Duh!

So I'm stupid. I just linked Rose and Pat's (Steven's sis and bro-in-law) blog to see pics of our camping trip but I realized I could just steal pictures from them. So here's a post about our weekend with Rose and Pat!


This is the day Rose and Pat few in. We had dinner with Steven's mom and Paul, Neil and Andrea, and of course Rose and Pat.

Here's Steven with his lovely sister.

Steven with his siblings and his dad and girlfriend Melanie on Father's Day. I wasn't there. I was with my own dad.

You can see the family resemblance here. Steven's gonna go all white like his dad I bet. I like it.

This is me and Rose on the beach. I must have been standing on a small mound of sand because she's actually about 4 inches taller than me. What do you think? Do we look like sister? Cousins at the very least.

And me and Stevie walking down the beach. What do I like more--Steven or my awesome 80s boom box I got for my birthday? Hmm...

This pic was stolen from Steven's awesome sister-in-law, Andrea. That's Andrea on the far right next to her husband, Neil.

I tried to steal more pictures from Rose's Facebook but my computer didn't like that. So that's it. We always love spending time with Rose and Pat. Love you guys!

June Failure

Wow. Not many posts in the month of June. Sorry for any of you who check regularly to see if we've updated. We're going to start our one fan. You know who you are.

Not much has been going on. We've had some quiet weekends at home mostly and during the week we just routinely go to work, come home and eat dinner, watch some TV and work on various things around the house.

I do however want to update you all on our "garden". Remember a few weeks ago when I planted seeds. Well here's what they looked like then:

And here's what they look like now:

I took these pics a few days ago too in preparation for this post so they're actually a little bigger now. They are growing like crazy. The ones still in the egg cartons are the stubborn green peppers. We've got a few teeny tiny sprouts but they were planted at the same time as the rest and are nowhere near matching in size.

Also, I just noticed in the above picture that you can see a bit of my toes. Notice how the big toe has a purple dot on it. That's not a speck on the lens or anything. That's a bruise that I got on both "thumb toes" during our backpacking trip over Memorial Day Weekend. I'll spare you all the close of pics of my bruised toes. At least my toes don't hurt anymore but the evidence of a 22 mile round trip hike still exists.

Unfortunately, we didn't get many pictures of our 2 day long camping trip with Steven's brother and sister but if her blog is open to the public, we're featured on Steven's sister's blog.

Last but not least, I've been working a lot on some sewing projects. I made one blouse from a 1970s pattern. I guess I was not all that happy with the results since I haven't even bothered to take pictures of me in it or wear it at all really. Oh well, it was good practice on making a collared shirt. Maybe I'll take some pics this weekend.

But I did make something I'm proud of and with this heat going on, I've already worn it multiple times.

It's actually a little too big but is very comfortable. It's supposed to have a zipper down the side but I was easily able to put it on over my head so I left it out. It has elastic in the back to help the back stay up but I should have put a smaller strip of elastic and stretched it more so that it actually does something. The way it is, it just kind of rests on my back and isn't tight. Oh well. I liked this pattern a lot so I'll make more and work out the kinks.

I have my sister Dana to thank for this top. She gave sewing a try and it wasn't for her so she stopped mid-project. That was a few years ago so I took it over last weekend and am happy with the results. I'll have to owe her a top. Maybe I'll make her one with the kinks worked out.

Steven and I are planning on going to see the Rose Bowl fireworks this year. Apparently it's the biggest show in all of So. Cal and it's only a mile and a half from our house. We're not sure if we'll bike there or walk there. Both of us don't like the idea of leaving our bikes unattended for any long amount of time. We'll let you know how it is and maybe you can join us next year...or even this year!

Memorial Day Backpacking Trip - Part 1

Steven and I didn't have any plans for Memorial Day weekend. That was until we called up my sister around 7pm on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend to ask her and her boyfriend Matt for a favor. They told us that they were going on a backpacking trip to Willett Hot Springs up in Ojai and were leaving at 5am the following morning. They invited us and we agreed to go at around 8pm. So we had 9 hours minus sleep time to prepare for a 3 day and 20 mile round trip hike.

Using GPS we discovered that from the parking lot to the camp site is actually almost 11 miles each way. The way out was fun but difficult. It was hot and there were many river crossings.

The red line follows our GPS path so basically everywhere Steven and his Droid 2 went was recorded. If you want to view the path in Google Earth download this: HikingIntoWillett

This is one of the many crossings and a foreground photobomb!

Am I really this short? This must be how Steven sees me (or doesn't).

One fellow camper brought a guitar so we had some music going on during the hike. In this pic he's harmonicizing as well which was particularly impressive.

About 3 miles into the hike is a beautiful watering hole. It was a nice place to take a break and go swimming.

Here are a couple of shots of the beautiful scenery.

Because of all the river crossings we had to take our shoes off and on a half a dozen times. After each our blisters got worse and worse. Some feet are being duct taped here to avoid further damage.

There were a bunch of these crazy torch looking plants along the way.

After a while Steven and I pulled ahead of the group but we still took pictures of the rest of our group taking a break some ways away.

There is an option to ride a horse in and have the horses carry in all you stuff but it's like $400 and that may be per horse. Plus horses try and scrape Steven off on branches.

Now here's the best part! After Steven and I separated from the group we were plowing ahead. I was following closely behind Steven until he yelled and turned with a horrified look on his face. He was passing a bush just to the left of the trail and all of a sudden there was a very loud rattling noise. SNAKE!

Every time we tried to continue on the path the snake would rattle and warn us away. Now it's hard to encapsulate the noise by a single word like "rattle". It was this primal noise, wholly animal yet also somehow mechanical, that spoke directly to your amygdala and what it said was, "You're gonna die."

So we hung out for a bit trying to figure out what to do until some more seasoned hikers approached us. One of the crazy dudes (in Birkenstocks, that's how you can tell) peeked into the brush and realized that the snake had already caught his dinner and so was relatively safe for us to peek at.

Steven and I were much too scared to get as close as the other dude who got less than 4 feet away so Steven used his awesome zoom to snap the following pictures. (10x, yo) We couldn't really see anything in the picture viewer on the camera since it was so bright out and the viewer is so small so we were surprised to see what we got when we saw it on the computer.

Yup! That's a rattlesnake eating a full grown squirrel!!! Check out how evil he looks!

That would be a close up of the murder in his eyes.

The picture below is a bit blurry but I like how you can see his massive scaly body in the foreground and his large head on the left eating the brown furry squirrel on the right. He was probably 4-5 inches in diameter.

And of course his tail.

I'm glad he warned us to stay away while he enjoyed his meal but I'm more glad we didn't cross before that poor squirrel. In the interest of not letting the next hiker be scared out of their wits and/or eaten we left a note on the trail and continued on.

So part 2 is soon to follow with pictures of the campsite and the hot springs!