9 posts tagged “california”

Scott and I went to Joshua Tree National Park on Saturday, October 13th. Here are some pictures from our day.

So, here's the story.... I met Scott Wharry on Eharmony, an online dating service, last May (2006). We emailed for a few months time and then started talking on the phone last Fall. In December, he asked me out on our first date the same day that I told him I was moving to L.A. He was very sweet and supportive of my decision even though we had never met face to face. He said that he wanted to meet me before I left town. I was very happy to do so since he seemed like such a wonderful guy during our email conversations and phone calls.

On our first date (December '07) he took me downtown to Chicago. There was an instant connection that we both felt. Usually first dates are a bit awkward, but Scott made me feel very at ease and we had a blast. Our second date was less "date-like." I was getting ready to move and Scott offered to come and help out in order to spend some more time together before I left town. He very graciously offered to help me clean my condo so I could get it ready to sell and move my stuff out to CA. So, he came over and helped me clean out my kitchen. Not your typical second date, but it was so nice of him to come and help me out. I took him out to dinner to say thank you for cleaning! Our third date wasn't very typical either since I was getting together with family in Wisconsin before moving (to say goodbye and celebrate Christmas). He joined us for dinner and to say goodbye since I was leaving the next day. He asked if he could come visit me in CA and I said yes. I was very happy that he wanted to continue to get to know me.

Since then, he's been coming to visit me once a month and I've been to Wisconsin a couple of times to visit him as well. We've grown in our relationship through phone calls, emails, and visits. Scott is a very sweet, thoughtful, sincere, and wonderful man who loves the Lord.

This past weekend (Labor Day weekend) Scott was here visiting again. We went to the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night for a concert and picnic. On Saturday he had planned a surprise day and took me to Catalina Island. We drove down to Long Beach where we boarded a boat that took us across to the island. We got off the boat in the city of Avalon and spent the day there. It was a gorgeous day. First we had lunch at a French Cafe. Then we walked around the shops and beaches for a while. He took me on a submarine ride to see some fish. It was cool to see the fish under the water. Later on as we were sitting on a beach he asked if someone would take our picture. He came back and started telling me how much he loves me and that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. He got down on one knee and proposed. I was so overwhelmed by his proposal. I said yes and he gave me a beautiful princess cut diamond solitare engagement ring. The pictures don't quite do it justice. It is very pretty! After that we went to a very nice Italian restaurant for dinner. It was fun to talk about future plans together and enjoy a beautiful evening outside.

We are hoping to get married at Wheaton Bible Church in April (if the church has an opening that month for a wedding). I will be moving to Madison, Wisconsin (where Scott lives) in late November. I'll get an apartment there to be near him while we plan the wedding and prepare for married life. So, looks like I'm coming back to the Midwest! Madison isn't too far away from my older brother and his family in Milwaukee and also not too far from the friends I have in Illinois, so that is nice to have friends and family nearby. Wow... so much has happened in such a short amount of time. It's been truly a blessing to have Scott in my life. He is an amazing man and I am so happy that I will get to spend my life with him.

Here are some pictures from our weekend.... 

My brother Jon came to visit me for a weekend (June 28 - July 1) from Minnesota. They are staying there for a few months on home assignment from Ireland. Since I don't get very much time with him it was extra special to spend a whole weekend together and just be able to hang out. We drove all over LA so it was a very fun weekend to do some favorite things, but also to enjoy seeing new things as well.

On Thursday, I drove right from work to go pick Jon up from LAX. Oh, I found out why it's called LAX... back in the day it used to be called the LA airport, but when they went into having a three digit code for airports, they decided just to add an "X" to fill in the extra letter needed. So, the X doesn't stand for anything, it's just filler. :) Did you know that O'Hare is ORD because it used to be called "Orchard Airport" but then was later changed to be named after someone. I know, I'm full of useless knowledge. Just thought I'd share some of it with you! Aren't you glad you know that now???

