Ashley's Birthday

This weekend was Ashley's Birthday. I decided to take her to San Diego. We usually like to stay at the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Blvd., but because we're on one income we opted for the Good Nite Inn, San Diego.

There's a photo booth we really love at the Balboa Park Museum of Photographic Arts. We visited the booth last year and we're trying to make it a tradition.

Camping Video

Hawaii Music Video

Hawaii Pictures!

Here is a link to some Hawaii pictures.

Quite the adventure

Today we had quite an adventure! It is our last day in hawaii so we tried to make it a good one. There is a great snorkeling spot right near captain cooks monument (Its where he died if you are wondering). Its such a great spot that the locals want to restrict access to it so that it does not becone overrun with "causual tourists".
Now that ash and i have spent some time on the island, we think this is a good idea. For instance, there is a very popular snorkeling spot on alii drive in kona (referred to as "snorkel beach"). This reef is easily accessable to anyone and it seems like pretty much every tourist and sight seer come to snorkel at this reef. The problem with this is that  its very shallow so everyone steps on the coral, sun screen gets on (and kills) the coral and if a wave comes a long you'll land on the coral and break it etc. Because its so popular the reef is dying and there's not that much beauty left. There's still some, but its nothing compared to our two other favorite snorkeling spots. Needless to say, no one wants any of the snorkeling spots to end up like this one.

In an attempt to keep the massive crowds away from captain cook no maintained roads lead there. So a popular way to get there is by a mile kayak ride and that is how ash and i intended to get there.

We rented a double kayak at "kona boys" and strapped it to the top of our jeep. After arriving at the boat ramp we loaded up our gear and put in the seats to the kayak. A gentleman kindly informed us that we put the seats facong the wrong way and we were about to kayak "backwards" (whoops).

The kayak trip was a hoot. The bay is often used as a place of rest and nursery for a pod of spinner dolphins. I hoped we would see some but we did not. When we arrived at the monument i promptly stepped on a bee which stung my foot. We put on our snorkel gear, trief to avoid stepping on the purple sea urchins, and jumped into the ocean.

I have to say, that ashley was being very courageous during this time. After our first snorkel trip the last thing i thought we would be doing was kayaking our into the ocean to jump in with the fish. Earlier in the trip she was nearly in tears for being within a yard of a puffer fish and now she was dragging me along into schools of them. I thinks shes finally over her fear of fish.

The ocean was warm, the coral beautiful, and the fish fishy. We swam and took pictures and admired God's beautiful creation of the coral reef.

As we kayaked back i announced that we were not leaving until i spotted a dolphin (or we reached the other side). We reached the other side first, so i guess ill just have something to look forward to for the next trip to paradise.

camping trip

This weekend we had a blast going camping with some people from church. Ash and I are going to be posting a little more about it but I wanted to post these pictures as quickly as possible. Click here.

placerita canyon hike

Here are some old pictures from when we went on a hike down Placerita Canyon. They have a fun 5 mi hike that we took one weekend. In a wetter season there is a waterfall at the top, but this time it was barely a trickle.

nate runs like a girl

this is a video from when we went to santa barbara in january. in this video i run as a girl might run.

Visit to Pennsylvania

Here are some pictures from my recent visit to Pennsylvania. It was so great to see Erin and Rod and the kids and experience an actual winter again. You can see the ice floating in the river in some of the pictures. The kids are hilarious - whenever I turned on the video camera they wanted to sing "Holy, Holy, Holy". No other songs, just "Holy, Holy, Holy". Adelaide is learning how to read and working on basic math. While I was there she did a lesson on counting change and did a great job. She really knows how to count those dimes. Henry is two and learning how to pee-pee in the potty. Actually, he's learning how to stay dry between trips to the bathroom, a task that became much easier last Friday when Erin decided that she was tired of washing three pairs of little boys jeans a day, and sprung for some snazzy vinyl underwear for him. Henry wasn't too happy about that, and it took a great deal of coaxing to get him excited about wearing an elasticized poncho. Adelaide took the rubber undies out of the package and smelled them and said, "They smell like my swimming pool." While I was there we went to this iron works place called John Wright Company. They had tons of great things, especially in the bargain room upstairs, but unfortunately, I had to think about how I would get items made of iron into my suitcase and home. I did get some great baking dishes, but had to leave the five foot coat rack behind.

Henry and Adelaide

Here is a video Ash took of Henry and Adelaide during her trip to PA. This seemed to be the only song they wanted to sing.

Ashley's Back From PA

Ashley's back from The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She was there for a few days to visit her sister and family. We'll have some pictures from the trip up here soon!

disneyland

Hey everyone, we went to Disneyland after all. You can view all the pictures if you are interested.

Theres a funny part in those images where you can see that I am taking a picture of Ashley walking and then the next picture is her looking really embarrassed. That is because she walked right into the guy whilst I was taking the picture! ha ha ha...

trip to nor cal oct 06 (video)

trip to nor cal

This last weekend we drove with Leah up to Aubrey's Family's house just north of Sacramento. Mark and Aubrey were back from Jerusalem for a short time, so we went up to visit them. You can view the pictures here. I'll post a video soon.

labor day trip to utah

We went to Utah over this last weekend. I've compiled a video of our trip.


Downlaod the video: high res (19MB mp4), or low res (3.7MB mov).

andy and beth's wedding

I went to Andy and Beth's wedding. It was a lot of fun.

Life is so crazy-busy these days I don't really have time to write much about it. You can see the pictures from the rehearsal
here. Pictures from the wedding can be found here.

austin

We went to Austin. You can view the pictures here. Pictures from the family reunion can be found here

we went on a hike

This weekend we went on a hike. We bought the book '101 Hikes in Southern California' and decided to try hike 16. It was a lot of fun and Aubrey took a bunch of pictures.