Spring Break!

Spring Break this year consisted of family, friends, sun, and beach.  Could it get any better?

We got invited to stay with Jeff and Amber at their family's beach house in Mission Beach, CA. It is so close to where some of my family lives that I don't get to see much, so of course we had to start the trip there. 

Uncle Bob and Aunt Joyce picked us up from the airport Friday night and we stayed at their house for the weekend.  On our way home from the airport we stopped at In-N-Out. Delicious!

Their dog Olive had recently given birth to 12 golden doodle puppies and I was in heaven playing with them.  Kade kept his distance from the poop smell and took some good pictures!

My cousin Trav and his new wife Megan came to hot tub with all of us on Friday night. I hadn't seen him since he got home from his mission, he had never met Kade, and I had never met his wife! It was fun to share stories and catch up.  Saturday we went shopping and got to hang out with my cousin Justin and his cute prego wife. 

On Saturday night we got together with the Grandmas! It was good to see Grandma Sheri, and especially our Great Grandma Haslam who turned 94 this year! She had never met Kade before, and always talked about wanting to meet "my sweetheart." They wanted to get to know Kade better, so he got bombarded with the questions.  The story they were most excited about was our meeting/dating/proposal story.  When he was done telling it, we heard each of theirs.  They are two incredible women. Both of my Grandpas have passed away, but I am glad they have each other for company!

We didn't get any pictures with Bob and Joyce, but it was so fun to spend time with them and hang out.  They had only met Kade once on our wedding day so I got to sit back and play proud wife as he did all the talking.

The next day we went to church, and then the Grandmas drove us down the the beach.

We quickly realized how lucky the Jack family is...their beach house is in an amazing spot!

Our next week was filled with delicious food, a slight bit of working out, and more delicious food.

Jeff had been going there ever since he was little, so he knew all the good places to take us.

The sunsets each night on the balcony were pretty incredible!

We did some shopping while we were there, and we also had time for a little date night.  Amber and Jeff went to a family party, so we had the night to ourselves. 

We took the beach cruisers for a ride and found a yummy italian pizza restaurant for dinner. We ended the night with The Bachelor Finale on tv.  It was comical, but such a waste of time!

Jeff's cousin Andrew took us to Balboa Park one day to walk around and we also got to go to a play with Grandpa Jack and Shirley.  They were very generous to pay for all of us.

We are so grateful that Jeff and Amber invited us along on their Spring Break trip.  They were so much fun to be around...always thinking of fun things to do.  We spent a lot of time at the beach reading or playing bocce ball.

It was not a fun transition to come back to Philly/get back into the grind of school and work, but we managed to bring the good weather back with us.  It wasn't too painful.

We are grateful for the family and friends that we have in our lives.  Hopefully we can host people in the future at our home and provide a fun time!

Random, but good times!

This post is going to be more about saving pictures for our memory, rather than talking about a specific event.  There have been many fun times in the past few months that we don't want to forget about.

They are in no specific order.

Penn Basketball game with Jeff and Amber.  Unfortunately they lost, but we enjoyed some yummy frozen yogurt after!

My amazing Great Grandma turned 94 in February.  I hope her genes run in the fam! She is so dang cute, and still does her morning exercises. 

I am still in love with my little Violet girl and am reassured everyday I see her that I have the best job ever.  Her mom went out of town a few weeks ago for work, so Kade and I got to sleep over and spend the night with her.  She didn't wake up once, and I secretly loved watching Kade play with her!  He will be a cute Dad one day.

One night for FHE we talked about the importance of memories, read our memories from 2011, and made a new jar for 2012. Hopefully we can do better about keeping up with it this year.

We definitely had a good laugh.

We received this picture and found out that Kade's Mom can still do the splits! 

It hurts me to even think about it but we were, and are, amazed.

Shopping with Ambs before our monthly Costco trip. Our husband's have had a busy semester so far!

I did some dog walking on a Saturday...

