Ladd Photos

Aliciana and I spent most of the weekend in Bakersfield. We were there to celebrate Brock and Mandy’s wedding, which was beautiful. They had an evening wedding in Scott and Lisa Davis’s gorgeous backyard. The ceremony was very touching, including a special presentation by Brock to Brianne, Mandy’s daughter, promising to love her and to form a loving family. After the ceremony, the rest of the evening was filled with music and the usual wedding festivities.

The wedding was attended by our entire group of friends and it was great to hang out with everyone and catch up. In addition to our friends, the wedding was attended by Brock and Mandy’s families and family friends. There was around 60 people in attendance overall, so the evening was a small but intimate event. I was even given the honor to drive the newlyweds to their hotel after the party, which I was more than happy to do.

The joy experienced by all in attendance makes me wish that my own wedding wasn’t still a year away. I hope my own special day is filled with as much love and happiness as Brock and Mandy’s was. I hope that their union is filled with unending love, joy, and excitement. In the words of Ryan’s toast, may your marriage be as long as this pennido!

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.

So, yesterday I became a year older. Well, technically I became 1 day older but custom tells us we should only celebrate once a year, on the day we were born. But, as I grow older, the celebrating seems to become less important.

I don’t feel like I am 26 years old, it seems like I was just turning 20. Paradoxically, I proposed to Aliciana one year ago, on my 25th birthday, but that feels like it took place eons ago. It is funny how specific events feel like they happened long ago and abstract ideas feel like they happened yesterday. I guess it is much easier for the mind to recall abstract feelings than particular points in time. But, I digress.

I had a nice birthday dinner at a restaurant in town called Mexicali. They have beautiful Christmas decorations this time of year so it is always nice to get to eat amongst them. We then came back to the apartment for birthday chocolate and peanut butter brownies, which Aliciana baked for me, and watched a movie. A nice, relaxing, and calm birthday… just like old people are suppose to be. 😉

My brother Nick, soon-to-be sister-in-law Jessie, my beautiful wife Aliciana, and I decided to checkout the Sunday performances at this year’s Bumbershoot. We saw a couple good bands, North Twin and The Bouncing Souls, and also visited some of the art exhibits. We were also hoping to see The Horror Pops, but they canceled at the last minute. Suck.