Big Bear Fall 2014

We took a few days off and headed to the closest real mountains we have and went to Big Bear. We mostly just hiked and swam and swam and hiked.

Utah Trip Summer 2014

Let's see if I can remember back to the summer. (Ha!)

Bell Canyon 

Bell Canyon again. I slipped in a little creek while wearing Jonah in the Bjorn and landed flat on my back, luckily Jonah didn't get hurt at all. 

Donut Falls hike 

I took the boys to Temple Square while Seth and my mom watching the World Cup at the Delta Center 

Gosh it was beautiful up at Silver Lake. Luke was not impressed. 

We did this hike with the Dan and Lara Herways, but I stayed back with Luke so no pics with the cuzzies.

Looks sunburned but isn't. We spent the 4th of July swimming at Cottonwood Heights with my family and Colie and Jed. Everyone but Jonah and me headed to Sugarhouse Park that night for fireworks. 

We had an afternoon at Hollywood Connection. None of my siblings or I had been there since high school and well....it's gone a little downhill. We still had fun! 

Marking his territory in Nana and Grandpa's backyard.

Mmmm...snowcones. They aren't a big deal in San Diego! 

Splash Pad playdate with old friends from Coronado who were living in Utah but now live in Hawaii

Jonah and me with one of my middle school-high school BFFs, Amber and her cute babe Sawyer.

Lanx, Trav, and Trav's parents were super nice and took us boating at Rockport. So fun! 

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.