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The next day we traveled to San Diego so Paul to attend his work conference.

That’s my social butterfly. Walking and talking with the bell hop while he is bringing in our luggage, ha!

Since Paul was at work all week, we had all week to explore and have fun.

I have never seen a boat like this before. It was pretty amazing.

He was sure he could move the boat closer to the pier.

The navy was docked at the pier. It’s been awhile, but are those F-18’s? They were flying around a lot while we were there.

We tried several desserts in the area.

This one was from Extraordinary desserts. They looked great, but they were not great. Very disappointed.

Oh Tin Fish, how I love you so! Every time we come to San Diego we go to the Tin Fish. They didn’t disappoint this trip either.

The salmon was so delicious!!

We went to this restaurant one night. Cafe Coyote. This was really good. I had to note this restaurant because we will be back.

The restaurant is outside, in-between two buildings. It was lit up with lots of lights and really fun.

We had lots of fun at the hotel.

I had to make note of this. The parking was terrible. To find a parking spot, we had to be back from dinner about 4:00pm. Then we would have to continue to feed the meter. Then just before we were in for the night, we would have to move the car because there wasn’t parking overnight. We would have to move it about a mile away from where we were staying at a parking garage. Not fun. We had to do this every night. By the end of the week, I was pretty tired of the parking situation.

Of course we went swimming every night!

The last night Paul took me to the company street party and had a lot of great food. Paul loved the apple cider so much he asked for the recipe and they gave it to him!

We went out shopping a lot. One day we were out it started pouring rain. This isn’t a Utah storm that lasts a couple minutes. This lasted for hours! The rain pounded the pavement for hours. We stayed at one store and quickly dashed into the next store until we were closer to the car. The rain was incredible.

We went to La Jalla Cove to see the seal lions.

We went to the San Diego temple.

What a beautiful temple.

It was perfect timing. My marathon in Las Vegas was the weekend before Paul’s work conference in San Diego, so we left for three weeks on a fun family vacation.

When we arrived in Las Vegas, we did the one thing I’m not supposed to do before a marathon. Eat!

We met up with Paul’s sister and her family.

We ate lunch at Nacho Daddy.

And we ate delicious nachos.

Oh, it didn’t stop there. We had nacho dessert. Sweet fried chips, apple pie filling, with ice cream on top. Don’t forget about the whipped cream drizzled with caramel sauce.

After lunch we went to our hotel and checked in. Right after we went to dinner. Oh, I was so full from lunch, but we had reservations, so we went to dinner.

That was our waiter. 🙂

The show started.

Eli was so chatty with the ladies. It was funny.

Dinner came. You eat with your hands. I had to take a picture of Paul’s dinner. There was a whole chicken on his plate.

The jousting began.

Eli loved it!

Our knight won 🙂

The second worst thing to do before a race is to stay up way to late. And not just staying up late, but walking around making my legs tired. After the dinner and show we played some video games.

We did eat a lot, but since the marathon didn’t start until tomorrow evening I though I would be okay. I will limit my food intake tomorrow afternoon.

First favorite: Pumpkin carving! Eli was really excited to carve one of his many pumpkins. He was so excited, he made a few drafts on paper, then the final drawing was put on the pumpkin with a marker and then “ta-da!” The pumpkin is now a cat 🙂

Eli has been getting into Halloween. He has been dressing in a different costume EVERY day 🙂 This day he was a builder and he built a fort out of the couch cushions.

Although downtown stresses me, I love the architecture and the beautiful buildings.

This one is just crazy. I now have bees in my garage. It’s getting so cold out, we didn’t want them to freeze. The little hive has significantly fewer bees than the big hive, and we were worried they would struggle to stay warm. So we clogged their entrance, and in the garage they went for the night. We will bring them back out every morning.

Friday favorites are always nice to look back and see the fun during the week.

This farm is simply the best farm we have been to. We frequent this farm throughout the summer for fruits and vegetables and almost every day during fall for the local corn on the cob. Our dinners during the summer usually are just corn on the cob, sliced cucumber, and a tomato. Simple and tasty!

My cute little pea!

They had slides to slide down.

Tunnels to run through.

A corn maze.

Swings to swing on.

This is a working farm so they always have animals to see, pet and feed. The goats are cute so we had to feed them.

Not sure why they had emu’s here, but they did. I have never seen them before, so they must be here for the pumpkin patch. Eli didn’t care why they were here, he got a kick out of them!

Eli said the best part of the pumpkin patch was driving the trackers. A little boy and anything with wheels!

Always a fun time at the pumpkin patch. It was really nice to slow down and take the time to be together as a family for an evening!

I wasn’t looking forward to running this race by myself. I do miss running with Ferelyn.

