New Year's at Big Bear Lake

Happy New Year everyone!!  Big Bear has always held a special place in my heart.  Many years ago I came here on a church retreat for confirmation.  This also happens to be the place where I met Alan :).  Anyways...this year I spent New Year's weekend in a cabin with a bunch of friends beside Big Bear Lake.  It is absolutely gorgeous out there any time of the year.  It's peaceful and the landscape makes it extremely easy to get away from the rush and enjoy the quiet and beautiful things in life.  Enjoy :).    

"We will open the book.  Its pages are blank.  We are going to put words on them ourselves.  The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."  

~Edith Lovejoy Pierce  

San Diego Mini Vacation

This past weekend my boyfriend took me on a mini vacation to beautiful San Diego.  He's a landscape architect and enjoys visiting gardens and great parks.  Lucky for me...I get to go to all these places :).  So if you're a lover of architecture, plants, or maybe just enjoy museums...you gotta go to Balboa Park.  It's GORGEOUS and there's so much to see.  Lot's of photo opportunities for all you photographers out there.  

The shot right above was actually taken by my boyfriend, Alan.  I absolutely love the composition and am thrilled that he's picking up the art and technical sides of photography rather quickly.  I guess he must have a good teacher ;).  

We didn't know what plant this was...but it smelled sooo good!

So we made a few stops while in San Diego.  Went to Old Town of course and got some authentic Mexican food, freshly made tortillas and street tacos...you can't forget about the street tacos.  Old Town is cool cuz you have great food, awesome music (if you like mariachi) and loads of shops with plenty of eye candy.

San Diego Zoo

Hellooooo Spring!

 

Details from San Juan Capistrano

Pasadena Rose Parade

Had the opportunity to see the the Pasadena Rose Floats up close and personal the day after the parade. Was a pretty spectacular thing to see. So many flowers, so much creativity, really a pretty awesome experience.

4th of July

I've never tried shooting fireworks and decided to give it a shot this year. All in all I'm happy with the outcome but you probably won't ever find me doing this again. I didn't enjoy the fireworks as much as a usually do :(. Ah well, it wasn't a complete waste.








Fourth of July has always been a real chill holiday for the family. We usually do BBQ at the park super early in the day then do late night fireworks show at the local high school. This year we did BBQ at my folks house which was nice. I was able to explore my moms back yard and have a little fun with my camera.