Catch Up

So most of our posts are dated "April 08" because I was doing a bit of catch up. You see, we're not the best at keeping journals (as was mentioned at the outset of this blog) so we started the blog to possibly make it easier... or at least to get into the habit of recording our adventures. Also, we only started the blog like last month, so we have a lot of catching up to do. So there's your brief explanation of why all the posts thus far are mainly in April and not in the months in which they actually happened, but if you really have a problem knowing when they happened, with titles like "Valentine's Day" and "Christmas" then.... yeah. Okay, so going forward, most stuff ought to be on the right time line. Yay!

A Night on the Town... kinda.

So our friends Tanei and Jed were in town. Jed is an amazing artist (see his work) and was here to do some networking to get in at Pixar. (He is THAT good) Anyways, while they were here they requested my (Josh) services as translator for a trip to China Town... even though it is completely unnecessary. Actually they just wanted to hang out with us.

So they stayed with us on Monday and Tuesday night. Monday, we went to China Town and then to other fun places in San Francisco. It was a lot of fun. We took lots of pictures. Actually, Jed and I were wandering around taking pictures (me being jealous of his beautiful camera the entire time) whilst Katie and Tanei were walking aimlessly around the shops wanting to buy Gongs, or a gong. Anyways, we went to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese food shop to eat a late lunch and the lady there said two things.

1. hello
2. an' theeen?

Now, if you haven't seen "Dude, Where's My Car?" you won't understand how ridiculously funny that was. I didn't think it really happened because in all of my associations with Chinese people (and I've had much more than your average person) I've never experienced it, but here we were and the little Cantonese lady taking our order was responding with the exact same high pitched "an' theeeen?"

Anyways, I tried to share that with Tanei and Jed, but unfortunately they had not seen "Dude, Where's My Car?"

After an interesting lunch, we wandered around the city, rapidly visiting a few of the tourist spots, including: Coit Tower, Lombard St., aaaand that's about it. Oh, wait, no... we visited the Golden Gate Bridge as well, duh. We've got some fun pictures from there! Including one of me revealing my true identity (the super hero one, not the one that looks like i'm gay, cuz i'm not).

Click here for pictures!

So after the bridge, we went over to our other friends' house; Kyle and Bekah Paredes. It was great to see them. They live right near UCSF. Kyle is pretty much a genius and is in Med school at UCSF. We took a nice little walk to a yummy restaurant and enjoyed dinner together. Afterwards we headed back to their place and played Catch Phrase. And of course, the boys won... as always.

Our little trip has spawned a few new activities.

1. Photo Scavenger hunt (for any trip we take, i.e. Barbados. Tanei and Jed are going to Japan and Korea as well. So we are going to make a list for them. This is gonna be awesome!)

2. California Adventures (no, not the theme park): a list of fun things to do in California that we want to accomplish/visit before we kick the bucket...

3. that's about it.

4. If you want to join in on any of the activities, let us know!

Tanei, Jed, Kyle and Bekah, we had lots of fun! We love you guys!

Barbados, here we come!!!

Katie's and my year anniversary is coming up very soon (Wow!) and we wanted to do something really fun (and not toooooo expensive). We both love to travel and so we decided that it would be a great idea to go somewhere exotic. Our first idea was to go to the island of Kauai, Hawaii, but amidst recent airline bankruptcies (Aloha Air, ATA, and others) we decided that Hawaii may not be the destination of choice, so we went back to the drawing board.

After tossing around a few options and a few dollar bills, we are now going to Barbados! We're really, really excited. We'll be down in Barbados for 7 full days (not including the day's worth of travel each way). We'll be staying in the Accra Beach Hotel on the coast of one of Barbados' nicest beaches along the beautiful Caribbean Sea, enjoying the sun, sand and surf. We haven't planned out everything as of this moment (because we just bought the tickets yesterday) but we know we definitely want to go snorkeling and maybe on an island safari tour of sorts.

