Celebrating Our 5th Anniversary

We try to do something special to celebrate our wedding anniversary every year. This year, we went on some amazing vacations and have even bigger ones planned for the next year, so we really did not want to spend too much money on a weekend away. We debated back and forth about what to do and finally decided to just spend a really long day up in Los Angeles. Neither of us had ever been. We left Lauren with my parents and Auntie and Travis on Saturday, our actual anniversary, and headed out bright and early. We stopped at Taco Shop first and about half way through my giant breakfast burrito, I realized that I was eating gluten. Ooops! We got on the freeway on our way to Simi Valley to visit the Reagan Presidential Library. We made a pit stop at McDonald's for some ice cream before we arrived. In the process, I lost my cell phone.

We arrived to the library around 11am and went inside. It was BEAUTIFUL! Justin was free with his Military ID and I was $21.

Right inside the entry to the museum is this beautiful portrait of Ronald Reagan.


There was a replica of the Oval Office, just the way it was when he was the President.


Then we went to my favorite room in the whole museum! There were different china patterns on display and there was this computer simulator that allowed you to plan your own State Dinner!







Next, we headed to the Air Force One Pavillion. It was so cool. We were able to go on his original Air Force One!




We wrapped up our visit there and moved on to the D23 Disney Treasures Archives that were there on loan. It was very cool to see all of the old costumes and original prints of Disney memorabilia and even a relpica of Walt Disney's office.

We stopped at the Gift Shop to buy an ornament for our travel tree and then continued around to the parking lot. On our way, we stopped at his burial site.

The next stop was at Jersey Mikes for some #13 bread goodness. Since I was going to be miserable from the gluten anyways, I decided that I wanted a sandwich. Then we continued on to Griffith Park and the Griffith Observatory. The place was PACKED and we had to walk a long way up a hill to get there. It turns out that it was the Fall Solstice and also public telescope day, so that caused the crowds.





Watching the sunset with the Hollywood sign in the background.

That line marks the Fall Solstice. The sun sets directly on that line that day.

The sunset was AMAZING!


We wrapped it up at Griffith Observatory and headed to The Grove to check out the American Girl Doll Store and also to get dinner. We sat down to dinner at around 9pm. We had Woodranch BBQ and it was really good. We got on the road around 10:30 and made it back to Temecula around 12:30am. There was traffic at 11:30 in Los Angeles! It was nuts. We had a great time and while we were having a great day celebrating our anniversary, Lauren had a great day swimming with Auntie and Travis and Great Grammie and Grampie's house! ...if only I had not permanently lost my cell phone, it would have been the perfect day!

Happy Anniversary Justin! I love you so much and the past 5 years of marriage (and 11 years in love) have been more than I ever dreamed of.

Happy Anniversary to my parents, Carolyn and Jerry, and my grandparents, Marvin and Betty, too!