Trip to San Diego for a wedding

This past Wednesday, we drove to San Diego for Melanie and Tyler's wedding.  I also opened my new camera on the way and read through how to at least make it function, so I took a lot of pictures.  So maybe I will just walk you through our weekend using mostly photos.

On Wednesday night, we had a dinner with both of the families at a nearby church.

Damon and Jade--cute little crazies

Arie loving on daddy

 

Tyler's dad gave Melanie and Tyler a little test to see how well they knew each other.

The next morning, January 2nd, was the wedding in the San Diego Temple.  It was very nice.  I wish we would have had more time to actually be in the temple and look around.  We didn't get to see the spiral staircase or the Celestial Room.  But as soon as the sealing was done, Nate and I rushed out to go get our kids (who were being babysat at the hotel by a local young woman from one of the wards) so we could have them back in time to take pictures.

This next set of pictures cracks me up.  I was trying to get a nice picture of this shot...

...when I was interrupted by Thing 1... (Jade)

...being chased by Thing 2 (Damon)

And being at the temple, taking pictures, was hard work for everyone.

After lunch and a little bit of rest, we headed out to La Jolla Beach.  We got there later than we wanted to.  It was a pretty warm day, but we didn't get to the beach until about an hour before sunset.  So it was a little bit cool.  Mom, Dad, and Jade as well as Rob and Tina were there with us.

We really thought the kids would have fun just playing in the sand and maybe putting their feet in the water.  We were wrong.  Those crazy kids wanted to play in the water.  In the cold, January, Pacific Ocean.  Natalie actually got completely in and went under several times. 

 

Here's all of the "we aren't cold!" pictures.

When we finally got them out of the water for good, we heard nothing but crying about how freezing they were.  Natalie was even yelling about how she was never going to get in the ocean again in January.  It probably wouldn't have been so bad if the sun were still up in the sky, providing some warmth.  But it was really fun to watch the sun set over the ocean.

I tried to take one of those cute family-feet-in-the-sand pictures.  It didn't work.

Arie loved the beach too.  She spent some time chasing seagulls, but never got very close.

Right before we left, Arie decided she wanted to discover the ocean and just started walking out in the water, apparently not bothered by the temperature either.  I pulled her back and then had Nate walk her out.

Kelton has had his first loose tooth and it got super loose while we were in California. I pulled it out for him the next morning (after the beach) and the Tooth Fairy visited him at Melanie's house.  The Tooth Fairy has visited him twice (for three teeth) and has yet to retrieve teeth from Kelton's own house.  (His front two teeth were pulled out by dentist Uncle Chad and picked up at grandma's.)

The day after the wedding we took our time eating breakfast and playing in the hotel pool.  Then we packed up and headed to Melanie's house in Gilbert.  The next day (Saturday) was the reception.  We went to Costco in the morning and then spent the rest of the day getting food ready.  It wasn't until after I cut up all kinds of fruit and skewered them all day--and then cut up 12 small-ish baguette loaves that I decided to try to cut my finger off. (Okay, not really off)  Good thing Melanie worked as a nurse and had steri strips and my parents had super glue.

We all went and helped set up the reception.  It looked really nice.  And somehow, my kids made it through the set up, the reception, and the clean up afterward, which didn't end until after 10:00 p.m.

Miss Jade.

Cupcakes!

Photo station set up for guests.

Damon got upset for some reason, and wanted his own picture.

 

 

At the end, we all danced (but all my pictures turned out blurry because of the setting I had the camera on), then cleaned up, and headed home.  We didn't arrive until after midnight.  Our new church schedule is 9:00 and we were not on time this morning.  Considering that when I woke up it was almost 8:30, Nate was in the shower, and the kids were still in pajamas and hadn't eaten, and it takes 10 minutes to drive to the church, I'm surprised were only 20 minutes late.  Our kids looked a bit homeless with their hair undone and the boys shirts were dirty from the reception--but we were there!