California Trip Recap

Happy Easter everyone! I loved seeing all of the Easter messages online from friends and family. James and I spent the day driving back from our week-long vacation to California. Below are some pictures from our fun trip both in the Bay area and in San Diego.

Sea lions and seals in San Diego

Ewww. Sea slugs.

Exploring the tide pools. Lots of critters.

We loved being close to the ocean again. I can't get enough of it!

The new grandmommy and her grand baby.

More tide pools

Walking around at Seaport Village near San Diego

Awesome bridge to get to Coronado Island

Beach time!  A bit chilly, but so nice.

And the star of the show. Our newest nephew. We are so in love with him.

So is the rest of the family. Even Anna with her broken arm :( 

So cute - Jess totally zonked holding him one night. They were out cold for a long time.

Love those lips!

Build-A-Bear with James's niece 

She insisted on carrying the bear's house through the whole mall...

...but couldn't carry it any further.

Easter baskets for the kiddos

The "Easter Bunnies" setting up the egg hunt around the house

And the fifth annual Judson family adult egg hunt...no candy here, just cash. Pretty wild hunt. Love my family!

Spring is Here!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! I can't believe that spring is here. There are tons of flowers blooming everywhere and we even have some cherry blossom trees too. It was a very exciting and long week for us and we are so ready for spring break! Here are some pictures to highlight a few things.

This cherry blossom tree is right outside out front door. It reminds me of Japan.

This is our little courtyard where a lot of the neighbor kids play. Took it mostly to show the blossoms on the trees.

We went to a little gardening 101 workshop on Saturday and got some free seeds. Looks like we'll be getting our own garden ready pretty soon.

This is one reason we haven't started the garden yet. This is what the couch looked like pretty much all week. Emily finished her classes and has just been writing papers like crazy. She'll be completely done with papers on Wednesday whether she is actually finished or not (That's when the last one is due).

This may not look like much, but I gave Emily a coupon book for Christmas. This is one she used this week to go to the movies. We went and saw "The Great and Powerful Oz." The movie was really really weird. I'm not sure if I would go and see it again.

This is an older picture of some things we got in a Valentine's Day package from the Grandbobs; some cute Disney water bottles stuffed with some of our favorite candy. So awesome!

Emily made me this tie rack for Valentine's Day and we never put pictures up. So this is the rack in action.

The rack by its lonesome. I have to admit that it is very effective and I love it dearly!

We sure excited for spring break but are probably more excited to have this term over. Emily is now half way through her program (at least credit wise) which means we need to start figuring out what we are going to do next. I have applied for graduate school and the results will be up on a blog post soon. We hope that everyone has an awesome week!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Happy March everyone! Spring is definitely on its way, at least in Eugene. I (Emily) am pretty thrilled about the warm weather and the sunshine. My cohort had class from 9 to 5 on Saturday (I know, what were they thinking?!), but the good news was that we held class almost entirely outside. AND James and I were assigned our free garden plots this week, which I am quite excited about. We welcome any gardening advice from you expert gardeners out there about Eugene growing (what to grow, when, how, etc...we are pretty new at this). 

Anyway, I am in the midst of final papers and such this coming week. I also had an interview for a fellowship that I am waiting to hear back from, so feel free to send some love and positive thoughts this way :)

Here are some quick pics from a few weeks back when we had a gyoza (pot sticker) party with some friends from church. Good food, good company, need I say more? 

We also had dinner with some friends from BYU-Hawaii who moved here recently. It was so good to catch up with them...unfortunately we forgot to take pictures, so I guess we will just have to get together again :) I love being reminded again and again of BYU-Hawaii and the amazing experience we had there. Makes me a bit homesick for Laie, but the world seems like a much friendlier place when you know people everywhere you go.