So, back to the story... I picked up Jon from LAX and we drove south to Manhattan Beach. We drove through town a little bit and by the ocean in time to see the sunset. That was a cool way to start his California weekend! I took him to try fish tacos at Rubios. He was a skeptic because, let's face it, fish tacos sound gross unless you've had a really great one! I wasn't too keen on the idea until I had my first one back in November and now I'm hooked. They are so good! Anyway, a guy he works with in Ireland had a shirt that Jon used to mock because it said fish tacos on it (he's from Southern California). Well, turns out that Jon likes fish tacos too so now he'll have to eat his words when he sees his friend again.

On Friday, we drove to the beach again. This time we went to Santa Monica and walked around the pier, the beach, and the Third Street Promenade for a few hours. We had lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express. It was great food. Gormet fast food... you gotta love it! :) The first two pictures are of Jon in Santa Monica.

After leaving Santa Monica, we drove north up the Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu and then drove inland to see a canyon and state park area. It was a nice drive through some scenic areas. There were some ranches with horses and some large homes. We found Mulholland Drive and drove along that scenic drive for a while too. There are lots of scenic places where you can stop to look around. It's a very winding road on top of the mountains so it's hard to keep focused on driving because you want to look at all the huge homes and beautiful views. (The picture of Jon pointing is to show Stacey where he's going to build their retirement home!!!) Good luck with that. The next picture is of Burbank where a lot of studios are located. The picture after that has the Hollywood sign in the background. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you might just be able to see the sign above Jon's shoulder. 

After driving around for a while, we drove right into Hollywood so I took Jon to go see the sights there. The next seven pictures are of the Kodak Theater and Grauman's Chinese Theater (where the stars handprints are).

On Saturday, we drove down to Orange County to see Laguna Beach. We drove south along the PCH to see some of the beaches along the way. It was amazing to see the wealth and the amount of people who live near the coast. Laguna Beach is known for it's great art museum, beaches, and shops. We walked around the town for a little while, had lunch at a little chinese hole in the wall place, and went over to the beach to walk around.

After walking around Laguna, we drove north up to Downtown Disney. It's next to the park and a fun place to walk around without having to pay entrance into the park. They have tons of shops, entertainment, and restaurants to enjoy. Jon and I went to a movie there (Shrek 3) and also went to the Lego shop. We thought the boys would enjoy seeing the huge lego giraffe and the life size lego statue of Darth Vader. All the restaurants were pretty busy with a long wait, so we drove back to Arcadia and I took Jon to Claim Jumper for dinner.  

On Sunday, we went to church in Pasadena, then I drove him around the area to show him where I work and some of the places I like to go there. We had lunch with a couple from Mosiac who are students at Fuller and want to be missionaries in Ireland. It was an interesting connection so I don't know if it will come of anything, but maybe God arranged it just so that Jon could be an encouragement to them and help answer some questions they might have about life in Ireland!

After lunch, we drove to the Getty to see the gardens and artwork at the museum. It's such a gorgeous place! I love going there. We enjoyed walking around the grounds to see the gardens and the architecture as well as the artwork inside the various buildings. I've been there with Tammy and went another time with Scott, but the exhibits are always changing so it's fun to go back and see it again at different times. It's too big to see all of it in one day anyway, so each time I go I see another part of it that I haven't seen before. I know that Jon doesn't like art as much as I do, but I think he still enjoyed it too.  

All in all, it was a very fun filled weekend! Thanks for visiting me Jon!!! :) I'm looking forward to spending more time with my family in a week. We are having a family reunion in Wisconsin on July 22-29 so I'll be posting more pictures of family after that.  

When we were done looking through the shops and walking around we came back out to the entrance (near the cross in the first picture).

Across the courtyard, there was a crowd gathering and so we decided to check it out and see what was going on. There was a group of Native people dancing with bells on their wrists and ankles. As my friend Colleen would say "it was a beautiful thing" to see them dance and express themselves. The costumes were quite elaborate (as you can see from the pictures).

It was cute to see a little girl in a yellow skirt sway back and forth to the music in the crowd as she watched.

All in all, it was a beautiful day... made even more special by hanging out with Colleen (one of my roommates here in CA). It was fun to go explore a part of L.A. that I've never seen before. I love discovering new places. (New to me anyway... this place has been around for a long time!).

