Grand Canyon, San Diego beaches, and...

From our desert view with palm trees to the next view with palm trees...

The unexpected has happened. In a good very exciting way. In three weeks we will find ourselves on a plane to Hawaii. Yes, Hawaii! Caleb received a phone call, interview, and job offer. Our first response was, "how do we say no to a job offer in Hawaii?" Going to Hawaii wasn't something we had given a single serious thought about. We knew he had some applications in Hawaii, but we didn't think it would really become a reality to go there so soon. We will be on Oahu and plan to stay on the southwest coast in Ko Olina. We didn't want to be living near Honolulu as each person we talk to said traffic is ridiculous and have used the words "worst traffic you have ever seen." Caleb isn't working in Honolulu so we figured we would avoid it all together for living and go more on his days off to enjoy Waikiki and the area.

Monday afternoon, we dropped Nathan off at the airport and were back home for a few minutes. Caleb's phone started ringing and he looked down at who was calling. He said to me "You wanna go to Hawaii?" I replied with , "WHAT?!?! YES!!" We were so surprised and honestly a little in denial the whole rest of that afternoon and evening. It wasn't until the next day did it really start to hit us that this was going to happen. More to come on our preparations for heading to Hawaii.

Here's a quick look at our time with Nathan visiting us.

We picked Nathan up at the Phoenix airport and then made the 3.5 hour drive to the Grand Canyon. It was a beautiful blue sky sunny day for views of the Grand Canyon. We hiked about 2 miles of the Rim Trail, but didn't hike down into the Grand Canyon. It is now a little dream of ours to come back some year to hike down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon to camp overnight. 

We were glad we decided to go to the Grand Canyon. After a day of driving 3.5 hours to get to GC and driving back the 6 hours to Yuma at the end of the day, we decided to spend our next day in Yuma chillin'. It was our 5th wedding anniversary! I'm thankful I can call my best friend my husband. These 5 years have flown by and it's been exciting. I love being adventurers in life together! Caleb and I have plans for a Colorado anniversary celebration.

This weekend was about enjoying time with Nathan and celebrating his birthday on Sunday. Saturday, we all slept in and then spent the afternoon at the pool. In the evening we played some games and all did some reading. It was a perfectly relaxed day.

Sunday we headed out to the California coast in San Diego. We found a couple really nice beach areas to sit and read. One area was La Jolla beach and the other beach was Ocean Beach. We ate some dinner and got ice cream in Mission Beach to wait for the sunset. Unfortunately, thick clouds rolled in right as the sun was going down so there wasn't a really pretty sunset to see on the beach. We did see some pretty oranges and pinks in the sky as we looked back during our drive home to Yuma. Caleb and I loved having you here, Nathan.

I love how the water in southern California has beautiful tropical blue and green shades to it. Now we'll see how the tropical waters compare in Hawaii!