The Catch-All Post of Awesomeness

So, David has been in South Korea for almost three weeks. I promised myself I would blog before he got back, and maybe even (eek!) get caught up. Well...he gets back tomorrow. The time has gone by mercifully fast. I have a lot of ground to cover. But I'm going to do this in 3 installments to try to be at least somewhat organized with my thoughts, so keep reading after this one, there'll be more!! That said, I dub this post the catch-all because that's where everything else fits. :) Hope you enjoy.

David and I tried to go camping on the beach one Friday night, with the intent of waking up in the morning and going diving. It was kind of a spontaneous decision (read: we wasted a lot of time getting out the door and on the road and we didn't reserve a camping spot in advance), and it kind of backfired. We were driving down PCH in stop-and-go traffic and had reached Malibu when we were graced with this view:

It was about then that we realized that there was no way we'd actually get ourselves a camping site, so we pulled over and watched the sun go down over the ocean until it was so dark that we started trying to spot constellations instead. Not a bad way to salvage the night.

Speaking of sunsets, I really love our Marina del Rey apartment. It has such easy access to the beach, great options everywhere for running, and the views all around were amazing. One day I realized that this was the view we got of the sunrise from our living room:

And this is what we get at night:

Not to mention, we have easy access to Venice Beach, which is quite possibly the most entertaining people-watching venue in existence. My personal favorite is the drum circle that seems to randomly materialize every so often. Everyone just somehow knows when it's time to pick up your drum and head down to Venice and jam.

Drums, bongos, whistles, dancers, sand, ocean, awesome.

MDR is also close to Abbott Kinney, home of First Fridays, where all the food trucks in the area cram into every spare inch of the street. Given our newfound interest in food trucks, of course we had to check this out.


The diversity of selections was impressive! We sampled dishes from the Dim Sum truck, the Korean/Mexican fusion truck, and the ice cream cookie sandwich truck. We wanted to check out the grilled cheese sandwich truck, but the line was just too long. Who knew grilled cheese could be so popular?


MDR is not close to Disney Hall. But we wandered over there one day anyway because it's just a photographer's paradise, with all the fun little curves and angles. As usual, David has all the good pictures and I have the self-portrait we took from my phone where we're blocking most of the building with our heads.


MDR is also not close to Bakersfield. But that's where I spent General Conference weekend. Emily came up to visit from Phoenix and we gathered with some cousins and aunts and uncles and had ourselves a fine weekend where we ate way too much good food and junk food and indulged in the Good Word. It was a delightful time.




And just because this is a catch-all post, look at the flower me and my co-worker made out of DUM-DUMs!


Keep reading! Looks like there's some more stuff down there...