Scooby Doo!

My company had its first costume contest this year for Halloween. Tons of people dressed up, but my department was the only one with a theme. Everyone thought it was awesome & I'll bet next year there are other departments who coordinate their costumes, too. The first place prize went to a lady who dressed up as "Cousin It." There's no winning against someone who's dressed in head-to-toe hair. But we had lots of fun! :)

My coworker, Fatima, and I coordinated everything. The guys said "As long as you bring the clothes, we'll wear them." Note our awesome outfit-shoe coordination.

Left to right: Fatima (Velma), Doug (Shaggy), Adam (Scooby Doo), Me (Daphne), and our boss Ralph (Fred)

Animal Watching & Apple Picking

We've had a couple of fun-filled weekends recently. My company is great about hosting annual events like our summer picnic for employees and their families. This year, our picnic was at the San Diego Zoo! They rented out the private party area and had food, animal presentations, and activities for the kids. They also gave everyone a day pass to the zoo so we could explore for the rest of the day. I got to the zoo early to help some coworkers at registration.

Here are some photos of the gorgeous animals the trainers brought to our picnic area. (These pictures were taken by someone else with our company camera)

After we had eaten & seen some of the animals, Dan & I spent the rest of the afternoon with my coworker, Fatima, and her family.

The weather was perfect and we got to see the entire zoo by way of guided bus tour, which normally costs extra but was included in our company package for that day. The San Diego Zoo is huge and we're usually exhausted from walking around the park for hours, so riding the bus & seeing the major sights in 40 minutes felt like a treat!

This past weekend, we had another first experience - apple picking! We drove to a little mountain town called Julian with our friends, Paul & Ann and their son Eli. Julian is well-known for their apple orchards and fresh apple pies, jellies, candy, etc. We had heard about their fall apple harvesting season, so we jumped at the chance to join Paul & Ann when they mentioned they were going apple picking.

The apples were tiny, but crisp & delicious!

Since we went late in the season, we had to search pretty hard for good apples. Many of the trees had been picked over and what was left on the branches was beginning to rot. It was like a treasure hunt, but it paid off in the end.

Eli picked his first apple!

And then he held onto it the whole day.

Getting there...it took us longer than we expected to fill our bag!

A few of the apple trees had pretty fall colors

Ann, Paul & Eli

After we left the orchard, we hit some horse-and-carriage traffic on our way back into Julian

There were more horse-drawn carriages in town, including this tiny pony cart!
We walked for a while around Julian's main street & shops

And then finished the day with freshly baked apple pie - of course!

Mmmmm... apple caramel crumb pie

The whole group outside Mom's, the best apple pie in town!

Team Kailey

This weekend, we met our friends Dave, Cynthia, & Olivia at SeaWorld for the "Shamu & You" fundraising walk to benefit Rady Children's Hospital. Dave & Cynthia's youngest daughter, Kailey, had to undergo heart surgery when she was just one and a half months old. She's thankfully recovering very well because of God's amazing grace and the excellent care she received at Children's, and is currently awaiting another surgery to repair her esophagus. We were excited to form "Team Kailey" and represent her at the walk!

Team Kailey (left to right): Cynthia, Dave, Katie, Dan, me, and big sister Olivia in front

Sweet Kailey

We wore signs saying "I'm walking for Kailey," and we got a nice shout-out from the announcer at the start line! The walk was SO crowded that it was slow going a lot of the time. It was great to see so many people supporting Children's, but man, they had us packed tight!

SeaWorld brought out some animals for the kids to meet along the way. The highlight for Olivia was meeting Pete the penguin!

She also met this llama, whose name we didn't get because she was less than thrilled about getting too close to him. (He freaked me out a little, too, I'm not going to lie.)

Finishing up the one-mile walk. There was another path that continued for 3 more miles, which we opted out of because we were starving!

Afterwards, we ate a hearty breakfast at the Broken Yolk. Dan stood no chance whatsoever against that smile & those flirty eyes. :)

We love this family! Please keep Kailey in your prayers! We hope next year we can do the walk with her, too!

As a sidenote, this was Dan's first event with a "race bib." He's now rocking a personal best time of 1 hour and 15 minutes for a 1 mile race. I told him he might want to work on his pace a little. Ha!