Proud of our Little Garden

Since moving to L.A. Dustin and I have found little time to really relax. We are so busy with school that we hardly even get to see each other. There is one thing, however, we have found to relieve a little stress and that is gardening. I know, we sound like a little old man and little old lady, but really, it is so fun! You get to take a break, go outside, talk to your plants, feed them, eat them...

Our landlord was kind enough to let us use one of his planter boxes in his backyard (our front yard) to plant a garden in. We decided, being that it was too late for many vegetables, to start from seeds and look what has happened in only 2 months!

I would like to thank my mom for passing on her knowledge of gardening to me and also Dustin for all his hard work and research!

Collard Greens, sugar snap peas, cabbage, spinach, carrots, cilantro

These are our carrots, not quite ready to harvest yet but getting there

Our cabbage, I think the little head is kind of cute :)

Our peas. Delicious! The first thing we have actually been able to eat

This is my little hanging basket I started from a tiny little plant. It loves me. :)

A little fall fun!

Riley's Farm to search for pumpkins. It was SO nice to get out of LA and into space! If you can't tell already, I am not the hugest fan of LA. It is ok, but man, it is sure nice to get out of the craziness.


This is our first time to the Hollywood Bowl in Hollywood. For my birthday, Dustin took me to see John Williams and the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra. They played many of his famous movie scores. It was pretty much amazing!

Our summer so far... continued...

Saturday we got to go to the Comic Con convention downtown San Diego. It was pretty rad. We got tickets through a friend who attends Gnoman which is the school that Dustin will be attending come September. It is a 3D animation trade school right smack-dab in the middle of Hollywood. So yes, we will be moving to Hollywood. Me, on the other hand, have decided to also go back to school. Scary, I know! I have been accepted to Pepperdine graduate school in west L.A. where I will be getting my Masters degree in elementary education. Crazy huh! Anyway, we will be moving from San diego in the next 3 weeks or so. It is going to be really really hard for me to leave this nice, peaceful and beautiful place and go to a traffic ridden and crazy place. It will definitely be an adventure!

Ok, back to Comic-Con. So, we got these tickets from a friend but the catch was that we had to pass out flyers for the school from 8-12. It was definitely worth it.



The day we went was the Costume contest so we got to see some pretty crazy costumes. There were also several celebrities there from Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) to Leonard Nimoy (Spock). The artwork was amazing and it was really fun to see the displays of Star Wars, Transformers, Harry Potter, D.C. comics and more.

Here are a few things we saw:

Dustin posing with Heman. Personnally, I think he looks like he is doing a John Travolta disco move but Heman works too. :)



This guy was one of my favorites!



Look! It's Jan from Grease! She was so cute and smiled for me and then she did "brush um, brush um, brush um."



Darth was pretty sweet even though I think his helmet was a little large for the rest of him.



Here he is... the man himself, Mark Hamill. I don't know who the other guy is. One had to pay $40 to get an atuograph or picture. I was content with this. I guess I could photoshop my way in there.



This giy was pretty good. He even had the curl. I asked him if I could be Lois Lane.



This one is for my sister Aimee. The Tick Aim! :) He is our favorite cartoon character. If you have not seen him you are seriously missing out!



Spock himself! I think both Dustin and I were surprised to see him with out pointy ears.



Ok, this was sad...

You won't get these princesses at Disneyland.



They had to hugest crowd of men with cameras around them. I think Dustin took about 15 pictures of them... hum. Sleeping beauty was probably the worst!



All in all, this was awesome! I think Dustin and I are going to go again next year but dress up. If anyone has any suggestions what we should do I am up for anything, excepting the costumes in the above photo... ;).

Our summer so far...

Let's play a little catch-up...

First off...

July 8th: Happy Anniversary to us! :) 3 years and still going strong!
















We decided to spend our anniversary at the happiest place on earth! We both love Disneyland! We stayed in a hotel the night before and then spent all day until the doors closed.





We have a tradition of getting ice cream at the ice cream parlor on Main Street right before the fire works show. It is probably the most amazing ice cream in the world and they make the waffle cones right in front of you.



This picture is rather embarrassing but at least every one can see the happiness that ice cream and Disney Land give me! :) Thanks Walt!



Happy Anniversary Dusty! I love you!

Destination... Anywhere!

It's time for another adventure...
So we decided to pack up and head out to Zion National Park and Moab. Dustin and I had been wanting to go to Colorado in the summer time for a while and decided to make it our final destination. I wanted to see my family and also see my brother Josh in The Wizard of Oz. He made the part of the scarecrow in a children's theater improv play. We will be seeing that this coming Saturday but I did get a sneak peek...



I think he is pretty much the best scarecrow ever.

Anyway, I will get more photos and a review following the play on Saturday.

On to what we have done so far...

First we camped out at Zion National Park.
Our favorite hike there was definitely Angel's Landing but the Narrows was pretty sweet too. In The Narrows you have to walk through varying depths of freezing cold water but it was pretty fun. Angel's landing is a straight up shot to a beautiful cliff that overlooks almost all of Zion. It is definitely not for those with a fear of heights. You do get to hike up some pretty sweet rocks while hanging on to chains.



Here we are right before the most intense part of the hike. We thought we were done and then we turned the corner and saw this:



It was such a gorgeous view when we got to the top, worth every effort.



Here is the view at night from our campsite at night. It was so peaceful and pretty.



The Narrows... was wet.







The next day we made our five hour drive to Moab.



It was like an adult jungle gym! We climbed all over.



Dustin with Delicate Arch. I almost felt like it was a celebrity.



Landscape Arch.



This it the last of our hikes at moab, Devils Garden.
Dustin discovered that it had an amazing echo effect so we decided to have a yodeling contest. We are dorks.





