May Family Extravaganzas

Seeing as how I'm so far behind and for some reason still believe that someday I can get caught up... I'm going to give very brief explanations and mostly just include the pictures.

We were able to visit with Kevin and Rachael while they were staying in Sacramento at the beginning of the summer. It was so much fun to see them, especially because we got to finally meet our new nephew, baby Ben.




Then we were so glad to have Ashley and Dave come visit us for several days. They are so fun to hang out with and put up with us, even when we were boring and had to work. Thankfully we were able to hang out during the evenings and spent a day in San Francisco. Umm... sorry again about swearing when we were going up that huge hill with complete stop-and-go traffic and cars in front of us were dying and turning around. I got super stressed out. I really usually don't swear!






To finish off our May Extravaganza, we went down to Visalia to visit Brett and Becky and kids, and to meet our new niece, Katelyn! We always have such fun hanging out with their family. Their kids are so cute and baby Katelyn is no exception!

First Year Anniversary

Ahhh, our first year anniversary. We had such a fun time celebrating our first fabulous year and look forward to many more. Marriage to a great, fun, worthy man is simply the best thing in the whole world. There have definitely been ups and downs thoughout, but the ups always outweight the downs. Besides, the downs just help us to grow together in the end. And I personally think we're getting better at this whole marriage thing. Always good to improve. Well, to celebrate our anniversary, we decided to go to Pismo Beach. We had heard good things but never been there yet. Mark found us an amazing place to stay. It was a bit pricey, so we just went for one night. Besides, Mark had school and a pretty busy schedule. We stayed at the Avila Village Inn and it was tremendous! More in the pictures to follow...

First of all, the inn had free beach cruiser bikes that they let us use. We drove for about 15-20 minutes to the beach and walked around a little outdoor shopping market. It was awesome.





Avila Beach

We then drove to Pismo Beach (about a half hour away) and walked around and ate yummy seafood for dinner.

Pismo Beach sunset

We had heard of this Hot Lix place before on a special Food Network candy show and were surprised to find it in Pismo Beach. They make candy out of bugs. Yes, that's right, bugs. So we just had to go check it out, and Mark even talked me into trying some... they were only 25 cents each. Actually the chocolate covered crickets weren't so bad. They bake them so they're crunchy and then cover them in chocolate. Tasted like a really crunchy crunch bar. Gross when I started thinking about it, but not bad tasting. Mark said the chocolate covered worm was worse. I refused to try that one.

There were a few reasons why we loved our little Avila Village Inn so much.

1. It was a small inn, maybe 30 rooms. So it was really quiet and intimate.
2. The free bikes, good times.
3. They let you borrow dvd's from the lobby, so we watched Strictly Ballroom, finishing up at the very last moment before we had to check out.
4. The lobby was absolutely stunning (no pictures), with this huge fireplace and basically no one there to bug you.
5. Free cookies and free apples (neither of which we tried... fresh strawberries from the market was good enough for me).
6. Our fabulous room... it was huge and luscious and simply amazing.
7. We had a balcony, which faced the back of the hotel, rather than the common grounds like other people's rooms. It faced the secluded trees area. The bike trail was down there as well, but we felt like it wasn't super close. See the view below...

and last but not least... we had our own private hot tub out on the balcony. We definitely made use of it a few times. It was so sweet and peaceful to sit out in the hot tub and feel so alone and out in nature. Then we had a fun time using it again the next morning... we wanted to make sure we got our money's worth.

The front/side of our inn.

After checking out of the hotel, we drove over to Pismo Beach for one last visit. Unfortunately, it was actually pretty cold. I don't think we took our jackets off. But we sat in the sun on our towels and beach chairs and read for awhile. We love the beach!

Wadsworth Parentals Visit

We always love having visitors come stay with us. I was so glad that my parents were able to come out and visit us this year! My mom had a conference held here in San Jose, so they ended up just staying at the hotel. Next time though... sleepover at our house! We had a great time hanging out with them, chatting, laughing, and having adventures.

We taught them how to play the train game (i.e. Ticket to Ride), which I think they really enjoyed. Great game. Oh, and isn't my dad looking great?!? He's lost a ton of weight in the last year since going on a very strict diet and exercise regiment. He's doing so fabulous!!


