Monterey with Grammie and Pop

We were so glad we got to tag along with Seth's parents when Seth's dad had a work conference in Monterey! We got to spend a week with them is such a beautiful place. Pop was gone most of the day so I failed to get any pictures with him, but he was there.

The house we stayed in included passes to the amazing Monterey Bay Aquarium. The boys went every day!  

I love that whenever possible, the Herways rent bikes while on vacation. It's such a fun way to get around and see the sights!

Poor Jonah. 

Point Lobos

I really love this crew.

Brudders waiting for the Loch Ness Monster

The scenery in Monterey really is breathtaking!

We spent a beach day in Carmel. There was a feeding frenzy when we got there! It was pretty cool watching the birds dive into the water to get their fish.

"Taft loves Mom"

Lone Cyprus- Anita and I rode our bikes to this point along 17-mile drive (no, we did not do all 17 miles!) 

We saw deer everyday! I didn't realize that deer would live so close to the ocean. 

The last night we were there my brother's family came to Monterey (from Stockton) and we spent the night on the Naval base. My brother is currently living in Monterey while learning Chinese for the Navy. He usually goes to Stockton to be with his family on the weekend, but they came here so we could all spend the evening together. We loved seeing their cute family! 

These kids loved these amazing tide pools. They'll touch anything!

And this silly boy was eating mustard with a spoon. Blech!

Bluth Grandkids minus Jonah

Thanks for the great week Grammie and Pop!

Summer 2014 (in a nutshell)

Summer was way too long ago for me to remember details, but I'll do my best with the photos that I have. And they are all out of order. Here we go:

We did a couple of hike at Torrey Pines. We definitely miss have a variety of hikes like in Utah, but Torrey Pines sure is a gorgeous one! 

It was Seth's idea to initiate an annual Kids Day at our house. I've already forgotten what day we decided to have it, sometime in August. The boys got to choose the meals for the day, activities, and we gave them really small simple gifts. They loved it. 

We had our own Summer Bucket list this summer which included bowling. The boys loved it! We also found out that our local bowling alley had free bowling all summer long for kids! 

One of many beach days. One of my new favorite beaches is Del Mar. 

The city built a cool splash park downtown that we checked out one day.

Big Brothers standing "guard" to protect Jonah 

I love this kid

There's a pretty fun children's museum in Escondido, about 20 minutes away. Luke loves these tiles! I thought they'd be a great birthday gift but I checked it out and they are $150!! Looks like we'll just keep visiting the museum instead. 

The Safari Park opened up a new tiger exhibit that is really cool. Here Luke is demonstrating how to be a tiger. 

Seth is getting good at catching waves on his SUP. I'm still just to the stage of slowly paddling on calm water. 

"Look Mom, I'm a teenager!" This may be foreshadowing. If he has my teeth, he will most definitely need head-gear. 

Reading books after his swim lesson while waiting for Taft to finish his lesson. The boys took lessons from a water-polo player in our ward. Luke responded amazingly well to the guy and made HUGE improvements! Taft did great too and is a total fish. 

Jonah!

Pile of my most favorite guys. This was in Pacific Beach after Taft and Luke had finished Vacation Bible School. Vacation Bible School is a big thing around here. Tons of churches put on really fun week long camps, for a few hours each day. The boys had a great time and came home slightly evangelized. 

Back to School Shopping for our KINDERGARTENER! "Mom, do you think I can wear this on a date when I'm 8?"

When he "ran away"

Thumbs up for this boogie boarder

Lukie Bootie

Roasting s'mores in our backyard! 

Taft also did a week long basketball/bible combo camp. Yep, they tied in sports and Jesus. The theme was "God's Game Plan"

We had our old Coronado crew over for a BBQ. We never could have much of a gathering at our condo, so we loved being able to finally host everyone!

One of my dear friends and old roommates lives just 15 minutes from us. Our boys are the same ages so we get together quite a bit. Lucky for us, they have a pool! 

Of course we can't forget about Seth's Residency Graduation! Every year they hold the graduation at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. It's a dinner and program with the Anesthesiology Department and it's always pretty entertaining. The chiefs always put together a fun video, full of skits/reenactments from the year/roasting attendings and such. Seth was a chief resident this year and had a big part in making the video and he did a REALLY good job. He sure can ham it up when he needs to.

Since I haven't documented it on our blog I should document that Seth took a  faculty position with UCSD. He is an anesthesiology attending/assistant professor now. Since UCSD is an academic hospital, he is only required to work a few days a week. He also signed on with Kaiser Permanente hospital for the days he isn't at UCSD. 

My parents and Tates came in town for Seth's graduation. 

On Father's Day Seth was on-call at the hospital so we paid him a visit. It was a very slow day so he played around with equipment on our boys. Here Taft is getting an ultrasound of his heart. 

Lake Tahoe

For Jonah first official vacation, he took a bit of a road trip to meet up with some of the Herway clan in Lake Tahoe. I had never been before and holy cow, it is gorgeous up there! We had a great time with Seth's parents, his sister Nicole and her husband Jed, Seth's other sister, Natalie, as well as his brother Jake and his wife Melanie and their youngest, Lily (who is to die for cute). We missed having many of the other Herway's there, but we had a great time.

We just stayed a few days, but Seth's parents were wonderful and rented a house for us all to stay in. I tried my best to stay up late playing games, but with a two month old, I also desperately wanted to sleep. I have a serious case of FOMO (fear of missing out) but sleep won most of the nights. I think I only stayed up one night.

We spent a great day on the lake and rented a pontoon to take out. Toward the end, Luke and Seth's mom got practically a bucketful of lake water tossed on them when he went head on to a wave. Seth had a great morning mountain biking with Jake and Jed. We took a late afternoon family walk/hike, but I wished I'd been able to spend more time exploring. It was too short of a trip.

Our Circus

Yes, that is a five year old driving a boat with his feet. 

Pretty sure they didn't leave Jed alone the entire time.

Uncle Jake is a fun dude. 

We love the mountains!

View from the deck of the house we stayed in.