Bradley Reunion

Torrey and I attended Danielle Centeno's Bradley class before Alethia was born. We actually got started a bit late, so we missed the last couple of classes because Alethia was already born. It has been about four months now since our class was last together, so we had a reunion so that we could meet all the others' babies and enjoy the group's company once more. Here are a few pictures from the evening. Thanks to everyone for the chance to see you all again, and especially to Lan and Monica for opening up your home. Enjoy the pictures.

Alethia Grace, Age 4 Months (Almost)

Alethia's First Camping Trip

We headed back out to Joshua Tree for a camping trip a little bit ago after quite some time. We hadn't been camping since our trip to Idyllwild back in April. That may not sound too bad to you, but after nearly five years of camping on average once a month, we felt incredibly cooped up. So Alethia finally had her first chance to enjoy the pleasures of camping at the ripe old age of 3-1/2 months.

She spent a good chunk of our time out there like this:


Preparing for the trip took much longer than we had anticipated, so we didn't actually get to the park until late Saturday and we left on Sunday. There were tons of people in the park - more than I remember ever seeing (in terms of cars driving through, at least), and it is amazing we found a campsite. Granted, it was probably the worst site in the whole park, with no flat ground for sleeping on, but it was our sloped patch of dirt, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.


We took some a number of pictures of Alethia while we were out, and since she is so incredibly cute I will post a number of them. Here they are in no particular order:










Of course I took some landscape shots too, and here are a few of them for your viewing pleasure.

The Fruit of Torrey's Labors

Torrey put the apples from our apple picking trip to good use.
I just ate the slice of pie pictured below, and I must say that it was well worth the work. Great job, Torrey! Your pie is amazing.

Apple Picking at Riley's Farm in Oak Glen

As I write this, I am eating a bowl of delicious raspberry ice cream. Well, actually, it isn't raspberry ice cream, it is vanilla ice cream with a bunch of the raspberries that we picked yesterday mixed into it. And it is wonderful.

Here is Torrey (and Alethia) picking the berries


And here is the result of our labors. The fields were quite well picked over this late in the year, so it took about two hours to get this many, and although we could have fit more in our baskets, the fading of daylight (and stiff backs) drove us to end our day in the fields and head for home.


But there I go getting ahead of myself. I've started with the end of the day. The main reason we headed for the hills yesterday was for the apples. We stopped in at Riley's Ranch, a quaint little place with staff running around in colonial outfits. They told us that the apples we were picking were Glen Seedlings (we did pick a few Golden Delicious too). Apparently the Glen Seedling is a variety of apple developed right there in Oak Glen, and it is supposed to be great for cooking. The pies have yet to be made, but the apples are ready and waiting. I don't know what varieties of apples are in these pictures.




Alethia thought she was a pirate, me thinks.


I suppose even pirates need naps.


I love berry picking. I mean, I really love berry picking. I think it may have something to do with all the hours I spent as a child up the fruit trees that were all over Yarina, but whatever the case may be, I was thrilled to find that there were wild blackberry bushes along the paths through apple orchard. Yum!


Riley's farm grows a number of edibles, like this sunflower.


They also grow strawberries and pears and cherries and corn and pumpkins and... well, that reminds me of something we saw at the farm. I hope this woman was joking, but I saw no indication that she wasn't seriously... horticulturally challenged. She was walking along when she called out to a friend "hey, I just found a pumpkin. It fell off the tree." And she picked up - a watermelon. I really hope she was joking.

So our day in the hills was great fun. It was so nice to get outside for most of a day after several months of being mostly home bound with Alethia. Here is a shot of the setting sun on the hillside behind the farm reflecting in a window.


And a parting shot: Fall is coming.

Catching Up a Bit

The past few weeks have been quite busy. We drove up to see Torrey's Grandma over the Labor Day weekend. Torrey's sister flew in from Buenos Aires to see us and meet Alethia, and Torrey's mom came down for a bit as well, and we spent several days with Brett and Steph as well. Since then I can't quite formulate what it is that has kept us moving at breakneck speed, but it sure seems like that has been the case. I did teach in Sunday School last weekend, which took a good chunk of time to prepare for. I had 45 minutes to go through the book of Jonah (and I had it easy - before my turn, Alan Hultberg had two weeks at 45 minutes each to teach through the entire book of Isaiah). Anyway, let me share some pictures from the past few weeks.

Torrey's Grandma, catching up on the news. I love this shot.


This was from the drive up to Rossmoor


Alethia looking like a natural phone conversationalist


Ethan meets a lady(bug)






Playing in the pool


More pool play


The Cousins play together


Alethia loves the outdoors (no really, she does)


This is just a tree outside our apartment that I used as an exercise in balancing ambient and strobe lighting. I like the way it turned out.


Another fun one... Keep an eye on sugar in the toaster oven.


And a parting shot - Alethia loves the Alpaca teddy bear I gave Torrey when we were dating.

Ryan and Kenlynn Floyd Wedding

This has taken all too long, but here are a few pictures from the other wedding we went to a couple of weeks ago. On August 23rd we attended Ryan and Kenlynn Floyd's wedding. Let me clarify that statement. We attempted to attend their wedding, but we had complications getting out the door, so we missed the wedding and attended the reception. This time we were there simply as friends, and it was fun to see a number of people I knew in Peru but haven't seen for many years. Here are just a few pictures from the event.

First dance


Rick watches Ryan dance with his new wife


Mike Miller dances with his daughter Kaitlyn


Co-Best Man, Erik


After the first dance, things got a little more... upbeat




Ryan and Kenlynn, we wish you all the best. May God bless your marriage richly.