'Venturing' Out

Okay, so now that we've been here in California for a few months, it's been high time that we get a lay of the land. So a couple of weeks ago we drove up to Ventura to check it out.

We heard it had a cool little downtown. It does.




What we didn't know was that every other store is a thrift shop.




In other adventuring, we also recently went to check out Griffith Park and observatory. We liked it there. Fantastic view. It's just north of L.A., along the same strip of mountains as the Hollywood sign.

This is the Hollywood sign.

Meanwhile, we also finally made it to my school's zoo. That's right. My school has a zoo.


The layout of the zoo caters more to the students than to visitors, so it was hard to get up close to the animals. I get it: they need to train to manage exotic animals. But despite being slightly disappointing, it still had its highlights.





What did not disappoint was the 'show,' which was a fantastic blend of information, passion, and awkwardness.

So that's it for now, stay tuned for some more adventures to come.

All of Fall in Three Days

Last week we decided to do something very impromptu and fly to SLC for the weekend. It was my friend Tia's 30th birthday party as well as Halloween, so we thought we'd go and join in the fun with friends and family there. Plus, it is still 86 degrees in California and we've had a hankering for some Fall, so we thought this would be a good way to get us some of that as well.

On Friday night all the fam (minus Laura and Bret who we very much missed) got together for some Halloween Eve fun. Poppy and Grandma were in rare Halloween form, and Norah was in heaven with all her Udall cousins around.

At Tia's big bash. It was very fun to celebrate with her and to see and catch up with friends we don't get to see often enough. Plus, the costumes were amazing.

On Halloween we got Norah dressed up and made the rounds.

Leo and Norah. These poor kids, every time we get them together we make them take a billion pictures, but who can resist? Especially when they are in costumes!

Then it was time to go trick-or-treating. The concept of endless candy at every doorstep was pretty lost on Norah (although she did enjoy putting it in and taking it out of her bucket), but getting to be out walking around with all the kids was definitely exciting.

She was loving crunching the fall leaves under her feet, she kept walking back and forth over them.

(Thanks Cannons for letting us tag-along, and Poppy for coming with us.)

It was a great Halloween weekend, exactly what we wanted.