with+locations+including;Griffith%20Park%20Observatory,%20Griffith%20Park%20-%204730%20Crystal%20Springs%20Drive,%20Los%20Angeles,%20California,%20USA

Jackie and I chilling with Albert, pretty nice guy, don't know what he was looking at though.

I must have put on some weight since we got married, thank goodness we don't live on Jupiter. There was another funny picture that I was told I was not allowed to post on the blog, so if anyone is interested, I will email it to you.
Our last stop was a Hamburger joint called Tommy's. It's one of those places that you can feel yourself getting fatter as you eat. Chili Cheese Fries with a Double Chili Burger. It was Yummy

My New Glasses

Everybody in my family has glasses except for my sister Jodi and me. My eyesight has been getting bad lately, I can't see far away things. I can't read street signs or the chalkboard in Primary. It was bound to happen sooner or later, so I decided it was time to get some glasses. CJ and I went to Lenscrafters yesterday and I got my eye exam and then we went through the store searching high and low for the perfect ones, but I am not so sure that we picked the perfect ones. CJ and the girl at the store who was helping us thought these were the cutest ones. I trusted them and went for it. We took a picture on CJ's phone and sent it to my sister Holly so my family could see, she showed my Daddy and he didn't even recognize me. So sad! I told myself I wasn't going to wear them all the time, just for driving or when absolutely needed. But after wearing them for a couple hours last night when we were walking around the mall, I couldn't believe how much sharper everything looked. I didn't realize how bad my eyes really were. Bummer! So needless to say, I feel like an idiot when I wear them. It will definitely take some time to get used to seeing me with them on.

Malibu Beach

Nothing too exciting happened this week. Friday we went to PinkBerry in Thousand Oaks to try out their famous yogurt. We thought it was pretty good. Jackie still prefers Cold Stone and we made a trip there on Saturday and Jackie actually tried a new flavor. I was quite shocked. She switched things up from her normal Cake Batter, Brownies, and Caramel to Cheesecake ice cream with graham crackers and strawberries.
Monday we went down to Malibu and explored some of their fancy neighborhoods and then went for a stroll down the beach with hopes of seeing someone famous. We didn't see anyone but saw lots of cool houses.
These houses are anywhere from right above the ocean to having 20 feet of sand in front of their place before the ocean. Lots of signs saying Private Beach, no stopping or it's trespassing.
My cute wife playing in the ocean.
Me being a dork. Couldn't quite figure out how you are supposed to get up to the first stair. Pretty high above the sand. Anyway that was our relaxing weekend.

Reagan Presidential Library

On Thursday night my Mom flew into town for a visit. Friday while we worked she went shopping and hung out at the house. I came home and took her to lunch and showed her where Jackie works. That night we went and walked around Downtown Ventura, went to Applebees and then went and watched the sad Jazz game. Too bad they waited until the last six minutes to put up a fight. Oh well, there is always next year. We had fun hanging out with Spenny, Nellie, baby Logan, and Andy. Saturday we hung around Ventura and then headed to the Reagan Presidential Library. This is something we have been wanting to do since we moved here. It was a lot more fun that I thought it would be and there was so much history to see and learn about it. It was pretty amazing. We spent close to 3 hours there and probably would have spent more, but I like to walk through things somewhat fast. Spent Saturday night watching Transformers and 27 Dresses. Great movies and best of all we were able to eat some good ole Mom's cooking.
I thought this painting was really cool.

This is us standing in front of the Nation's Capitol.
One of the old Air Force One's. We were able to walk through the inside of it. It was really cool inside. Not as fancy as what I imagined, but 20 to 30 years ago it was probaby way amazing.
This part of the Library was all about Nancy Reagan. There were so many of her dresses there and her life story. It was really interesting.
Next to one of the President's bullet proof cars. Maybe I am slow but I didn't know Ronald Reagan was the Gipper in the movie about Knute Rockne. So when you say "Win one for the Gipper" Reagen was the Gipper. That was probably one of the most interesting things I saw. Jackie had never heard that line before, but I guess it is a sports thing.
Us in front of the President's helicopter. I was really glad we went to the Library. It was really interesting and had a ton of history that was really cool to see and read about. Thanks Mom for coming and visiting us. We had a great time and enjoyed your cooking.

2nd Anniversary

Monday the 5th is our 2nd Wedding Anniversary. How fast time flies. With the 5th being a Monday we decided to take a little trip this weekend to celebrate. We decided to go up North along the coast and visit Hearst Castle. We left after work on Friday and ended up eating at Chili's on the way. Yummy mashed potatos. We stayed the first night in Morro Bay and little did we know they were having a Hot Rod Car show there. So the hotel's were a little busy. Lucky us the Hot Rod Car owners decided to leave at 6 am and had to show off their engine noise. That was wonderful to wake up to, let me tell ya.
This is us up at Hearst Castle, the only picture we took together. The castle was huge and had three huge guest houses. To understand how big it is, the smallest guest house has 10 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. So you can imagine how big the rest of the houses are on the grounds.
The pool below is the Neptune Pool and is huge. There was also another indoor pool that had 24 carat gold floor tiles. Amazing how much money was spent on this property to build it over 28 years and it was never finished all the way.
I think the Gardens were our favorite part of the tour. They were so beautiful and smelled so nice!
Speaking of smells, we stopped off at this point of interest. Those things behind me are elephant seals and they are huge and smell terrible. The seals were coming out of the water, laying in the sand, throwing sand on themselves, and I guess they shed their skins around this time. Some of the seals had half of their skin on them. It was a crazy site to see, all of them on the beach.
Happy Anniversary to Us! It has been a fun and wonderful two years. I look to many, many more with my Beautiful Honey Bun!

Hearst Castle