Bikin'

Our first official family bike ride, on a real trail, on our own individual bikes...occurred this weekend.

It was awesome.

And occasionally while riding, Aaron and I would glance at each other and grin. We were both pretty excited that our kids were now old enough to ride all by themselves (no bike trailers!) and actually keep up and enjoy themselves!

Good, good times.



(I really wish the light wasn't hitting Aaron here the way it was)


(not sure why I'm all contorted the way I am here, but I was on a bike ride and not ready to pose to Aaron's camera phone, so I digress...look at the cuteness of the kiddos, please)


I think Leda, in all her respective bling, would be totally safe to ride alone at night. She has enough reflective gear for ALL of us.


Spencer is a bike riding stud.



And little Chase, in his black socks (bless his heart) kept up real good despite having the smallest wheels in the group!



And at the end, it was determined that we may have been a little too ambitious our first time out...so while Dad stayed with kids on the side of the road, Mom rode her bike back all alone :) to get the van to rescue the weary (aka: Leda, a little bit of Chase, but mostly Leda)



But all in all, a good time was had by all!

11 years

With the help of my friend Elizabeth (thank you) I decided to surprise Aaron with a little 24 hour getaway to Del Mar to celebrate our 11 year wedding anniversary.

We had the best time.

Friday at 2pm I showed up at Aaron's office to surprise him. He had no clue. Little did I know he had a conference call scheduled from 2-3pm (grrr) but I sat patiently waiting until we could bust outta there!


And at 2:45 we were off...with no children :)



We stayed at the cutest little hotel. You just never know when you book online and when you're trying to save a buck...but we were SO pleasantly surprised!



That night we ate at Jake's. It was right on the beach and we got to watch kids play volleyball and surf all throughout dinner. Fun!



We dined (pigged out) on appetizers of fried calamari and crab cakes and I had the BEST halibut dinner ever. And in case you're wondering: No, you can never eat enough seafood.




During dinner, I sent a text to my Mom to check in on the kids and I received this sweet text back:

Thanks Mom and Dad for being just so fantastic.


And to finish our night, we got a free Hula Pie for dessert in honor of our Anniversary. I know it's totally embarrassing that I took pictures of our food, but we don't do fancy this often and I wanted to remember it!


Behind us here was our view from our dinner table


After dinner we decided to drive by the place where Aaron and I were married. The San Diego California Temple. We were surprised to see the scaffolding up (they are cleaning it) but it was still beautiful to us and it was fun to be there and think back.


One of the best things I've ever done happened there 11 years ago and it was so fun to be back in that place for a moment.

The next day Aaron had "the best eggs I've ever had in my life" at a little cafe


and then we were off on a little adventure


"La Jolla Cave" is located inside La Jolla cove, where inside this tiny little shell shop (that's been there for 100 years) there is this crazy, steep staircase that leads you down to the inside of the cave. Pretty neat!






And deeper in...doesn't it look freaky? All we could think of the whole way down was how much our kids would dig this!


And here's the bottom


The view looking out


On top of the cave where we took in the views, watched the most entertaining sea lions and listened to the kayak tour guides tell stories about the area of La Jolla cove.






On our way out of town, Aaron stopped off at Deseret Book where he bought me an Anniversary card (aka: A San Diego Temple print that I've been wanting forever that happened to be on a killer sale...ahh, meant to be!)


And that's the end.

Thanks again to my folks for taking our children and to the fabulous Forsyth's for taking our dog, Lucy overnight.

What a fun memory that I'll tuck away and remember forever.

I know we've changed a bit in 11 years, but we think it's all good changes and we're happy :)