What we have been doing

Here is just a pretty picture I took while hiking a few weeks ago.  It's hard to imagine that it's still winter everywhere else.

For President's Day, we did something a little unusual, especially for Jeremy.  We went to the Getty Villa Art Museum.  It is in Malibu in a very pretty little valley.  It only has Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art, and the building is modeled after a Roman house (obviously a rich Roman).  The gardens were great and Jeremy was great looking at all the statues and vases with me.  We spent a whole 2 hours there and no complaints were heard.  It was amazing ;) I have such a wonderful husband.

Last week, we decided to try out a new beach (Dockweiler Beach).  Its the beach right next to the airport and it was really cool watching all the planes take off above us.

I was walking by our badly neglected garden when I decided to pick the carrots to see if any were worth eating.  We planted them a really long time ago and haven't watered them in 2 or 3 months so I wasn't expecting much.  But look what we got!  They look funny, but they were so sweet and delicious.  Here's the funny part of the story.  I was so excited that I texted Jeremy and said I had a surprise for him at home.  This was not a good text when so much is going on here along with the fact that we could have our little girl at any moment now.  I felt bad and stupid and had to text that it wasn't that awesome, just carrots.  What a let down.

Here's the nursery.  I made the crib skirt most recently.  Jeremy's sister, Nicole, made us the butterfly mobile for Christmas and it matches perfectly!  Jeremy's mom made the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls along with many other things.  This little girl is already spoiled.

All the fabric boxes are finished and full of stuff.  Its amazing how much stuff we have suddenly accumulated.  Now we just need the baby!

Catch up Hikes from January

Trona Pinnacles, CA

January 5, 2012

These are the strangest rock formations.  We drove a few hours to see them and hiked around and drove through them.  If you pay attention, there are several car commercials filmed here.  Also, there are several science-fiction movies filmed here.  It was really cool.

This is me at 31 weeks.

To get an idea of size on this pinnacle, look at the next picture compared to our truck.

January 6, 2012

Icehouse Canyon Saddle, CA

We drove up to see the snow, hike around, and maybe ride the ski lift up to the top.  Turns out, it was $12 a person to ride the lift with no snow.  So we drove around till we found this hike.  It was a great hike, and it turned out to be a little more than 7 miles round trip.  I kept saying I would just go a little more and then ended up doing the whole thing.  It was a beautiful day.

These next two pictures are taken in the same spot.  One side of the trail was still winter and the other side was full-blown summer.  It was crazy to see.

New Additions to the Family!

We don't have our baby girl yet, but we are getting ready for her to come.  Just one more month... During Christmas, we went shopping for Glider/Recliners and found this one at Sofa Mart.  It was magic sitting in it after trying so many others.  We loved it so much that we tried to find it in California, but after many stores and calls, it didn't exist here.  We ended up driving to St. George to get it.  It was a quick trip and we even got to see our friends the Noel's in Las Vegas!  We love this chair!

Since we have been married, we have started a tradition of buying plants from Home Depot where ever we live.  This is our LA addition.

From front to back: Cactus from Las Vegas, Plant from LA, Pink veined plant from Provo, Utah (we've had this plant for almost as long as we've been married), and the yellow speckled plant from Las Vegas that has gotten huge since we brought it to LA.  Our favorite plant is the one from Provo because it has feelings.  It has been almost dead for most of its life until LA weather.  Who knew it needed humidity?  It has died and wilted completely several times, but it always comes back.  

Can you tell we treat our plants like our pets?

Our new Crib!  I made the sheet, and am planning to make the other bedding stuff soon.

Here is our Bamboo Shelf that we just made.  We looked all over for bamboo, and got quite discouraged until my mom said to look at a nursery.  Little did we know that there was cheap bamboo within walking distance of our apartment.  

Jeremy built this in our apartment at night, so hopefully our neighbors don't hate us too much.  I love how it turned out!

I am making 3 more fabric boxes from makeit-loveit.com.  These are the first 3 and I love how they have turned out.  Plus, the owl fabric is my favorite!

December Catch Up

Since I haven't done much blogging, I thought I would get most of December in one post.  After Jeremy finished his first semester of law school, we drove down to San Diego and went to the San Diego Temple.  It was beautiful with all the Christmas lights!  What an amazing temple, it looks like a fairy tale palace.  We ended our date night with eating at Outback Steakhouse, my favorite!