One of the days they were here, we went up to San Francisco. I have been wanting to walk across or drive across or bike across or anything across the Golden Gate Bridge every since moving to this area. So we made that happen! We walked all the way over and back. In case anyone was curious... it's kinda a long walk! I think we decided it was about 2 miles one-way. It's awesome to see how in-shape my dad is nowadays... he left us in his dust because we were going too slow and we didn't see him again until we got all the way across. He put up with our speed on the way back though. So much fun!

Mi Madre and me! Halfway across the bridge. What a fabulous lady she is!

The view of the city and the bay from the other side of the bridge.

And then, as if walking four miles wasn't enough for one day, we walked down Embarcadero to get to the correct pier for our Alcatraz adventure. If you haven't been to Alcatraz before, just be aware that it does include a fair amount of walking. All I know is that by the end of the day we were all pretty sore and tired (well, maybe that was just me). Here's us on the boat ride over to Alcatraz.

Listening to the audio tour on Alcatraz with the city view in the background.

Hanging out in the outside exercise area.

Just checking out the accommodations...

Oh gosh, I love my dad. He made me take several pictures to see if he could get his "angry prisoner" look correct. He did awesome.

Mark was less the "angry prisoner" and more the "why are you taking more pictures of me prisoner." :)

And here's some pictures on the boat ride back from Alcatraz. Well, we're not actually at sea yet. I think the boat's still docked, but we wanted to get some Alcatraz background in the picture. Anyways, we're just pretty awesome. That's about all there is to it.

I love this picture of Dad and I (is that really the grammatically correct way of saying that? looks weird...)! Partly because it reminds me of the hat that I brought all over San Francisco because it's usually cold there and it ended up being the hottest day in San Francisco I've ever seen. The hat ended up most of the day in Mom's purse. Still being the best mom ever. Always having to carry things around for us, even when we're supposed to be adults now!

All in all, we had such a fun time with the parentals in town. We got together several evenings and also spent time with the Waltons. We even all went and worked out in their hotel gym. Definitely a first as far as family activities. Very cool.

Easter 2010

April showers brought Easter fun for the San Jose chapter of the Abbott clan. However, I did make the grossly huge mistake of putting off Easter candy and basket shopping until the night before Easter. That week just ended up being much busier than I had anticipated. And when I come home from work, I would much rather hang out with Mark than run around doing errands. All in all, a bad decision. I also didn't have time to run errands during the day on Saturday because General Conference was held the same weekend of Easter. We were busy watching the sessions, trying to get outside when we could, and making food. However, I had the genius idea of going to Walmart to shop for Easter supplies while Mark was attending the Priesthood Session that evening. Genius or insane. It seemed like a good idea, until I got into Walmart, found a shopping cart, and found the Easter aisle absolutely jam-packed with people and shopping carts, with limited amounts of candy strewn everywhere. So, a new plan formed. One that included not looking at prices and objectively deciding what to buy. No time for such nonsense when hundreds of people are pressing upon me and when the candy has all been unsettled and moved from its original resting place. So I just started throwing things in the cart, one for Mark, one for me. I made it down the first aisle after many moments of utter panic and despair. Freedom! Only to realize that I still needed baskets, plastic Easter eggs, and another candy run. I found a huge bin full of plastic Easter eggs that were just ridiculous looking... who wants comouflage eggs? Or real-looking bugs on their eggs? Where are just the normal plastic Easter eggs? Too tired to care much, I decided against them. After all, most of the candy I bought was individually packaged and didn't need plastic eggs. Maybe next year. Then in a moment of desperation, I decided to simply leave my full cart near the end of the aisle and make a quick run down the Easter aisle towards some surprisingly cute looking baskets and a few candy items that looked appealing. Once again, who has time for price checks? Miraculously, no one had disturbed my cart by the time I dug myself out of the crowds again. Thank goodness. I would have been even more aggrevated if I had to start all over again. After failing to find one or two other items on my shopping list, I finally left the store in disgust. Let me share these words of wisdom: never, ever, EVER go holiday shopping at Walmart the day before the holiday. Maybe not even a few days beforehand. If you're going for the cheaper Walmart prices, plan ahead. Otherwise, just buy candy somewhere else. After all, I ended up spending much more money than I had originally planned because of the intense craziness. Oh well, we do love our candy here! And yes, I will admit that we bought even more day-after-Easter-sales candy.

