Summer Vacation: Part 2

On Tuesday, after spending time around the Old Faithful portion of Yellowstone until about 3 or 4 pm, we traveled to Meridian. On the way, we stopped to get 50 cent ice cream cones in Montana, and stopped at the Costco in Pocatello to get gas, and just in time to eat dinner at the food court. We got to Meridian around 12:30 am Wednesday morning. We took turns showering and got to sleep by 2 am.

On Wednesday, despite the hot weather and late start to the day, we went to Zoo Boise. It was actually a really nice zoo, and the perfect size. My favorite parts were the petting zoo, where we could feed the animals, and the butterfly exhibit! The butterfly exhibit was so neat, and SO much better than the one I went to at the Living Planet Aquarium! There were so many butterflies, and so many different kinds!

 

 

This little guy is thinking hard about something

We found some prairie dogs

 

Butterflies!

This one loved Grandma!

One landed on me!

The next day, we went to the mall and did some shopping, which was fun. Later, we went to the Idaho Military Museum. We also had to have Sonic shakes that night, because that's a Meridian tradition for us. And a few of us played disc golf!

 

On Friday morning, we headed back to Utah. We made a pit stop in Twin Falls to see Shoshone Falls. I had never seen Shoshone Falls before, and it was so pretty!

 

We got back to Uncle Dean's around 5 pm. We took him shopping at Market Square, which was fun! Ricky and I used to take him there a lot when we lived with him. After that, we all had Chinese take-out together at Uncle Dean's because that's all everyone could agree on. It was so fun seeing and spending time with Uncle Dean again! Ricky's family left to go back to San Diego the next morning, and Ricky and I headed to Ogden for the sealing of his friend Bennion. It was SO hot (and smoky)! That night, we went to the reception. It was really nice, just really hot at the beginning! It was fun for Ricky to see his friends Reid and Bennion again! Ricky and I flew back to San Jose on Sunday morning. We are so grateful for the wonderful, full trip that we had! It was so fun being able to see so much of my family and of his family! It was perfect!

Summer Vacation: Part 1

Since I have a new job and have to earn PTO over time before I can actually take a vacation, this has been my one long-awaited, much needed summer vacation (Ricky has had two trips home to San Diego this summer while I've been busy working).

We've been looking forward to this trip all summer, and it was packed full! We got to see and spend time with lots of family on both sides and spent time within 4 states during our 9-day vacation. Our vacation began on Friday when we flew in to Salt Lake City. My parents picked us up, and we spent the evening with them. We went to visit my Grandma and Grandpa Carlson in their home since they're moving to a retirement home soon. It was nice to visit with them and be in their house one last time...lots of memories there!

Saturday was the Hirschi Reunion, which was a main reason for the trip. It was at a park in Hyde Park, Utah, which is by Logan. Ricky and I went with Ricky's whole immediate family, minus Jake who was in France. Dean Jr. and Adelaide drove Uncle Dean there. And Dan drove Ricky's grandparents there, so it was a great turn out from our portion of the family!

The whole group. We had people there from San Diego and San Jose, CA, New York, Ohio, Bountiful, UT, and Meridian, ID!

Ricky and I with his grandparents and Uncle Dean

Ricky pointing to the line he comes from on the family history chart. He learned that Milton Hershey is his 6th cousin 4 times removed!

After the Hirschi Reunion, we of course stopped at the Pepperidge Farm outlet and the Gossner Cheese Factory. That night, Ricky and I spent time with my family again to celebrate my mom's birthday. We went to dinner with my whole family and my Grandma and Grandpa Coulam. Then we went to the Hale Centre Theatre to see the Newsies! It was a fun night!

Yellowstone
On Sunday, we traveled to Yellowstone! We camped there for two nights. Besides getting a moth stuck in my ear the first night, it was a really fun trip!

It was really neat to see lots of bison pretty close

The "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone"

The crew

Old Faithful

Ricky and the Economic Geyser. It fits him well!

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Summer Vacation! We traveled from Wyoming, through Montana, to Meridian, Idaho to visit Ricky's grandparents. Here is the Meridian trip from last year, which was a blast!

My trip Home

I had the week of the fourth off of work, but Brooke didn’t. So I decided to take off for a bit and visit San Diego.

I went to the Del Mar fair. I was surprised at just how expensive the food at the fair has gotten over the years, a turkey leg cost 12 bucks! We ended up getting 4 turkey leg street tacos and splitting it between me, my two brothers and my dad.

On one of the days I decided to visit Mexico with my friend Fernando and his fiancee Chris. We got tacos, of course. And I saw a man balancing bread on his head.

While there, I looked at some of the interesting architecture of the city. I noticed there were no grass lawns. The way the homes are built is so stream of consciousness to me. Like it seems like the homes just happened, and not that they were planned in advance. I kind of like it, it has a sort of flair to it. Some might say a pile of rubble is unsightly, but it kind of gives the place character.

While there, I spoke to Fernando's Grandmother. She told me about how violent the city had become: “The men would rob your necklace and earrings, and if you didn’t have anything to take, they would kill you.”

While on a hill overlooking the city of Tijuana, I thought about how much of a difference a line can make. Just a line is the difference between English and Spanish, between relative safety and relative danger.

Other than that, I pretty much played a lot of Cuphead and Fortnight.