Here we are at the Double O arches. You can't see it but there is another mini arch right underneath the one you see here. This is why we are doing O faces.



The Devil's Garden



This is some random cave we found off to the side of the hike. Dustin called it the womb... maybe it will give me some good luck. :)



We were planning on staying in Moab another day but when we got back to our camp a sandstorm decided to erupt. So we got back in the car and made our way to Highlands Ranch. So that is where we stand now. We have had such a fun time being home so far. We have some fun plans coming up so stay tuned! :)

Napa...Continued...

Hello again :)

Well, I promised the last couple of photos as well as a story so here we go...

First, let us begin with the story that could have been the end of ash 'n' dusty as we know it.
The Wagners, the wonderful family we were staying with in Napa, asked us if we wanted to take one of his buddies blow up canoes down a 3+ river. Dustin jumped on the opportunity right away. I was pretty excited about it too. I love white water rafting. I didn't really start having second thoughts about it until the day before we went. I think the fact that we were going to be going down a river that neither of us know, without a tour guide and in a tiny dinky raft really started getting to me. Ok let's pause for a second... I just want to make it clear that I was incredibly hormonal at this point. I won't go into details but I was, indeed, very unstable.

Anyway, so we start out... first thing, we get in the raft and it fills with water (I am pretty much cursing at Dustin in my head). So we blow up the raft a little more and get on our way. The first little rapid we go down Dustin smacks in the head with the paddle. That, as they say, was the straw that broke the camel's back. I burst into tears. It didn't even hurt that bad but I think I was so freaked out for my life in the first place that that put me over the edge (I hope you are laughing hysterically at me right now). Continuing down the river we go through the first BIG rapid and our raft folds in half...I lost it. Hyperventilating and all. I hated Dustin so much for torturing me like this. I made him pull over to the side so we could get onto dry ground while I blubbered away (I really am not usually like this I swear!) Dustin was very sympathetic and told me we would pull off before each rapid so we could check it out. That made me feel a little better. Anyway, to make a long story short, we kept going, I kept crying but we lived... barely. The last rapid known as "The Mother" could have resulted in a divorce except for Dustin allowed us to skip it. He must love me.

Alright, I am sorry I made you read all of that. But just so you can get a picture in your head here is the picture of the raft. Don't let the nice calm water behind Dustin decieve you.



And here we are the next day at a Padres vs. Giants game in AT&T Park. As you can see we are still friends. :) The Padres played terribly but it was a fun stadium and we always love supporting our team (my allegance is still for the Rockies however).

I love Napa!

Updates! Dustin and I spent a marvelous 2 weeks in beautiful Napa Valley, aka Wine Country. We decided not to get drunk this trip, maybe next time. Instead, we took full advantage of our surroundings and recreation. We went hiking, mountain biking several times. We went sailing, almost died white water rafting, baseball (Giants vs. Padres) and ate great food! etc. etc. We were doing some kind of activity every day. It was awesome! We were able to stay with some family friends. I will have to say it is now one of my most favorite vacations spots.



The first of our hikes. It was probably the most intense of the trip. It was pretty much a continuous incline. What a tree hugger!



Easter Sunday! I have never gone an Easter without dying Easter eggs and despite Dustin's scroogey attitude towards Easter traditions he was kind enough to humor me and my inner child. He always does the cutest ones.



We couldn't go to Northern California without spending at least a day in San Francisco. We walked the entire city and pretty much saw everything you could see. We mapped out our mileage of how far we walked and discovered that our sore feet were well deserved. We walked a total of 13 miles.



Macy's was having their botanical gardens which is where the decorated the who store with beautiful flower creations. The flamingo was definitely my favorite.



We HAD to stop at Mrs. Fields for a cookie. The smell was too mouth watering to pass by.



Dustin and I love to watch Iron Chef and on a few episodes they have used Gooey Duck which, as you can see, is somewhat disturbing. It doesn't actually have anything to do with a duck, which I am sure you guessed. It is also known as a King or Elephant Trunk Clam. I would like to try tasting one one day. Personally I just think it looks like a nasty tongue.



We made the most awesome discovery ever while walking around trying to find find a park. We turned a corner and there sitting before us was a statue of the one and only Yoda. So of course we had to take a picture with him. Then, while Dustin was on the phone with someone, I decided to venture into some random building behind him. Lone and behold it was a George Lucas museum. We were in heaven. There were life size replicas of Darth and Bobo Fet as well as the lightsabers and a few other gadgets from the movies. It was the coolest discovery ever.



Dustin with Darth



Me, trying to be Bobo Fet


We also walked over to the planetarium where they have this beautiful architecture. It was like a Greek temple.



Our second hike... We made our way to a cave that had some serious graffity. Not as exciting as we thought it would be. There was, however, a perfect seat for Dustin to pose. A special prize for anyone that can guess who he is trying to be. :) What a dork.



Dustin, in training for the Strongest Man in the World competition.



One of my favorite adventures we had was the Jelly Belly Factory. We went right after our hike so that is why I look so retarded (besides the hat). :) It was so cute. We went around on a little tour and saw how they make the Jelly Beans. At the end of the tour they give us each a little bag of Jelly Bellys.



Look how happy Dustin was after we went. It was almost as good as Disney Land.



Dustin finally took me sailing! We found a little lake in the middle of Oakland that rented sail boats for a super good price. It was a beautiful day with a perfect wind.



Dustin was kind enough let me take charge for a few minutes.



Our last hike in Napa was amazing. Once we reached the top we could see all the way to downtown San Francisco. Gorgeous. We were so high we were looking down on the birds.



The last few days of our trip we went white water rafting and to a Padres Giants game. Pictures to come! I will have to explain all about the white water rafting trip when I post the pictures. I am surprised that one of us didn't ask for a divorce after that one...