Birthday Adventure

Hey everyone, Sasha here. It was my 23rd birthday last weekend, on the 7th. I know, I'm getting up there in years. Our entire street was being paved, so doing your typical birthday outing was out of the question. Instead, we did a little exploration around our house on Discovery Bay after a delicious banana pancake breakfast (lovingly handmade by Bryan and served with tea right in bed!), which was accompanied by an unexpectedly silly Disney channel Jonas marathon. I may be old, but I'll never be too old for the Disney channel! All in all it was a really great birthday and we had a really mellow and romantic day. Also, Bryan gave me the coolest present I've ever seen, let alone received. Scroll down to the bottom to see what it is if you can't wait until you've gotten through all of our woodsy foresty adventurey photos from the day.

This is the beginning of our walk down to the shore. Naturally, we stopped to pose for some tree leaning portrait opportunities

Okay so maybe the forest isn't as untouched as we'd like to think...

Bryan leads the way down what turned out to be a steep and somewhat treacherously slippery trail to the water, but he was an amazing navigator

It was totally worth the trek to see the beautiful bay during sunset at high tide

The shore isn't your usual sand (usual for us Californians, anyway), but small polished pebbles and shells


The slowly setting sun begins its descent


After walking along the shore a little bit we came upon a tiny lagoon!


Bryan of the Bay (would be his Viking conqueror name)

Really cool driftwood was all over the place

We stopped to admire the sunset... and each other

Of course we wore our mud boots, duh


Almost time to head home... don't want to be caught outside in the dark with those cougars around!


For my birthday present, Bryan made me a birch wood wizard's wand on a lathe and also a Peruvian walnut stand to display it when I'm not casting wicked cool spells. It is down to all the specs of the wand I figured I would have if I were attending Hogwarts. It is made of wood from my favorite tree, 14 inches long, and I can only assume there is a phoenix feather core inside.