Sept and Oct in one big post, for the sake of catch up.

It's official...I need to catch up. So, here are some of the things we did in the months of September and October.
I celebrated my birthday for the second time....only later. That girl in the middle, that's Aileen. The one on the right, that's Jayna. They're my friends. Aileen had a combined birthday party for us. She made us birthday hats and she made me a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, which happens to be my favorite. She did that on purpose. Nice work, Aileen! Nate came and was, according to this picture, very happy. Maybe it was the cake.

In the months of Sept, we camped. TWICE! That was kind of a record for me. We went with friends like Aileen, Jayna, Anamae, Chris, Brad, Tom, Season, the other Nicole and Darren. I didn't get many pictures though. Oh what fun we had, even though I was constantly worrying about bears. Yes, bears. Also, on the first trip, we wore our matching Coke shirts. Not sure if our friends were jealous of us or embarassed for us. For some reason, I think it might have been the latter.

I did another 5k........ with Aileen. It was so cold. This is our cheering section. Thanks Nate and Jayna for standing in the freezing cold just to take pictures for us so we could post them on our blogs. I like Aileen as my running friend. We need to make this a tradition and do many more. This is just minutes before we went to Magleby's Fresh and ate back the calories that we ran off. I love their french toast! My salon had a retreat in Park City. These are my co workers, Mckenzie, Stacy and Sadee. We ate, talked, laughed and slept a little. Since we had the Presidential Suite, we had a hot tub on our balcony. We stayed in there for quite a while. Unfortunately, the water was only luke warm and when we got out, the tub was about half full. I think that means we surpassed the maximum capacity. Anneliesa and Scott came to visit and stayed at our house! Nate and I had a great time playing Ticket To Ride with them. Of course, we had to go to Zupa's to get Anneliesa her fix. Aileen and I didn't mind. Since they came conference weekend, we did a lot of relaxing and eating. As per usual, Anneliesa and Aileen stole my camera for a self pic. They're so cute. Last but not least, we celebrated our 2 yr anniversary! We started off the weekend by going to the BYU game. After the game, we headed up to Park City for a relaxing weekend. We spent our time at the hot tub and sipping on hot chocolate, shopping the outlets, eating out, watching movies, attending the visitors only sacrament meeting(who knew those existed?) and apparently not taking any pictures. This pic at the BYU game is the only one I have of the whole weekend.

These last two years have been so great and I feel so lucky to have such a great guy who totally gets me and is everything I have ever needed.

The Best Birthday of My Life!

Note: this post is long overdue, but had to be done for posterity purposes.

Back in July, Nate and I started talking about going to Wicked for our anniversary (which is Oct 11). I have wanted to see it for a couple of years and I conviced Nate that it was a good idea. When we checked the website, we realized it was closing at the beginning of Sept and decided that there wasn't a great time for us to go, especially since we went to Disneyland in August. I wrote it off and decided I wasn't going to be able to see it anytime soon. A week and a half after we got back from Disneyland and 6 days before my birthday(which is Aug 28th), Nate said to me, "We should go to Wicked for your bithday". I was like "really?......OK!!!!" So we did just that. It was pretty spontaneous.

We made it a very quick trip. We were gone for 4 days and two of those days were driving days. The night we got there, we stopped at his grandparents house and had dinner. I was a slacker and forgot to get a picture.

The Oakland temple was on the way to the hotel, so we stopped and got some pictures. It was so pretty...but I FROZE!Our first official vacation day started off with breakfast with some pretty cool people. My friend Courtni, from high school and her family were living in the Bay area (they moved to Idaho the day after this pic was taken). We met them for breakfast and to catch up. She has such a cute family. It was kind of ironic that I never visited until the day before they moved away, but we had a great time. Next up, a trip to the city. We started off at Union Square, then took the trolley down to the pier area. Getting on the trolley was pretty much a nightmare since it was so busy that weekend. It was every man for himself and I might have thrown a few elbows by the time we finally caught a ride. Here I am waiting for the trolley. It took us about an hour to finally catch one. The trolley was well worth the wait! I loved it. We stood on the outer edge and got to see everything from that viewpoint. Our first stop on the pier was Boudin's for Clam Chowder in a sourdough bowl. We saw this fun bread and had to take a picture. Fisherman's Wharf was fun and smelled very fishy...obviously. Too bad we're not bigger seafood fans. This seemed like seafood heaven.For my birthday cake, I decided a good substitution would be a cookie bottom sundae from Ghirardelli. I was right. It was amazing! Look at that beauty...not me, the cookie bottom sundae. I was worth every last calorie. Yes, I did share with Nate. This displays the way Nate was feeling when it was gone.

And this is how I felt. I look like I'm ready for more, and I was. We decided that wouldn't be a good idea.

Peir 39, Alcatraz and China Town

One of the trip highlights was Alcatraz. While we were waiting for our time to go over, we walked aoung Pier 39. It is a crowded fun place with a lot of shops. We got to see the sea lions, which apparently lay out on the docks every day. The numbers have gone down over the years, but there were still quite a few. It was pretty entertaining to watch them

Like I said, Alcatraz was awesome. They give you headphones and send you on a walking tour. I found it quite fascinating.

After the tour, we walked outside where Nate took pictures and I did this (refer to picture below). It was so windy and cold. I tried to bundle up but my jacket wasn't helping a ton. Our last stop that day was China Town. We spent most of our time walking though all the shops and seeing all the cool stuff they had. We had my birthday dinner at a restaurant there that isn't worth mentioning. It was below adequate and disappointing, but China Town was still really cool.

San Fran part 3...Wicked edition

For the second day of our trip, we drove to Carmel. If you've never been there, please go! It is paradise. Our day started at the beach. We rolled up our pants and walked down the beach in the water. When we got about as far away from our car as possible, we found a stranger to take our picture. I went to pull the camera out of my purse only to realize it was in the car! So we walked all the way back up the beach and climed the massive hill to our car. We grabbed the camera and walked back to where we started. Another stranger agreed to take our picture. When we tried to turn the camera on, we found that it was out of batteries. Awesome. At this point, we decided a picture on the beach wasn't meant to be.
After the beach, we found a charming little place to eat lunch. It was the best meal we had on the trip(this does not include the cookie bottom sundae). After lunch, we walked around the town and windowed shopped. Carmel is a great place to see, but very expensive to buy. That didn't bother us...we were there to relax.

The Cottage of Sweets was so darn cute, I had to make Nate get his picture taken next to it. Before we headed back to San Fran, we took a drive down the coast and found this amazing spot to take a picture. It was such a beautiful day and the views were amazing (as you can see). Now...the pinnacle moment of our trip and the best birthday present I've ever received, WICKED!!! We gave ourselves plenty of time to get back to our hotel so we could get ready and get to the city for the show. We were so nervous about something going wrong that we took BART(public transport) in early and arrived about an hour an a half before the show. Instead of chancing the time at a sit down reastaurant, we ate at the Carl's Jr next to the theater. It was full of transients. It gave us the opportunity to buy dinner for a homeless woman who walked up behind us in line, asked us to buy her dinner and told us what she wanted. I decided it was a much better method than standing on a corner with a sign.

Here we are in front of the theater. It is so pretty inside! The show was absolutely amazing! It was both of our first times seeing it and neither of us were disappointed. I was so impressed with the cast and how talented they were. My favorite was the girl who played Elphaba. Her voice was so unique. It was interesting to put the music with the story, which I didn't know. I loved how clever it was and that it has a great moral. I would recommend this show to anyone. It is so great! The morning that we left, we wanted to make a few stops to Lombard Street and The Golden Gate Bridge. I love Lombard Street and how well taken care of it is. The bridge was also very cool. We walked out to the middle and were able to see a great view of the city. It was the last thing we did on the trip. It was so much fun and a great way to spend my birthday! I really could not have asked for a better present. I can't wait to see how he tops himself next year.

Did I post too many pictures??...Our Disneyland adventure.

Every morning, Mr. Fawcett's alarm goes of at 5:55. He immediately jumps out of bed and turns it off before I have the chance to even consider waking up. By the time he says goodbye, I still haven't even peeked out from under the covers. This morning was different. Somehow, he must have confused the off button with the snooze button and at 6:05 am, I found myself wondering what that strange noise was. The end result?... I couldn't get back to sleep. It was early and I needed somthing to do until my 9 am Zumba class. Then it hit me. I could no longer put off the inevitable. I had to get going on the blog.

