Ladd Photos

My mom and Aliciana went to church on Sunday morning and then we all grabbed a bite to eat at Cugini’s. From there we headed up to see the elephant seals that sun themselves on a beach 15 miles north of San Simeon. My mom and dad had never seen them before. The elephant seals, as usual, were quite amazing to watch.

We had dinner in a good Mexican restaurant in San Simeon and then headed back to San Luis Obispo. Monday morning we had breakfast at Hobee’s and then said good bye to my mom and dad. They will be back in 10 days for Aliciana’s graduation so it was more like a see you later than a good bye.

Aliciana and I went on our first geocache yesterday. For those who don’t know, geocaching is quite similar to just going on a hike except the hike is laid out by other geocachers and the goal of the hike is to use your GPS to find the cache at the end of the hike. To find different geocaches to go on, you just go to www.geocaching.com and look them up.

The hike we went on was short but steep. It had some beautiful views of San Luis Obispo from on top of the hill we ended up on. Geocaching is definitely a fun hobby and we are looking forward to doing a couple different hikes every month. It is a great way to find trails you never knew about and to get some exercise and fresh air.

Well, my parents were suppose to be in town by now but I haven’t heard from them yet so I will instead take this time to embarrass my dad. Tomorrow he turns 50 and he is not really looking forward to it. We are going to go out to dinner tonight to celebrate. They are in town for Aliciana’s college graduation, which is tomorrow. So, happy birthday dad! Remember, you are only as old as you feel… or smell… or something like that.

We are finally recovering from graduation weekend. First off, I want to say: “Congratulations Aliciana! I am so proud of you!” Aliciana graduated last Saturday with a Bachelors in Business with a concentration in Accounting. She also received a Minor in Philosophy. By the time the graduation started, there were 27 people who came to watch her. These people included her parents, my parents, her grandparents, my grandparents, her sisters, my brother and sister, and her uncle and family. It was quite a large group!

There was actually two graduation ceremonies. The first one was for all the students graduating from every college. It was a nice ceremony, only about 1.5 hours long, and included some good speakers. The second ceremony was just for the college of business. All they did was read everyone’s name and hand out fake diplomas. It was complete chaos, you would think that the business school would be organized, but we still ended up being able to see Aliciana walk across the stage.

After the ceremonies we all went to Round Table Pizza to celebrate. We ended up taking over half the restaurant. My family and Aliciana’s family got to talk with each other and get to know each other, which was nice. Everyone went back to our apartment after dinner for ice cream and cake. It was amazing that we were able to fit everyone in our apartment… it was quite cozy.

My side of the family left Sunday afternoon after we had lunch with them. Aliciana’s parents and grandparents stayed until Monday so we got to hang around with them and have some good meals. Overall, it was a very fun and very exhausting weekend. It was nice to have our families meet each other before our wedding in a year. Now that we are sorta recovered, we have to start packing and move to Bakersfield.

We are currently in the process of packing up all our belongings and moving them to Bakersfield. It has been 3 years since we moved into our old apartment, so we had forgotten just how much packing sucks. Hopefully we will have most our stuff in our new apartment by this weekend. Until then, we might be a little hard to get a hold of because our whole environment has been turned upside down.

It has been too long since I last wrote a blog, but moving will cause that to happen. We almost have everything put in it’s place at our new apartment in Bakersfield, California. Moving was quite an ordeal. It took us 4 trips to get everything to Bakersfield, with each trip taking 5 hours of driving. And of course we had the packing, moving, lifting, carrying, dropping, cursing, and unpacking of all our worldly possessions that added to the experience. So, as you can imagine, we are quite tired and sore. Next time we move, we are definitely going to get some help.

We just got back from a wonderful evening of great food, company, and fireworks. All the Ladd clan migrated to my Grandpa and Grandma Ladd’s house for dinner and festivities. Most my relatives made the event and it was nice to see everyone. We ate some great hamburgers cooked by my Grandpa and then enjoyed a spectacular fireworks show on the front lawn. We are already reaping the benefits of living back in Bakersfield and are looking forward to many more family parties.

I just wanted to let everyone know that Aliciana received her diploma in the mail today. She received her Bachelors Of Science in Business Administration from Cal Poly, complete with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature. Congratulations Baby!!! We are all very proud of you!!!

Well, Aliciana and I are finally starting to feel recovered from our recent trip up the west side of our beautiful country. Our trip ended up taking 6 days in all. We learned several valuable lessons on this trip, the most important one being to never drive more than 4 hours a day on vacation if you expect to enjoy yourself.

The first day of our travels we drove 9 hours from Bakersfield to Medford, Oregon. This was a major mistake. We finished up the rest of the drive to Seattle the next day, only a 5 hour drive. By the time we got to my friend Ryan’s apartment, we were completely exhausted! We ended up spending the whole trip in a state of exhaustion, which kinda ruined the trip, but we still managed to have some fun.

Our original plan was to spend 3 nights at Ryan’s apartment, but after 2 long days of driving we were already itching to call off the vacation and go home. Then we saw Ryan’s apartment in person and I decided there was no way I was going to be able to spend more than one night there. I am very grateful to Ryan for offering us his floor, but his apartment is the smallest apartment I have ever seen. There are a couple of pictures of how Aliciana, Ryan, Ryan’s friend Dave, and I all managed to squeeze into it.

The next night I decided to try to salvage what we could of this trip and booked a room at the Hampton Inn which is just one block away from the Space Needle. We spent the rest of the day walking around the University of Washington, Downtown Seattle, Pioneer Square, and the Seattle Underground. The Seattle Underground Tour was amazing and I recommend it to anyone who is ever visiting Seattle! I will blog about the tour more tomorrow.

For our trip home we changed our plans and took 3 days to make the drive. It was easier with the mileage spread out but still very exhausting. We spent the night in Eugene, Oregon and Redding, California. Along the trip home we stopped at the State Capitol of Washington in Olympia. We also saw the State Capitol of Oregon on the way to Seattle.

Overall, we had a good time. We got to see a lot of the country we hadn’t seen on our first trip up there. But I highly doubt we will ever do that drive again. Next time we go to Seattle we will fly.