I know that it hass been awhile since I have posted an update. I guess things have been really busy!

A few weeks ago we went to NY for a wedding and then to Charleston, SC for a week to go to the beach with my parents. It was nice to get back to some East-coast weather! Over Labor Day weekend we will head to Seattle. Back in March we went to Yosemite and had some amazing weather and great views while the snow was just starting to melt. You can check out my photos on Flickr to see some of our random activities in SF.

On the work front, things have been going well. I worked on Blog It, a Facebook Application (also for the iPhone). Now we are working on an OpenSocial app for LinkedIn, too. The web 2.0 world is always buzzing it seems.

You can find more of the family activities on the family blog, although the jury is still out on just how frequent anyone will be posting there.

Recently I started a new job at Six Apart, a software company that makes blogging software and websites.

For Christmas we went to both Atlanta and Charlotte to see family, which was nice and relaxing. Photos coming soon.

In other news, it's been just downright cold and rainy in San Francisco lately. Soon it will get warmer (well, sortof), but in the meantime we're heading to Tahoe soon!

For our one year anniversary, we took a nice long weekend trip to the Big Island of Hawaii. We snorkeled off of the beach and saw sea turtles and lots of tropical fish. We also went scuba diving one night with huge manta rays. Then we stayed a few nights up by the volcano. The lava was flowing in a place where we couldn't see it, but it was interesting to see all of the hard black rock along the shore and the craters at the top. Check out the photos.

We took a recent vacation up the coast of California and into Oregon. Driving up highway 101 from San Francisco, we stopped at Redwood National Park and the surrounding areas. The trees in that area are huge. After that we drove up the coast of Oregon and eventually made it to Portland. Oregon's coast is spectacular and very dramatic. And Portland is a nice town as well. The downtown area has an almost European feel to it. Everything is withing walking distance to everything else, and the newly refurbished loft-condos still have that old feeling which adds to the city's charm. From Portland we headed south to Crater Lake National Park. This became our favorite spot on the trip, and the photos will hopefully do it justice. The lake is so amazingly clear and blue that it is hard to describe. The weather also became warmer for us just as we arrived, which probably helped us a bit, too. Finally, we went further south to Lassen Volcanic national park in northern California. The whole area is an old volcano that erupted in the early 1900's, and the landscape is covered in mountains and boiling pits of mud. The volcanic activity can be seen all over the area.

Check out the photos by clicking here.

Also, a few weeks before our trip we went to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks for a weekend of camping. Photos from that trip can be found in the California section.

Athena is our new kitten. She is 12 weeks old and very playful. She sleeps the day away, but when she's awake, she is a non-stop ball of energy. Her hobbies include pouncing on invisible objects, chasing laser pointers, and losing her toy mouse.

We made it, and we are finally settled into our new apartment in San Francisco. We returned from our trip just before Christmas and saw the families. Then, we made the long drive across the U.S. from Charolotte to San Francisco, stopping in Memphis, somewhere in Texas, Williams, AZ, and then central California.We arrived in Oakland and had a temporary apartment there for a few weeks so that we could do some serious apartment searching and job hunting for Bryan. We found a great apartment in Nob Hill (except for the uphill part!) and the neighborhood is very quaint. The Cable Car line is even right in front of our building. Check out the San Francisco photos for some shots of our area.

It seems like a long time ago now, but the wedding in September was great. We had a lot of fun and everything went really well. The weather ended up being perfect for our outdoor ceremony in the gardens, and the reception came together without any problems. Everyone seemed to have a great time!

And then, our three month voyage through Southeast Asia was amazing. We saw so many things and places, and met so many people, that it is hard to sum it up in a paragraph. The two of us combined also took about six thousand photos. If you want to read more on that, then head over to our Southeast Asia travel diary. We're still in the process of uploading photos, so check back often.

Friday was our last day at work. It was a strange feeling to leave a job that I have been at for just over 5 years. Friday was also our last full day in Washington D.C. It's sad to leave friends behind, but I'm also very excited for our upcoming plans. Over the last few years we've met a lot of great people and made some good friends. D.C. is a great city, but now it's time to move on.

Friday evening was spent packing the car. I have never put so much stuff in my car before. There was hardly enough room for Laurie. The TV had to go in the front seat because it was just too big to fit into the back or the trunk. That left just a little space in the back for her to squeeze in. In the end, we almost got it all in, but we had to leave a few things behind such as our relatively new vacuum cleaner and the (very old) computer monitor. We managed to make it down to Charlotte on Saturday, and now we are finishing up the last minute wedding planning before we head to Durham on Thursday. The wedding will of course be on Saturday, and then on Monday we leave for Hong Kong.

So not only are we excited about the wedding, but also our honeymoon. We'll be posting pictures and stories of our travels on our Southeast Asia website occasionally so that all of our friends and family can keep up with our whereabouts.

For those of you that haven't heard, our wedding is coming up soon. The week before the wedding we will be ending our jobs here in D.C. After the wedding, we will be traveling to Southeast Asia for three months. We're headed to Hong Kong first, and will make our way though southern China, south through Vietnam, through Cambodia, to the north of Thailand, then to southern Thailand for the nice beaches. Finally, we will head south through pennisular Malaysia and then on to Singapore. We'll return to the U.S. right before Christmas. After that, we'll be moving to sunny San Francisco to start our new life together. We're very exicted about all of this, we have a lot going on and can't wait to get started!

On Sunday, October 20th, I completed the Marine Corp Marathon. It was a fun event (except for that whole "running" thing) and the weather was perfect. Congrats to all of my friends that ran it with me, too. Check out some photos here.

For those of you that haven't heard, we're engaged! We are very excited and want to say thanks to all of our friends for their nice words over the past few weeks. We're planning on having a ceremony in the Duke Gardens in September of 2006. Check out our wedding website.