The Happiest Place!

It's been quite a few weeks but I'm finally finding some time to document our trip to Disneyland at the beginning of December. We had this trip planned before we even moved to California because my sister Emily has had her little girls earning money for a family Disneyland trip for forever ! Moving to California made meeting them there a perfect opportunity. It was the first time we got to see family in 5 months so not only was that fantastic but we got to do it in the happiest place on earth! We went to Disneyland for our anniversary but dare I say that this trip was even better. There is just something about going to Disneyland with kids that makes it a little more magical. And for those of you who have not been there during Christmas time, I HIGHLY recommend it. I'm not sure I ever want to go back any other time besides Christmas. Ok that's not true but it was so cool to see it transformed into a Christmas extravaganza. They do a lot of pretty neat stuff for Christmas. My favorite was what they did with It's a Small World. I can't even explain it but let's just say there were a lot of lights involved and the whole building became a huge projector for showing Christmas cartoons and playing music every 15 minutes or so. Technology these day! Anyway, I couldn't have asked for a better day! Emes, thanks for sharing your cute little family with us for the day. Let's do it again next year!

And before I sign off, can someone please tell me what's up with Tinkerbell? I'm just having a hard time trying to get the connection between a sweet little fairy and a skull and crossbones. Gangsta.

Or perhaps this hat makes more sense?

No? Yeah, I didn't think so. You're pushing it Disney!

The Perks of California

One great things about California is that there are so many great and beautiful things to go see and do. Fresno is about 3 hours in any direction from just about everything cool in California. Over the Thanksgiving weekend JR and I went on a day trip to Monterey with a couple of our friends. This was the first time we'd been to the Central Coast and it was gorgeous! We had a blast. Our first stop was actually in Carmel at California's jewel of a state park, Point Lobos. Point Lobos was such a great combination of forest that you could hike around in and then ocean cliffs and hidden beaches. We had a nice little picnic there before heading over to the Pier at Monterey Bay where we enjoyed shop hopping and harbor views. There is also a fun little downtown area called Cannery Row with restaurants and shops, etc.
Our friends Maria and Mitch
This next series of pictures was pretty hilarious to us. There was this rock on the beach where the water was coming in and surrounding it and then the water would go back down and there would be sand. Well JR and Mitch decided it would be great fun to run really fast on to the rock when the water was receded. So they did just that. What they weren't taking in to consideration was the that the waves were actually very big so once they were on the rock they got a little freaked out.
In fact, Mitch got so freaked out that he didn't last long on that rock and panicked and jumped in the water before the wave went back down and started running for his life. We all got a really good laugh at his face in this next picture. Look at the sheer terror! Haha! We zoomed in on his face several times that day.
Needless to say Mitch spent the rest of the day with wet pants and shoes. JR got his share too.












It was really great to get away, hang out with friends, and enjoy the beautiful earth that we live on!

I'm no Martha Stewart

Thanksgiving this year was quite the adventure. At the end of the day I told JR that it was one of the most eventful uneventful events I've ever had the pleasure of participating in. If you remember back a couple posts ago I had decided I would try to cook a full Thanksgiving meal for the two of us. Although I may not be Martha Stewart I think it turned out pretty dang well. I wish I had been Martha Stewart though because then I would have had about a thousand people to help me prepare this meal. Instead I started cooking pies at 10 am and wrapped up with everything else around 3:30 pm or so. That's about 5 hours of straight cooking. Hence why it was such an eventful uneventful day. I turned on the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade, rolled up my sleeves and got to work. Thank goodness for our upstairs neighbors being gone and leaving us their house key to cat sit because having and extra oven was pretty helpful.
Although it took super long to do everything I actually really enjoyed it. I had to admit it sure was a lot of work for about 10 minutes of eating, you might even call it somewhat anti-climactic. I was especially proud of the fact that nothing came from a box or was pre-packaged at all. Even my stuffing started as french bread! Our menu consisted of Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, green bean casserole, home made rolls, and we finished up with a peaches and cream pie. We went with a turkey breast rather than a full one considering a full turkey may have been a little much for 2 people. My biggest challenge turned out to be the rolls. Some day I'll get rolls down but they didn't rise quite right. I also struggled a bit with the pie crust because I was reading the recipe wrong and didn't put in enough butter before I cooked it. I made 2 pies and with one of them the crust totally fell apart when filling it but I was able make an emergency crust and saved Thanksgiving. I'm glad Thanksgiving isn't for another year because I'm not quite ready to commit to another meal like that for at least a year. It sure made me appreciate moms the world over!






We also put up our Christmas tree after dinner. Since we are going to be gone half of December we decided to get the decorations up early so we could enjoy it longer in our home. Our tree is so beautiful this year! I'm quite pleased with it. It's amazing the difference a nice artificial tree and some new ornaments can make!




And here we are enjoying our egg nog. It's always been my tradition to drink egg nog while decorating the Christmas tree.

By the way, JR is obsessed with egg nog. No, really. I had bought half gallon to drink when decorating the Christmas tree and when I wouldn't let him drink it early you know what he did? He went out and bought not 1, not 2, but 3 half gallons of egg nog to drink and for awhile was trying to keep them hid from me. What a silly man he is. He sure does LOVE egg nog.
We spent Thanksgiving night with friends playing games and eating yummy desserts. It was a really good day! We missed family but were still able to make special.

Tear ;(

This was me last Friday:



Oh how happy and carefree I was.

This was me on Saturday...and today and every day for way too long:



Don't be fooled by the happy look on my face, I am not pleased with this hair cut. It is WAY shorter than what I wanted. So sad. It's gonna take forever to grow out too. Dang it all!

SYTYCD- happy birthday me!

I finally got to use my birthday present...tickets to So You Think You Can Dance on tour. It was really good! It was quite a wait but well worth it. I think it was really well done and seeing the dances in person just made me realize why I love that show so much! For anyone who followed last season you'll know that it was Janine to won it in the end but she really wasn't featured very much in the tour which I thought was a bit strange but everyone was so good. Seeing things like that just make me want to be a dancer! I think it may be a little late for me though, what do you think? Anyways, here are some of the highlights:
This first pictures is kind of funny because since the booklets were $10 we opted out of purchasing one but JR grabbed a lady who had just bought one and asked if we could take a picture with it. Turns out that this lady happened to be the aunt of Jason, one of the dancers who was from Fresno. Oh trust me, Fresno made a big fuss out of Jason! Once we found out she was the aunt we were hoping she would be charmed by us and invite us backstage with her. She didn't. Perhaps it was he expression on my face that did her in.


This next one is a dance all about a guys obsession with this girl's butt. Oh the funny concepts they come up with. I love when the dances have stories behind them. Most of the dances on SYTYCD have stories.

The oh same famous local Jason being welcomed by his home town:






Probably my favorite dance was about addictions. The guy in the dance below portrayed the girl's addiction. It was really well done. If you've never watched it before you should look it up on youtube or something...if you like dance anyways. If you don't like dance then you probably hate this whole post. It's ok though because I still love it...and still want to be a dance superstar.
I'm so glad JR thought to get me tickets to this. So much fun!