I'M 25.

we started the birthday celebrations by having brandon and hannah in town! the four of us went and stayed in a somewhat sketchy hotel near sea world. it wasn't so bad and it was fun reminiscing about the first time we met 3.5 years ago and stayed in a somewhat sketchy hotel on camp lejeune! 

we ate breakfast at the mission which is one of jon's favorites.

after breakfast we went to balboa park. we made the rash decision to rent one of these bicycles!!! it was the best decision ever!! we sped around balboa park for almost an hour laughing hysterically. jon was so unsure the first few minutes and we were all over the place. he quickly got comfortable and we saw all of balboa, even the restricted areas. our ride included:
going over a very narrow and pedestrian only bridge
swiping the side of the bike on a pole on a sidewalk (luckily brandon and i pulled our legs in so that we can laugh about the memory and not cry). jon was NOT slowing down. we were very clearly too large to fit in between the two poles, but he was stopping for nothing.
and barely making it up a steep hill. we actually pedaled ourselves halfway up the hill before we came to a dead stop in front of more than four onlookers. we had to back up and get a good head start and we did make it up all the way though we were going verrry slow toward the top of the hill.
it was so much fun and i'm really glad we did that! it was definitely the best part of the day. we visited a couple museums afterwards then headed back to the isaac's for some games.

we have been living with the isaac's who are a family from our ward. it is weird to refer to them as 'the family we are living with' because that makes it sound impersonal. we love living with them so much and they seem like family.
anyway, brandon and hannah came over and we played a good game of monopoly with bella and sully (the two youngest issac's). lucy and brandon enjoyed each others company. we also played settlers of catan nights and cities. it was my first time with that expansion and i really liked it!
brandon and hannah are our game friends. they know a ton of fun games and are always looking for new ones. they are good sports and we always get such a laugh hanging out with them. (kim and mike are our movie friends. lindsay and wes are our SNL friends:))

sunday was my birthday!! we woke up bright and early to attend church from 9-12. after church jon and the isaac's gave me presents and sang happy birthday to me. they were all so nice on my birthday and let me make every decision! we played settlers of catan, had a yummy steak dinner, went on a wilderness walk, watched pitch perfect, ate cake and played the great dalmuti until we were all too sleepy to play any more. seriously, i think they all wanted to finish pitch perfect, but when i mentioned that i wanted to play a game, they turned the movie off and we played a game. annie (the mom) kept saying "it's your birthday! its up to you!" this family is so awesome, they do everything together! we can't figure out if it is always like this or if they all want to hang out with us just because we will be here for a short time. their house is set up perfectly so that the private areas are small and the common areas are big. even if people are in two different rooms, the rooms are all connected so they can talk to each other. i can't explain it, it is just not how i grew up!

jon made me the most delicious cake!!!! chocolate cake with made from scratch chocolate frosting. i was amazed at how good it tasted on day one, but it's only gotten better since. 

it was a fun birthday and i'm so glad we were at the isaac's to celebrate. they did a good job making me feel special and they all kept telling me happy birthday throughout the day. jon was really cute about my birthday as well and got me a really nice card which was my favorite part (along with the cake). i got to talk to my sisters and my dad on my birthday too, technology is so awesome. lizzie, amanda and i chatted on google plus and got such a kick out of the sound affects. if someone said something funny the others would either applaud or put on crickets. it doesn't sound as funny as it was, so you've justttt got to trust me. 

25 is going to be a good year, i can feel it. annie says that every year just gets better and better (until you're 70 at which point everything hurts or at least something hurts at all times) and i think i believe her. 

goodbye first house: bedroom

the last room in the house is our bedroom:

 we have a tiny bed and we constantly fought over how much space the other person was taking up. during the olympics we took our mattress downstairs into the front room for two weeks and pushed it up against the couch. while we were down there, i slept up against the couch and that meant jon got most of the bed! we decided that maybe it'd be better if we pushed our bed into the corner of the room so that i could sleep up against the wall and we'd both be more comfortable. (i don't like sleeping close to the edge of the bed when its in the middle of the room, scary!!) it looks funny having our bed like this, especially since that means the rest of the furniture is lined up on the opposing wall, but it's actually helped a lot! the only thing i don't like is reaching over jon to turn on and off the lamp, and not having a place to plug in my phone.

