We Bought a House!!

After over a year of looking for a house in El Dorado Hills, we bought a house! Escrow should close August 15th. The house is a bank owned home that needs some TLC. We will be painting the inside ourselves and putting in new carpet. So if anyone wants to help paint, feel free to join us!! It is a large house with plenty of room for us to grow into. We are hoping that we won't have to move again for a very long time. The house is in an established neighborhood of El Dorado Hills, it is on a 1/3 of an acre and has established oak trees in the backyard. The house has 5 bedrooms, so if anyone wants to come visit you are always welcome!!

We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we are so excited to get established in Northern California. The house is about two minutes from my school and about 10 minutes from Patrick's school. So it's pretty much the perfect location for us.

Two Years

On 8/6 we celebrated our two year anniversary. Patrick planned the whole thing and surprised me with a trip to Napa Valley. He didn't tell me where we were going until we pulled onto the highway for Napa Valley/Sonoma. He then told me that we were going to be spending the night in Calistoga. We checked into our hotel and then went and drove around. The vineyards were so beautiful! I loved it! We went out to a nice dinner in St. Helena where Patrick said he had the best pizza in his entire life - that is quite a compliment coming from him! Patrick then told me that early the next morning we would be going for a ride in a hot air balloon! I was so excited!!

We had to meet at 5:30 am to go up in the hot air balloon, so it was an early morning, but worth it. We met at a restaurant then they drove us to the launch site. There were a total of 3 balloons and each one held 10-12 people. We had so much fun. You just feel like you are floating. The pilot actually took us down to this little stream and barely touched the basket in the water and took us up again.

They took us back to the restaurant and served us bruch. After that we went to the Napa Valley farmers market where we got to taste the best fruit. It is all organic and yummy!! It was amazing and truly a memorable anniversary. I have the best husband in the world!! =)

South Lake Tahoe Backpacking

Colleen and I wanted to get away for a few days beofre going back to school. We decided to go backpacking in an area just south of Lake Tahoe. Living in Folsom, the area was only 90 minutes away which made it an easy drive.


We were a bit concerned that there would be a lot of smoke in the air from all of the California wildfires. Descending down the grade into the Lake Tahoe area from highway 50, there was a visible haze over the lake. It was a 5 minute drive south on Highway 89 to the the trail.

After beginning our journey from the trailhead, there was a half-mile climb to reach Big Meadow. At the meadow we were excited to see smoke free blue skies as we hiked further south.

After a good 3 mile trek, we arrived at our destination for the evening, Round Lake. We walked around the lake for quite some time trying to find a good campsite. I think Colleen was ready to kill me after we passed ten perfectly good campsites and had to do some boulder hopping to reach the inviting area on the southwest side of the lake. The campsite did give us a nice view of the unique "dardanelle" rock formations surrounding the lake.

Colleen and I had a wonderful time at Round Lake and we hiked out after only one night. We hope to go back to the area on a longer trip to visit some of the other lakes in the area (Dardanelles Lake, Meiss Lake, Showers Lake). Next time I'll be sure to bring a fishing pole as we watched a father and son catch a nice brook trout on a fly rod.