Griffith Park with Friends

**You really need to read Megan's post about their visit.  She was way more descriptive than I was.**

This past weekend, our great friends (Andy, Megan, and their kids Joey and Hannah) came up from San Diego.  We had a great time with them, even though the weather wasn't all that great.  They got here Friday night, then on Saturday we went up to Griffith Park to check out the trains, and then we went to the Observatory after that, followed by a very necessary stop at Diddy Riese (amazing ice cream sandwiches for $1.50).  We all went to church on Sunday, and then they went back home after the kids got a good nap that afternoon.  Other than that, we enjoyed some March Madness, lots of food, conversation, screaming (the happy kind - by the kids), and more conversation.  So enjoy these pictures, and please excuse my husband's mustache - only a few days left in Mustache March, thank goodness!

Twenty-Six Miles Across the Sea

We see it everyday (well, depending on the marine layer/smog/fog) from our back windows. It was mysterious to us. We even used to call it the island from LOST, and would wonder if smoke monsters, polar bears, and Jacob lived there. So we decided to investigate.

Actually, Grant just turned the big 3-0, so I planned a pretty amazing surprise day for him...but it didn't work out on his birthday (thanks to the aforementioned fog), so he found out the surprise on his birthday, but we didn't go until two days later. I started to type out the fiasco that occurred that day, but realized that I'm not ready to rehash the stress it caused, so I won't. Basically, I had originally planned for us to take a helicopter to Catalina Island, spend the day there, and take a boat back. Well, we ended up doing the opposite of that. We took the boat out there, then took a helicopter back. It ended up working out better than what I had originally planned.

So here's some pics. I should say, too, that another part of Grant's big birthday, was a few days earlier, his mom flew out as a surprise, too. We were happy to have her along on our adventure.

Ange and Caleb's Wedding

Let me give some background here...

Back at college, I was friends with Jenny. Then, her younger sister Kellie came to college. I was close friends with both of them. I always heard about their younger sister, Angela. I visited them a few times in Michigan, met Ange, but she was just their high school sister. Over the years, as I spent more time with their family, I was kind of adopted into their family, and I got to know Ange better. She started to become "my friend" instead of "my friend's sister." Then she moved out here to Orange County, and we got together regularly.

Well, she got married this last weekend, and thankfully, chose to get married out here instead of in Michigan, where she's from. So I got to see my best friends! It was a fun few days. Kellie had her first baby back in February (speaking of, I blogged about a really cute gift I made for her, but guess what...it got lost in the mail! So she never got it! How sucky is that?), so it was cool to finally meet baby Warren, and also for Jenny and Kellie to meet Cami (they had met Kendall before). Little Matthew has some serious competition for Cami's future husband!




And have I mentioned how Kendall is totally into a baby phase right now? She loves babies, and would rather play with them than kids her own age. So she was a little obsessed with baby Warren, and talked about holding him. Alot.



Anyways, a cool idea that Ange had was to do her own flowers. So on Thursday we all went to the LA Flower Market and picked up the flowers that were needed. They turned out so nice! It was a great way to save some money. I was hoping to help with putting the flowers together, but realized pretty quickly that with a toddler and a crawling, getting-into-everything baby in a small hotel room with flowers everywhere, we would just be in the way.



The wedding was on Friday, and it was awesome. It was on a boat in Newport Harbor, one of our favorite places! The setting was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the dancing was fun! All in all, it was one of the most memorable weddings I've ever been to. The girls were troopers, despite being on the boat until about 10 pm. Kendall loved dancing, but we kept her pretty far away from the dance floor, because some of the people were getting a little crazy.







Saturday, we all went to Laguna Beach for the day. I didn't get one picture the whole day, but Kendall was having so much fun! She hung out down by the water most of the time, and whenever the water would go out, she would stand up and yell, "Come on, ocean!" And when the waves would start to come in, she would run away really fast and say, "Oh...that was close!" She did this for hours. When it was time for us to leave, she was not very happy, but quickly fell asleep in the car.

Sunday was a site-seeing day for the family, so they came up this way to visit the tide pools by our house. Then they spent the rest of the day in LA. They really had fun, and even saw an octopus! It's kind of a random place to come when you're only in LA for a day, but it's one of Ange's favorite spots (it's where Caleb proposed to her), and they all loved it. I guess when you live in the Midwest, a place like this is pretty unique. I only got one picture from tide pools, and this random little girl made it into the shot. Oh well.



So that was it! The girls and I spent so many hours in the car over the last few days, but it was all worth it.