here comes the sun.

Jason and I arrived from Hawaii in California at about 5 o’clock in the morning on Saturday– the day of reception #2. We both attempted to get as much sleep as we could before another crazy-filled day. Our reception was at the beautiful Dove Canyon Country Club which had another gorgeous backdrop of putting green and sand traps.

Jason’s mom put together a travel theme for the event. She had pictures of our engagement in a hot air balloon, a bulletin board map of places we had traveled to, a sign in book with pictures of all of mine and Jason’s adventures, and black and pink napkins with our names on them. I had so much fun meeting Jason’s family (especially some of his cousins from Arizona that I had never met before) as well as his close friends from high school and Comedy Sportz. Again, I danced the whole night with people I knew and people I didn’t know as well. We had a lot of fun, although it was very difficult to not fall over and crash because of how tired we were.

During the next two weeks, between wedding madness and going back to school, Jason and I spent some time in California and Arizona. One day, Jason took me to Balboa Island. This was so much fun! We rented bikes on the Balboa Peninsula – I hadn’t ridden a bike since middle school so I wasn’t really sure how this was going to go, but I was still really excited! We rode for 30 minutes with the ocean to our right and colorful beach-side homes to our left, and took a ferry across Newport Bay to Balboa Island. Once on the actual island, we biked through residential areas on the streets until we came to Marine Avenue and locked our bikes up to a Stop sign and went shopping on the busiest street on Balboa Island.

On the Ferry

Bikes!

At one place I bought a chocolate covered banana and Jason got chocolate covered marshmallows – our favorites! We bought taffy from the Candy Shop and a book from Jason’s favorite store – Art for the Soul. The book, All About Us, is a question book for couples that we intended to fill on our road trip back to Rexburg. We went to a few other shops along the strip and just really enjoyed our time on the island. We biked all the way back to Balboa Peninsula after going on a quick Ferris Wheel ride overlooking Newport Bay at the Balboa Fun Zone.

Ferris Wheel

Another day, Jason and I went to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. We stopped on the way to eat at Pedro’s Tacos in San Clemente – mine and Jason’s favorite place to eat Mexican food. Because we didn’t have the time to go to an aquarium in Hawaii, I really wanted to go to one in California. This aquarium was small, but a lot of fun. I wanted so bad to see sharks – even though I’m pretty sure there is nothing that I am more afraid of in the ocean or on land. We had fun looking at all of the multi-colored fish, the octopus, jellyfish, and a wide-variety of sea-horses!

Pedro's Tacos!

Jason hates eels

Octopus

Jelly Fish

Eek! Sharks!

We spent a few days in Mesa, Arizona because Jason’s Aunt Kathy and Uncle John invited us to break up our trip back to school and stay with them. Lucky us, we were there during the hottest time of the year. It was pretty miserable. For our first day, Kathy’s beautiful daughters came over with their families and we had dinner together – while all of Jason’s many younger cousins ran around and swam in the pool. Jason helped me with most of the younger cousins’ names and who belonged to what family, but I still don’t think I remember half of them. It was still fun to be around all of the family even though we were a little tired from the drive.

I found out that my sister, Stephanie, lived walking distance from Aunt Kathy’s house! So one morning for breakfast, Jason and I met her and my sister, Sarah, and each of their youngest boys at IHOP! It was a lot of fun talking to them about the reception in California and the honeymoon.

For our last night with the Winn’s we went out to eat with Uncle John and Aunt Kathy and watched The Help. It was just such a fun week we spent with them and we appreciate them offering to have us stay with them.

On our way (but kind of out of the way) back to Rexburg, Jason and I went to explore the Grand Canyon! Believe me; we just can’t have an adventure without having another adventure. The Grand Canyon is amazing and as cliché as it sounds – it’s huge! We went to the North Rim and just stared into it for awhile and tried to catch a glimpse of a Condor in the distance. We didn’t stay for very long before we had to get back on the road, but the stop was definitely worth it.

Can you see the tiny people on the left compared to the Canyon??