Christmas and more...

Well, we hope you all had a great Christmas. We definitely did. We went to San Diego with Ryan's family last Sunday and stayed there until Tuesday afternoon. On Monday we went to the San Diego museum and saw the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit. It was really neat. I wish I had pictures, but, understandably, they don't allow photography in the exhibit.

They had a big green house and we found some really beautiful flowers.

Ryan and Courtney were more interested in beating Luke up than looking at the plants :)

Monday night, the boys left us to go to a Chargers game. Arlene, Courtney and I went to the spa and got full body massages. It was my first one and I just loved it.

We opened presents on Christmas morning and Ryan and I were SO excited to see that we had gotten Disneyland passes. It's been too long since we've been and we can't WAIT for tomorrow to activate them (we're still in a blackout week right now). That afternoon we went up to Fallbrook to Walt & Darbi's for Christmas dinner. Most of the family was there and it was really great to see everyone and eat a lot of really good food.

We were exhausted by the time we got home and definitely NOT ready to go back to work the next morning, especially because that next morning I realized that I was getting sick. Luckily it was only a 3 day work week! I came down with a nasty cold and was so glad that the weekend came quickly so I could recover.

On Saturday I was feeling a little better. I was still coughing and sniffling, but my fever was gone, so I had the energy to go out. Ryan and I met up with Brian and Desiree and went out to the Long Beach Aquarium. Since I was still sick, I was a little grumpy and not in the mood to go, but I went anyway and I am so glad I did. It was really fun!

They had a stingray pool where we could all pet the stingrays. Ryan and Brian especially enjoyed this. We saw so many cool animals including these eels that looked like worms poking out of the sand, the orange jellyfish, which were mesmerizing (we watched them for like 10 minutes), these HUGE crabs (I can't remember what they are called but they were massive), the clown fish (which all the kids referred to as "Nemo"), and the seahorses, which we all agreed might be one of the strangest sea creatures around.

Once we were through with the aquarium, we had a sudden urge for sea food -- go figure. Lucky for us, there was a Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. right across the street. We took advantage of our 25 minute wait by taking pictures at the lighthouse and near the famous Queen Mary, which you can see in the background of the last picture.

So as you can see, we had a great Christmas and a great weekend with Brian and Desiree. We are so grateful to have many friends and so much family so close. It really makes life a little more fun!

Today is that last day of 2007 and I suppose I should start taking down the Christmas decorations, but I really don't want to!! It seems so boring with out them :( We'll see when I finally come around to doing it...

Happy New Year to you all!