golfing

weston went golfing with my dad early on monday morning - before the reunion. they played 9 holes and both did pretty well. that afternoon, we landed another tee time for my parents and weston and me. my dad killed it, followed closely by weston, then my mom, and i brought in the rear with an impressive 70+ on 9 holes! (par of 36 if you don't play). ouch. we played again the next afternoon - yes, that was our patriotic and festive way of celebrating the 24th of july. no parades or park barbecues for us! :) weston also worked a bit - he had a couple family portrait shoots while we were there. we had a great couple of days in monroe with family and friends!

10 year reunion?!?!?

wow - does time fly. i (erin) had my 10 year high school reunion on the 23rd. lisa (mathie) was in charge and she had said that like 6 people had RSVP'd. when we drove up to the park, there were a ton of cars - so we got to catch up with a lot more people. we didn't make the rounds and talk to EVERYONE, but we got to spend a bit of time catching up with ben (jones), hans (white), kristi (cartwright), lisa (mathie), marin (sondrup), mandy (jensen), and kimberly (nielson). here i am with kimberly, tyler, and emrie. don't worry about the creepy guy in the background, it's just lloyd - he's normally that creepy :) i asked weston if he thought people might be surprised we were still married. he said, "i wonder if people were surprised we actually got married." :) he even overheard someone say, "was weston in our class?" :) oh yay - we get to do this all over again next year when weston has his 10 year! it was actually a pretty good afternoon.

baby update

we had the 12 week appointment today. i was totally holding my breath that everything would be fine... and it was! we heard the baby's heartbeat right away, a healthy 174 bpm. i had to do the horrible act of standing on that scale, but made up for it with a good blood pressure reading :) everything looks great and i'm super relieved to have this appointment over! wish us luck!

san diego: part two

on tuesday we hung out with the carmen and the kids. later we did some shopping. for dinner that night, greg treated us all to his invention: the perfect burger. this is a must everytime we visit the guiness household. wednesday, we hung out by ourselves - slept late, went to lunch, went to dinner at panera (one of erin's absolute favorites), and went to see harry potter! it was a fun movie and erin already wants to catch it again! thursday, weston went downtown with rory and they checked out all the local shops for "research & development" .... sure.... haha. that afternoon, we met up with carmen and the kids for the beach and dinner.

erin didn't think weston would get in the water at all once we got there, but he surprised her and got in with his boogie board... she quickly followed.

our feet...

AZAFRAN!

we try to eat here everytime we come down this way, and friday night was the night! after a long day at the beach, we decided this was the best way to top it off. weston had to order IRONBEER, his favorite cuban soda. erin thinks it tastes like cream soda fresca - weston did not concur.

erin and her food

weston and his food

a HUGE thanks to the guiness family for letting us stay with them again this year! a huge thanks also to christian, for giving up his bedroom and sleeping in the loft for 10 days :) we'll see you guys again next year! :)

san diego: part one

the drive down friday evening was pretty good. weston ended up powering through and driving the entire time, getting us into oceanside at about 4am, MST. this is a shot of a fire in southern utah. we were breathing in smoke for about 10 minutes.once we got settled in and started sleeping, the next thing we knew, that alarm started going off. we headed out for breakfast to meet the olsens! we hadn't seen shireen in what seems like at least a year and we hadn't seen brett in more than 3 years! it was definitely worth waking up after just a bit of sleep :)weston had to keep the bird (blanco) and the cat (kona) separated or who knows what disaster might have ensued! sunday afternoon, we decided to be tourists and tour the point loma lighthouse. erin wanted to use the "distant viewer" to see further out and spy on the sailboats :) of course it took 25 cents, but weston handed over the quarter so we gave it a shot. the timer started ticking away and the view wasn't any better than when you looked at the boats with your own eyes. probably about halfway through the "thirty seconds" the viewer started closing, giving a crescent moon-shaped view of the ocean. lame. this is the old, historic lighthouse. it is now a museum so you can see the rooms as they were left. this is the new lighthouse - bigger and better with much more room for living quarters! here is a picture weston caught of a lizard trying to escape his quick lens :) here we are at the "whaling area." we had ZERO luck trying to spot a whale doing their various whale moves :) so we took a picture of us instead. when we went to the tide pools, there wasn't a whole lot to see. apparently winter is the best time for lower water and better specimen viewing. erin was a bit bummed... but at least we got to see some cool crabs!weston spent some time skateboarding with christian, who is 10 and can heelflip and kickflip :) . Christian and Weston went to MLK Middle School to do some skating. Christian was doing ollies up curbs and even ollied off this bench. He broke the hanger on his board, but then landed the ollie on Weston's board. monday night, carmen went with us to see the bodies exhibit in la jolla. erin loved it - she had all kinds of flashbacks of taking anatomy from dr. shively at uvsc. too bad those 2000+ memorized landmarks and terms are long gone!
we have been doing a MAJOR catch-up on all things harry potter in preparation to see the order of the phoenix wednesday. each day, or night, we have watched at least one dvd to refresh. we are pretty dumb when it comes to harry potter, so we have nerdy conversations about things we caught in this movie or that one and the things that tie from one character to the next. we're a couple of nerds :)

here we are...

we are finally joining the rest of the world and having our very own blog. hopefully we can keep this updated and post ample amounts of photographs for anyone's viewing pleasure out there :) To give you a quick update on life.... we are living in american fork, utah and have been here for about 3 years. weston is studying commercial photography at byu and keeping busy working at blindside in orem. this is one of my favorite photographs he has taken semi-recently. erin finally finished school and has been working for a mortgage company in american fork for about a year now. probably our biggest news is that we are expecting! that's right - erin's pregnant. here are a couple pictures of baby colton at just over 8 weeks... but there will be more to come!
we always know summer is here when we get itchy to get out of town - even if it's just for a weekend trip to visit family. we went to denver in the beginning of june for a baptism and had a Cottle family picture taken.we've made a few quick trips to monroe to visit our families and celebrate the 4th of july. alex and cynthia and andrew and sarah were there with their kids so it was really fun to visit them, even if it was too short! tonight we are off to san diego for 10 days! we are taking our annual trip, visiting friends, and working at the same time! weston will be shooting a wedding at the tail end of our trip, so we can do all of our playing and relaxing before he has to get to work :)