There's No Place Like Home!

There is a LOT of good Mexican food in California. Mexican is typically the first place we pick if we're going out to eat. Everyone has their taco shop. I just wanted to show you a picture of my all-time, 5 year standing favorite meal at any Mexican place. This is the Carne Asada Nachos from Santana's in PB. The picture may not look amazing, but it's just my favorite-est-est meat, pico, guac and cilantro meal! I highly recommend this place (also called Fresh MXN).

We've been in San Diego about a week now. It's been great to be back where we have so many great memories, family and friends!

If you saw Peter's blog (I think a lot of our readers are shared), you know that I caught some 24-hour bug. I'm mountains better now, but Tuesday night - Wednesday night was plain ugly. I'm not sure how the flu inspired it, but I did three puzzles in 24 hours and watched The Happiest Millionaire. In that time, I saw what was in my inner-self and I saw what my inner-self likes to do when I'm hurting. Puzzles and classic old Disney Musicals.

Happy Holiday Home

We'll be away from Tucson for Christmas, enjoying holiday-family-play-eat-music-cheer time. We don't get to enjoy our tree for long, but we love when it's up!

This is our new apartment. I love that we inherited the light green walls. I like the way it makes the tree pop against the fireplace.

Family Pictures

We got these pictures taken right before we left Pacific Beach last summer. We felt sorta silly, like they were engagement photos again, but I'm glad we did it. We LOVED living a mile from the beach and all these places are places that were really important to us for those 2 years.

Oh, the places you'll SLEEP

I left for my big trip three weeks ago today. In reflecting on the trip - I wanted to put down in writing where I've slept since then...

1 night on a plane to London
1 night in Qatar
3 nights on a spare bed in Dubai
1 night in different bed in Dubai
3 nights in Tiff's spare bed in Qatar
1 night on a plane back to London
1 night at my mom's new house
3 nights with my mom in a Marriott in Palm Springs
3 nights with Peter in the same bed at the Marriott
1 night on a pull-out bed/couch with lots of kids on the floor
1 night in a different bed in the Marriott, alone finally
2 nights in our bed in Tucson

So- there it is. This is probably more for me to remember and enjoy than for your enjoyment, but it's 11 beds in 21 nights. Seems like I'm in my early 20's again... I was always crashing and staying at friend's places. (right, Tash?)

Pictures of my to trip to Dubai, Qatar and London

I'm back in Tucson after 3 great weeks out and about this planet!!

I had a fabulous time, and it was a perfect trip to the Middle East!

I uploaded my photos to Facebook from my trip. I think it would be too much to post that many photos to my blog-ito, so I'll attach the links for the people that don't have FB (ahem, Anne), so you can see them.


Dubai



Qatar


London

Thirtieth Birthday Trip!!

My 30th birthday is this week and it's been on my mind for months. It could be said I'm going through a "Third-of-Life-Crisis." So, I'm doing something about it, I'm going to Dubai and Qatar in 2 weeks and I'm so excited!! To me, and to people that knew me in my early 20's, this is the perfect trip for me.

My longtime girlfriend, Tiffani Clark Bates (check out the MTC below) lives out there for the last few years with her husband and darling children and has always offered for us to come for a visit. Unfortunately, Peter is just so busy with school and I'm just not busy with anything else. I wish he could come, he wishes he could come, but he gets that I need to do this trip (and it gets him off the hook for a big birthday gift). :)


QATAR SKYLINE

DUBAI SKYLINE

DUBAI'S PALM ISLAND

Fabulous old pictures of Hermana Clark and Siostra Romney
Sep 2003

Das Gemüse

Just got back from the Farmer's Market. There's something so satisfying, domestic, fulfilling and tasty about having a full fruit basket in your kitchen.


The title of the post is an inside joke with my sister Liz, even though she may not even remember it. If you think back to "Called to Serve" video, it shows an MTC teacher drilling vocab and saying this over and over again. It translates to vegetables. At the time I didn't know how to say 'I Love You' in Polish, so we used this phrase. As she pulled away from saying goodbye to me from my mission in 2003, we kept yelling "Das Gemüse" at each other. We wrote it on our letters. Silly memory, but I like it.

You Remind Me of the Babe...

All thanks to Awkward Family Photos, I found this picture. My brother Dave and I LOVED the movie Labyrinth and this picture makes me smile. When we were about 12 and 14, we pooled our money and special ordered the soundtrack for $17.99 from Sam Goody, that was a big deal and a lot of money back then.

I hope the picture makes sense to you, and makes you smile too.