In years to come, perhaps we will fill each other's Easter baskets, like we do for Christmas stockings, but this year it was all me. I wanted to do it and thoroughly enjoyed the rush of preparing a basket for Mark. Not gonna lie... it wasn't so bad picking out candy for myself either. Well, because I prepared both baskets, I hid both of them in our bedroom (limited space in our small apartment) and made Mark find them both. He found his cheery yellow basket first (yellow is his favorite color after all).


Then he found my basket for me... yummy!

Mark enjoying his treasures!

A close-up of my basket of luciousness...

We also took time to decorate eggs together, something that I never really did often growing up. We actually tried to do this last year and even bought the egg dying kit and hard-boiled eggs. Three weeks later though, we still hadn't dyed the eggs and ended up throwing them out. This time we were better... we actually dyed the eggs! Of course, we did end up throwing them out a week or so afterwards. One step at a time...

Here's Mark with his favorite egg - LAKERS pride!

Decorating in our kitchen.

Mark's ubber cute face. :)

The end product - our eggs! And yes, you can see the start of the egg Mark made me... M hearts H. Love that man!!

A look back continued... February and March 2010

Just a quick review of February and March this past year. First of all, here is an awesome picture of one of our favorite meals... Salad Dressing Chicken. Basically I boil bite-size pieces of chicken in a mixture of water and salad dressing until the liquids all boiled away and the chicken gets a little crispy. Basically the salad dressing gets soaked into the chicken and the chicken tastes delicious! Our favorite salad dressing to use is Italian Dressing, but we have a few others we've tried and loved, such as Poppyseed and Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette, which is pictured below. Tastes totally awesome and turned out basically red/pink. We made this for the first time a week or so before Valentines Day, but perhaps in the future this could be a fun Valentines Day meal for the family?


For our first Valentines Day married, we actually celebrated by ourselves before by going out to eat. And yes, because I'm lamely doing this post six months later, I don't remember what restaurant we went to. Sad. But we had lots of fun, especially Mark taking crazy pictures.

For the weekend of Valentines Day, we actually traveled down to Visalia and spent time with Brett, Becky, and their kids. We had such a blast! We've been so lucky to have them live pretty close and be willing to put up with us. We love them! Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures. Once again, lame.

Then came March. As part of our future traditions, we threw the Second Annual San Jose Abbott Academy Awards party! The Abbotts always throw an awesome Academy Award party and we definitely want to continue the tradition, mostly because Mark is really into movies and into the Academy Awards. We invited several couples over and had lots of food items that related to many of the nominated movies. Unfortunately, once again, no pictures until after the fact. Too much like my Mom who always forgets to bring and/or use her camera, except during the ugly times (i.e. Christmas morning). I'm getting slowly better at taking pictures though.

Mark and I filled out our guesses on who would win which awards. Mark definitely guessed more correctly than me, no surprise.

I wish I had taken a picture of all the food before we dug in, but at least you can see the aftermath of the crazy amounts of random food. It took a lot of cleaning, but was so worth it!

During our cleaning escapades, we somehow tried to put an entire cabbage (or at least a lot of it) into our garbage disposal, which for some reason didn't agree with it. It was actually pretty hilarious. The water started backing up and then Mark grabbed the plunger and went to work... only to find out that the metal part of the sink on the far top right corner of the sink is connected to the pipes and shot out a water and cabbage mixture all over the counter and the walls. Nothing quite like cleaning up gunky cabbage pieces from all over your kitchen. At least I took a picture of this shining moment. :) Eventually we realized the plunger wasn't helping and got the Drain-O. We now have a very sincere testimony of the power of Drain-O. Ten minutes later the sink worked perfectly.

During March, we had yet another first holiday after being married... St. Patrick's Day! I don't remember much about St. Patrick's Day growing up, but I think it can be fun dying food green and celebrating. So, I made pesto pasta with chicken (I think we had to use a bit of green food coloring to make it look that green), french bread with dyed green garlic butter (super yummy, even though that did look a little gross), and Sprite dyed green. Awesome first St. Patrick's Day.