three is a magic number

Husband and I celebrated our three years last week. He's such a hunk and I love him to pieces. Thanks my love, for making me the happiest woman around.

One Last Hurrah

before school starts on Monday. We got to spend a lazy 10 days in sunny Southern California with family. It was heaven.

We spent the first few days at Newport Beach. Lots of time was spent at the pool.

an intentionally awkward brothers photo:


We got to spend our days with these people:

During our trip Mckay also delighted me by going from this:

to this: much better.

One day we made our way down to the farmers market in San Clemente. Me and Mckay went there on our honeymoon so it was fun to go back a day after our third anniversary :)

lots of fun things to see and yummy things to taste

lots of looking through beautiful custom made kaleidoscopes.

lots of photo taking.

and lots of entertainment provided by miss caroline.

lots of sunsets at the beach were a must.

this is what happens on vacation: no hair done, no make up, its a glorious thing.

racing waves

The beach made husband happy. He just couldnt get enough.

along with lounging at the pool and playing in the waves we definitely took advantage of the many restaurants that we had never tried.

I have to mention some of the restaurants that filled the Rytting family bellies. oh my did we eat well on this trip! some of our favorites:

Pedros Tacos in San Clemente- killer fish tacos and fried chicken tacos

Rudy's Taco Shop in Carlsbad- probably the most amazing carne asada we have ever had. boys loved the California Burrito, we went back a third time

Rosana's Italian in Carlsbad- between the six of us we probably ordered half the menu, and everything was homemade and so tasty

Thanks for the memories California, you treated us well.

Hiatus

Well we've been a little absent from the blogging world lately. This will be the first, and only post of July, cutting it a little close I must say. I can't believe it'll be August tomorrow. crazy. Anyways, despite the lack of posts we have been pretty busy playing this month. we've been climbing, to movies galore, and had lots of family time. We've also ventured out to do a little offroading. I have a love hate relationship with it I think. I like that at first the bumpy roads feel like a nice little massage, but it gets old pretty quick. I have to say though, its always fun going down an unfamiliar road, and the views are definitely worth all the bumps.

We also took two trips up to Idaho this month. The first was for the 4th of July. I neglected to bring the camera along for this one. The second trip took us up to Rexburg over Pioneer Day weekend to see big brother graduate. yahoo!

The boys did some climbing:

and we took a fun little canoe trip down the river. I have to admit, Idaho is not one of our most favorite destinations, except to see our sweet fam, but the weather was amazing and the river trip was such a good time!

The last day of the trip we found ourselves at the Idaho Falls Air Show. It was so hot and so crowded but still a good time.

love.

This isn't the best picture, but there was a woman standing on top of that plane. an insane woman. This plane flew around for at least 15 minutes, spinning, doing loops, dropping straight down to the ground, and all the while this woman ( the pilots wife in fact) was strapped to the top of the plane just having the time of her life. I would have died.

The Blue Angels were the finale to the show and worth the wait. It was so impressive the stunts that they did, this picture shows how close they fly together, 18 inches separate their wings when they fly in formation. going hundreds of miles per hour. pretty impressive.

Now on to August! August is a little bittersweet for us. It means back to school for Mckay, but it also means its time for the epic California road trip with the Rytting family. its going to be a serious party.

a little rytting roadtrip fun

preface: I have to warn you this is easily the longest posting of our blogging career. im sorry, you're more than welcome to scan through it quickly, but i took lots of pictures, like hundreds. and it was hard for me to narrow down. so buckle up because this is a posting marathon unlike any other.

Last week we two ryttings set off on a much anticipated roadtrip to the Pacific Northwest. We have been talking about making a trip to Washington for years and we finally decided to go! We have major enthusiasm for this part of the country, and we wanted to check it out together. Having been born there i use that as an excuse for my obsession with Washington, I'm in love with the place and have always dreamed of living there one day. With its cool temperatures, green, green landscape and lots of outdoor activities it also seemed like a perfect fit for Mckay's personality.
We had a few reasons for going. We haven't been on a trip just the two of us since our 1st year anniversary, (we are quickly approaching our 3rd). Mckay is also planning on applying to UW for graduate school so we thought it would be a perfect time to take a trip just us and visit the campus. We took a few detours on the way, taking our time driving up the coast of Oregon, which made for one amazing trip.


Knowing we were going to be spending hours and hours in the car we checked out some audio books from the Library. I have to say this saved us, and i would recommend it to everyone with a roadtrip in their future. no matter how gorgeous the landscape is you get antsy being in a car for hours on end. The Count of Monte Cristo was up first and provided us hours (19 to be exact) of Edmond Dantes entertainment. In an effort to save money and snack healthy we brought lots of 'good for us' munchies and PB&J ingredients to save us from fast food restaurants. We even made our own roasted almonds, so easy to make, healthy and addicting.

The first day was somewhat uneventful, but we were both super excited for our little getaway. We drove almost 9 hours to Pendleton Oregon where we watched the Lakers win the Championship :( and played at the pool.





Outside my window looked like this most of the way on day one.


{DAY 2-Tillamook and Seaside}
and on day 2 the roads started looking more like this.

We drove the historic highway which took us past beautiful waterfalls that were right on the road, or a short hike from it. This area was full of campsites, so we made a mental note to come back again some time.

Horse Tail Falls

We finally reached the coast and made our way to Tillamook Oregon, where we overindulged big time in the dairy department. We first made a stop at the Blue Heron French Cheese Company for free samples and a quick trip through the petting farm.

"I wonder if they still have brown cow icecream led to a spontaneous stop at the Tillamook Cheese factory. we had no idea the wonder that lay beyond the doors of the visitors center.

Inside we enjoyed free cheese samples of cheese. which led to the buying of some cheese curds.

We watched humongous blocks of cheese being cut, sorted, packaged, etc..

Mckay was overjoyed to discover that they did in fact have his favorite childhood icecream "Utterly Chocolate" formerly known as "Brown Cow". happy boy.

perfection.

After leaving Tillamook we continued making our way up the coast.

Aftre awhile we decided to pull off the highway and go exploring, trying to find our way onto the beach. We climbed up an unassuming sand dune only to find this lovely on the other side.

Miles and miles of twisted wood scattered all over the beach on both sides.

We finally made it to our hotel in Seaside and quickly made our way down to the Promenade for some delicious seafood and a sunset stroll.

We went to Norma's for their 4 different kinds of fish n chips.

Apparently Norma's clam chowder was named one of the top ten soups in the country. We hate clam chowder. hate. but we decided to be adventurous and try it, anyways. It was surprisingly better than expected but in our opinion not a top ten soup.

such a wonderful day :)