Still sitting here freezing. I had to put on a space blanket because it was getting pretty cold just sitting on a rock.

What I wore to remember for next year: It was 30′ in the morning without wind 🙂 I wore a long sleeve shirt, under a lightweight running jacket, and a band for my ears. I dropped my coat and gloves 5 minutes before the race started. This was perfect. I wasn’t too hot or cold going down the mountain or in the valley.

Sipping on my smoothie 🙂 Paul makes me a running smoothie before every race. Peaches (fresh!), yogurt and a little orange juice. This smoothie keeps me full during the race, it’s not too heavy, and doesn’t do anything to my intestinal track 🙂 during the race.

This was a fun race. There was a headless horseman on a real horse just before the first mile. It made it for a fun start.

Mile 10.

At mile 12 I was very motivated to finish with a great time and started to sprint, but when I turned the corner the last mile was a hill. I said I didn’t care that much and had to walk. 🙂 I’m just not as strong as last year.

13.13 mockingbird lane, Ha!

While I was running, Eli and Paul went to breakfast at the Blue Plate Diner. They said it was good so we will have to go back.

Then they waited at the finish line for me and played at the park and the bouncy slide.

As always I really enjoyed running. I will definitely run this race again next year.

I’m a little late on my Halloween decorating this year. I know I only have a week left of the month, but I couldn’t help but create this oven dress towel for my kitchen! It turned out really cute!

We are doing all things Halloween and going to every pumpkin patch in the valley. This is a request of 5 year old!

It’s actually been quite fun to visit all the different pumpkin patches. It’s also been fun trying to get selfies with all the goats. They needed a little directing 🙂

My last favorite of the week is peaches. It’s peach season here so we are eating everything with peaches. This is dinner. Yes breakfast for dinner happens a lot around here 🙂 Peaches and waffles with REAL whipped cream.

The goat wouldn’t look at my camera so I had to point him in the right direction 🙂

Eli went with his school on a field trip to the pumpkin patch. The crazy mom that I am, was worried about something going wrong such as Eli getting lost, or hurt, so I volunteered to be a helping hand and went with them.

It doesn’t look like a lot of kids, but with 11 of them with only 3 adults, it was quite the challenge to make sure they were all with us at all times.

The goats were pretty cute. They had about 10 of them and at one time, all the goats had their heads poking out all the holes.

After the tour of the pumpkin patch, they held class. They learned about seeds and how they grow.

Each student received 3 cotton balls that were dipped in water and three bean seeds.

The cotton balls were then put in the fingers of a glove. The gloves were tied off with rubber bands and will be taken back to school to be observed and watch them grow into plants.

A pumpkin patch isn’t complete without a maze! So through the maze, we went.

At the exit, each student picked out their own mini pumpkin to take home.

EVERY child had a great time and was exhausted when they got back to school. It was a fun day.

A fun little project for my kitchen. I’m always sewing for others so I decided to make something for me.

A dress towel for my oven!

It is tied on to the oven door handle.

It has a front and a back.

A cute ruffle for the top of the dress.

Cute, cute ribbon.

I added several layers of ruffles on the bottom of the dress.

It turned out really cute. Now to make a Thanksgiving towel!

I’m a vegetarian so when Paul wants meat, he has to make it. 🙂

Looks pretty good….for someone who eats meat 🙂

He cut up garlic and parsley.

200g shrimp, 3 cloves garlic, 10g parsley, 4 Tblsp olive oil, 1 tsp chili flakes, 3 1/2 Tbls white wine, salt.

He heated the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Added the garlic and saute for 1 min. He added the shrimp and chili flakes to the pan. Saute over medium heat until the shrimp were cooked through.

He then added the white wine and cooked for another min or two. Added the parsley and salt. Sounds easy enough.

I don’t know what it tasted like, but he said it was good 🙂

My first favorite: Missing my 44 year old 🙂

Second favorite: My 5 year old! I miss my 44 year old dearly, but love my 5 year old and I’m loving every minute of his cute personality!

Third favorite: Our queen bee emerged from the cell of our little hive. We successfully raised a queen bee!

Fourth and fifth favorite: This little treat deserves two favorites! I went to a little shop where they supply specialty items from around the world. These little guys are like a mini marzipan cake, but it’s a cookie.

What’s in the layers? Here’s what’s in the layers: The top layer is marzipan, a layer of cream, a cake-like cookie, a layer of cream, and another cookie. The bottom of the cookie is lined in chocolate and the sides are dipped in chocolate.

I’m in love with these and I can’t get enough. Good thing I run. I need to run off these high calorie tasty goodnesses. Yes, goodness is a word. It describes these little cookies. Ha!