Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Pumpkin Patch Fun


One of our favorite Halloween traditions is visiting the Pumpkin Patch that is close to us.  It's a huge family owned farm that has tons of bounce houses, a quad "train" that takes them around the property, and their own corn maze.  This year they had the distinct honor of having five Wackpads that Uly's brother, Eddie, built for them! Of course I spaced out and only got a picture of one of them, but they are so darling! It was fun to see his cute houses where tons of people got to see them! 


Jake and Oliver in some of the cute cut outs.  Oliver loves posing in these! 








Oliver played in this bounce house last year and judging by how much he flipped out when he saw it, I swear he had to have remembered it from then...Or it was the fact that it was a Mickey Mouse bouncer...



This bounce house was so dang cute - a whole circus train! - and was made 100 time better by the kid who let Oliver go through it so many times we lost count! 






This is what the quad train is built of - quad shells on a bike-type frame.  Either way the boys love it! 

We love our little Pumpkin Patch and can't wait to visit it once it turns into the Christmas Tree Farm in a few months!

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Uly + Ashlee = <3

This year for Uly’s mom’s birthday we decided to take his parents and little brother up to go camping in Yosemite.  His parents hadn’t been for about a year and I had never been so it was perfect! Uly ended up having a test on Thursday but we decided get up super early on Friday and meet his parents at Glacier Point on their way out of the park and get some family pictures before they headed out.

On the drive up there Uly seemed unusually anxious to get up there and meet his family.  They had gone up there earlier than we thought they would and we left an hour later than we wanted to, but I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal, but apparently Uly did! The only other thing that I thought was odd was that his sister, Ali, kept texting him and usually he’d pass the phone over to me to text, especially on the windy roads but when I offered to text for him he was like “No!!!”  I thought it was odd, but brushed it off.

Once we got up to Glacier Point, however, it was SO foggy!! If the picture below had been taken at Glacier Point, you wouldn’t have even been able to see the car that’s in the background! So Uly talked me into going to the bathroom and when we got back he said we were going to go back down to the next vista point. 

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This was only a little better, but we still got out to go see what we could see.  Ali grabbed our camera and stared snapping pictures.

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Look at that fog! I felt right at home, though!

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Uly was trying to show off what we could see and was really concerned about the fact that it was so foggy and I couldn’t figure out why! I thought it was cute that he was upset about it, but wasn’t really that worried about it. 

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Oliver somehow knew something was going on because he was running around like a little crazy man. 

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Well, let’s get one family picture at least…

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Uly’s face! He was such a cool cucumber that I had no idea what the heck was happening…. 

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…Until Uly kissed me and asked “So do you know why we’re hear yet?” That totally threw me and I told him no, but then he looked at me with this look and….

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I realized what the heck was about to happen!

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And of course immediately started crying!

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(You  can just barely see my month old self-manicure that I immediately chipped the rest off so that I could take pictures of my ring, hahaha!)

 

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Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd my camera died right after this picture!! I’m just so glad that we got what pictures we did! And of course I said yes! :)

So there’s a bit of a funny story about my ring.  I’ve had my eye on this gorgeous blue topaz ring for at least 6 months at Costco.  Almost every time we’d go I’d stroll by the jewelry case and drool at it for a few minutes.  So when the time came, Uly knew exactly what ring he wanted to buy me.  Problem is…Costco doesn’t manufacture jewelry – they just get certain sizes in and sell whatever they have.  So my beautiful dream ring was a size 7.5, and my finger is a 9! The pink ring in the picture below is a pink topaz ring that we picked up at a barn sale while we were visiting my parents in Washington.  After we bought it I had joked around with him that if it would get him to propose to me faster, he could use that ring so that’s the ring that Uly actually proposed with.  We’re going to head up to the L.A. jewelry district sometime and see how much it’ll cost to get my blue one sized, but until then I get to wear that big fat pink one!

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Monday, May 21, 2012

Solar Eclipse!

Today, well yesterday, was the solar eclipse! We weren't anywhere near the path of totality so I didn't think that we'd get that great of view of it, but by the time we remembered and went outside it was pretty neat! I snapped a few pictures without looking right at it, and Jacob figured  out that if he put on 3 pairs of sunglasses it darkened the sun enough that we could see the edge of the moon.  Too cool! We watched the last 1/2 of it online but it was really neat to be able to witness this! I can't wait until we have the money to fly to the next total solar eclipse!! 




Aquarium of the Pacific

Our nearest aquarium to us is the Aquarium of the Pacific, which we absolutely love! They've had a few weddings and Proms there lately so while they close the main part of the aquarium, they keep the shark touch tank open and free to the public so we've gone 2 or 3 times.  Oliver absolutely loves it and asks at least 3 times a day if we can go see the sharks! We're looking into getting a season pass so that we can explore the rest of the aquarium!













That's the Queen Mary in the background!








Jake pretended that this shell was eating him, and Oliver was trying to rescue him...


Then, when Jake tried to get Oliver to get in, he absolutely refused, haha!




Oliver loves Jake so much! He wants to do every single little thing that Jake does.




We love Long Beach so much, it's so pretty at night!