Wicked

My mom took Chrissy, Katie and I. I had heard it was good but I had no idea... fantastic!

Blooms

Justin planted a potted flower garden for me this spring and the Dhalias are just starting to bloom - gorgeous! When I was outside taking this picture Justin and Andrew walked out outside, got in the car and drove away. After a minute or so I realized I was barefoot and locked out without my phone. It's a good thing we live so close to my parents. I burned my feet walking to their house and Justin had a hard time feeling bad for me because I walked outside on the sidewalk instead of "grass hopping", which I guess is a favorite past time of his or something. My excuse is that I didn't walk around the streets barefoot like a motherless child. No offense, Stephanie, I know how hard-headed he can be.

for Katie

My little sister is not so little anymore. Everyone is asking me if it's a shock that she's 18 and graduated and my reply is not really. She's seemed pretty grown up to me for a while now. She has a part-time job, has realistic college goals, has made good choices in friends, and has always been the level-headed, no-drama girl in her peer group. I remember a while ago - maybe a year or so - my dad telling me he was impressed because she took notes during General Conference and then initiated an in-depth conversation about what had impressed her from it. I remember being pretty mean to her when we were children. She was scared of the movie Hook and so I'd curl my finger and chant, "Hook, Hook, Hook.." to her when we were home alone. When my friends were over we'd play hide and seek and Katie would hide and we would conveniently forget to seek. I'm glad she has forgotten some and forgiven a lot more. I'm proud of her - I love you, Katie!

You HAVE to check this out!

http://www.reflectionsofchrist.org/index.html

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It looks like an AMAZING exhibit. Megi, it's supposed to be showing in your temple visitor's center, I'm so jealous! On the Blog link on the site there is a cool slideshow where you can see more images from the collection. I've been watching it over and over all morning. Thanks Crystal for the tip!

Bakersfield Junior Miss

Bakersfield Junior Miss, class of 2009: Julia Berchtold

Jr Miss is finally over! Well, most of it anyways... I still have to sort through hundreds of pictures from the show & send proofs to all the girls. I took the portraits for the program book and displayed an 11x14 framed/matted grouping for each of the 18 girls at the show. I still hope to sell more than I did after the show, as of now I haven't even covered my costs. This has been taking up a considerable amount of my time lately & with school as well I've been just swamped. I had a pretty good guess at who would win (she got 1st runner up). Working with the girls is fun (the moms who think this is a pageant... not so fun). If you don't know what the Jr. Miss program is check out ajm.org.

Big Sur

We took a long weekend & drove up highway 1. This little vacation was long overdue for Justin, who's been working so hard with no vacation for over a year and a half. I bought a new lens which I've been needing for a while now & it came just in time to take with us on the trip. I'm very happy with it. It's a good thing Justin is super into art/photography - he was awesome about me wanting to stop every 15 min. & take another picture. He even insisted on stopping several times when I said I was was too tired cause he knew I'd want the pictures later. Wow, this is a beautiful place. We took a tour of Hearst Castle & went to the Monterey Aquarium, and took a lot of short hikes off right off the road and were blown away by the stunning views. It was super cold/windy but completely worth it. After deleting tons of bad pictures I have exactly 700 left. Here are just a few:

Salmon Creek

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Hearst Castle

Elephant Seals - very odd creatures in my opinion. Besides their looks (the little ones are cute but the adult males, VERY ugly) they have a distinct smell, which after a while we figured out must be coming from the mounds of decaying carcases which they indiscriminately cuddle up to. Gross! That's true love (or a bad olfactory system).

There was a cave right on the beach in San Simeon full of thousands of tide pool creatures. These anenomes were bigger than my hand.

17-Mile Drive - This image of this tree is actually owned by some company & you can't make a profit off of any pictures of it. How lame is that - they didn't even plant the tree & it's on national forest property. It's called 'The Lone Cypress'. The new Lexus Pebble Beach is named after the company...seen the commercial?

Monterey Aquarium - my new favorite animal is the sea otter... ok so I don't really like animals but sea otters are pretty darn cool. No matter what they're doing it looks like they're having a blast! The river otters were pretty cute too. The "living art" jellyfish were pretty cool - brainless, spineless, beautiful.

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The Coastline

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Strike!