Every year since the year after we started dating, I took part of the Carpenter tradition of painting pumpkins. I remember back in 2004 when I did my first pumpkin painting and unlike the Carpenter family I have zero artistic skill, so needless to say I was both nervous and intimidated knowing that they were all super artistic. 

Needless to say ten years later we are keeping the tradition alive. Jenn and I had our whole Sunday planned out. We woke up at a reasonable time and headed to Strawberry Farms in Irvine to go pick up our pumpkin. Having never gone there we were amazed with how gigantic the place was. I mean truly enormous. We spent quite a bit of time searching for the "perfect pumpkin" and managed to stumble on three great ones. 

At 27 years old and living in Southern California my entire life I have no excuse for never making the short journey (distance wise) to both Beverly Hills and the Griffith Observatory. Better then late then never. 

Jenn and I love Orange County so its not very often we journey out of our nest, but last Saturday (8/17) we decided it was time. We went first down to Beverly Hills and managed to get there without much traffic. Our iPhone's got us lost (nothing new there) but we managed to get there and even got free valet parking right on Rodeo Dr.   

Today is my birthday. I'm 27 years old and I'm in a reflective mood. A few weeks ago (7/17) I woke up in the middle of the night feeling dreadful. I knew right away given my chills that I had a fever. I went back to sleep hoping that would be the cure, but woke up with a 102 fever. 

A few weeks ago Jenn and I decided that we needed to start doing some quick weekend getaways. Didn't even have to be overnight we just wanted to get out of our Newport Beach/ Irvine comfort zone. We live in Orange County and there are some beautiful places near by so we decided lets go on a small adventure and just see what's happening in Laguna.

Last year Jenn and I did our first ever "favorite things" list from the year. Unlike my Year-In-Review which more gives a high level summary of the year, our favorite things goes to the stuff that we liked throughout the year whether it be TV, Music, Movies, Games, etc. 

So we are back now with our favorite things from 2012! 

I’ve been writing these Year-End posts for a long time now and I am extremely grateful for it. Before writing this years post I went back and read the past couple of years. One thing struck me loud and clear, every year you can see how truly blessed we are. God has been with us through some serious lows and incredible highs. Through it all we have learned so much, grown together, and had an incredible journey.