Beach trip 2013

I love the summer time and am so sad to see it coming to an end.  To remind myself of how wonderful it is, I'm sharing some pics of our annual trip to Newport Beach, CA. 

We love going to Balboa Island.


We were at the beach house the same time as my brother, Matt and his family and had such a blast playing with them.

Grandpa's house holds so many fun memories. It's such an awesome opportunity that he provided for us to go there. I miss you Grandpa!

Original Pizza- our favorite pizza place.




I could do this all day every day.






Shopping at fashion island- I love this store.

Love seeing some pretty things. 

I think we need this sign for the beach house. It truly is my happy place. 

the beach

In June we took our annual trip to the beach. My Grandpa passed away last year, but we still have the beach house so we were able to take our trip. The beach is so relaxing to me. I come back feeling rejuvenated and refreshed. It is wonderful to remember Grandpa there and all of our fun memories with him. We were able to go down to San Diego to see some wonderful friends before heading to the beach and we also overlapped our trip with my brother, Brent & his family.

I spent the trip home relishing in all of the time spent with our friends and family. I went through a withdrawal from my cute nieces and also spent the ride home plotting on how I could move to the beach permanently.

finishing up December

We had a wonderful Christmas. We went down to Riverton on Christmas eve to have dinner with the family and stayed at my in-laws that night. Christmas day we went to church, had a yummy breakfast, opened presents and enjoyed time together.
It was also really nice to get together with some of my family members on Christmas evening.  We played games and chatted and had a wonderful time. Brent and Christa and their family were in town from Mississippi so it was fun to be able to see them along with my local siblings.  I am so grateful for family relationships.
Here are the only pictures I have from Christmas day:

The day after Christmas I drove to California with Ashley and her cute son Gideon.  We visited the beach and were able to hang out with some amazing friends. I forgot to charge my camera battery before the trip and failed to bring the charger so I didn't get too many pictures.

But, I did get to visit this beautiful place:

with these amazing people:

We also went to the San Diego Zoo (courtesy of Wendy) and had a blast. here are the pictures I took with my phone while there:

It was a wonderful break. Tomorrow it's back to work for me for the last week of my job. After that I am unemployed.