(mouse!)

i think i posted about this before. jon used to go to work before i woke up and sometimes i was so sleepy i couldn't even say i love you! so i used push pins to spell ILY right by the door so that he knew i loved him every time he left the room, even if i didn't say it. the light switch cover is the one that was in my granny's bedroom forever.

i must say that our room never looks like this. maybe on the first day that we have guests. the floor is usually covered in clothes and shoes! but that's what makes it homey, right?!
i am writing this while i should be studying for my midterm tomorrow. it's been awhile since i've just sat down and written my thoughts like i used to.
it is our last night here in this house. i don't think it has hit me yet, it seems surreal. i did get a dose of reality when we were packing today. in the winter marines wear green cammies. they change to their desert (tan) cammies in the spring and wear them until fall. they just switched from green to tan when the time changed. that means jon won't be wearing his green cammies anymore...who knows if he will ever wear them again. we took out all the drawers from his dresser and he and his dad took the dresser out to the u-haul. i saw his drawer sitting in the middle of the floor filled with his green cammies that he is sending to storage for an indefinite amount of time. it made my heart hurt...a lot. it's enough to have to say goodbye to our first little house and move in with someone else. it's really sad to leave san diego, the place where we've spent our entire marriage, our friends, my school. but to think about leaving the military...that is more heart wrenching than the others. we can come back to san diego, we can come see our friends, i'll be back next year to graduate from my school. but come May 3rd, jon will no longer be wearing his uniform everyday. he won't be able to say "I'm a Marine." i will no longer be a Marine Wife. I mean, i will...but it just won't be the same. it is quite difficult to explain. it's just been amazing to have my spouse do something we are both so proud of. i'm proud that my husband went to afghanistan. i'm proud that he enlisted on his own free will. i'm proud that he has known since he was a child that he wanted to do this and proud that he chose the marine corps because it is the toughest branch(wink). i know we need to move on from this. jon has so much to give the world, so much more than the marine corps will allow him to do. he's starting school in june and i know he will do awesome!  he's had an internship this spring and met a lot of prevalent people who were impressed by him. i know he's going to do great in whatever he decides to do. i am sad to leave california, but i'm ready to be in a state where i can (hopefully) find a job that doesn't require me to mop before i go home, is that too much to ask?
i could ramble on and on, but i really must get to studying. we are packing up the trailer tomorrow and checking out of our house. tomorrow night we are going to sleep at the isaac's (that's who we will be living with when we come back to san diego on april 7th) and then saturday morning the three of us are road-tripping from san diego to san antonio! jon and my FIL tried to warn me about how tiny the middle seat was in the u-haul, but i told them to stop. i wanted to be surprised. i don't deserve to dread the roadtrip three days before we leave. i'll deal it with saturday morning.
wish us (me) luck!

disneylandddd 3 of 3!

we had planned for day 3 to be laid back since we figured we would have done everything we wanted to on day one and two, but we still felt rushed like we had to see more! it was fine with me because we saw and did a lot of fun things.

we saw the bug's life 4d movie. it really terrified kim and i. at one point i was huddled in jon's chest and kim reached over to grab me and it scared me so bad i screamed! when we got out, i felt like i had just gone through a haunted house. wtf!

tower of terror was another crowd favorite, but for some reason every time we waited in line for it, we found ourselves stuffing our faces with all the food we packed. particularly flamin' hot cheetos! not a good thing to have on your belly when you're being jostled around like that. 

we had appetizers at carnation cafe again on sunday. those fried pickles are so addicting! jon and i shared a serving of pickles and another bowl of baked potato soup. it was just as good the second time around. 

at mike's request, we went to tom sawyer's island. kim and i put up a pretty good fight, but he wouldn't drop it so we went. we walked right onto the ferry and mike couldn't stop talking about it. "at least we didn't have to wait in line!" that man...