Petaluma trip

This last week I went to Petaluma California for work. If you are like me, you have never heard of Petaluma. Well, it's North of San Francisco. Anyways, all I have picturewise of this trip is a few pictures of the Motel 6 I stayed at. I drove at 8 pm Thursday night so I didn’t see too much of the scenery, I did however drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. I forgot which side of the bridge the toll was on. So when I drove North I was confused why I didn’t pay a toll.

On the trip back, I had a totally different experience. Just a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, I saw the cutest homes basically on the bay, like if you built a dock and put a bunch of homes on it. As I passed through the Robin Williams tunnel, mist was pouring off of the mountain to the right of me like a fog machine. And that same fog slightly obscured my view of the Golden Gate Bridge, almost like an image you might see on a postcard. It was a spectacular sight. And naturally I was driving, so I didn’t get a picture. Also on the way back, I hit a bunch of traffic getting on the 280/1 and it was because one of those two story tour buses that travels the SF broke down. All the tourists up top were waving at people as they drove by.

Regarding Petaluma itself, I didn’t really see the city, excluding the Motel 6 and the client site I was at the for day. But the area around it sure is pretty.

A Sacramento Day Trip

We were walking to lunch, and saw all of these random circular pictures.

This one reminded me of Sun Valley!

There were so many, and it was kind of random because there were no captions or explanations anywhere.

Then there was this strange path leading to this random gold ball.

We came across State Capitol Park, which contains a Vietnam Veterans Memorial

The path leading up to the capitol building is lined with orange trees

We got lunch at Petra Greek, as per the recommendation of Ricky's friend

The succulent portion of the park

Ricky sticking his hand in a strange hole

Brooke standing by an orange tree

A reproduction of the Liberty Bell

We went on a tour of the capitol building, which was neat

Us by the California Bear Statue, named Mike or Bacteria Bear

We ended the day going through the temple, which was the reason for the trip

I made a little friend when I went to get some water for the drive home.

We had a fun day in Sacramento! There was actually more to do than we thought! We also explored Old Town Sacramento, but didn't get pictures there. Old Town Sacramento is so cool! It's like going back in time! It is so cute with it's little streets and shops! There were so many candy shops! We definitely want to go back and check out the passenger train next time.
-Brooke

The anti-vacation

So last weekend was long due to Memorial Day. Brooke had to work Saturday, so we thought we might have some sort of a stay vacation. We thought about going to Santa Cruz area, but ended up deciding against it as there surely would be tons of people visiting. We ending up deciding to see a movie. So we looked at the movie options nearby. Brooke and I ended up agreeing to watch Solo, which I had a mild interest in seeing because it has Donald Glover in it.

Brooke really just wanted popcorn. Sadly, it seems there aren’t any dollar theaters in San Jose area. I guess that is the nature of the crazy rent prices here.

Anyways, we got to the theater, and the matinee tickets were $10.75 each. Which seems a little pricey, but I was ok with it, we did after all have a $50 gift card - or at least I thought. When we used the gift card, we still had to pay 11 bucks. It ends up the $50 gift card was really a $10 gift card. We were originally promised a $50 Coldstone card, so when we got the Cinemark card we were a little disappointed (after all, we don’t go to movies all that often). Apparently at this place you need to pick your seats out in advance. All the good seats were taken, so we had to sit in the front left row. I didn’t realize how close this would be to the screen. The screen was so big and sooo close. It was larger than my field of vision, so I couldn’t even see it all at one time. I thought about the neck strain I would have sitting here. I thought about the 20 bucks the seats cost, and I decided, no way. So we went to customer support to exchange our tickets for the next showing, and sure enough, there were only seats in the front row. So we got a refund instead. So instead we walked around the mall and looked at Target. We couldn’t really buy much as we walked to the mall from our apartment.

So that was our Memorial Day weekend. Really kind of an anti-story. So that's the story how we didn’t go on vacation and we didn’t even see a movie.

We are in the process of moving all our Youtube videos to a new website, Dtube.

Check them out here:

https://d.tube/#!/c/edwardo340

MY 25TH BIRTHDAY!

This is a little late, but I wanted to post about what we did for my birthday this year! Part of my birthday celebration was being able to go to Utah and visit my family at the beginning of the month! I have a blog post about that here! 

My birthday was on a Sunday this year, so Ricky and I weren't able to do our normal birthday tradition, which is to go to Denny's and get the free birthday meal, and then go to Firehouse Subs and get a free birthday sandwich. Those deals only work on the actual day of your birthday, and since we don't go out to eat on Sundays, we had to figure something else out for my birthday this year. 

What we did is I signed up to get emails from the Habit Burger Grill, and then I got a free burger offer sent to my email to use the month of my birthday! So we celebrated the day before my birthday by walking over to the Habit Burger Grill and getting a free burger!

My parents also had fresh cookies sent to our door that day! It was such a delicious surprise! We got so many cookies and they were huge! They were also warm and fresh, SO GOOD! We both loved the chocolate chip ones the best, but I also loved the snickerdoodles!

We took a picture only after we had tested each one!

On my actual birthday, Ricky and I went to church and taught our Primary class like normal. One of the girls in our class gave me brownies and a card she had made! That was so sweet and made my day!

And then a boy in our class dropped off a card and some mini bundt cakes that were delicious! I felt so loved!

Also, Ricky made me my favorite meal -- fried rice!

It was a fun birthday weekend, and I just felt so loved!