A Happy Holiday Season in San Diego

It has been a fun and busy holiday season. It has been interesting to find our way into the Christmas spirit when it is sunny and we look out our window at rows of palm trees. Still, we have had a great time starting new traditions for our family as well as joining our extended families for their traditions. We spent Thanksgiving with Kelson's family in Escondido. We had an amazing feast and enjoyed a day of movies and time with family.  We have lot to be grateful for this year.

For our Christmas card picture, we decided to capture a little of San Diego. It may look like summer, but this picture was taken on Thanksgiving in Kelson's grandparents' garden.  Where I come from, oranges are only found at the grocery store. Picking them off a tree is so cool!

I am used to spending the day after Thanksgiving huddling around the fireplace to stay warm after wading through the snow to cut down a Christmas tree. It was a very different experience this year. We did hunt for a Christmas tree, but it was at a store, and rather than wading through snow, we were strolling down the beach at Coronado.  Sometimes, new and different things can be exciting.

The Hotel Del Coronado is amazing. I would love to go spend a night there.

We had a date night at the temple. Before we went in, we ate a picnic in the car. After we got done in the temple, we enjoyed some hot cider that I brought along in a thermos while we walked around and looked at the temple lights. They were great!

Celebrating the Christmas season at the temple was a good reminder of what we need to be focusing on at this time of year.  We are grateful for the Christmas season, which gives us a special opportunity to celebrate the birth of our Savior.

We decided to start a new tradition of making our Christmas ornaments every year. This year, we went to a paint-your-own pottery place and painted our ornaments. Kelson was proud of his snowman.

I went with a snowflake. So much fun!

Being on the water, San Diego can't just have a normal parade. Our Christmas parade was composed of boat-floats sailing around the bay. The traffic downtown was crazy, but it was worth it. Some of the boats were awesome!

After the parade, we went to a neighborhood near our house called Christmas Circle. There were several blocks of houses decked out for the holidays. We found some wonderful pockets of Christmas spirit that day.

Now, we are at home in Oregon for Christmas. I accidentally deleted all of the pictures we have taken since we got here, so the Oregon post may have to wait a couple of days. In the mean time, merry Christmas to everyone!

A Visit From Oregon

We are so grateful to my parents, who drove all the way down from Oregon to bring us our other car. Not only did we get to spend some time with them and introduce them to our new home, but now we have two cars, so I don't have to get up before the sun and drive Kelson to work. It is lovely. We had a great time during the four days Mom and Dad spent with us.

Since we won't be going home for Thanksgiving this year, we decided to make a little early Thanksgiving dinner for Mom and Dad. Kelson and I had grand adventures with turkey, brown rice stuffing, and various other holiday foods. To top it off, I made a pumpkin trifle.  Yum! I think we did pretty well for our first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

On our first day exploring the city, we went to Old Town San Diego. Our first stop was the Mormon Battalion historic site. It was an amazing museum, and we learned lots of things that I didn't know before. Dad got to dress all up in soldier garb.

While Dad carried the gun, Mom and I relaxed in the wagon.

The next day, we went on a trolley tour that took us all over the city. It was a wonderful way to learn about the history of my new home and see all of the places I can go back to later.

Arrr  Matey!

We love you, Mom and Dad!  Thanks again.

Veterans Day at Knott's Berry Farm

First of all, my Veterans Day post would be incomplete without a huge thank you to all of those who have sacrificed and are sacrificing now to keep our country safe and to protect those who can't protect themselves. As I have had a little taste now of what it is to be a military wife, this Veterans Day is much more meaningful to me than it ever has been in the past. I also want to say thank you again to all of the retailers who made it possible for us to have an awesome Veterans Day, including Knott's Berry Farm, TGI Fridays, and Chili's. We had the awesome opportunity to spend a day at Knott's Berry Farm for free. It was pretty busy, so we stood in a lot of lines, but it was still very fun.

We started our day out with a bang on the Pony Express. It was a weird roller coaster-type ride. You leaned forward, so you were going head first.

After that, we slowed things down with the Calico Mine Railroad. It is kind of like the "Its a Small World" of Knott's Berry farm. The ride is slow, safe, non-thrilling, and full of corny, old animatronic figures. That's what makes it great. Classic. I think Kelson was lulling me into a false sense of security for the next ride he wanted to go on.

He wanted me to go on this. Are you kidding me? You can only see a little bit of it, but it was a serious, loop-the-loop, flip head over heels 15 times in 30 seconds, faster than lightning, feet dangling in the air roller coaster.  I had never been on such a thing in my life. Apparently I love that boy, though, because I consented.

This is how we both looked at the end.  It was so much fun! Of course our eyes were watering and we both walked like we were intoxicated for a few minutes, but it was worth it. We went again right at the end of the day.

Speaking of classic rides, the log ride was our absolute favorite. We both loved it when we had been there as little kids, and it was still great. It was all decorated like the North Pole for Christmas. We went on this one twice too.

TGI Friday's gave Kelson free lunch.  Thanks!

Slowing things down again on the railroad tour. It looks like Kelson is advertising something.

On first glance, it looks like Cinderella's carriage, but it is actually a little hearse. Creepy.

Getting ready to get spun around really high in the air.  Fun! This time Kelson was the nervous one.

We flew around in circles 300 feet in the air. The view of Anaheim was fabulous.

Our day at Knott's Berry Farm was so much fun! Thanks again!

Sea World!!!

