Melissa, Andy and the kids' Blog

We arrived home from Philadelphia on my birthday.  It was great because we were able to have a birthday BBQ with some of Andy's family and some friends.  His mom made me a delicious peanut butter chocolate log!  Yum!      Here I am on the left with Andy's high school friend, Bret, and his wife, Holly.  On the right is Jon, Brenden, Adam, Marissa and Andy's dad, Jon, is walking by.     Lindon missed me so much that it had a firework show for my birthday, or my birthday just happened to be during Lindon Days.  They even had a band.  I'll say it was for my birthday!   Adam's kids loved climbing all over him. (Jonathan, Marissa, Adam, and Brenden)     Brenden and Andy's dad, Jon.     Bret, Holly, Melissa, Zoe, and Andy     Andy wrapped Zoe up in the blanket to calm her down, and I think she almost fell asleep listening to fireworks.  ...

The week after the beach Andy had a diabetes conference in Philadelphia, PA... so we headed back for our second stay in the city of brotherly love in 2013. What better place to find brotherly love than an "Old Ale House," McGillin's to be specific. We dropped in for dinner.  Andy's coworker Albert attended the same conference so we got to hang out together. We got carded... I've never been carded before, not because I look so mature, but because I've never been to a bar. Melissa didn't have her ID with her, but they decided she might be over 21 (the week of her 31st birthday). Albert enjoying the cool stuff on the walls and the general happy noise that surrounded us.  Albert and Andy spent 7-8 hour days in the conference so Melissa decided to go spend a day and a night at Jordan and Amanda's house (Andy's older brother and sister-in-law). She spent her time playing with the kids and they even made a visit to The Please Touch Museum....

South Carlsbad, CA has always been my favorite vacation.  My mom's family has gone since my mom was a teen, so she took us almost every year as kids.  I love the beach.  I love swimming and boogie boarding in the ocean, laying out in the sun, relaxing with a good book, playing in the sand, looking for shells and sand crabs, seeing dolphins surfing the waves, camping on the bluff, making s'mores by the campfire, playing games with family by lantern light, and falling asleep listening to the waves.  Since I loved it so much I had to take Andy there.  He thought that he wouldn't like it because he really doesn't care for swimming, but he loved it!!!     We couldn't take Zoe down to the beach, so we had to get a family picture above.  We plan on taking one every anniversary, but this was about 2 months late.   While we were in California we took a morning to go to the San Diego temple.  It was a lovely morning.   ...