American Honey

The Dalton's have officially made it past the ONE YEAR mark! Yip-eeeeee! August 1st of 2009 was the day that changed my life all for the better in so so many ways. This first year has been one some trials, enormous loads of fun, several ups and downs, and most notably it has been jam-packed full with lessons! And those lessons seem to never cease, and i have a feeling that they will never cease, probably a good thing. I don't think that there is any situation that can make a person more self-aware than living with someone. I can say that I have a completely different view of the person I am than I did a year ago thanks(this isn't to imply that one view is better than the other, I'm jsut appreciative to be more self aware) to Devin.

For our anniversary celebration we were planning to go to the Tim McGRaw/Lady Antebellum concert in Salt Lake, but there was a change of plans when Devin's long time best friend Kevin announced that he and his longtime girlfriend also named Whitney were going to tie the knot in LAKE ARROWHEAD, CALIFORNIA on ............AUGUST FIRST!!!!!! Well, I guess that decides where we will be celebrating this year! We decided to make a trip of it and visit my grandparents in Orange, and we even brought my mom along for the ride! Here are some pictures to show what an AMAZING weekend we had....

Our first day in ORange was filled with shopping and eating at our FAVORTIE restaurant Buca di Beppo! If you haven't tried it yet I highly recommend it. They serve you family style and the whole joint is covered in kitchy(not sure on the spelling) Italian memorobilia. We were seated at the FRank Sinatra table which just happens to be my grandpa's favorite human being of all time!


I got my usual, a Peach Bellini, Cheers!

Unfortunately we were plagued with some car trouble and needless to say Devin was very upset, but I was actually grateful that it happened how it did. Our battery died while parked in a gas station on the day before we were to head up to LAke Arrowhead, we were very lucky it didn't happen a day later.
Lesson #1 Living with a pessimist(Devin) brings out the optimistic side of me

The next day Devin and I went to Huntington Beach. Devin is not a big beach/sun/shopping/crowd fan so I was doing my wifely duty by constantly pestering him to lighten up and have a good time
Lesson #2 If I lighten up about him lightening up, he will lighten up a.k.a. nagging doesn't work.
And did he ever lighten up....
This is a rare shot of Devin just laying in the sun, doing absolutely nothing, and enjoying it

We took a stroll along the beach and saw some real characters, we picked the most normal-looking ones to take our pictures.

The large crowd was there to witness the U.S. Open of Surfing which was a surfing competition being held at Huntington throughout the week.

After my long-awaited day at the beach we started our journey to Lake Arrowhead. My grandparents took much time explaining the dangers of the road up to Lake Arrowhead and basically told us that we'd be lucky to survive the journey, they can be a little worrisome. Thankfully, we did survive. Our phone GPS led the way and another lesson was learned
Lesson #3