we spent most of the day going between disneyland and california adventures. jon and i got a dipped chocolate-chocolate ice cream cone last time we were here (in september) and we loved it and wanted another one this trip. it delivered.

kim's memories of disneyland included churros dipped in chocolate sauce and on the last day she finally found where to buy it!

the tiki room is a family favorite for jon and i. it was kim's first time!

jon and kim don't like riding on wet rides, but mike and i love them. we finally talked jon and kim into going on splash mountain with us! they sat in the back and mike and i sat in the very front. almost as soon as the ride got going, mike switched seats so that i was alone in the front by myself! i got mad at him and he assured me he wouldn't do it again. i knew something was suspicious because jon was in the backseat unable to stop laughing. as we started to ascend the final hill, i turned around and mike had left me in the front all alone again! i was pissed and tried sitting down in the same seat as him thinking that it was a spot for two (i found out later it was most certainly a one person seat) and all i could hear was mike yelling "you can't ride!!!" while pushing on my back trying to stop me from sitting on his lap. at the last minute, i sat in my own seat and we got this picture on the way down! there was no line when we finished the ride, so we asked one of the workers if we could ride it again. his response was "accctually nooo....we can see you guys and watched you switching seats..." way funny! we kept up the nightly tradition and finished the night off with one last round of space mountain.

candid!

not candid, but still cute!
it was such a fun vacation! we did so many enjoyable things and ate so much good food. i would go back in a heartbeat if i could. disneyland is always a blast, but its so much better when you're with three of your best friends.
kim's recap of day three here!

we had one more night with the birds, so we spent it in old town san diego eating cinnamon tortillas and drinking root beer. it's always so fun hanging out with mike and laughing at old stories. he's a really good friend and he couldn't have married a better girl! we all get along so well and surprisingly never got sick of each other, haha! it was pretty easy talking them into coming out here for disneyland, i'm hoping that talking them into moving to san antonio with us will be just as easy...

disneyland! 2 of 3!

day two didn't start as early as we had planned...we all slept pretty well the night before and didn't get to the park until around 10:30 am. that was okay though because we had alllll day!

Jon jumped in this picture of mike and kim. he wasn't invited, but it actually turned out really cute!

splash mountain was a success every single time. see what i mean about trying to out-funny each other? how funny is that hooded figure resting her chin on her hand? but mike surprised us all by taking off his shirt and whipping it around his head! he whipped kim in the eye with it! and jon had so much fun on the way up the hill that he passed out on the way down.

my man has been going to disneyland since he was little and it's always been a tradition to get clam chowder in a bread bowl from  Royal Street Veranda.  

it was so funny to have jon and mike ride the rides together. kim said "you and i look like friends when we ride together, but they look gay."

for a shorter wait time, we went on the cars ride in the 'single rider' line. this time jon and i happened to be in the same car and mike and kim were in the same car, and we raced them! AND jon and i won! haha, lots of coincidences. the man trying and failing to get out of our picture in the backseat was wearing a USA track and field backpack. mike asked him about it and he told us that his wife (in the front seat) runs on the USA track team. she does the 100k and is 5th in the world. so awesome!

we didn't know what mike and kim did in this picture, but as soon as we got off the ride kim said, with a straight face, "Mike ruined that ride for me."

we thought this was the center of disneyland...sad!

i love this picture. kim had never tried to get the sword out before and she's really trying!

we ate at flo's v8 cafe, it was okay. the ambiance was ideal though, cars land is so dreamy.

on saturday night we watched the fireworks in disneyland, it was really nice. the park usually clears out after the fireworks, and that's the best time to ride all the big rides. we rode splash mountain again and walked right onto the ride! we rode it once and when we got to the end, the people asked us if we wanted to ride it again! we didn't even have to get off. mike and jon had planned to take their shirts off for the picture again. mike took his off on the way up the hill right before the big drop. out of nowhere a worker popped out of a curtain with a flashlight, shined it on mike and yelled "hey! put your shirt on!" mike looked like a deer in headlights and immediately put it on. this is the picture that resulted:

it was so funny. we ended the night with space mountain and immediately passed out in our hotel room!

kim wrote about our second day of disneyland here.