For those of you viewing our blog who are not sure where Barbados is (or aren't sure where the Caribbean Sea is...) put your finger on the bottom tip of Florida (if you don't know where Florida is, you really should go back to elementary school) and then follow the little string of islands below it, in a southeasterly direction. You'll pass over Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and you'll find a string of little tiny islands to the east of Puerto Rico. Follow those South. Barbados is nearly the last one and the one furthest East. It lies on the edge of the vast expanse known as the Atlantic Ocean. A little further south and you get to Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela. We were thinking we could possibly swim there to check it out but then realized we'd probably die, even though Katie is a great swimmer, she'd probably die trying to tow me behind...

So, yeah... We'll be sure to take pictures and update our blog from our trip to Barbados. But don't worry, there will probably be a couple posts before we go still. WooT!

The Joys of March Birthdays

Valentinte's Day

Our First Camping Trip

Kate and I both really like to camp and, wonderfully enough, we were given camping gear from my family (and from my wife to me and vise versa) for Christmas, so we decided to finally go camping.

We decided on Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It is a really pretty area south of the Bay Area, covered in Redwoods, nestled in deep canyons with contrasting rolling green hills. It really was quite nice. The drive out there, however, wasn't as much fun. It took longer than anticipated and by the time we arrived, it was pitch black... especially deep in the woods. We struggled at first to find an open campsite, venturing into the center of the park, only to find that the only available and open sites were back where we came from.

We made our way back and, after finding a nice place to park ourselves, began setting up our tent with visual assistance from our headlamps. It was fairly simple and didn't take much time at all. The next big feat was the fire. It got pretty chilly and we wanted to be warm. We also wanted to eat! We scavenged for wood scraps and after a bit of struggle, were able to get a nice glowing fire. We prepared our foil dinners and were eating a few s'mores while they were cooking when we heard a quick rustle behind us. I had heard a few kids walking around just seconds before and assumed they were theiving our food, but when I turned around I was met by two beady yellow eyes. stared at each other for a split second and the little raccoon, so meticulously disguised as a burglar, darted off with our stash of Hershey's chocolate bars. It was a hoot!

I gathered my courage, flipped open my pocket knife (just in case) and chased after him, only to find him nestled in a dense barrage of bushes, porking away at our chocolate bars. By the time I had reached him, he had already finished a whole bar and was working on his second. Fortunately, in his hasty retreat, he dropped a couple of chocolate bars on the ground by our table and we were able to use those to feed our craving for s'mores.

After finishing our foil dinners, which were quite tasty I might add, we prepped for bed, curled up in our sleeping bags, and dozed off to sleep. Katie slept fairly well. I, on the other hand, did not. My feet were cold the entire night and thus I was unable to sleep, but when morning broke, I was enthused and ready to build another fire. This time, it wasn't so easy. I scavenged for wood (traveling, by car, to the ranger station to buy a bundle of chopped logs) and worked for a good 20 minutes to get a fire going, only to realize later that I could use the oil (that we later burned b/c it was cool) to get the fire started. Duh...

When the fire was a'blazin, we made tasty donuts using the wonderful method I learned in Boy Scouts... store bought biscuit dough. We were happy with our little breakfast. We cleaned and then took lots of fun pictures. (You can see our album here!) Exhausted, but enthused and happily smelling like campfire, we headed home to our nice hot shower and comfy warm bed. We can't wait for our next campout!

A Married Christmas

So there are extra perks during Christmas time for being married; namely, you get presents from your family AND from your spouse's family... rock on! Anyways, this was our first Christmas married. Whereas some couples might struggle deciding where to go for their first Christmas, it was actually pretty easy for us, which was really nice. Some of Katie's siblings were going away for Christmas (it being their spouse's year to visit family) and my parents were going out to Utah, so it worked out really well that we went to Utah for Christmas as well. Next year, all the Hiltons will be together for Christmas.