...and have read The Tushy Book on a weekly occasion.  It is Zachary's favorite book and I find it hilarious. 

Kade has been busy with classes, but has a slight dose of "senioritis."  The end of the tunnel is so near, and we are excited for Wharton to be a thing of the past! :)  It has been nice to have him home more and sick of the library.  I am not complaining at all.

A couple of quotes that I have recently loved:

"We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become each day.

-Richard G. Scott

I hope I can become less selfish and more mindful of others.  We have amazing people all around us here in Philly, and our time is coming to an end.

Less than two months left...I can't talk about it.

Valentine's Day

I remember when Valentine's Day was all about candy and homemade mailboxes.

I was the type of person that could never decide which design I wanted to do, and that resulted in my box being made the night before or the morning of.

I was pretty excited when I got a picture of my little brother Preston and his box this year.  It brought back a lot of memories, and I think he is adorable.

When I was on my way home from work I stopped by the train station to buy some bus tokens.

This is the line that was formed with last minute men buying flowers as they left the station to go home to their loved ones.  One lady told me I wasn't the first to take a picture.  I was laughing pretty hard, but knew it was necessary and they were about to bring a smile to someone's face.

I definitely had a HUGE smile on MY face when I walked into my apartment and saw what was sitting on the counter.

I wasn't sure the hubby had time to do anything this year.  He is extremely busy with this last semester.

I was wrong, and ever so grateful.  He is amazing.

I got to work and started on his present before he got home from a study group. We are keeping ourselves on a budget this year so I tried to get creative.  It resulted in an extreme amount of cheesiness, but I loved it and so did he.

He gasped in surprise and took a step back when he first saw it.  I don't think he was expecting me to do anything either.

I found this quote below and fell in love. 

It will be a great reminder to us as to how special our marriage is.

I love my Kade K. I was grateful for the holiday, and another excuse to do something special for him.

Handsome's Birthday!

February 2nd. Groundhog day. Call it what you want...but around here, it is the most handsome boy's birthday.  I had to work all day, and he had to go to school...but that didn't stop us from celebrating. 

I woke up extra early to fill the front room with balloons.  I scrambled to find some the day before, and ended up with small ones that I believe were meant for water.  That didn't stop me from trying to blow them up at 6:15 am. My lips and muscles around my mouth have never been so sore in my life. Those little buddies were hard to blow up!! 

At one point, I had blown one halfway up and lost my grip on it.  It let out a big whoosh of air as it blew to the other side of the room.  Kade later admitted that it woke him up and he knew what I was doing the whole time. Woops.

When I got off of work, he came and met me in the city.  I had made two dinner reservations so his choices were Italian or BBQ.  He chose BBQ so we ate at the restaurant Devil's Alley in the Rittenhouse area. He got interrupted with birthday calls the whole meal, but the food was delicious.

After, we decided to get some hot chocolate for dessert.  It was freezing outside!

Next was popcorn, present, and movie time.

One of his favorite birthday cards came from Morgan.  We were laughing SO hard.

We spread his birthday festivities throughout the weekend and went to see our first 3D movie.  Hugo--what a cute show. My favorite part of the whole night was before we even left.  We decided to bring my big purse, pop some popcorn, and put it in a baggie to snack on when we got there. I pulled it out of the microwave and Kade was waiting with a big baggie.  He poured it in and all of a sudden popcorn kernels were falling all over the floor. Microwave=hot. The kernels had melted holes all over the bag and were falling out everywhere.

This boy has been saving up money and gift cards since Christmas to get the new ipad when it comes out in March. That will be his big birthday gift and he is super stoked. He deserves that, and so much more. He has worked so hard to accomplish many goals and inspires me to be a better person everyday. I love him so much and am excited for this next year to come.  He gets to graduate college from one of the top business schools in the country, and then start fresh right out of school into a brand new career. 24 should be pretty exciting, and I feel lucky to be at his side along the journey. 

HaPpY bIrThDaY mY lOvE!!!!!