Anniversary - #1

Could you believe it? We've been married a whole year! One year. Uno Anos. And, let me tell you, its been quite the year. Marriage, new jobs, stress, moving back to California, job hunting, being on opposite coasts for two months, starting a new job. It's been crazy!.

Our anniversary was on June 3, and to celebrate, our gift to each other was to take a couple day trip down to Monterey. Later, I found out that the hubby wasn't completely stoked to go, but he gave it a shot since I wanted to go (see, already learning!) and was pleasantly surprised. I guess he didn't realize how cute and quaint the area was!

We stayed at this brand new hotel called The Clement Monterey. At that time, the bellman said it was only open for about 10 days. The views were beautiful and the room was gorgeous. The little fireplace was great since it was quite chilly at times for those of us with Florida blood still running through our veins. I would definitely recommend the hotel since its right there on Cannery Row and literally next door to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We mostly parked the car while we were there and walked where we wanted to!

Here's a picture of Eli and I behind the hotel overlooking the ocean. By the way, you'll see this pose quite a bit whenever I wanted a picture of us together. He has the long arms, and there wasn't always someone walking by to take our picture.


Here's a picture of the back of our hotel. We sat by the outdoor fireplaces for a bit and just looked out over the ocean. Pretty!!!Since this is how the pictures loaded, I'll pop over to our drive over 17-Mile Drive. This area has beautiful scenic views over the ocean. Pebble Beach golf course is also on this scenic drive. Every once in a while we'd stop and just take pictures or just take in the views. LOVE the houses on the drive, too. Let's just say, some of those houses were over $10M, I'm sure!

Here's a picture of us overlooking a piece of the golf course.

Yeah...there were signs to not feed the animals. What do you think...were those signs effective? Poor little big-boned squirrel!

Here's another shot I took. I don't know why, but I love this picture!
One of the stops was overlooking this lone Cyprus tree. It really old and has withstood a lot of weathering. In addition, I believe the logo for my old highschool, Monterey Bay Academy, is based on this tree.
Before taking the car out to 17-Mile Dr., we walked over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It wasn't the largest aquarium I've been to, but it has really spectacular exhibits which beat out other aquariums. We were one of the first visitors, so we were able to have some exhibits to ourselves before the school groups started coming in. That was nice since there is something about water that is very calming to the soul.

Eli took a picture of me in front of this HUGE aquarium, and he captured this school of fish perfectly! I was fascinated and felt like a little girl mesmerized by what I saw.
One of the exhibits started by the people walking in to the room and looking up and seeing a 360-degree tank of fish just swimming in circles. It was awesome! We just stared and stared.
My favorite part of the aquarium was actually the jellyfish. I couldn't stop taking pictures! Since I accidentally left my camera charger at home, I wanted to conserve my battery...but that was very hard with the jellyfish exhibit!

After 17-mile dr., we ended up walking around Carmel. There were tons of cute little shops and quaint little restaurants.

We were walking near this park, and I had to stop and take a picture of this statue sitting on the park bench. It was of this little old couple still looking very much in love. I thought how I hoped we'd be able to get to that stage in our life. A complete life together with kids and a family and a lifetime of memories together.

All in all, it was an amazing trip, and I'm so glad we were able to have it!

Happy Birthday to me!

...and I'm 30!

I am a happy 30-year old, though. No regrets, I am happy where my life is, and I can't complain! Here are my birthday highlights:

Breakfast at Mama's on Washington Square. This is what showed up on our table. It was good food and even on a Tuesday morning, there was a line at least 15 people deep (you have to wait outside since there's no room inside except for those eating). After breakfast, we hung out at Washington Square just people watching. There were asian people visiting with each other and performing Tai Chi...or something close. There was the drunk and the people walking their dogs. We also went into a nice church. I have pictures of those things, but I didn't want to get carried away with this post and take too long and then not post...ya know how these things go.

COIT Tower. This is the third time Eli's been to the tower but only the first time up to the top. I took lots of pictures of the city from the top of the tower. Pretty!!! I'm starting to really like the city!
Dinner at Skates on the Bay. The fam all went to this beautiful restaurant. Although the majority of the menu was sea food, and I don't tend to order in this area, the views were awesome, and it was great turning 30 with my family around.

Here's my favorite gift from my very thoughtful husband. My very own Coach laptop bag! LOVE IT! This was the biggest thing he's ever kept from me. and just in time for when I start my job tomorrow.

Yes, I'm starting my job tomorrow. It's been a fun three months off, but back to the grown up world I go. My husband is here in beautiful California. We've spent time together and celebrated our one year anniversary (pictures and post to come, for sure), I'm starting a new job which hopefully I'll enjoy, and I'm 30! A lot of things have happened in the last year.

Here's to a new year of life!

ROADTRIP!

Well, I wish I had more interesting pictures or something to go along with my account of our roadtrip from Florida to California, but alas, we pretty much just drove! We left late-late Tuesday night and drove as long as we could each day. We weren't able to do much sight seeing on our trip out, and I was so disappointed we weren't able to visit with our friends Kristin & Isaac and Jim and the fam. If I could do it again, I'd give it a week for us to really enjoy the drive...that and a carload less stuff, but hey, we still had fun. It was a great way to reconnect with the husband of mine I hadn't seen in about two months!

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Somewhere on our drive we came upon a lot of smoke...then the fire! I think it was controlled, so that's good.

We looked at maps. A lot! Whether they were big maps or little maps. Maps of the country, of the state we were in or of the county, it felt as if we were looking at them. I think the hubby likes maps. I, personally, am sick of looking at maps.

We saw a lot of pretty scenes throughout the trip. This is one of my favorite pictures of a view. I think we may have been in New Mexico.
Surprise! SNOW! This was in the Flagstaff area of Arizona. This was the hubby's first sighting of snow in years...according to him. Yeah, I was the recipient of his first snowball in years, too! Lovely. I was in flip flops walking through the snow and bit down a canyon walkway! You could definitely tell I was "not from 'round here!"
Our destination was Leoni Meadows - Northern California's SDA Camp. We got there just in time for Filipino Campmeeting! My family faithfully attended every year on Memorial Day weekend. I just hadn't attended since either highschool or college! It was nice to go since all my family - both immediate and extended - were there! Mom, dad, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles...all there! We were able to catch up on some sleep and hang with the family a bit.

Here's a picture of the hubby bonding with No-Cal nature. Doesn't it look as if they have matching smiles?

Here's the hubby bonding with my cousin's daughter, or as filipinos deem it - my niece! Saturday night , after the programs, there were a lot of games. Of course, there were a lot of spectators. Here's a picture of some of the Patricio clan. It's so nice being around family again!

Anyways, I'm glad I don't have any pictures of the car breaking down or running out of gas. We were blessed driving out that there were no major glitches in our plans to drive across country. We're now here safe and sound!