Long Awaited, Highly Anticipated, Much Deserved

To celebrate my sister Cami's 30th birthday (that happened in July), Cami, my mom and I took a much needed girls trip to Southern California.
One of my very favorite parts was getting to spend some quality time with my Grandma Marilyn (my mom's mom). She is beyond amazing. She is pushing 80 and seems to have more energy than me! She kept up with us on the shopping trips we dragged her on. She did opt out on some of the shopping to stay home and make some calls for prop 8, make dinner for a friend, clean up the house and finish knitting a shawl to be donated to cancer patients. She is endlessly happy and service oriented! I adore my grandma and look forward to many many more years with her.

Did I mention we did a little shopping? Ok, that's about all we did!! Well, we ate too. Here we are taking a quick breather at the Irvine Spectrum. This is actually about the end of our shopping when our feet were sore and we were out of money.

The Orange County Swapmeet. A So. Cal. must when you have children to shop for. We also hit the Carlsbad outlets, shops in Laguna Beach and a few other shopping greats down there.

Whoa! We got a lot of stuff!

After an early Christmas, we were wiped out.

And I mentioned that we ate. It seemed most of the trip was either "where can we eat that's near good shopping" or "Where can we shop that's near good eating"

My cousin Summer raves about this cupcake place near the Newport Temple. We, of course, had to hit it up. It did not disappoint! YUM YUM! I am still craving them.

ummm...you have something in your teeth

Another California must for us is chocolate malted crunch ice cream. Nothing is better after a long day of shopping than a big bowl of ice cream with grandma's hot fudge!

My grandparents took us to a great little restaurant on Dana Point Pier called Wind and Surf

The sun set while we were eating and it was totally perfect!

Where do you think we get our chocolate addiction? My grandma kept our sugar highs going all weekendWe did take a little break to do initiatories in the Newport Temple. It's always a neat thing to do and nice to be a smaller, quieter temple.

We couldn't find anyone at first to take our picture, so we took one ourselves

We had to hit the beach while we were there, just to say we did.

And put our feet in the water (that's a surprisingly hard picture to capture)

We had a hard time getting good pictures at the beach, which only led to fitful laughter and a really great time (but no good pictures! Actually, they turned out ok)

My ever wonderful grandma put together a little party for us to be able to see all our family that's there. Between my mom and her brother's wives (she's an only girl) there were 8 babies born in 3 years. 7 of us were girls! My sister and I were two. Three of them live in Southern California and two are out of state (we missed them!) It was so so great to see my cousins who I love dearly and don't see enough. The party was perfected by Chinese food and Marie Calender's pie!

My Mom, my cousin Summer, my sister Cami, me, cousin Katie, grandma

Just the cousins. Summer and Katie are sisters. Cami and Summer are 10 days apart in age. Katie and I, a year. Summer has two little girls that are busy, but darling. Katie has a little girl that keeps her on her toes and a baby boy, who is much calmer.My cousin Janice. We have always been close. She is a cute mom of four boys! It was so fun to be with her for a short time.

I even got cozy with Summer's dog, Gordon.

I've oozed my feelings about my grandma, so you have to assume that someone as wonderful as her is married to an equally wonderful man. My Grandpa Jerry is ever busy. He puts out a family newsletter every month or so, complete with pictures and updates of each family member. His projects are endless. I have never, ever, in my entire life, heard my grandpa complain about anything. He is (as President Monson called himself) a showaholic. He loves old musicals and has hundreds of them on tape and dvd. Every time we go visit he has a new clip from his most recent favorite to show us. This time is was a movie called "Sweethearts." It gave us a great song to sing to them. They love each other so much and are constantly serving each other. It is so wonderful to see a marriage filled with so much happiness after 60 years!! They are the very very best example of everything good.

We had dinner at the beach on our last night. All of us went to the bathroom and came out to find them like this.

This is another common site. Working together on a puzzle. They are waiting for the USC game to start

Grandpa always sits in a folding chair in front of the couch. He has learned to work a DVR to record all his musicals! Pretty impressive.

Somethings never change. She is fixing his hair for a picture. Can't resist snapping that one.

Cam and I got the giggles about something. We laughed A LOT!!

Cami and I gave ourselves pedicures

Getting on our early morning flight in the fog! (we sat on the runway for an hour, finally took off and it took about 5 seconds to rise above the fog)

So sad to be on the airplane home (mostly because it was a 7am flight). Jude is exhausted!