Presidents Day in Monterey!

We had a great President's Day weekend with our good friends, Jentri & Shane. It was Jentri's birthday so we all went down to Monterey and had a great weekend getaway! We went scuba diving, to the Monterey Aquarium, Camping and to Pacific Grove. It was a great time and we are grateful that we have friends who like us enough to want to spend an entire weekend with us! I had a great time with my camera and took some pictures that I really love....

Above you can see as Jentri hands over money to some people on the street who talked her into buying interesting bumper stickers that I know she will NEVER put on her car!

God is an artist

It's true! This past week I have been amazed at the beauty of the earth. We live in such a gorgeous part of California. I woke up the other morning and looked out our deck and saw the gorgeous fog rolling over the hills. It was breathtaking.

Down the street from our house we have a wonderful view of San Francisco and Berkeley.

I love how the Lord has blessed us with such a beautiful world to live in!

New Year!

Here's to the New Year! We celebrated our three year anniversary on December 30th. We can't believe how fast time has flown and how many amazing blessings we have been given since we were married!
We can't wait for this New Year! Sam just started his third semester of Business School and Marielle was just called as the Young Womens President of their ward. We are looking forward to a trip to Jamaica (and Girl's Camp!) this year!
Hope everyone who reads this is doing well!

Christmas Festivities!

Let the party begin! We had a great Christmas holiday! We had everyone over for Christmas eve dinner where we carried on the McCombs tradition and ate breakfast for dinner. It was delicious and we had fun!



Levi LOVES CHRISTMAS!


We ate dinner and then exchanged stockings. The greatest stocking stuffer (in my humble opinion was in Jeff's stocking- NERD GLASSES! They rocked and everyone had fun trying them on... Here is Scott's Nerdy picture-

Even Brody had a little fun with the nerd glasses!

Before dinner we went down and took some family photos!








It was gorgeous outside and we had a spectacular sunset!

Here is our lovely table set so gorgeously for Christmas dinner! Thanks for helping, Heather!



We had a wonderful Christmas and we are so grateful that we had the chance to spend it with the Hayes family! Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Marielle's family drove in from Reno and we had fun spending time with them. We had both of our families over for dinner and also had our new friends join us, Jentri and Shane. We are so grateful to have friends and family who we love and who were willing to try Marielle's cooking!:)Here is our lovely table that before the dinner!
After dinner, we continued the Hayes Thanksgiving tradition by attending the car show in San Francisco. Here are some rad cars we saw...







I don't know the names of any of these cars except the Range Rover. All I can tell you is that I need to buy that green zebra car!

We took family pictures the next day and that was fun fun fun!
Here is me and Sam. We look dang hot. And yes I am rocking the black nail polish!


Happy Thanksgiving everyone~!

Cheeeeezzzzz!

I want to set the record straight once and for all. MARIELLE LIKES CHEESE! I come home to find huge bite marks out of our block of Cheddar Cheese. I don't want to hear anyone objecting when I make Marielle eat delicious foods covered in dripping, oozing, and always tasty cheese (ex: Pizza, nachos, deep fried cheese balls). She loves the stuff, which is why she sneaks to the refrigerator in the middle of the night to eat a slice of ripe, full-flavored, and aromatic Cheddar.

Spooky Halloween Party!

We had a few friends over to our place to celebrate Halloween. Costumes were mandatory, of course! We ate, talked, watched Sleepy Hollow and had a good time! Here are some of the cosumes that were awesome! We love our friends!
Keith & Ann- check out Ann's pose!

Shane the caveman...

And Jentri the angry sumo wrestler...

Kimberly & Tim as Eliza & Professor Higgins from My Fair Lady...


This may be hard to believe but this is Sam dressed as White Trash for Halloween. Very Classy!

Marielle was a sexy bullfighter!

Thanks everyone for coming! We look forward to next year....Marielle already knows what she is going to be!!!

The Philippines Part 3

Wow! Will this Filipino Blog ever end? The answer is yes but not yet. We have way too many pictures! So, moving forward. We finished our short stay in Cabanatuan and then went down to the island of Anilao to scuba dive for a couple of days. The four hour bus ride down was a little shady because we were positive that we were surrounded by three pickpocketers. Luckily nothing happened. We got to our hotel in Anilao and Sam could not get his wetsuit on quickly enough! He was so excited to get in the water but I was very hesitant. I was really worried about death by shark until our dive master told us that there weren't any sharks where we were going. I totally believed him and we went on our way to scuba dive! And here is the proof!
Before I say anything else, I would like to point out that Sam is an amazing underwater photographer!













Now here is a story. While Sam was taking my picture by this underwater cross, he felt a tug at his leg. He turned around and didn't see anything. He continues taking pictures and turnes around again and this ginormous fish was biting at his fin and chasing after Sam. I turned around and saw Sam kick this huge fish in the face. Here is a picture of the fish coming after Sam.








Looking up from 80 feet below the surface- the deepest we've ever been! Aah!


We saw a shipwreck while on our second dive. Sam liked it but it really creeped me out!










AND OUR SCUBA ADVENUTRE ENDED THERE. HERE ARE SOME SHOTS FROM THE END OF OUR GREAT TRIP IN THE PHILIPPINES! SUNSET IN ANILAO WAS BREATHTAKING!




At the end of our trip we met up at the Manila temple with the Guimba branch. Here is us with a group of people who all remembered Sam. It was so nice to meet each of them and to have fun at the temple!

We had a great trip! I cannot wait to go back to the Philippines again. I have never met more humble, sincere and loving people in my life. We are both so grateful to have been able to spend time there together! The end of the Philippines blog!