Road Trip Scrapbook - Finished!

It took me quite a while to take some snapshots of our finished scrapbook from our 2013-2014 road trip. I find that making scrapbooks for everyday life is a little boring and I can't motivate myself to keep up. I tend to make scrapbook for things like road trips and vacations, like I did for my 2012 visit to New York (when I unexpectedly got engaged AND married) although I still haven't made a scrapbook for our formal wedding ceremony OR our honeymoon! Talk about inconsistent!

Going through and looking at these scrapbooks brings back so many great memories that just plain photo snapshots couldn't capture.

In fact, I don't know why I even stopped adding to this scrapbook! I still have a ton of Instax film, there are still tons of empty pages in the Smashbook and my scrapbook kit I put together for travel is still in its box. I think I will resume scrapping until I run out of space! Let's make it a promise. Maybe I will do a biweekly update of my progress on the blog as well.

The Pool

Joe found out about this pool in Santa Cruz that is going to be destroyed soon, so we went out for a day of skating. After we were there for a while a little seven year old kid came with his parents and they started doing a photo shoot. He was really good, but we could hear the dad telling him he needs to "go higher" and do-this and do-that, like a coach. He would drop down off the deep end of the pool over and over again trying to get a picture that was just right and his parents were talking about "getting paid" to skate. It really upset Joe that the little kid was being used like that. It made me uncomfortable too. The poor kid looked like he wasn't having very much fun either and kept looking at the adult skaters like he had to be better than them.
I don't know, I suppose that's how big successes like Michael Jackson and Beyonce happened. I still feel like it's too much to put a kid through. I'm happy Joe won't be that type of dad!

...and just on a side note, yes, the pool says "tits."
I love it.

Monarchs

My family decided to go to the Natural Bridges State Beach the day after Christmas to look at the butterflies. I remember going as a child and seeing huge clusters of monarchs hanging from the trees like leaves. When it's too cold for them to fly around they huddle up together in the trees like banana bunches.

We walked along the beach for a little bit before enjoying the rest of the day at my grandpas house.

I hope everyone is enjoying the new year!

Happy New Year!

It's true, as you get older every year goes by faster. I remember thinking how insane it was that 2012 was over and it was 2013 already! This year will be Ellie-bear's birthday year too! Insane. 

My aunt April took a ton of great photos of Christmas, so this is Christmas photos part two. For my present this year my dad flew my brother in as a surprise! I was so excited to see him.