First of all, I know this is late. I know I’m way behind in my blog posts. I work at a college and it’s just been crazy busy because the Spring semester just started. When I get off work at 7pm and drop off all the Samoans, I finally get home at about 7:45 and make dinner for Ben and myself. After that I just totally want to veg and spend time with Ben so I haven’t had time to blog or even facebook. Well we just started our 4th week so it’s a little slower now, so I finally have time (and energy) to show off some pictures and brag about how wonderful my husband is and how cute my nieces are. Ha! I’ve been wanting to post our wonderful Valentines Extended Weekend and my special Birthday present from Ben and some cute pics of my nieces, so now I finally have the time!
I hate blogging like this though. I don’t like reading blogs either where people blog about 50 million things in one post. But it’s information I want to document so I’m going to do it….again!
On Friday we went to the
On Saturday we went to the Ronald Reagan Library. That was really neat! It was interesting to see how our country’s current financial situation is similar to what it was when Reagan was president and how our current administration is doing the complete opposite of what Reagan successfully did. I’ll stop there. That could be a whole other blog. We had a lot of fun there too.
They do this fancy Valentines day dinner with a live band and dancing. The room they had set up was beautiful!!! Red, black and white, and it over looked the valley. President Reagan’s, Air Force 1 was in there too. Ben said maybe next year we could make reservations for the dinner!
For this year we went home for dinner. I had a special Valentines dinner planned. We started with salad and mini heart shaped pizzas with heart shaped pepperonis. Then we had coconut shrimp and heart shaped steak with blue cheese and broccoli. For dessert I made him a special chocolate raspberry cake. Dinner was so good, if I do say so myself! I love cooking! I just wish I had more time and money to do it. I wish I would have taken pictures of everything else. The pizzas came out really cute.
Sunday we had church and dinner at my dad’s. Fun as always!
Monday we stayed home and vegged because it was really rainy. Tuesday we drove up to our favorite spot in So Cal. Nojoqui Falls. It was a rainy weekend so the falls were more beautiful than ever.
I’ve blogged about these falls before. It’s on the way up to Solvang through a windy back road.
It’s a short hike about 15 minutes to the top and it’s a calming and peaceful hike. Then we stopped in Solvang and visited our favorite antique store and went to our favorite bakery for our favorite chocolate cake. Then we went down to the beach and watched the sunset again!
It was such a great 5 days off and it was so wonderful to be able to spend those days with my hubby. It was really hard to have to go back to work on Wednesday.
Two weeks later for my birthday Ben planned this whole day of surprises. He just told me how to dress for the day and off we went. Well first we went to 
Our captain was cool and let us pretty much do anything we wanted. He even offered to let us drive the yacht. We saw a bunch of seals and about 10 dolphins. At one point the captain started racing the dolphins so they were swimming and jumping right by our boat.
I tried to get some good pictures but it was more amazing to see without the viewfinder of the camera to my eye.
After our 2 hour cruise, Ben had planned a picnic lunch at 
I had never been to Salt Creek before but it’s like my new favorite spot. We sat on the grassy cliffs right above the beach and had a lovely picnic lunch.
Some curious little squirrels started coming really close to us.
Then all of a sudden there were about 15 squirrels all around us. Ben started feeding them chips and then they became our new best friends.
That night to we went down and watched the sunset again on the beach. There’s nothing more comforting to me than to sit in my husbands arms on a cool night watching the sunset on the beach. Sooooooo peaceful!
We don’t have enough money right now to go on extravagant vacations or cruises’, which I would love, but we do have a lot of fun visiting the various locations here in
Oh and in case you read this blog but are not on facebook, Ben passed the nursing state exam and is now finally a licensed Registered Nurse! I just pray now that he can find a job soon!
