Life Within the Cuckoo's Nest: Celebrating 8 Years in Santa Monica!

Happy 8 Year Anniversary My Love!

Josh and I celebrated our 8 Year Anniversary by both of us working and going to bed early that night. Well, I did pick up Cafe Rio for the family to eat for dinner after work so technically we ate out, but it wasn't anything special. However, we had big plans for that weekend! I had signed up for a Children's Yoga Instructor Certification Training in Santa Monica that weekend and we decided to leave the kids with my Mom and make it a combined Anniversary trip! It was fabulous! The Santa Monica Pier was amazing and our hotel was right there on the beach! The traffic was insane with all the people flooding the streets so we were happy to park our car at the hotel and walk everywhere like everyone else. Luckily my yoga training was just up the street so I was able to walk to and from that in the beautiful California weather!

Dropping the kids off at Grandma's house, messy face and all!

It was so beautiful exploring underneath the Pier!

How cute is this old carousel?! This is where we found the hand crafted old fashioned sodas! And of course I had my yoga book to study on the beach :).

BIRD! haha!

This pier was amazing!

Be still my soul! My Pisces heart is always happiest at the beach!

We spent the first day driving, and singing our hearts out like we used to when we were dating. We talked and laughed and felt so free! When we made it to the hotel, we checked in and then spent the rest of the day at the Pier! It is like nothing either of us had ever seen before! Dolphins and Sea Lions swam directly below us as we looked out over the pier and one friendly Sea Lion happily played directly below us, hoping to snag a fish off the hook of one of the fishermen casting their lines. What makes this pier unique is the carnival! There is amazing carnival food along with a Ferris Wheel and roller coaster that looks out over the ocean. It's especially beautiful at night all lit up. We also had the most fabulous sea food while we were there! The first night we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp! Just like off of the movie Forrest Gump! It was fun seeing all the memorabilia from the movie and eating the most amazing shrimp either of us had ever tasted. We wandered around the pier with an old fashioned cherry soda and ate Dip 'n Dots ice cream every night! We spent most of the first day hanging out on the beach reading a book and wandering around underneath the pier with our feet in the cold water. Even though we were stuffed, we bought a funnel cake because it looked so dang good! And oh it was! I ended up throwing up later that night from all the food we ate, and probably also because I was so nervous about my yoga training class the next morning! I didn't know what to expect and my perfectionist self was so nervous about doing something that is so different from the typical academia that I normally excel in. Yoga is a different kind of education. One that doesn't solely involve my brain. And since I've excelled my way through life by using my brain, this is something new for me and it made me nervous.

Mmmm funnel cake..... I might have thrown up that night but this was totally worth it! haha!

The bench and shoes from Forest Gump! This place was so cool!

Josh wanted a picture with Captain Dan :).

We didn't ride the rides (because Josh is a chicken with a weak stomach these days) but it was fun wandering around!

Mmmmm....fresh sea food! haha!

The second day was my yoga training day and I was there from 8am-6:30pm so Josh spent the entire day reading on the beach (lucky) while I spent the entire day doing yoga. It was everything I dreamed of and more! I was so stinking happy and had such a blast learning how to turn yoga into game form for little children. We even got to watch our guru Shana in action teaching a live class while we took notes! It expanded my knowledge of yoga in so many ways and I was dying to tell Josh all about my day as I walked back to the hotel! It was a short trip and that was our last night in California but we made the best of it! We walked down to the pier and ate amazing clam chowder in giant sour dough bread bowls outside while I talked Josh's ear off about my day and all the fun stuff I had learned! As the sun set, they lit the fire places and we were warmed by the fire next to our table while we looked out over the ocean. It was so perfect! Then we walked over and grabbed some more Dip 'n Dots ice cream and ate it while we watched the tide roll in, stronger and stronger as the sun went down. It was crazy to feel the magnitude of the waves crashing against the pier! A testament that God is real! As it got dark, they closed the pier and we headed back to our hotel. We were both so sad to leave such a wonderful place but I couldn't wait to show our kids all that I had learned!

Just one of the cool tricks we learned!

Watching Shana teach her class! It was so enlightening and adorable!

We drove home that day and unpacked, and then Josh went back to work the next day and I headed out to Logandale to spend a day with family and my babies. We were all so excited to be reunited and I spent the entire day playing outside with them in the pool. I let my imagination run wild (a trick I learned from my children's yoga class) and for hours we were in our own little world.

MY BABIES!!! I missed them so much as I watched all the little kids playing happily in the ocean.

The next day we went apricot picking to make homemade jam! This was at my Mom's lifelong friend's house (Chrissy). It was so fun to see her again and to chat with her about life as we all worked together to pick the apricots. It was a great learning experience for the kids to learn all about the cycles of fruit (and life) and to not pick the green ones because they are the babies. I couldn't wait to bring our haul home and make Jam! My Grandma Wiegel has always made the most amazing homemade apricot freezer jam and I was dying to teach my kids her ways!

Grandma helping Austin pick the high ones.

My awesome helpers :).

Our jam turned out amazing and the kids had a great time learning! It was definitely a sticky mess but it was worth it! Now we have a years worth of jam in the freezer, not to mention all the apricots we bagged up and froze to make fruit smoothies!! This past week really helped me get over my depression of leaving Utah. I don't know why, but leaving Utah really put me in a slump that I was struggling to get out of. It helped so much to be reminded of why we live here in Nevada and of all the blessings and fun we have here :).