Hey, all! We’re back this Easter week Weekly Wednesday during the worldwide pandemic to share some more personal times from the past half year-! We had planned blogs for this month sharing brand new photos from current Spring weddings, current Engagement Sessions, and more, but since we’re a non-essential business, these things have been rescheduled with our couples, so obviously we don’t have photos of these wonderful couples to share just yet. Instead, this week we’ll be sharing some important things from our personal lives- namely, this week we’re sharing with you a trip out across the country to California family and friends 7 months ago in mid-September. Jenny just had to cancel her trip out to Arizona for her sister’s Baby Shower which was scheduled to happen next weekend (since her sister will be 7 months pregnant then), so this week we’ll be sharing our trip from 7 months ago to see our FIRST niece right after her birth! Jason’s twin brother’s daughter Elliott Juanita is almost 7 months old and we’re so happy that we’ve gotten to visit her in California twice so far! We cannot wait until Jenny’s sister has her baby in a couple months too, so to celebrate these babies that we hope to be super close to, we’ll be sharing our trip out to California from mid-September! **While on that trip to California for a week we also got to go to a best friend’s wedding in our old home city of Santa Barbara, camped in Santa Barbara, camped in Big Sur, and visited/ stayed with Jason’s mom, uncle, and grandma in their rural desert home of L.A. County as well, so we’ll be sharing those side trips in here as well!
Niece Elliott Juanita
Though things happened in a different order, we’ll first share our visit to our newly born first niece: Elliott Juanita! You may remember seeing photos of her a few months ago when we were out for our annual immediate family belated Christmas trip. Ellie was 4 months then, but we also got to see her immediately after she was born in mid-September! Though Jenny’s cousins have 35 to 40 kids (many of whom we see often throughout the year in Indiana), this is our FIRST niece of our very own and our next niece or nephew will be coming in a couple months- only 9 months younger than little Ellie! Ellie was super sweet, tiny, and sleepy when we saw her after her birth and we loved holding her while sitting with their little family there at the hospital for hours.
We luckily got to spend this private time with her as well as her parents (Jason’s twin Josh & his wife Cassie) for the first time seeing them in over a year & a half! Cassie started 2019 off newly fully finished with her Speech Language Pathology certification and pregnant, so it was also our first time seeing them since all of these exciting things had also been accomplished over the prior 20 months (other than a month prior when Jenny had come out for her Baby Shower)-! When we saw them after the birth of Ellie there in California Cassie had just started 6 months off of work to raise their daughter and Josh had 3 months off of work before transitioning into his new corporate job (which he luckily currently gets to do from home right now during the pandemic)! Due to the pandemic we worry about mom Cassie working in healthcare face-to-face with patients (what with the fluctuating weird mask bans at so many medical facilities) AND we’re also anxiously unsure of when we’ll see them & Ellie next, so we’re really glad that we got to visit them twice in her 4 months!
Meeting Baby Elliott
We both only have one sibling (Jason’s twin & Jenny’s sister whose birthday is 3 days apart from hers), so it’s pretty significant when our siblings have kids, let alone their FIRST kids! Since Jenny had to cancel the flights for next weekend out to her sister’s Baby Shower and cancel the Baby Shower altogether, we’re unsure if there will even be a Baby Shower before baby’s birth in a couple months. We’re hoping that at least Jenny can go out for a early or mid-January Baby Shower before hopefully photographing our late June full day Notre Dame Basilica weddings (depending on how the virus is in June), then fly out in July to see this little newborn, so we’re holding our breath trying to see where the pandemic goes to figure out how long the Stay at Home order lasts. No matter what, we’re determined to keep her sister’s baby, little family, and Jenny’s parents safe and planes/ airports are definitely not very safe since there are many people and surfaces that can easily spread the virus.
Best Friend’s Santa Barbara Wedding
On this trip (literally in between photographing a full day wedding the night before we got on the flight out to California and the night before we got home and captured anther full 10 hour wedding) we also got to attend Jason’s best friend’s wedding in our old home city of Santa Barbara! After a huge fiasco (with our 3-months-ahead booked & paid for rental car being completely gone in Los Angeles), we got to our camper up near Jenny’s old mountain house in the Los Padres National Forest in Santa Barbara, quickly changed in the new (more expensive/ hard to find) rental car, & got to attend the informal rehearsal festivities at Jason’s bestie’s new house that they’d just bought 8 months prior! It was so good to eat, spend time with friends, and relax that night before the wedding especially after having photographed a full 10 hour wedding day the evening before.
Bryan and Annika’s Wedding
The next morning we headed over to a campground around where we’d stayed up in the mountains prior (with our tent we’d flown out with), then headed down to the wedding day! The wedding ceremony was gorgeous outside at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden in the 100 degree dry heat, we then got to head down into the botanical garden for free with friends immediately afterward, then headed over to the reception downtown at Arnoldi’s! All-in-all the whole day was wonderful and we danced the night away with friends.
