Chase's Family Reunion

Last weekend was Chase's family reunion in Avila Beach. It was a lot of fun and good to meet all his extended family again. When you meet them of course they always remember me and say that we met at my wedding, but I met so many people! I told Chase this and he just said "Welcome to my world" and I got no sympathy at all! I guess it just shows me that I should be more sensitive to his situation here in Lodi. We got there Thursday night and went out to dinner with everyone at a restaurant with AMAZING fish tacos. I guess all my worrying was for nothing because as soon as we sat down talking to everyone was totally natural and fun. I love his relatives! Friday everyone went to Morro Bay which was about 45 minutes away from our hotel and went whale watching. We saw a lot of whales and it was cool except it took like 5 hours and on the way back everyone got sick and 3 people barfed!

This is Morro rock and Chase!Alex and Ashlee seeing the whales, I must've just missed a picture of the whales!
And Chase on the open ocean.
That night back in Avila Beach we walked around the local farmers market and bought food for dinner and dessert. We ate on the pier and it was so fun, I want to go to farmer's markets every day!

This is us on the pier, poor Chase got roasted on the whale boat. Who knew that you could get burned on an overcast day??
After the farmers market that night we went down the beach a little ways and had a bonfire and roasted smores. This was the time for everyone to tell stories about Chase's Grandma and just talk and enjoy themselves without worrying about throwing up like we did on the boat! Haha.
Us at the bonfire.
The next day we went to Morro Bay again and went to a restaurant called the Coffee Pot for breakfast and met the owner who is this amazing guy who wrote the book Double Luck about his own life growing up as a Chinese orphan. Then everyone went out on kayaks in the bay for a couple hours. I was paranoid about getting wet but Chase was nice and didn't splash me at all, so it was really fun! Then that night we had a BBQ at our hotel for Grandma's birthday and everyone gave her presents. Sunday was the last day and we checked out of our hotel room and went to Grandma's house in San Luis Obispo for a delicious brunch and then to church in her ward. It was so small we basically doubled it with the 15 or so people that came to church with her! Then we drove home in time to celebrate my mom's birthday with dinner. The weekend ended up being tons of fun and I enjoyed spending time with all of Chase's relatives, hopefully we'll be able to visit some of them before the summer is over!

Our summer.

This summer has been really crazy. We moved to California with my family so Chase could "work", but we've ended up going on so many trips, it truly is a summer vacation! Chase has been interning at my dad's engineering company and he says he's gaining a lot of experience. I didn't get a job so I could help my mom take care of Aubrey and my Grandpa who lives with us. He has Parkinson's disease and some dementia so it's IMPOSSIBLE to leave him alone at the house. There is some outside help, but she can't live here so either my mom or I have to be here pretty much all the time. It's fun to play with Aubrey everyday though! My mom says we can't have too much fun because she remembers EVERYTHING and she'll want to play like that everyday! Aubrey and I swinging, one of her favorite activities. She might look scared, but she's not! Besides that we've had some fun vacations! It started when we left Utah and drove to Bakersfield to see Chase's family.
Chase's dad had to set the timer and run to get in the pic.. haha. It was really fun spending time with them and we even got to celebrate my birthday and our anniversary!
Chase got me a huge present for my birthday and it ended up being an amazing new set of pots! He was just as happy as I was.
For our anniversary I made Chase a book called "Our Story" and it told the story of how we met until we got married. I tried to upload a video of Chase reading it but it wasn't working, I'll try again later.
After Bakersfield we drove to Monterey for the weekend as a present from Chase :) We went to the pier Friday night and the Monterey Bay Aquarium on Saturday. It was so fun! I don't know why I haven't tried this being married thing earlier! Haha. This is a pic of us on the pier.
Here we are outside the aquarium... I bet Chase thinks he's pretty lucky!
After the weekend we finally headed into Lodi for the summer. Besides watching Aubrey and spending time with my mom, we've also been camping for memorial weekend, gone to Bako again for Ashlee's graduation, had numerous BBQ's, had a reception for Beth's wedding, and gone to the desert for a week! Here are some of our favorite pics from the desert trip. All us girls in the truck about to drive out to the dry lake bed. Somehow Beth managed to get into the picture too! On the dry lake bed with my honey :) We were setting up for the bowling ball cannon, and be "we" I mean the boys dug the hole while the girls watched. Out with the shotguns. Chase was amazing, I only looked it... haha. Fireworks. Chase was getting creative with the bottle rockets, shooting them from his fly. I was okay shooting them from a bush.