A Weekend Away...

...with no kids. When was the last time that happened? We'll just say...years. This was a very special time for us since we are celebrating 13 years of being married. For Christmas, we recieved a gift card to Bed and Breakfast.com from The Mullins Family - Matt's sister. We met in California so we wanted to go there again to celebrate...and we found a really neat place in Coronado California called the 1906 Lodge - we HIGHLY recommend it to anyone who needs a weekend away.

After a long car ride...we couldn't check in quite yet so we went to Mission beach where our family vacation's every October. We walked along the board walk to the Surf Rider...the girls can't wait to go there again.

Then it was off to Coronado Island...

The 1906 Lodge

We stayed in a room called the Author's Study. It was SO nice...and right outside was a coffee and tea bar...perfect. They must have known I was coming.

The room...

This was waiting for us on the bed...how nice.

The grounds are really well manicured and beautiful...

After checking the lodge out, we were off to the beach.

We walked by the Del...to get to the beach!

Every evening at the 1906 Lodge from 5:00-6:00 pm is happy hour. We met other guests staying there and had so much fun...of course I had to get a picture for the blog. What's funny is that we are all from the Great Northwest...ont he left is Ivan & Barb visiting from Edmonton Alberta. Then us...from Arizona via the Seattle area. Then we have Maureen & Frank Johnson visiting from Spokane Washington. Of course Matt had to tell Frank about his basketball playing days there...and wouldn't you know it, Frank played basketball too! (Dennis McPoland...you should have been there!) On the end is Tony Dawson...originally from England (accent and all!) but has been living in Vancouver Canada for a while now. He was escaping from the Olympics...lol! Actually he was working, submarine stuff...very cool! We had the best time talking with everyone and hearing stories of their lives.

Breakfast

A stroll thru downtown lead us to...

We went walking around town and found a McP's...hilarious! This is a very popular hang out for the Navy Seals...awesome.

Coffee...

I found a Starbucks...and it started pouring with rain, but only for about 15 minutes. We were worried that it would rain the whole time, but Saturday was really nice.

A rainbow over the island...God's promise to us.

Matt missed coaching one of Alyssa's soccer games...so here he is getting the play by play from his dad. Thankfully his team won 2-0...and Alyssa scored a goal. Thanks to Coach Hunsaker for taking over and doing a great job.

Matt really wanted to see a museum while we were there, so he picked the Air & Space museum. It was really interesting.

It was cool to see planes & helicopters that my company helped build ~ Matt

Matt's Grandpa Hyler sat in one of these in WW2...I can only imagine how dangerous it must have been. It was a ball turrent underneath the B-17 that held a twin .50 cal machine gun...he sat in it on long bombing runs over Germany controlled Europe.

Matt loved talking to Bob, a WW2 veteran...

~I learned some new stuff after I told Bob what my grandpa did in the war, Bob mentioned that on a few planes when the electrical went out, they wouldn't be able to get the bubble up and the gunners inside it would die when they landed...he said the B-17's landing gear gave enough clearance so he wouldn't have had that problem. But with the B-22 that was a big problem because electrical would go out quite often and it couldn't be hand cranked up. Also, it was so cold up there that sometimes the gunners would take the gloves off to grab something and then touch the cold metal, the hand would stick and the only way to get it off was to rip the flesh off. The sign out front read "Freedom is not Free"...these stories hammer that point home. ~ Matt

After the museum we had lunch at La Salsa and then hit the beach again by the Del...

This picture was inspired by Sara Parsons...she said it was fun, and that everyone should try it. So we did...

I can't believe he actually went in the water...I thought it was freezing!

ahhhh.....relaxing.

Playing checkers...and happy hour at 5:00 pm.

We went to the other side of the island for dinner at a fancy Italian place with a great view of the city all lit up at night.

Excuse me, can you take our picture? - Matt was so annoyed at how many times I asked many different people, but hey...I have a blog to keep up.

Italian...

We walked around a little bit after dinner...it was a great evening.

Early Sunday morning we went for a jog on the beach...it was perfect! If you want to see more of that...click here.

On our last day after breakfast at the lodge and checking out we decided to take a ferry boat ride from Coronado Island to downtown San Diego. Of course it started pouring down rain which was fine, after all, we are from Seattle.

The next time we come to San Diego we are definitely going to make a stop on the Midway. I wished we had more time, but to see it really good you need about 3 hours. I know Matt really wanted to see the inside, but at least we went right by it.

After the ferry boat ride we stopped by this cute place for the hot chocolate special...it was tasty.

We truly had a great time...and we appreciate the thoughtfulness of the gift card Kirsten and Burke!

On our way home we saw another rainbow...it's yet again another reminder of God's love for us and how He keeps His faithful promises.