Malibu, CA

Josh has been traveling to a lot of neat places lately and I have always stayed home and worked, but this year I made sure I got to have some fun too! He has already gone to California twice, once already this year, so when plans started happening to make a second trip, I made sure I got to go! I had only been to California once, but that was only on my way to Ensenada, Mexico to work at an orphanage for a week. It is always amazing to see what else God has made...and now that I have seen Malibu, I think Michigan got the short end of the creative stick!

Josh was speaking at the Pepperdine Lectureships on Thursday and Friday of last week, so we flew out Wednesday morning and stayed through Sunday afternoon. We stayed on campus in the dorms, and let me tell you I wanted to do my undergraduate again after seeing their campus! It is tough looking at the mountains and the ocean wherever you are! Malibu's temperatures are pretty cool because of the winds, it never gets over 80 and was in the mid 60s while we were there. The flowers are just gorgeous....seeing that they grow all year long!

Josh and I decided to start our own tradition last summer that wherever we were, we would go to the nearest baseball game...in hopes that one day we would see every major league team in their home stadium! We braved the Los Angeles traffic and went to see the Angels play in Anaheim. (It took 3 1/2 hours to get there in rush hour, and 45 minutes to get back.) I will never complain about traffic again!

On Saturday, we visited a couple strip malls (only in Malibu do you find Ralph Lauren and Banana Republic as the cheap stores in a strip mall! Needless to say, my souvenir was a cheap t-shirt in a surf shop.

We drove through the mountains to get to Fresno, CA for worship the next morning, the College Church is a really neat church that hosts the ZOE Conference every year. We stayed with some really fun people that Josh had met when he did the ZOE conference. It was also in Fresno that I saw my first ever grapefruit tree and lemon tree...how cool is that?! You can just pick your breakfast out of the backyard! After Josh preached we ran out to get to our flight to come back home and now we are still trying to get used to Eastern Time!

Before I go, I wanted you to meet my new friend from the beach!