First Home Football Game

This past weekend was the home opener, and we had a great time! I love being around a ton of people screaming for a fun reason. This was one of Peter's first College Football games, he thought it was way over the top. I thought it was fantastic.
Take note - I am wearing blue, which is a common denominator with this school and my favorite school, but I am never giving up my Cougars. I called it ambiguous Blue.

The sunset was beautiful!

The Marching Band spelled out U of A. I thought that was way cool!
Take note - it was 9:45pm and still that hot!

It was a good time!

Our Second Anniversary

So, two years under the belt. Another two to go!! (totally kidding) How different do we look now? I still smile like that at him daily. He makes me really happy!

August 29, 2009 at the Temple in the World's Best City.

August 29, 2011 at Guiseppe's in Tucson.

Peter took me out to the nicest place Tucson had to offer and I made dessert. This was my first fancy-schmancy cheesecake, Caramel Apple Cheesecake with Streusel Topping. All thanks to Mel's Kitchen Cafe.
And my sister Anne for letting me call every 20 minutes when I try baking something difficult. ::wink::

Now, onto the next 75 years so Peter and I make it to this adorable couple!

Peter "The Grad Student" Leavitt

As you know, we moved to Tucson two weeks ago for Peter to start his PhD in Social Psychology. He's been looking forward to starting Graduate School for about 3 years now. I had to get pictures of the event.

This is his first day of Orientation last week.

This is going to class today, his first day of Grad School.
We were both pretty excited!

He wasn't excited that I wanted so many pictures, but I wanted to remember this day!

We're in Arizona Now!

Even with a sun-shade in my car, it's just so hot!

We try to not drive in the afternoon for the reason shown above.

When I was a kid, I have two specific memories of my dad buying me TCBY yogurt with sprinkles at the airport. That sort of thing really sticks with a kid. Peter knows well, I always get sprinkles, and I think this is why. I splurged and just got some. It's making me happy, although it made me tear up a little bit too (which is really rare for me).

I'm on a layover right now that's delayed in Phoenix. I've got a lot of thoughts running through my head. I'm flying back to San Diego after having been in Tucson since Sunday. I bringing back our second car and I have my last recital on Saturday. Just a lot of transitions.

The whole Tucson thing isn't going to well... yet. We're going to manage another building again, and really lucked out getting one in Tucson. We didn't see it before we signed and it's just a bad-on-bad situation. But, school starts for Peter in 2 weeks and we're really excited for him to do that (although I'm going to be so bored)! I'm looking forward to making new friends, cooking dinner each night, taking an Institute class on Studying the Scriptures and that my darling Peter will be loving and working hard in his program.

I'll be posting much more once all this is done. Thanks for letting me vent.


Fingers crossed for Tucson to be good! I really hope I can say it got 100% better!

The Last Harry Potter Movie

We're going Friday and I'm so excited! Honestly, my heart beats a little faster when I think about it. Peter's even excited (but I think that's because the trailer shows a lot of fighting).

So sad to see the movies come to an end. But, I know I'll be reading them again with my teenagers... or every other year on my own...

Whippler, AnnMarie and Holly - roommates I've had that got me more and more into it. Thanks Ladies!

Magic Mountain

We went to Magic Mountain with Peter's fantastic cousin and his wife, Ben and Sharley Leavitt. Peter had never been and I hadn't been in at least 5 years. I loved this place in High School! And looks like the place is still loved by High Schoolers. We had a great time!

Grabbed lunch at In n' Out and ate in the car on the way up. Peter was the only one who didn't get 'Burger Crotch.'

Before getting onto X2. "Show me your scary face!" AWESOME ride! I hadn't been on it before.

Ran into an old friend in line for Apocalypse, James Franco. He asked ME for the picture. No big deal.

This was taken before out last ride, should have taken it before our first ride. We were so hot, tired and post-sweaty. Magic Mountain is so fun, but exhausting!

And this was the buzz-kill for the ride home. This truck jackknifed and stopped traffic on both sides. Slow-moving for way too long...

We drove 6 miles in 2 hours, 20 minutes. Got to bed at 2am. Eh.

Peter's Marathon

Peter ran his second Rock 'n Roll Marathon yesterday. I imagine he'll do a post of the emotions and stories, but here are the pictures of the event. It's so much fun to watch someone run a marathon!

I put these are the pictures I put on Facebook last night, you may have seen them already. But I'm so proud of him, I want everyone to see!


Before the race

After the race... Not too bad, huh?


It's simply amazing to see 33,000 people running!
Mile 1

Marathoners on the 163

Peter at mile 10

Mile 22

Mile 26.19...

Peter got me that shirt last year, seem appropriate to wear it.

Video of him about to cross the finish-line