San Diego, the Neals, and the wonders of Tecate!

The older I get, the more I realize that siblings are the best. Luckily we live close enough to my sister Jenn and her husband Matthew to get to hang out with them and their cute kids periodically.
This time around Matthew's passport was about to expire, so we planned a day trip across the border into Mexico. Since Matt and Jenn both speak Spanish, something as run-of-the-mill as Tijuana would never do...we went all out and headed for Tecate, knowing only that it was part of Mexico and famous for its brewery, of all things. The locals should be in good spirits, right?

Miles and I drove down the night before, and got to go to the San Diego temple. Unfortunately, these pictures don't do it justice! Nor do they do justice to the huge lake that we stepped in on our way out of the temple.

Miles took this. Gorgeous, huh?

this one, too. He's good.

 We slept over and then had some fun times with the nephews--I recently learned to make balloon animals for our YW carnival, so I brought that and we had some fun times playing with them. Jason cracked me up.

Anyway, we finally got off to Tecate. Miles and I, and especially Miles, and also I, REALLY miss the land and space that there is in UT. It was like coming home again to drive out to where there were no houses and just rolling hills. Someday!

The rest I will tell through the pictures, because a)it is much easier not to try to format these suckers, and b)I think it is more fun to read, no? Enjoy!

Onward, to Mexico! We payed five bucks to park our car in this magnificent lot, I believe :) The pots were free

I think Jennifer is on the US side of the boundary. Looks easier to cross than I imagined...

Just kidding! This is the real boundary! Lucky for us we just walked right on through

It was pretty cold and rainy. That church behind us had some really neat stained
glass windows, and told the story of St. Guadalupe(ask Matt on this one)

Well, they pegged me, but Miles is really more of a baritone or bass.

Tecate! and ... McDonald's! I forgot to look and see if they had McEnchiladas or something.
We walked all around the city, checking out the little shops, the old train station, and headed for the museum.

I guess this is the real draw of Tecate. Yep, the brewery. We walked to it and thought
about doing a tour, but it smelled funny, and we didn't want our free beer coupons.

After a while of walking to the Museum, I thought it might be necessary to hire some transportation. 

We also considered staying the night at this lovely hotel, but since
Matt's passport expired that day, we couldn't chance it. Pity.
Just kidding, this is part of the Tecate Community Museum. They also had some cool
computer screen thingys and indoor displays, which saved us from a torrential rainstorm or two

...and here we have Atlas, oops, I mean, Matt. Mattlas? 

We were getting hungry, so we stopped in to a little grocery store and found THESE little gems.
We bought some cookies.

What we DID end up eating was delicious! Tortas, a quesadilla con adobado, and a burro gigante!
And don't worry, we didn't lose Jenn. She and Matt just took turns taking all the pictures.

Here it is, the most delicious restaurant in Tecate. That we have tried, anyway.

Wouldn't it be funny if this was a coincidental picture?
It wasn't, though. We passed these murals a few times and couldn't resist taking pictures.

Jenn couldn't stop laughing! 

I still think Miles wins the prize for this one. And for humoring me when I wanted to take a picture of his imitation.

"The best bread in Tecate!" Of COURSE we went in.

...and it was pretty much the Willy Wonka's chocolate factory of Mexican baked goods.
We filled some paper bags, gave away the last of our pesos, and headed back to the border.

What!? $3 per sin? What, are they still selling indulgences here?

 Ok, quick break from pictures only. Only because this was hilarious! We were walking down the street towards the border, completely by ourselves, and suddenly what did we hear? Crazy mexican carnival music blasting from...I don't know where--one of the houses? Enjoy!

AHa! I think we were inspired to walk across the border! Look at this crazy
long line of cars trying to get back in! Also, thanks for sharing your churros with us, Matt!

Back to the good ol' USA. What you can't see is Matt crossing his fingers in his pockets that they'll let him back in.

Hurrah! We made it! and I finally took my hood off :) hey, it was COLD!

The US side of Tecate. Welcome to the USA, everyone!!!

Our first(and last) view of Tecate. 

What a fun trip! I'm so glad that we live close enough to Matt and Jenn to occasionally hang out like this! We also probably would have never planned something so cool on our own, and it was such a blast to spend time together! Thanks, guys!!!

the joys of organizing old pictures and videos

I still have hours of work left to do...so far I just have them in seasons and years, but I DID find this little treasure, which made me laugh:

This was last summer, and the caulk job turned out great. I just thought you might enjoy watching this as much as I do--I just think Miles's videos are so entertaining! Even when he's talking about our bathroom.

One year! For reals, this time!

 Wow! I can't believe we've already been married for a YEAR! This has been the most amazing year yet(yes, even including my mission), and I'm working on a sum-uppance of all the things that have made this year great. For this post's purposes and in general, though, the best thing has just been being together all year! Two of my favorite things about marriage are waking up next to each other every day, and never having to drop each other off at different apartments every night. It's sappy, I know, but I just can't seem to ever "wake up on the wrong side of the bed" when the first thing I see every morning is my wonderful best friend AND husband waking up next to me! Probably helps that he is always cheerful, too!

Okay, so we thought deeply about what kind of romantical thing we'd do to celebrate the big first anniversary, and....

WE WENT WHALE WATCHING! 

If that doesn't sound like the most thrilling thing to you, then that is probably because you have not spent multiple hours watching the Nature videos on PBS...come on, doesn't everyone want to see a whale spout in real life?

We have actually been wanting to go down to this lighthouse place in Palos Verde for a while, because supposedly this is the place to see whales, and so Miles got off work early and we headed down. This also strategically gave me time to prep some of my dinner surprises. :)

Right as we pulled into the parking lot, I looked out the windshield and was pretty sure I saw a whale surfacing! We jumped out of the car, and sure enough, there WERE whales out there, and we saw at least a couple spouts!  Off to the left we saw a couple dolphins, and then Miles pointed out that to the right was a group of seals leaping in and out of the water. We were so excited that we were jumping around like kindergartners--there's TONS of things out here! We were both secretly expecting to just kind of sit around for a very long time, waiting for whales to show up, and here the ocean is apparently swarming with them!

It was kind of like this! Only the whales looked more proportional, not suspiciously like they'd been drawn in "Paint"

Weeeeell...turns out that we were just the luckiest little newlyweds in the world, once again, because when we started walking around and talked to the "whale society" people that had set up their camp and spyglasses(can I call them that? It sounds so much more fitting with the buttons they had pinned to their whale-watching vests and directors' chairs), they apparently had been there all day and had only seen four whales. TOTAL. Isn't that amazing?

We hung around to see the whales leave, and after a while of looking at boats through Miles's spotting scope , we took off for dessert.

Miles took this artsy panoramic shot. I think that cleft in the ocean is where all the other whales were hiding.

Since we had decided that making our own special dinner at home would be more fun than eating out, Miles was in charge of picking a special dessert place, and we decided to do that first. And the winner was...Cold Stone! Yum! We were kind of excited to see those little mochi there, and the server humored us and put some on top of what we got for free. Yay for anniversaries again!

I had been plotting for some time to make a special dinner, and decided to make what we'd had on our first date. Through a funny turn of events, Miles had taken me to SPARK restaurant in Provo to try to get some hot chocolate, but they didn't have any. Instead we had mango mojitos(NON-alcoholic, mind you), and, of all things, two kinds of edamame. I used my trusty friend Mr. Google to help me find out how to make those things, and then added chicken salad croissants to the menu, since that's the yummier version of the food we didn't get to eat at our wedding reception. Here's how it came out: