Merry Christmas from KerMatt!

KerMatt's 2009 Highlights

• Getting engaged at the top of Mt. Soledad in San Diego on Valentine's Day after 21 months of dating
• Keri - Busting out my road bike and thoroughly exploring the trails of Salt Lake County with co-worker, Rachel
• Keri - Playing with my girls at my awesome bridal shower in March and bachelorette party in April
• Matt - Finishing the ISys Core Program with good grades
• Getting married in the San Diego Temple in May, having two great receptions with fantastic family and friends, and enjoying newlywed life
• Honeymooning in Florida and especially spending a day lounging on the beautiful white sand beach at Honeymoon Island
• Visiting Redmond, WA in October for Matt's 10 year reunion and Keri spending much needed time with Brad & Sharee in Spokane, WA
• Matt - Accepting a summer internship with Ernst & Young in San Jose, CA
• Matt - One word... Football! - BYU's 10-2 Football Season / Charger's 11-3 record & #2 Playoff Seed / 1st Place in Fantasy Football (Friend's league)
• Spending Thanksgiving in Fairfield, CA & Christmas & New Year's in San Diego with family & friends

Finals Are Over And We Are Back in Cali!

My little Christmas tree at work to help

keep me in the Christmas spirit

Life makes sense all over again... Matt and I are back in San Diego and exhausted but could not be happier. Matt survived another grueling finals week, which beat him down and caused much sleep loss (not a good thing for Matt as many of you know). And I was able to wrap up my week at work nicely, working on an opportunity that is turning out to be a battle of the hospital groups here in Utah.

We started off the week hosting a fabulous football party watching another great Chargers win (over the Cowboys). Then we had another successful FHE activity on Monday. Matt gave a wonderful impromptu lesson on influence and the power of a positive language when dealing with conflict (D&C 121:39-43). Then we had a random, but plentiful potluck and made Christmas ornaments together. We had 4 couples show up this time taking our total to 7 couples now in attendance. It was so fun getting to know others like us and I made 2 ornaments to celebrate our first Christmas married together.

Then Matt went incognito and took to serious studying to finish his finals. He was up til 3:30am on Wednesday and Thursday and didn't get much sleep. We finally left at 7am on Saturday to head down to San Diego. And we made it here just in time to take his Dad out for birthday dinner, along with Daniel and his adorable children.

We are so looking forward to the next 2 weeks of much-needed time with friends & family, celebrating Christmas, beautiful San Diego weather, BJ's Pizza, Wahoos Fish Taco's and especially for Matt, relaxation and football.

We are truly appreciating all of the blessings that we have been given and the sincere quality of the loved ones around us. We love you all and love the spirit of kindness and generosity that Christmas brings. And remember the greatest blessing of which we celebrate on Friday but should be celebrating every day of our lives - the birth of Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas everyone!

KerMatt

Classes are over and Crunch time begins!

We have had another action-packed week as we continue the countdown to Christmas and our highly anticipated vacation to San Diego. As I have been working hard to make up for the two weeks I'll be missing, Matt has been finishing his classes and preparing for his finals which ended on Thursday. PriceWaterHouseCooper even sent him a nice bag full of snacks for his finals week (except that most of the food was organic which Matt is not really down with so I now have inherited most of the snacks).

We put on our first "Newlyweds" FHE with 3 others couples attending including 2 couples we have been hanging out with a lot (Jake & Suzanne from Texas and Brian & Lindsay from Washington/Idaho). Lindsay is actually a cousin's of Matt's best friend, Matt Fairbanks. I gave a lesson about remembering the true meaning of Christmas pulled from a talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland on the LDS Christmas website and then we all played a new game for Matt and I called "Ticket To Ride". It was a fun strategy game but we played in couples and as you can imagine, Matt and I were the most feisty ones as we both had differing ideas of how we should proceed each turn. Oh the lessons we are learning on patience and understanding each other.

Then while Matt went and played his usual church basketball on Wednesday night, I got together with Lindsay and Suzanne and we hung out and chatted about our silly men and their quirks, which the boys are not loving so much. In fact when they returned and we started teasing them, one of them said "Oh no, maybe we should have made sure to put a movie on or something for them BEFORE we left so they wouldn't just talk the whole time." As if we are children or something!!!! Can you believe it?!

On Thursday night our festivities continued down to Jump On It in Lindon for Matt's ASM (Association of Systems Management) Closing Social. Matt (as ASM Activities Co-Chair) had rented out Jump On It for the night and we spent the night jumping around like flying squirrels. Jump On It is a huge warehouse fun center full of trampolines all connected together with more trampolines lined along the walls so you can jump all over and off the walls. They also have a bunch of balls and mats and hoops inside. We had a BLAST - although the night was not without injuries and bruises, including Matt landing his leg between the one of the diagonal wall trampolines. You should have seen his ASM colleagues pulling out all sorts of tricks and chucking footballs at each other mercilessly. I really didn't want to leave and we'll definitely have to do that again.

And again on Friday, we got together with the same 2 couples and actually took TRAX up to see the Lights at Temple Square in Downtown Salt Lake. We just missed a performance by the Mo Tab but that is probably not a bad thing for us as that also meant we missed a HUGE crowd of people who were leaving as we arrived. We also walked through the Gallivan Center, which was created for the 2002 Winter Olympics and had it's own fantastic lights and little outdoor ice skating rink. Even though we were FREEZING, Matt and I were so glad we went since we had chickened out seeing the lights last year and they are just too fantastic to miss. I am telling you, they have got the tree light-wrapping down to an art! And I hear they have to start putting up the lights months before December.

Temple Square

Gallivan Center

KerMatt (freezing booties off)

Jake, Suzanne, Lindsay, Brian, Keri

Lindsay & Brian

KerMatt (in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building)

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

NorCal Thanksgiving & A Flurried December

We wish you a Merry Christmas, We wish you a Merry Christmas,

We wish you a Merry Christmas...

It seems that November flew by too fast. We went to Fairfield for Thanksgiving and spent a week with the Adams Family. We had a great time and caught up on our relaxing as we like to do when we get a chance. We saw "Blind Side", which we both absolutely loved. We ate at BJ's, which is Matt's favorite restaurant. Matt discovered "Settlers" online and spent way too much time trying to win but he was so relaxed and content that I really couldn't complain. I loved the time with my fam doing our fave Adams things - sitting around talking about Elvis, playing the piano, eating, etc...

We all drove up to Roseville and spent Thanksgiving day at my Aunt Lori's home. And Matt got to participate in his first Adams Family Thanksgiving Soccer Game. He blew everyone away with his mad skillz and I even busted a few "unique" stunts - one which Matt coined "The Samurai" because of the invisible sword I carried in my hand as I flew at the oncoming ball. We ate way too much great food including the like 16 pies that my mom, aunt, cousin and grandma made.

As with all good things came the bad though and we both ended up catching nasty colds before leaving. We hurried home to make it to the highly anticipated BYU vs. UofU rivalry football game but I ended up giving up my ticket to Matt's cousin, Curtis, as I still had not recovered from my cold and the last thing I wanted to do was stand out in the cold for 4 hours. We were overjoyed with the win though!

Matt finally made his decision regarding his internship choosing Ernst & Young, which they were absolutely thrilled about. I know it really wasn't a big deal but I still think he is relieved now having that done. Now he is just focused on finishing the semester and the anticipation of a very busy semester come January. This week is the last week of classes and then Matt has 2 finals and a couple projects to do next week. He's also in charge of the ASM Closing Social on Thursday night and he's rented out Jump-On-It, a tumbling gym of sorts, for the activity.

He also completed his GMAT prep course and will be taking the GMAT pretty soon.

I have been doing a lot of reading lately in trying to cut down my TV time, which has been a nice break and I'm loving busting out my Christmas music. I'm also still working on projects for our home, including making my first curtains with my mom while we were in Nor Cal. I also caved in last night and bought a Christmas tree. Matt doesn't see a need for one since we are only going to be here until the 18th but it just didn't feel like Christmas around here without a tree. I found an awesome tree that I could fit into my trunk and love the addition to our home.

I received a calling today as the Relief Society chorister, even though I thought I had done a good job convincing the bishop that I didn't know how to lead very well. But he saw through it and said it would help me improve on my conducting skills. I actually am looking forward to the opportunity although that 6/8 just gets me every time. And I'm a little nervous about that whole practice hymn time :)

Matt and I have also been asked by the bishop to get together an unofficial Newlywed / Young Family FHE & Break the Fast group after he heard that we have been inviting other young couples over on Sundays. We have SO many young couples in our ward and we get at least 2 new ones each week but being a new ward, they just haven't got anything together yet. Although they do have a Single Sister FHE group and an Empty Nesters FHE group. So we have gladly taken on the challenge with another couple and we are really looking forward to getting to know our ward members better. Tomorrow will be our first group FHE and we are in charge of the lesson.

We both can't wait to head down to So Cal for 2 weeks soon and we are just trying to stay focused here for the next 2 weeks.

Fantasy Football Update: Matt retook 1st place in his friend's league and is excited about that. Jerry is in 7th place in that league. In our Family league, Jerry is 1st and Dan has 2nd and 3rd place. Matt is trying to replace Dan or Kyle for 4th place and a shot at the Championship in a couple weeks. Matt plays Jerry next week though... Keri has a tough matchup against Dan that ends after tonight's game, and it looks like she's going to win.

Love you all and hope that you are able to look beyond the sales and materialism to the things that are most important during this Christmas season. We are really trying to remember the meaning of it all and keep that in our thoughts and actions.

May hot cocoa run rampant in your little throats and you find warm fuzzies in this cold, winter season :)

Love,

KerMatt

My mommy and I

Snow is here...and the fight is on to hire Matt!

Pic of Matt looking handsome today after church

Another week of nice weather here...until yesterday when we finally got hit with the snow. Matt and I stay inside almost all day to avoid it until about 8 pm when we rushed over to IKEA before they closed to grab cinnamon rolls he has been craving.

As many of you probably already know, Matt received another offer from his second firm, Ernst & Young, after his fly-out interview with them in San Jose earlier this week. So now he is just trying to decide which he will take. But to help him in his decisions, both firms have pulled out a full-court press to win him over. And he could not be happier :)

Sometimes I am reminded that he is still a student and living for the free meals. Both firms now have their BYU Alum-hires now calling and meeting with him this week and next to tell them about their wonderful experiences with the company. A PWC rep took him out to lunch on Friday to any restaurant of his choice - which was, of course, Tucanos. And then that same night, E & Y had a dinner for all of the BYU students they gave offer to and their spouses. They held the dinner at the Hinckley Alumni house which was really very nice. I haven't actually been in there - they were just building it when I graduated. And then Tuesday, E&Y is taking Matt out to lunch again.

So if you know Matt, he is definitely loving all of the attention. I just kind of have missed cooking dinner this week :)

He also was nominated and elected as BYU ASM Co-President (Association for Systems Management) for the next year, and he accepted even though it is going to be more to add to his load. But with this, he has a much better chance of being accepted into the Master's Program.

We are very happy for him and I am so proud of his hard work. I just feel like he is continually growing into an even better man every day.

As for me, I am just working along but kind of ready to explore some new career options. I am a little burnt out from the Heart Walk, more specifically the fundraising, and with limited options with the AHA right now, I have ventured out a little and put out my resume. I'm not sure what I want to do, or even if I really am ready to leave the AHA since it has been very good for me. But I just don't have the passion and energy I once had for my job. So I am opening the door in case I am supposed to move on.

We are looking forward to only one more week of work and school before we head out to Nor Cal to visit my family. I am so excited and can't wait to finally join in on the Adams Family Thanksgiving festivities again...including the annual soccer game.

We love you all and appreciate you all writing regularly. We love being able to keep in touch when everyone is busy and in all parts of the country.

Have a fantastic week!

Pic of Keri and co-worker Red Rachel in the Funny Face booth

at a "Business After Hours" networking event on Wednesday. The theme for the party was "Alice In Wonderland" and they had some crazy decor.

Pinback & More Interviews

Hi all, so we have had a pretty fabulous week.

First of all Matt had a fly-out interview to San Jose for PWC and was wined and dined by the office there. He got to meet several professionals and had 3 behavioral interviews. He was offered an internship position within 24 hours. Whoop whoop! We are so happy and relieved to know that there is at least one option on the table already.

Matt came home Tuesday from San Jose for another fly-out interview with Ernst & Young. This interview was going to be more of a challenge since he not only had to do 2 behavioral interviews but also a 45 minute case study and a 45 minute writing sample.

We don't yet know what our exact plans will be - whether Keri will go out with Matt or not - and we probably won't decide until we find out in May whether Matt gets into the Master's Program. But Keri is looking forward to the possibility as we will be so much closer to her family in Fairfield.

We went and saw Matt's favorite band, Pinback, on Saturday night with his friend Derek and had a great time. Keri had not heard the band before but they were pretty good - similar to Coldplay or The Postal Service. I was amazed at how different and so low-key the concert was compared to my pop concerts. There's a couple pics below of some of the band, including the lead singer who looked like he was wearing clothes he picked up off of his floor - and my favorite ... mismatched Christmas socks. That would never fly with my peeps! :)

Beyond that, Keri's work load has slowed down and she is finding more time to devote to reading, friends, and our home. Matt decided on Sunday that he wanted a say in our decorating. So we spent Sunday afternoon with Matt running around the house pulling off picture frames and trying to relocate them or put them away and Keri chasing after him to fix them. Don't worry, I put the smack down and gave him a corner to exercise his own creative control :)

Happy Veterans Day to Barry Adams (Keri's Dad) who will be proudly marching in the local Fairfield parade with his Veteran's of Foreign Wars crew. Well actually - as my dad is the only one still able to walk, he will be walking alone and the others will be riding behind in a car. Too bad we're going to miss that sight!

Happy Halloween!

We missed writing last week because we had Keri's dad visiting to go to the BYU vs TCU game. While the game was a disappointment, we had fun entertaining Barry. Keri made him a southern breakfast, and her and her sister, Tori and her husband, Bryan, took him to Hee-Haw's farm in

Pleasant Grove to watch a pig chase, go through a corn maze and pick out some pumpkins. If you have never been to this place, Keri recommends going elsewhere, although it proved to be quite interesting. The corn maze was about 4 feet tall - so hardly a maze, but the pumpkin patch looked like something out of Nightmare Before Christmas with a bunch of dead pumpkins and scary, humongous, dead sunflowers. And to top that all off, Keri and Tori were upset at the lack of supervision in the Petting Farm where people were letting their children run all over the animals. And then the pig in the "pig show" got out of his pen and into a donkey cage next to him during the "show" and almost got slaughtered by the donkey while all of us (including children of all ages) looked on in horror. We still managed to enjoy ourselves and find some awesome pumpkins though.

Matt found a great deal on a 32" LCD HDTV (see attached pic) and surprised Keri with it when she got back from Washington. Matt really likes having TV, Movies, and Xbox 360 in HD now! In Fantasy Football, Keri and Matt both won in Week 7 and are both going to lose in Week 8. Matt is tied for 3rd and Keri is tied for 5th now. Keri has had the most points scored against her of anyone in the league.

We enjoyed dressing up and going to a party at Keri's cousin's house for Halloween as the Geico money and a Geico caveman. Keri loves Halloween and spent the week putting together our costumes, including downloading the "Somebody's Watching Me" song to play on her phone with her costume.

We are looking forward to another busy week - Keri has her awards celebration party for her Heart Walks which will be a nice wrap-up to this year's walk events. And Matt has his usual crazy school-work-club mix but also a flyout interview to San Jose on Tuesday and Wednesday. Please think happy thoughts this week and keep him in your prayers as he ventures out this week and next week to secure an internship. He has also begun a six-week GMAT Prep course on Thurs evenings and Sat mornings (which are already wearing him down). But on a positive note, he took a practice GMAT already and did pretty good for his first time (540).

Oh and today marks the celebration of our 6 month anniversary of marriage!

- KerMatt

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime® 6.5 or higher is required.

Help me pray for little Emma!

A co-worker of mine has asked me to reach out to my family and friends (and ward) for help in praying for a friend of her's baby.

Baby Emma (who is 14 months old) has had 4 brain surgeries in the last 4 weeks and they don’t know what or who she will be when and if she gets out of this. Her parents are nearly 100% positive that their daughter was violently shaken at her daycare causing severe brain damage. She needs all the prayers she can get. Emma has already risen above many odds thusfar so I know that she is being watched over.

So if you can just remember to keep her in your thoughts and prayers, I would truly appreciate it as would her family.

Here is a blog that her family and friends are keeping up:
http://hopeandloveforthecrewfamily.blogspot.com/

I beat Matt :)

Oh and I beat Matt last week in our Fantasy Football league. A huge win thanks to the help of my oldest bro, Ryan. In fact - my only win this season.

Matt took it like a champ but tries to say he let me win. Geesh! Men!

KerMatt Weekly Email - Pizza & Washington

Life in our household is just flying along! We spent a wonderful weekend with Matt's parents and his nephew Cayden as they visited from San Diego. We had a great time playing with Cayden and the three crazy nieces :). We all played Wii Mario Kart together, they made Keri run around the playground as their "monster" chasing them for a good hour, spent plenty of time giggling at Tio Matt who they love to call "Pizzaface" due to his love for pizza. (Side note: Matt managed to eat pizza every day this last week and most of it for free which he is very proud of but now has no desire to eat pizza for awhile). Our sister-in-law, Johanna, also showed us how to make cute little rice krispy ghouls and monsters.

Matt & I tested out our vocabulary with a fun game of scrabble with Lane and Kathy Friday night and somehow Matt got away with using the word pwont although we are still not sure how.
Matt is still busy applying for jobs after graduation and we are just so wishing we didn't have to wait until May 15th to find out if he makes it into the Master's program. But he will start a GMAT prep course this Saturday morning which will take up more of his time so that he can take the GMAT soon. Keri has even been able to get Matt a few job prospects as she is out meeting with companies for work and mentions that Matt is going to be graduating soon with an ISYS degree. Apparently that man is WANTED for his skillz :) Or maybe they are just impressed with Keri :)

We missed writing last week because we were in Seattle for Matt's 10-Year High School Reunion. We spent 3 days in Seattle area with Matt's best friend, Matt Fairbanks, and his wife, Kim, and family. We had a blast remembering Matt's high school days with his old friends and Keri loved seeing all of Matt's old hangouts in Redmond. We also spent a day in Seattle while Matt and Kim were busy. I enjoyed visiting H&M and then even got Matt to buy a few new clothes. Then we headed to Pike's Place Fish Market and loved checking out the scene there. But the smell was a little much.

The reunion turned out better than we had expected with a good turnout, awesome people, and plenty of awkward moments. I'm glad Kim was there as she and I hit it off and we were able to keep each other company while the Matt's ran around trying to talking to all of their old friends. We were just sad that neither Matt were brave enough to show up in their letterman jackets And we spent most of the night monopolizing the dance floor - always a good time.

Before we flew out, Matt & Kim took us to Snoqualmie Falls - similar to a random waterfall Keri had found in Northern Australia.

While Matt flew back to Utah in time for school, Keri hopped over to Spokane and spent some much-needed time with our good friends, Brad & Sharee. We spent most of our days shopping to add a little "sass" to Sharee's wardrobe which Keri is pretty much an expert at, Brad & Sharee both kept trying to spoil her with amazing food, especially these amazing chocolate chip cookies, and they pretty much laughed the whole vacation.

Keri & Sharee also spent a day in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho where Keri remembered one of her seminary teacher's had moved and bought a bed and breakfast. So she was able to look them up and go visit her which was great. If anyone is heading out there you should go stay at The Roosevelt Inn http://www.therooseveltinn.com/.

Although Keri had a fabulous time away, she was also glad to come home to Matt and she is enjoying the normal routine again.

We are looking forward to Keri's Dad visiting us this next weekend for the BYU Vs. TCU football game.

October and cold are here...

After months of talking about doing a blog together, we are finally ready to kick it off! Since we already put together a weekly email for our families each Sunday, we figure this really won't be to hard to keep up. And stay tuned for pics and details from our past honeymoon, wedding and our new lives together (which are long overdue). Thanks for joining and for being a part of our lives!

This week has been a better week for KerMatt - Keri feels rested finally from her heart walks and Matt's throat is more fully improved and he has been able to speak again. After much coaxing from Keri to finally go to the health center - he discovered that the cause of his throat pain was a GIANT CANKER SORE on the back of his throat. Keri takes no credit for it - even though she had a canker sore on her tongue about 2 weeks ago. :) So the communication in our home is back on and the week of Charades is over.

We finally setup our family blog and will start including our weekly updates in there as well. You can find it at kermatt.blogspot.com We'd love for you to follow it and check out as we are hoping to get our honeymoon pics and other fun stuff on there this week.

