Our First Anniversary

One year ago, on June 2nd, Kelson and I made the biggest and most important promise of our lives. It has been a wonderful year for both of us. We decided to celebrate our anniversary with a weekend getaway to Idyllwild, a beautiful, artsy, little town in the San Jacinto mountains East of LA.

 We stayed in a charming lodge called Silver Pines. Definitely more fun than a normal hotel.

 We had a pond full of koi right outside our door. We sat by the pond and read for an hour on Saturday afternoon, and we could hear the water trickling into the pond as we fell asleep at night.

 Just below the lodge was a pretty little creek that we explored for a little while.

 It felt so good to get out of the city and into this beautiful place. It was peaceful and happy.

 The town was full of fun little shops, including a Christmas store and one of the best thrift stores we have been to in a long time. Kelson's favorite was the rock & gem store. He loves rocks so much that I think he really should have studied geology instead of geography.  He really looked like a kid in a candy store. Unfortunately, I wouldn't let him bring home a 100 pound piece of quartz.

 I guess I have a bit of my parents in me, because I love riding around in the mountains. We drove around for a while and ended up at Lake Hemet. Beautiful!

 Idyllwild is the hiking gateway for the San Jacinto mountains. We only had time for a little sample of the hiking trails, but we found some fun things, like this giant rock.  Doesn't it just make you want to climb it?

 Or perhaps crawl inside of it? My mom hates my tendency to crawl on and around rocks and cliffs. She is sure I am going to be eaten by a mountain lion one of these days.

 Kelson is basically a monkey. A very cute monkey, of course.

 I jokingly dared him to do a headstand on this stump, which had a 10 foot drop-off on the other side. I didn't think he would actually do it. This is as far as I let him go.

 He tried it again in a slightly less risky location.

 I found my new dream house. You can't see it well in the pictures, but it was a cute yellow cottage with a white picket fence, a rose arbor, and a beautiful garden all tucked into the forest. I want one!

 We saw the most amazing assortment of wildlife, especially birds. This woodpecker was especially pretty. We also saw lots of beautiful blue jays.

To celebrate our anniversary on Saturday night, we got dressed up and went out for dinner at a restaurant called The Gastrognome. I ate the most amazing dish, chicken scallopini with asparagus in a mushroom sauce.  It was worth the splurge. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of it. I am going to try to come up with my own version soon.

This was the view from our dinner table. Not too shabby. The only problem was that there were tiny caterpillars falling out of the pine trees above us and landing on our table, so we were a little afraid for our food. I don't think we managed to eat any extra "protein". It was a fun, fancy dinner.

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