This is the view of LA from Griffiths Observatory.  

We are up close to the hill with the Hollywood sign.

Here is the LA Temple with its Christmas lights.  I love the palm trees.

We got a deal to go whale watching for 2 hours and this is our way out of the harbor with the huge cranes.  We were so excited to see whales and dolphins, but we spent the whole 2 hours looking and searching.

Finally on the way back to land, we saw these Sea-Lions on the buoy.   That was it.  As fun as it was to watch the sea-lions push each other off, we were really annoyed that there were no whales or dolphins...

This was a hike to Point Dume in Malibu.  We love this area and it is our favorite beach (Zuma Beach).  This is also where Tony Stark's house is in Iron Man (it doesn't really exist).

After hiking to the top, we kept going and found a tide pool with sea anemones, starfish, and lots of birds.

After getting back to Zuma Beach,  Jeremy did some boogie boarding in the cold water.  Apparently it's not too cold for him though.

We went to Ellensburg, WA for Christmas and had a blast!  I only took these pictures though because we were having too much fun to remember a camera.  One of the days we drove up to the pass to go sledding with our two nieces, but they didn't really like it that much.  There was only a little snow there, but we brought it back with us to make a snowman.  The boys tried to make it on the front porch without Jeremy's parents hearing, but then the base cracked and the whole thing came down.  No snowmen knocked on their door, but we rebuilt it on the grass.  It stayed up long enough for pictures, but it was too full of water to stay up for long.

After spending a wonderful time with the Gibb side, we flew to Utah and spent a while in Draper with the Browers.  We didn't take any pictures here, but had a blast with everyone!  The only sad thing was that there was no snow!  How can it be Christmas without snow??  It was great to spend Christmas and New Years with family.

What we have been up to...

The last little while has gotten busy for both Jeremy and I.  He has been very busy studying for and taking finals (just one more week)! I have been having tons of fun organizing our ward Relief Society's Super Saturday.  Here is a picture of us making Personal Pies in a Jar (from Our Best Bites).  It was tons of fun to make all sorts of fun things with such great women in the ward. 

Here is the table making Mini Book of Mormon's.  Cute Felt Christmas Trees are the table behind.  Sadly, we forgot to take more pictures, but everyone had a great time.

 We ate lots of delicious Cinnamon Rolls and Pumpkin Hot Chocolate.  Yummy!  Turns out it works great to make them and freeze them way ahead of time and thaw and cook them when you want them.

Catch up

So I haven't blogged much since moving to LA, but here are some highlights over the last 2 1/2 months (or some of the highlights that we took pictures of anyways).

We hiked Strawberry Peak on September 5.  It was an overgrown trail and we were poked several times by a very pokey plant or by yucca plants or by cactus.  We didn't see anyone on the hike which we thought was weird considering it was still very close to LA.  Then as we finished the hike, we had to go through a fenced area that said it was closed.  Woops!  We had a hard time finding the start of the trail, so we didn't even see the start where it was closed off.  It was a fun hike, but I got very very tired on it.

Here's our customary "top of the mountain" picture.

There was a fire here and the dead trees among the smaller green plants were kind of spooky looking.

The pointy mountain in the middle is Strawberry Peak from the road.

On October 8, we hiked Sandstone Peak (also known as Mt. Allen) which was a short, but very scenic hike.  In the second picture, you can see the ocean behind Jeremy.  We could see lots of islands too.

Other than hiking, we have also gone on a few mountain bike rides.  The best trail we have found is the Backbone trail and it goes forever.  It reminds me of the Crest trail in Utah because it is so beautiful and has lots of smooth single track through the trees.

We have also spent a lot of time at the beach.  We usually go about once a week and here are some of my favorite pictures from the beach.

If you look at this picture closely, you can see a dolphin in the left half of the picture.  We went to Zuma Beach in Malibu because they have dolphins a lot.  We were really hoping and then we saw them!  They were so close to the beach and playing in the waves, it was awesome!

I like watching birds at the beach.  They are so funny how they run into and away from the waves, how the dive-bombers are so fast zooming into the ocean.  This bird had the longest beak ever.

Jeremy was boogie-boarding and all the seagulls stopped to watch him...