It was a lot of fun. We left here on the 22nd and arrived there the morning of the 23rd. We had to get new tires for our Jeep so as to not die in our trek through the Sierras and Rockies. It seemed to take no time at all on the way out and we made it in a timely fashion. We actually had a really clear, snow-free ride all the way to Utah and then BAM! all of a sudden I was sliding along the freeway on 215 past a pile up of cars and other cars facing the wrong direction. It was nuts, but we made it through, thanks to the fabulous 4-wheel drive, and eventually down to my brother's house in Spanish Fork.

It was wonderful to see my family all together again. It was the first time we'd all been together for Christmas since 1998, because of missions and etc. Christmas cheer was everywhere. It was snowy and white and wonderful. We played kickball in the snow (way fun!) and also played dodgeball at the church (also really fun).

On Christmas Eve we had home-made pizzas. Everyone got to decorate their own and then we all shared. They were pretty yummy, for the most part.

We played Buzzword, girls vs. boys, and the boys pulled it off, getting an absolutely necessary full list of 10 within mere milliseconds of the buzzer sounding. It was quite the upset, but we couldn't let the girls win. We're still undefeated.

On Christmas morning, I tried to get a shot of everyone before they woke up, but unfortunately missed a few. It was an absolute fun-fest opening presents. There were more than I've personally ever seen, loaded under and around the Christmas Tree. It was a great time. We started somewhat organized, one person at a time, but that likely could have taken all day so we opened it up to a free-for-all. I would say we were all pleased with what Santa had to bring.

When the commercial Christmas cheer died down a bit, we sat together and turned to the true focus of Christmas, the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ. Dad read us a story by Pres. Monson and Katie played the keyboard while we sang a few Christmas hymns. It is a great time of year.

We headed for home on the 27th, just in time for the mountain pass to get yucky and prohibit anyone without chains of 4-wheel drive. Fortunately enough, we have 4-wheel drive and were able to pass, slowly, through the mountains. Our trip through, sadly though, wasn't without loss. As we switched drivers during one stage of the thoroughfare, one of Katie's new pearl earrings disappeared into the deep white snow. Had we have noticed at the time, we may have been able to recover it, however, it wasn't until miles beyond that we realized the sad misfortune.

We made it home tired and weary, finally escaping the grasp of the endless black and yellow abyss. But spirits were high following a good night's rest, ready to enjoy yet another Christmas celebration a few days later, on New Year's day with the Hiltons.

View pictures from Christmas in Utah and Christmas in California!

Our Honeymoon

The Beginnings

Well, hello! We're finally starting a family blog for Katie and myself (Joshua). Blog posts will come from both of us, so we'll try to make sure we indicate who is the author of a particular blog post so as to not cause too much confusion.

Now, to the Beginnings!

(Neither of us have been very good at keeping a journal of events over the past year and a half, so this is going to be a summary of how we came to be and the experiences we've had up to now. For a Chronological Layout of events, see our Chronology page.)

How We Met The Proposal The Planning The Preparation The Wedding

How We Met Top

It began with the wedding of my friends Kyle Paredes and Bekah Kamau'u (now obviously Bekah Paredes). They were getting married in the Oakland Temple in the summer of 2006 (i believe). My other friends and I were going out to attend but didn't want to spend a lot of money on housing, so I asked my mother if she would call her brother (my uncle) Steve who lived in Piedmont, CA, and ask if we could stay there. My mother said I needed to call, so I did.

We went to the wedding, stayed with my Uncle Steve and Aunt Mary, and I was able to do some catching up with them. Unfortunately, my cousin Kristi was unable to make it up from Santa Clara for a visit, but we did exchange emails and started chatting almost daily. In the Fall of 2006 my roommate, Shawn, and I went to Tahoe to spend a weekend with Kristi. We had a load of fun and later, Kristi made plans to come visit us in Utah. Whilst making plans, she got in touch with an old High School friend, also attending BYU, and arranged to meet up with her during her visit to Utah. Kristi had an epiphany. "Why didn't I try to set you guys up sooner?!" she mentioned to me one day over the phone. This friend just happened to be Katie.

