Laguna Beach~Holiday Party 2009 at the Montage Resort

Joseph and I had a great trip to Southern California. My mom came and took care of the kids, I forgot to download all of her pictures, but they had such a great time together! She even made gingerbread houses with them with homemade gingerbread. She always does things with all of the kids that I would never attempt to do on my own. I need to get the pictures she took with her camera while we were gone. I think they had as much fun as we did.

Joe and I packed it in this trip. We tried to take it all in. We stayed up until 1:00 a.m. and were up by 6:00 working out, and swimming in the pools and the ocean, enjoying good food and we even took a trip to Disneyland/California Adventure. Next time I think we'll opt to stay and enjoy the Montage a little longer, but it was fun to go just together. We were exhausted by the time we came home.

I love the Montage. They have the best guest services. They treat you like royalty, but I must admit, sometimes I feel a little out of place. When they stop for me to walk past in the hallway and call me Mrs. Lee, I want to say, "Hey listen, you can call me Amy, I'm just a normal girl, who drives a mini-van, you will usually find me in a pair of old $9.97 clearance Gap jeans and a t-shirt with 4 small children in tow, nothing about my life is fancy, but my life is good and happy!" I know it is just part of their job, and they probably already know we're not like most guests that stay there, but I still would like to set things straight sometime.

This is so funny, but this is the only picture we got while we were at Disneyland/California Adventure. We were so busy talking and going on rides that we forgot. We walked past Mater and Lightning and said, "Ohhh! Aaron would love that!"

Laguna Beach

In early December we flew to Laguna Beach for Joseph's work Christmas Party. We flew Mom into Sacramento to watch the older kids, but Isaac came with us. It was a nice vacation and we are very grateful to my mom for being willing to babysit when she had so much to do to prepare for the wedding at home. I didn't realize just how much she had going on until I flew to Utah for Christmas and took part in the busy-ness of that event. Let's just say things were pretty tense our first few days in Utah (and that's putting it nicely). Neither of us are fun to be around when we are stressed....but the wedding was beautiful and all of her hard work and insanity paid off!

The Montage always looks beautiful, but during the holidays it's especially magical.

A man from the concierge desk took these pictures, I just love when they tell you it looks perfect after the shot without even looking at the screen...? Excuse me, but I consider a perfect picture to atleast have our eyes open! Hopefully the pictures from the professional photographer turned out better (but then somehow we missed the memo on where to get those pictures... we still haven't seen the photo from last year???)

We enjoyed a nice date together, and Isaac enjoyed the big, soft, fluffy bed...

...the warm bath, with thick, soft towels....

Joseph enjoyed swimming in the ocean, while Isaac and I slept. When I was about to be discharged after giving birth to Isaac, my midwife told me she wished part of the insurance plan was to send the couple and the newborn to a five-star resort for a few days to recover and get acquatined with one another. Well, I didn't get it then, but it was fun to have it a few weeks later. It was a nice break before our busy Christmas holiday.