On August 10, Nate turned 30. This also happened to be the day that we left for Disneyland to join my family for 3 days of Disney entertainment. It was filled with long lines, expensive food, family shirts, jazzies and good old fashioned fun. Before leaving, we had the birthday festivites at home. I made Nate a blueberry crumb cake for breakfast, as it was our only chance to have cake that day. It was delicious.
I gave him the board game Ticket to Ride (as seen in the picture below). His other gift was the BYU shirt he was wearing in the cake picture. I must admit, I had to pat myself on the back for a job well done in the present department.

My little sister Melissa and her husband Travis met up with us around noon and we left for Vegas. First stop...the pawn shop from the reality TV show Pawn Stars. Nate and Travis were quite star struck from the whole experience.After and overpriced and under tasty birthday buffet and a nights stay at the Excalibur, we made way for California. Our first stop Huntington Beach. We borrowed beach cruisers from Nate's local friends took a bike ride down the beach. The weather was perfect. Nice weather doesn't always make for nice water. That wasn't about to stop Nate and Travis. They had great time playing in the water. While they did that, we did this.After the beach, we strolled around downtown Huntington. We looked through the shops and then found a cute little restaurant called Hurricanes. I kept pronouncing it like Nate's hometown of Hurricane(sounds like hurrikin). Sometimes I get confused. He was happy to be eating some good food. And the moment we have all been waiting for....let me introduce you to Barbara. She's my grandma. She makes a mean white chocolate macadamia nut cookie. She also paid for 59 people to join her at Disneyland for her 86th birthday. She did it all in a jazzie. We love her.We started out the day but strapping on our "I'm celebrating" buttons and heading out to the park. As strange as it may be, even though we spent equal time in Disneyland and California Adventure, we only took about three pictures in California Adventure(they didn't make the cut). The rest are at Disneyland. How does that happen?We had to take a picture with the 2 wild rides at Disneyland....Grandma's jazzie and Mr Toad's wild ride. See these fabulous faces? This is what happens to your face when you're crammed in a too small rocket ship on top of your husband's long legs on a ride in Tomorrow Land. Even though it was a painful experience, it proved to be very memorable and even more hilarious. A trip highlight was the dance party in Tomorrow Land. Gabby made me hold her the whole time I danced. Even though it gave me extreme low rise pants and a great workout, it was oh so fun. She loved it as much as I did. The second morning we had breakfast with Minnie and friends. The kids loved it. Unfortunately, I didn't pull out the camera until the very end so I didn't get any pics of the kids and the characters. But I did get one with this shady individual.

Capatin EO. What more can I say? This was a family tradition growing up. When we caught wind that it would be back for our 2010 trip, there was cause for a celebration. We all met up and saw it together. It was awesome...especially when Gabby was calling Michael Jackson a 'her'.The Brian and Marilyn family at their finest. Barbara is right in the middle. We took a picture with each branch of the family and then a picture of all 59 of us. Unfortunately I still have not received that picture. My camera was not chosen for that picture and I'm sure it would have been pandemonium at the least to do a picture with all the cameras. I'll be sure to post it when I get it.

You might be wondering about the family shirts. These are a tribute to Grandpa Gutke, Barbara's husband. As you can kind of see on the back of the shirt, there's a picture of a football player on top of the 'A'. That's Butch Gutke in action. We were all proud to be strutting around Disneyland sporting a logo of Grandpa Gutke. The trip was amazing. Thanks Grandma Gutke, for making all of our dreams come true at Disneyland, USA. We love you!!!

Now to address the elephant in the room. Yes, that was a mustache you saw Nate wearing during the trip. I attribute this facial hair to a mid life/turning 30 crisis. He blames it on a)his role model Phil Dunfee and b)not giving into a wife who insists he needs to shave it. He took one last picture in the hotel room before he shaved it off on the last day of the trip. Please notice my unamused expression in the back. If you've made it this far, you deserve a free trip to Disneyland too!!!