Lobsterfest!

Since the wedding, we have had a lot more time to explore and experience everything LA has to offer. One thing that we did find and thought could be really fun was Lobsterfest at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro. This festival had the two things we love most: lobster and dogs - this festival is known for their dog parade.

We decided to invite our friends Bridget and Ely, who we met at our Catholic Engaged Couples Encounter, a weekend that we spent up in Santa Barbara preparing for the wedding. We became fast friends with them, bonding over wedding planning and our love for Hawaii.

It was one of the best days filled with eating fresh flown in that day Maine Lobster (we saw the airline containers in the back), the dog parade, a concert in the grass and did we mention the dog parade? The parade was really cool where owners got to dress up their dogs in handmade costumes that had to resemble in some way a lobster. As you can imagine the costumes varied from creative to thrown together to out there...Needless to say, we will definitely be going back to Lobsterfest next year!

Kasey and Connor's Wedding

The last wedding of the summer was right here in Manhattan Beach. Mahina's Theta sister Kasey Wafer got engaged to her longtime boyfriend Connor Stinson a couple of weeks after we got engaged and were married at Kasey's childhood church, Manhattan Beach Community Church. Mahina and Kasey had spent much of the last year trading wedding planning ideas, vendors and anything weddings, so Mahina was especially excited for Kasey's wedding.

We met up in the early afternoon with Jill, Jenna,  Autumn and Savanna at their hotel before heading over to the church together...pre-gaming is the best way to put it really. We all knew this was going to be a fun night. A couple of drinks later and it was time to make our way over to the Church.

When we got to the Church and managed to find parking we headed in and grabbed some seats. The Church was quickly filling up and before we knew it, the ceremony had begun. Wedding ceremonies are really a special thing, Kasey and Connor had a beautiful ceremony as all their family and friends looked on. Congratulations you two!

Labor Day Weekend

With a three day weekend ahead of us, we decided to head out to the Lake of the Ozarks to visit Mahina's parents in their new lake house. As we looked online for tickets we realized that we could redeeem some airlines miles for first class seats to St. Louis and quickly jumped at the chance of flying first class, a first for both of us.

We caught the last flight out to St. Louis, which would put us in at about 10pm local time. On the way we enjoyed the true flying experience up front, even if it was only for 3 hours. As soon as the plane took off, the stewardress was around to give us a drink and a bowl of warm nuts. Things were off to a great start for our weekend and as the dinner service and dessert came around we know we looked like total first class amateurs as we soaked up the experience while the regulars around us probably chuckled. Sad as it was to get off the plane, we landed in Missouri looking forward to a weekend of fun. The final first class perk was the quick arrival of our bags in the baggage claim and it was off to hit the highway with Mahina's parents.

The drive to the Ozarks was smooth and we quickly arrived by about 1am. As we all settled down for the night, the excitement of the coming weekend was already building. The next morning things kicked off as we spent a relaxing morning catching up on recent weeks and enjoying the view of the water. The house sits at mile marker 32 in a great spot of the lake that doesn't get a ridiculous amount of traffic, but does get busy especially over this weekend.

We all spent the next couple of days playing "May I?" and riding around on the jet skis, just having a lot of fun. We would go into town every now and then as we needed to grab supplies, but otherwise our time was spent sitting on the lake and spending time with the Aalbers.

It was tough to admit the weekend was coming to an end, but we had to get back to LA and most importantly pick up the dogs. We had a great time this weekend and look forward to many more jet-skiing adventurers.