Another Day in Santa Barbara
The next morning we were happy to wake up at the serene campground in the mountains of Santa Barbara. A fun fact about the hills surrounding Santa Barbara is that there are huge population of wild turkeys that often frequent the campgrounds each morning. We were awakened as soon as the sun rose by the sound of the turkeys searching around for food. At any given time there can be 20 or 30 of them foraging around the campsites. For breakfast we then ate from the array of exotic and unique fruits and vegetable that we had bought at the Santa Barbara Farmers Market. We’ve probably talked about this farmer’s market before, but it really is the one of the best in the nation. The growing climate in the area allows for a wide array of tropical and temperamental fruits and vegetables to thrive… and it’s all sold pretty affordably!
That last full day in Santa Barbara after breakfast we hung out photographing the turkeys, eventually went over to Cold Springs Tavern for the weekend outdoor grilled famous tri tip sandwich, ran some errands for fun downtown, then got to meet up for dinner with the newly married couple & our photo school good friend DP and his fiance (whose actual Engagement we got to photograph in Indianapolis over 4 months earlier)! It was amazing to get to see and laugh with some of our favorite people again. We feel so lucky that we then got to see these favorite folks again in Arizona & California 4 months after this during our belated Christmas immediate family visits a few months ago in mid-January. Friends like these are so priceless- they’re humble, accomplished, well-rounded, empathetic, sarcastic, passionate, and just damn hilarious.
Late that night after we said goodbye to everyone, we decided to stop by the historic fig tree in downtown Santa Barbara by the Amtrack Station. This tree is the largest fig tree in the United States and after discovering that the fruit was in fact edible we decided it was time to give it a try. Needless to say there is a reason that no one eats the figs from this tree. Not being a suitable growing variety, the plentiful fruits are mainly hard and pulpy seeds with almost no flavor. Now you know.
Camping in Big Sur!
Another part of our week-long trip out to California over half a year ago was camping. We knew that we’d be visiting our niece when she was born that week, so we wanted to stay closer to the northern part of Southern California to be near the birth hospital to be able to visit newborn Ellie soon after she was born before heading down to around the L.A. desert to visit Jason’s grandma & mom. We decided that in the 2 days in between that we’d go up to Big Sur to camp!
Jason had never been up to Big Sur and we’d waited years to go up there since the only road there along the coast got wiped out in a landslide & it took literally years for them to rebuild even a small 1-lane new portion. The drive up still took several hours along the winding single lane Pacific Coast Highway, but we were glad to finally be heading up there. We even added some time onto our drive deciding to stop off on a few occasions to admire the views and take a few photos.
Having booked a campsite in a State of California campground, we were able to access many of the state park areas located in and around Big Sur without having to pay extra for a day use fee. This is something we would highly recommend doing if you plan on seeing all of the natural sights and do some hiking. These campgrounds book up well in advance, so make sure to reserve them ahead of time since you aren’t likely to be able to walk in and find a spot. Big Sur is a pretty popular destination and many of the vistas were very crowded with groups of tourists. Overall most of the trails in the area were pretty open though in mid-September without too many people around to distract from the natural beauty.
We were able to make some friends with the local birds (Stellar’s Jay) and squirrels at our campsite and enjoy some time relaxing around the bonfire at night while also keeping up with our photography client work (even editing photos for wedding blogs from our hammock & in the car ride on the way back down to more Southern California)! ((We even managed to get the best nachos in the world again for lunch/ dinner from Free Birds on our way down to meet our niece at the hospital)!
Big Sur
Visiting Jason’s Mom & Grandma in 2019
Since Jason during busy business work decided against the annual immediate family Christmas trip over Dec ‘18 to Jan ‘19, we finally got to visit Jason’s mom & grandma for the first time in over a year & a half! We got to stay with them for a couple days & nights down in the desert hours east of Los Angeles back in September 7 months ago. During the trip then we go antique with these two (who now live together) and we also got to visit with their 7 pets. These seven pets even include a couple of pigeons that Jason’t mom found nearly dead in their barn and one dog we played with who has sadly since passed away from cancer. We spent most of our time during those days with them just talking and enjoying a few moments of solitude before heading back home that last evening to be ready to photograph another 10 hour wedding the morning after we returned home.
We’re lucky because just 4 months later we got to stay with them for 3 days & nights again (less than a few months ago) for the annual Belated Christmas immediate family visits! We hope to see at least Jason’s mom later on this year when she visits once travel becomes a possibility again!
Visiting Jason’s Mom and Grandma
…and Jason’s mom’s pigeon
Thanks so much for taking a little bit of time during this stressful & scary pandemic to read about our personal adventures & families! It’s nice to look back and re-live a few happy memories from just a half year ago! Given the current atmosphere we highly recommend doing a little bit of rewinding to a happier time or two in the past year to remember that we’ll all get back to normal life in due time. Until then let’s just all do our best to keep our heads up and help each other out in whatever way we can even if that help is bringing a smile to someone’s face. We’ll catch you next Weekly Wednesday!