Chicago and New York aren't the only cities with a train station called Union Station. Here are a few pictures from Union Station in Los Angeles. Colleen and I went downtown on the train and we were admiring the beautiful train station as we came out into the city. Ok, some parts of it weren't beautiful (like the women's restroom... not so pretty), but I tried to capture a few beautiful scenes to show you.

 Scott came to visit me the weekend of April 20-22. It was so great to have him here. We had a lot of fun going to Universal Studios, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills.

The first few pictures are from Universal Studios. We had a fun day walking around the theme park.

My favorite part of the park was the tour that takes you behind the scenes to show you some of the movie-making tricks. They show you some of the sets used in making films and some areas were closed off so you couldn't see what was happening.

The tour takes you through different settings and tells you how they make things look real... like how a miniature ship can look huge in the right setting.

We also saw a huge stuffed King Kong that was not a miniature. I missed seeing that movie, but this was quite impressive to see.

They also took us through an area where there was a plane crash scene. It was also very dramatic looking because of the smoke coming from the plane and the debris all around it. I can't remember which movie they said it was from, but they said they have kept it because it was such an expensive set to build. They purchased a real full sized passenger plane and destroyed it for the set. I think they re-use sets to help save on costs but they also design new ones all the time so the tour changes through the years even though they keep some things the same.

I'm not a fan of the show, but they also took us through the set of Desparate Housewives (Wisteria Lane). It was interesting to see the fake facades on the buildings that look so real when you see them on TV.  

The next picture is of the Hollywood sign. It's hard to actually get too close to it unless you are hiking in the park or have a great zoom lens on your camera. My digital camera isn't as good as my other camera so it doesn't have a great zoom. So, if you squint a little bit or can increase the size of the photo, you'll see the Hollywood sign on the hillside.

The last picture is of a section of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. We drove around the area and got out to walk around as well. It was the kind of place where you know you don't belong unless you can drop a few thousand dollars on a shopping spree without blinking an eye. Kind of sad to think of all the wasted money there. It's a different world!

After the Youth Specialties Conference, I stayed with Tammy for a few days. It was great to hang out with her and explore some of LA together. These are pictures from the Getty Center, a beautiful place with outdoor gardens and architecture that is amazing. It's also an art museum, which I love of course! If you ever come to LA to visit me, I'd love to take you there to see it. There are great views of the city from the Getty as well since it sits on top of a hill. You could explore this place for days.

I was going back through some pictures from my digital camera and decided that I should put some of them up here on my blog.

I'll start with this picture from the National Youth Conference from Youth Specialties in November 06. It feels like a long time ago now because so much has happened since this picture was taken. This was the youth team for our Student Ministries at Wheaton Bible Church in November. We went to a youth conference in Anaheim, California. It was a great time to bond with the team and learn a lot from the speakers.

I also took the opportunity to visit with Tammy while I was out in California (at the end of the conference). It was on this trip that I finalized my decision to move here. I had been thinking about it for a while, but I wanted to come and visit to see where Tammy lived and check out the housing situation before I made the final decision. One thing that made it hard was to leave behind the incredible team of people I worked with in Student Ministries! I truly value the friendships with everyone on the team and all that I learned as a result of working with each one of them.

(Ignore the "title" of the picture above. The date is when I put the picture on my computer, not the date of the picture. Also... that's Jeremy leap frogging over the meter below... just in case you were wondering what he was doing!)

It has FINALLY sold! I closed on my condo TODAY so that is a huge relief. Thank you to those of you who were praying for me regarding this situation. It was a long time to wait, but God is in charge so maybe he wanted the family who are moving in to have it instead of the last buyer that fell through. Just rejoicing at this news!

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I'm going to go to the LA Arboretum tomorrow so I'll post pictures here soon. It's beautiful now that it's Spring and the flowers are in bloom. It was great to go there this winter too, because there are things blooming there year round. It did feel funny to see leaves on the ground (like fall weather in the Midwest) in January/February, but this is California so everything is different here. Like, for instance... the green parrots that fly around near my house and like to make loud noises around bedtime. :) Pretty birds, but noisy.