sea world

We can go to Sea World once a year for free because of Matt being active duty military.  It's not a bad deal.  Once or twice a year is plenty of Sea World time.  The boys love it, though, and had a great time.

happy valentines day

So the only pictures I took of Valentine's day was at breakfast.  Happy Valentines breakfast, I guess.

vacation in vegas

Matt had a week off at the beginning of February.  It was warmly welcomed.  We all needed some time off, probably Matt more than the rest of us, but we were glad to have him home from work for a week.  We wanted to go somewhere, but we weren't able to get one of our family's time shares in southern California like we originally wanted.  A really nice time share opened up in Las Vegas, so we took it.  We're not really the Veags-type, but it was still fun to get away.  I didn't take a whole lot of pictures, which is kind of sad, but I didn't really want a bunch of pictures of dirty old Vegas.  We figure we won't take the kids back there to Vacation like ever.  We also go to meet up with Matt's parents who came down for a few days.  It was fun to see them and to have a few vacation days with them as well.

warm play days and cold beach days

The longer we live here in San Diego, the more we love it.  We loved Arizona, but now we see why people flock to San Diego.  It's fabulous.  The weather is nearly always beautiful, and there are so many things to do.  We happen to live in an exceptionally wonderful area, as we are able to walk to nearly everything.  Oftentimes we walk to Ralphs, Trader Joes, the library, and it's wonderful.  It's a shame the Navy is making us live here.  Such a burden.  : )  Sometimes the boys get books from the library and they can't wait to get home to read them.  This particular day, they found a Lightening McQueen book, which was a hit.

road trip + air trip

 We were long overdue for a trip to Idaho, so we took advantage of the cheap airfare on Allegiant and made our way up north.  It turned into quite an adventure, though, because we flew to Idaho by way of Arizona and there was a lot for us to accomplish in a few weeks.  

Christmas Day

Christmas day was perfect.  We relaxed, opened our presents, and just enjoyed each other's company.  We were definitely spoiled by our families, and we're grateful for such a wonderful time of year.

Christmas Eve

We got really lucky at Christmas with Matt's schedule.  There aren't exactly days off and vacation time for interns, and many of our friends were working during Christmas.  Matt was on an internal medicine rotation, which is hairy, but the amount of patients they had on the 23rd was manageable, and they were able to send them all home on the 24th.  So, Matt got home early on Christmas Eve and didn't have to go in on Christmas day.  It was perfect.

On Christmas Eve during the day, we went to a friends house and decorated some cookies.  It was particularly warm that day, so the kids had a picnic outside and played jump rope.  We couldn't help but laugh at the fact that if we were to eat watermelon and light fireworks it wouldn't seem strange or out of place.  It felt like a summer day.

For Christmas Eve dinner we had various finger foods.  The favorite, by a long shot, was little smokies.  The boys devoured them.  We also had lots of other yummy foods, like spinach artichoke dip, but the boys were only interested in the little smokies.

Christmas Festivities

Each year we come up with a list of things we'd like to do and see before Christmas.  This year, there were a lot of new and exciting things for us in a new city.  Despite Matt's busy schedule, we were able to spend some good time together as we prepared for Christmas.