Over the weekend we did lots together. We went out to eat a couple of times, had a dance party, played games, watched a movie and much more. There was no apparent attraction between myself and Katie at the time, however, after Kristi left I "Facebooked" Katie and in a pathetic attempt to be 'smooth' told her I "forgot" to get her phone number.... yeah, real smooth.

I invited her to go babysit my nieces with me that upcoming Saturday, expecting full-well for her to politely decline such a lame excuse for a date. Much to my surprise, she accepted my invitation. We went to lunch at Mi Ranchitos that Friday afternoon (after-which she had another scheduled date) on our first official 'date'. It went well and much fun was had.

Saturday's date was a little different. (This is where our versions of the story begin to differ) Katie came over to my apartment in the evening and my brother (Joe) picked us up to take us down to his house. It was a pleasant trip and most of the conversation was comprised of questions from my brother directed to Katie, some geared toward my embarrassment. Babysitting went well. Apparently we did an amazing job as we were able to get the girls to bed before 9:00pm and had an extra hour and a half before Joe and Beck returned home.

We sat on the couch watching TV, chatting and waiting. After Joe and Beck's return, we continued to chat late into the night. I believe we left for home after 11:00pm. During the midst of conversation, Katie was sitting at my fee and I was rubbing her shoulders. At some point, she reached her hand up to her shoulder and our hands "accidentally" touched, which of course always sends chills up ones' spine. We held hands on the drive home...

Things were going pretty well. Second "official" date in two days and already holding hands. But it doesn't stop there. I walked her to her car and went to hug her. I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to kiss her (I mean, come on... it was only the second date!) I hugged her and was giving her a kiss on her cheek when all of a sudden she turned just mere centimeters and locked her lips to mine. (She may tend to disagree on the details a tad) Anyways, it didn't last long and besides, things tend to move a little more quickly in Provo.

A short six weeks later I found myself in California visiting my cousin, with Shawn, and driving to Katie's parents' house to have a "chat" with her dad, Jerry.

The Proposal Top

January 23, 2007 was a seemingly normal day to all but me. Katie and I had our usual schedules full of class and work (or donating plasma). I asked Katie to meet me for lunch as she had no classes on Tuesdays and after lunch I walked towards my building as she was heading off towards her car. As soon as she was out of sight, I turned back and made a break for my bike. I sent a text message to Katie telling her she should go home and get changed into something warm. She was a bit confused and I responded back that she had about 30 minutes.

I sped home, changed, readied the supplies and headed over to Katie's (arriving 1 or 2 minutes later than the 30 I had previously said) and we headed for a surprise location. She, by then, kind of suspected something coming. I told her we were going snow-shoeing. We went up into the canyon and after parking and packing on our shoes, trekked in a little ways through 1-2 foot snow. Katie was stepping on the backs of my snow-shoes which caused me to decide to walk behind her, which worked perfectly, allowing me to not obstruct her view. She asked where we were going and I replied "not much further."

We came up on a large bush tree where a glimpse of something caught her eye. She walked towards a table set up in the middle of the snow upon which sat a vase of a dozen red roses, a bottle of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider accompanied by two glasses, and lastly a Scrabble board with the letters strategically placed to spell out the words "Katie, Will you marry me?" She turned around to face me to find me on my knee with a ring in my hand. I repeated aloud the words, "Katie, will you marry me?" Her response "It's about time!" ... lovely.

**Special thanks to: Joe for trekking out ahead of us and setting it all up without a trace; Beck for providing the table cloth, glasses, scrabble board and pieces, and husband's time; Mari for the use of the table; and Shawn for the use of his car.

The Planning Top

The Preparation Top

The Wedding Top