Kelson finally had some leave last week, and we made great use of it. There are lots of amazing deals going on right now for military folks in honor of Veterans Day, and we made good use of them. Our first adventure was to Sea World, where we received free admission (thank you Sea World!). I can't believe it is only 15 minutes from our house. So cool!

Hello stingray! It looks like it is smiling at us.

We started out our day on the Journey to Atlantis. Good thing it was warm outside, because I got rather wet.

The last time I went to Sea World in San Diego was when I was eight. Aren't I cute?

The starfish are still pretty much the same 15 years later.

We went to the 4-D pirate movie. Everything comes right out of the movie at you!

Look out Kelson! Shark!

Being a Wednesday, the park was pretty empty, so we had no problem walking on to all of the rides and in to all of the shows. We didn't stand in lines at all. We loved the dolphin show, but the sea lion show was probably our favorite.

Lame self-photography I know. Notice that we are super wet. We went on the Atlantis ride two more times right at the end of the day and got thoroughly drenched. It was a great day. Thanks again, Sea World!

Finally Settled in San Diego

There is a reason this blog is entitled "Sea to Shining Sea." Not only does it cleverly incorporate patriotism and the ocean (you know, that whole Navy thing that we do), but it describes what we have been doing for the last year.  I figured out the other day that in the past year, between the two of us, we have flown cross country at least 12 times. We have covered all four of the extreme corners of the United States. We have lived in or visited Oregon, Maine, Key West, and now San Diego. For someone like me who has never moved in her life except for going to Utah for college, this is a new, exciting, and terrifying experience. On the days when the stress of it all overwhelms the exciting part, I have to remind myself how blessed we are. We live in a beautiful place, we are less than an hour from Kelson's grandparents, and I am seeing and experiencing things that I never imagined that I would. Now for a few pictures from our first week in town...

My first view of downtown San Diego.

 Our first priority was to find a place to live. We were blessed to have a place to stay in the interim. Kelson's grandparents live in Escondido, and we slept in their home gym for a little over a week. Thank you so much Grandma and Grandpa!

After a few stressful days of apartment shopping, we finally settled on a place about 10 miles from the base that we really like. It was a huge relief to finally have a place to live and to start unpacking all of the stuff that has been boxed up for 6 months.

After we chose an apartment, Kelson decided that I needed a break. He took me on a day trip to the charming little town of Julian, which is up in the mountains above San Diego. It did me a lot of good to get out of the busy city and enjoy the scenery. They had the cutest chapel I had ever seen. It looked like a little old schoolhouse.

Julian is famous for its pies, so of course we had to have some apple pie at Mom's.

That night was Kelson's grandparents' ward Halloween party, so we had fun passing out candy at the Trunk or Treat. I'm afraid we were a complete failure in the Halloween costume department. It was a little tricky with all of our stuff still being packed up in boxes. Next year we will come up with some awesome costumes.

Key West!

Hello for yet another three week late post. I have been so busy having fun at home with my parents that my blog has been pushed to the back burner. We arrived in San Diego a couple of days ago, so I should hopefully be a little better. Before I jump forward to the present, I wanted to share a some of the highlights from our wonderful trip to Key West. Kelson sailed there in his ship, and I met him there. I felt very brave as I flew into Ft. Lauderdale and drove down to Key West all by myself.

This was the first beach we visited in Key West. The whole thing was about 100 feet long. The beaches in Key West were all pretty tiny. This happens to be the southernmost beach in the continental U.S. In case you were wondering, moonshine is not allowed. Just read the sign.

This guy was just standing on the end of the pier playing the guitar and singing. He looked like he had a pretty good life. From this pier, we saw a stingray, a shark, parrot fish, pipefish, and all kinds of other neat wildlife.

That night, we went on a ghost tour of Key West. Spooky!

The big event was on Saturday. Spruance became the newest commissioned destroyer in the US Navy. The ceremony was amazing.

In addition to friends and family of the crew, thousands of people from Key West were there.

The ship was looking fabulous. It was an awesome sight to see all of the sailors in their whites running up to man the rails of the ship.

It was the first time I had seen Kelson in his dress whites. What a handsome boy!

That's Kelson right above the "R" of Spruance. Sorry for the blurry picture.

We spent one whole afternoon snorkeling. It was so fun!

On Sunday, we drove up the Overseas Highway while we listened to General Conference. Beaches are in short supply in the Keys because there aren't big enough waves to make sand, so we had to settle for this concrete wall to eat our picnic on.

Beautiful!

Many of the houses in Key West have the underside of their porches blue. It is a Gullah superstition. Ghosts can't cross water, so the blue tricks them into staying away from houses.

Key West is crawling with scantily clad, drunk people. I felt like this poster was a fairly good synopsis of downtown Key West.

Key Lime Pie!!

We went out early on our last morning in Key West to snag a few more minutes on the beach. This is at the country's southernmost point, just 90 miles from Cuba.

We went swimming at South Beach again. There were schools of tiny fish swimming around our legs, which attracted pelicans. It was great to watch them fly in, scoop up some water, and then do a clumsy splash landing in the water and fall over backwards. They were not very graceful, but we had fun.

We had a great time in Key West. It was a treat to be able to spend a few days together in the middle of our two month separation. After Key West, I spent three more weeks at home, and Kelson sailed south to Colombia. From there, the ship sailed through the Panama Canal and then spent a few days in Panama before sailing up to San Diego. What adventures!