Labor Day 2009

For Labor Day we drove over to Phoenix to stay at my dad's. Kami and my little friend, Kai, flew in on Friday and it was a blast! We went to the Grand Canyon, laid by the pool and ate way too much food! Here are a few pics.

Wedding!!

So here are just a few pictures from our wedding last week. I will post more when I have time in the next couple of days. It was pretty great!!

Oh how I LOVE an Insect Fair...

Every year LA's Natural History Museum holds an Insect Fair. It was pretty cool. I spared everyone having to look at pictures of bugs and spiders, but I took a few in the rose garden outside. I bought the COOLEST necklace. It's made from butterfly wings (died a natural death) and is gorgeous! After the fair we went to Chinatown for dinner. I, like always, posted my pictures backwards, but you'll get the gist of it.

A Chinese "wishing well"

View of the fountain from the rose garden with the Natural History Museum behind

Gabriel imitating a rhinoceros

Me and my soon to be husband! And yes...this is the longest my hair has been since high school. Kinda Crazy!

Lions and Tigers and Bears...Oh My!

For my birthday, Efrain and I went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. It was so cool! It's not like a regular zoo in the sense that it's not just cage after cage of animals. You feel like you're out in their element watching them. It was huge! I was so tired by the end of the day. Then we went and had dinner at our favorite mexican restaurant down there, Cafe Coyote. (If anyone ever gets to San Diego, you have to go here. They make homemade tortillas that are to DIE for!!) Here are a few of the many pictures I took.

This gorilla kept posing for all the cameras and playing with the kids running around.

They also had a petting zoo area where you can pet and feed the animals.

Here's Efrain in a (I think) birds nest. So Cute!

Engagement!

And now for the BIGGEST news! Efrain and I got engaged the Saturday before Labor Day at the Grand Canyon. It was incredible! (both the canyon and the engagement) Neither one of us has ever been there before and I was so taken aback by how beautiful it was. Right when we got there the clouds started rolling in and after about 45 minutes it began to POUR! It was seriously a torrential downpour. We scrambled to get some lunch and wait it out. The problem for me was that I hadn't taken the time to do anything to myself that day...I don't even think I showered. So once the rain started down, I looked even worse! So I get to look back on my engagement photos and wonder what I was thinking. Well, anyway...we started hiking along the edge of the canyon and after awhile I needed to sit. So we climbed down to almost the edge (Yes, I was FREAKING OUT!) and rested for awhile and took pictures. Finally I needed to go to the bathroom, so I told Efrain that we needed to start heading back. He kept hemming and hawing and I couldn't understand why he didn't want to leave. All of a sudden he told me he had a gift for me and pulled out the ring. Right at that moment, a man walked up right next to us (we had been completely alone). So we sat there and waited and I gawked over the ring. Then he got down on one knee as I tried to make sure he didn't fall off the cliff! It was so romantic and I'm so excited! Efrain is the greatest man a girl could ask for and I can't wait to marry him.

I can't seem to get a good picture of my ring! It's too sparkily!!

Us being dorky after the proposal

Here's where we got engaged

And Efrain trying to give me a heart attack!

August Wedding

Okay, so I haven't updated in awhile...which is really sad considering some pretty cool things have happened. (DELETED ITEMS FROM AN EVENT WE WANT TO FORGET) Then...We went to the Olympic Park and went on the SCARIEST zip lines EVER! I was freaking out, but I survived. It was so much fun!

Efrain as an Olympic skier!

KOA Camping

So I decided to surprise Efrain and take him to this camping spot we had seen once while riding our bikes. It's actually not far from his house and has a place to fish. I made the reservations and was so excited! Until we got there...I had made reservations at the wrong place. We ended up camping at a KOA hooked onto the fair grounds. They also neglected to tell me when I made the reservations that they were under construction...ten feet from our campsite. Needless to say, it wasn't the best camping trip, but we still had fun.

Here's our little campsite.

Here are the tractors right in front of our camping spot. We woke up to them at 7am.

This where we went fishing. It looks a lot nicer/cleaner than it really was.

Here is my fisherman...