January 2007

Our January highlights mostly consist of our vacation to Monterey, CA to visit my sister Tiffany and her family. It just so happened that we weren't the only ones she invited to see her over New Year's weekend. My mom, step-dad, brothers, and sister-in-law all came as well. There were 18 of us in Tiffany's house. To say the least, it was an adventure. We had lots of fun staying up late into the night playing games, and we made sure to take lots of family pictures, since it isn't too often that my mom has all her kids together at one time. Most of the family left after New Year's weekend, but we stuck around to see more of the sights. (We had to make it worth our 12 hour drive.) We went to the Oakland Temple where my brother Jason got sealed to my mom and Glen. The next day we went whale watching and deep sea fishing at Monterey. Well, really Mike, Noah, and Keyth went deep sea fishing while the rest of us went whale watching. It was so much fun. I would have given anything at that moment to have a really good zoom lens for my camera. As it was, all you can see in my pictures is a big puff of water. The kids loved it. Sammi was a little nauseous, but Jessi seems to be at home on the sea. While the rest of us had to hold on to the rail to walk, Jessi was running on deck like it was standing still. Later that night, we had sand dabs, that the guys caught, they also brought home about 8 dungeness crab. We cooked it all up and had a big meal. The next day we went to San Francisco and met up with Mike's brother, Mark and his friend Brian. They took us on the grand tour of San Francisco. We went on a boat tour around the bay that took us under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz. It was really informative and quite beautiful. Then we went to the Aquarium under the Bay. They simulate you being under the ocean, it was really cool. Then of course we finished our tour up at Ghiradelli Square with some nice hot cups of hot chocolate. They have this thing called liquid chocolate, which of course I had to get, it was basically melted chocolate chips that you drink, yep I gots a bit tipsy, but it was worth it. That was the highlights of our trip. Course my sister is probably wondering by now why I didn't mention my niece's first birthday yet. I just wanted to make you wonder, Tiff. My niece Annabella, who is of course adorable, turned one while we were there and the kids loved playing with her. She loved her aunt Nikki too of course.

I'm still working on getting pictures on my blog, but for now, I will just send you a link to Snapfish for all our vaction pictures. There is alot, so you will probably just want to scroll through them real quick. At the end are all the family pictures that we took across the street from Tiffany's house in front of a golf course. We thought the scenery was good enough. Well be sure to tell me what you all think of my new blog, I will try to be more current on it from now on.