Vacation Part II

As you all saw below Eric and I had a week of vacation and the first half we went camping and then second we got to do what I wanted. Well, I told Eric I wanted to go to California; I didn't care where I just wanted to go. Of course I gave him a couple of ideas in the beginning and then when it came time to plan it he said not worry he had everything planned. I thought ok cool where are we going? Well, he wouldn't tell me and left it a surprise. He ended up surprising me with a trip to Catalina Island. Neither one of had ever been there before, so he thought it would be fun to check it out. It was great, the weather was perfect (in the mid 80's), our hotel was beautiful and there was tons of shopping!! Thanks Eric for a great trip!!

Here is the boat we took from Long Beach to Catalina and back

On the ship to Catalina (nice hair right?)

Here is the view from the balcony of our room

We even had turn down service and they put chocolates on our pillows

We rented a golf cart and took a ride around town, this was the view from the top of the moutain we drove up

This is a house owned by the Wrigley family, the same people that own Wrigley chewing gum, and Wrigley Stadium

Here I am pretending to drive our golf cart because I wasn't allowd to drive it because you have to be 25. How sad is that?

Eric in front of the "famous" casino

And here we are at the top of the mountain overlooking Catalina

We got home on Thursday night and on Friday night Eric's cousin Michael and his wife Kelli arrived to stay with us for the weekend. We had so much fun with them, they are so fun to hang out with and Eric and Michael are so much alike it's scary! We all agreed that they are twins that got separated at birth. They were the first guests that have stayed in our house and the first ones to use to new bathroom (I will post pics of the bathroom soon). While they were here we did lots of shopping at the outlet mall downtown, and of course had to vistit the COACH outlet!! We went to the strip and saw all the newer casinos, had a nice dinner, went to the strip some more, ate at Grand Luxe Cafe (yummy), got to see a $170,000.00 cell phone that we all agreed was a little much but Kelli and I decided we would settle for the $75,000.00 one, and we even got to visit with Ryan, Brittany and kids while they were here. Thanks guys for coming!

Ok, so here we are at Grand Luxe Cafe and Eric had this "brilliant" idea that we should all do "sugar shots" to keep us all awake. Basically you take a packet of sugar (in this case it was Sugar on the Raw) and eat the whole thing all at once. Well, it was really gross, and I don't think it helped to keep up our energy since none of us felt an energy boost.

Here We Go!

Well, are you ready for one big post?? Prepare yourselves it will be long and full of pictures...

Eric and I were off this past week for our yearly week of vacation and it was decided that we would split it in two and the first half we would do what he wanted and the second half we would do what I wanted. So the first three days we went camping up in Zion National Park in Utah at Kolob Resevoir. It was perfect weather, luckily all the rain happened before we got there, we were right next to the water and we had our own little spot that no one else could drive through. We took the two dogs with us and they loved it! They were in the water everytime we turned around and Eric even ended up in there too. We did all dutch oven cooking, we did biscuits and gravy, chili and corn bread and breakfast burritos. It was great and such a pretty spot. Here are some pictures...

This is the road that people would keep trying to drive through and they would end up getting stuck. Honestly would you look at this and think you could make it in a mini van or a little Kia? We ended up having to pull one guy our with Eric's truck.

This is Eric jumping in the lake to go get the freesbie for the dogs, he threw it too far for them to swim out and get, so he decided to jump in and get then the dogs decided that they had to follow...(there's no sound but you can still watch it)

On the second to last day we went up to Camp Del Webb (the scout camp that Eric use to work at during the summer). Eric wanted to go say hi and check things out since we were only about 20 min down the mountain. So we went up and ended up getting taken on about a 2 hour tour of the whole camp. It was a lot of fun and it was really pretty, and we even got taste some fresh mountain spring water...