And for our big news this week - Matt got 3 second interviews out of the 4 Big 5 accounting firms that he interviewed with last week. We are so happy for him and proud of his success thus far. He has an interview with the LA office of Deloitte, San Jose office of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and the Irvine office of Ernst & Young. We can't wait to see what happens now (although hopefully not ending up in LA). These next round of interviews will be in-house interviews, which means they will be flying him out to their offices to meet him and conduct the interviews.

We spent Tuesday night at a bowling and dinner social with a company located in Portland called Stockamp Huron. They are an ISYS consulting firm that works with hospitals nationwide. After learning about the company, we are actually very impressed with them - although probably not enough to live in Portland. If we are going to live in the NW, Keri would rather be in Spokane near our dear friends, Brad & Sharee. But Keri did win an awesome fleece hoodie for getting the lowest bowling score - a whopping 47!!! Matt won a T-shirt for getting the highest combined score from both games.

We enjoyed a wonderful weekend of Conference and spending time at home doing more projects. Our favorite talk was Elder Holland's very direct and honest testimony of the Book of Mormon. What a profound and passionate talk it was!

While Keri spent time in between sessions painting more walls (giving Matt much anxiety) and finally putting up her pictures on the walls, Matt put together his surround sound system. He even had a couple friends come over and help him yesterday - and they just couldn't stop laughing about him hooking up the system to our janky little 19" inch TV donated to us by Keri's Uncle Larry. We are in the market for a bigger and more modern TV in case anybody knows of any deals. Keri put together a cool wall art project she found on DIY.com and has been dying to do (see attached pic). It may be a little too funky for Matt but Keri loves it and feels it adds a little something to our home.

This week is looking to be a better week for football, with BYU winning and the Chargers almost making a huge comeback against the defending SuperBowl Champion Steelers. In Fantasy Football it's looking like Matt is going to get a big win over Ryan & Dylan's (and Paige's trash talking) undefeated team (who

currently hold the #1 spot) and Keri's going down to the wire tomorrow night against Skyler. She's down 11 points and it's her kicker against Skyler's kicker. That might be exciting!

We are looking forward to our big trip to Seattle this weekend for Matt's 10-Year High School Reunion. Keri is going to fly over and stay a few days with Brad & Sharee in Spokane.

We love you all and love hearing about your lives! Have a great week!

Honeymoon Part 2: Universal Island of Adventure

Honeymoon Matt

We already posted our honeymoon but what we didn't include were the photos from our time at Orlando's Universal Studios and Island of Adventure. Matt and I sat through a timeshare presentation to get 3-day passes to the theme parks and enjoyed a few days there. We chose Universal Studios over DisneyWorld because Matt had never been to any Universal Studios.

Universal Studios

Island of Adventure

Carrying the weight of the world on my back

I've got the whole world in my hands...

Playing in the gift store

Sponge Bob Square Matt 

Just chillin with Jaws

Photo bombed by the shark

Cuz I'm bad like that

Matt and his funny faces entertaining me while waiting in line

And then doing some info-gathering  

Posing at the Simpsons Ride

The Lego people

Matt and I loved walking around seeing all these people gnawing on big turkey legs in the Florida heat

The real Jaws not so scary

Trying to take my mind off the heat

Look Mom, no hands!

About to enter Jurassic Park...

Matt showing that he is not afraid of what lies ahead

Just fighting off dinosaurs

Somehow I became a dinosaur

Help me!

I've always wanted to be character in a Dr. Seuss book

We represent the lollipop kids

Thing 1 and Thing 2

Thing 3

One night we stopped in the Universal Studios Riverwalk and had dinner at Bubba Gumps

"I know what love is"

The paddle is how you let the server you need help. Look at how sweaty Matt was - good old Florida humidity.

We also stopped in at this place in the Riverwalk where you could do karaoke with a live band and backup singers, which would have been amazing but I think we were both too hot, tired, and grumpy to actually do it. So we left after about 15 minutes.

We also saw the movie "Up" in 3D

For a couple days, we left Orlanda and headed down to the Tampa Bay/Clearwater area. We stayed in some dirty motel that we hadn't booked until we got there. But we got to spend the day at Honeymoon Island Beach, which was voted one of the best beaches in the U.S. It did not disappoint, though Matt got fried from not putting on sunblock. 

Honeymoon Beach

Clearwater, Florida

While there, we also got to see a pretty amazing firework show at night. 

As I look back at these photos now, I'm amazed at how many photos we took. But I remember we bought a little video camera just for the trip which we were excited about at the time.