1 Year Down....

On March 11th, we celebrated our 1 year anniversary, and we did it in style in San Diego.  Here are some of the highlights:

CORONADO ISLAND

The first couple days we stayed on Coronado Island at this amazing lodge called 1906 Lodge.  The room was fabulous, but the service was even better!  They recommended some good dinner places for our anniversary dinner, made the reservation for us, and paid for our dessert!  Plus, they were just plain friendly!  For the big night, we went to a seafood restaurant called Peohe's that was right on the pier.  The hotel told them it was our anniversary so they gave us a special table with flowers on it (no other tables had flowers) AND gave us customized menus that said "Happy Anniversary Ben and Kathryn" (which we of course kept).  Other things we did on Coronado included sitting on the beach (it was too cold to actually swim), checking out the Hotel Del, riding bikes around the island, and finding some great places to eat!  Coronado was great!  

Coronado Beach

Peohe's for our anniversary dinner

biking on the island

on the pier at Coronado Island

 SEA WORLD

You can't go to San Diego without a visit to Sea World (well, I guess you can, but we didn't).  We had a great time seeing all the animals and catching a lot of the shows! 

 WILD ANIMAL PARK

Instead of the zoo, my parents recommended we try the Wild Animal Park.  And we are glad we did!  We got to ride a tram through some open area where they have animals like giraffes, rhinos and other African animals.  They also had more standard type exhibits for things like elephants, lions, gorillas, etc.  And every day they do a 'Cheetah Run' where they let a cheetah run the hundred yard dash off leash for everyone to see their speed.  We got some video of it, but I'm not going to try and put it up here.  Just know that it was FAST. 

                                                                                     I LOVED this baby gorilla

Giraffe feeding IS as fun as it looks!

 Along with this fun stuff, we also visited Old Town and the Mormon Battalion Museum, Legoland (which by the way, while fun was definitely kid-oriented.  The displays were really cool to see, but we didn't do any rides or spend much time there.  Luckily we didn't have to pay the full price entry fee because we had a pass---but I'd definitely recommend waiting until you have kids to stop here), and did a session at the San Diego Temple.  

We had a WONDERFUL time and couldn't think of a better way to celebrate our first year together.  Now more than ever I look forward to Eternity and everything in between!

Since Christmas...

...there have been a few fun things happen in our lives:


February 19th we celebrated Ben's 30th birthday.  Poor thing was actually kind of sick that day, but I did a "Ben's Favorite Things" day; giving him various gifts related to his favorite things (i.e. root beer and ice cream = root beer floats; Jurassic Park movies = he likes dinosaurs, and also those movies; some games, etc). The only thing I got a picture of though was Dessert Waffles in Bed:

March 11th was our 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!  Time flies!  We had so much fun too.  We went to San Diego for a few days in honor of the occasion and had ourselves a mighty fine time.  I'll post separately about that awesome week, but here's a little preview: 

My brother Ryan and his wife Anna were sealed in the St. George Temple on April 28th and we were able to drive down and be there!  It was such a great experience and we are so happy for them!  Because of the way they did things, this is actually wedding #3 for them!  In the words of Anna, "That's one for the government, one for us, and one for the man upstairs." They are so fun, we love them!  

So that's been life as we know it lately!  Hopefully with summer upon us we'll find some fun things to do before the cold sets in again!



 

One of these days I WILL blog again. I promise.

Christmas and All That Came With It

I know, I'm a little behind in posting about Christmas--but if you look at my track record for blogging you shouldn't be surprised. However, I am going to talk about Christmas and the weeks leading up to it, because it was AWESOME.

Although this is not Ben and my first Christmas together, it is our first Christmas married, so we wanted to do our first year with a real tree:

Trucks are over-rated :)

The tree was the perfect size for our apartment, and the bottom was perfectly shaped to fit Ben's awesome train under it:

 And of course we visited Temple Square and saw the fabulous lights (and got really cold):

And then got to spend Christmas Day with both our families!  We had Christmas morning with Ben's family.  They came to our apartment and had breakfast and did all the traditional Christmas Morning stuff with us.  Ben's family is split between AZ and UT right now, so we didn't get to see everyone, but we sure had fun with the ones who were there!  Then Christmas night we went to my parents for dinner and presents with all my siblings and their families. As usual, we had a great time and there were some great gifts given!  We are so blessed to have such amazing families.

CHRISTMAS WITH THE GEDDES':

   CHRISTMAS WITH THE KEMPS:

{this was meant to be a picture of my sister and

bro-in-law--but unintentionally turned into this

hilarious photo of mynephew}

We got these hilarious fleece blanket pajama things
for my sis and her husband. Best gift ever!

 First Married Christmas=FREAKING AWESOME! :)