Huntington Library and Gardens

Let me just say (once again) that I have the sweetest freinds...ever. Bri and Batstone wanted to take me out for my birthday and had  planned this weekend for about a month, since it was the first Saterday we were all available after my birthday! They suprised me with a trip to the Huntington Library and Gardens in Pasedena. I had been there once before when i was about 13. Definitely did not appreciate its beauty as much as I did this time around. We all had so much fun taking pictures and trying to find the different gardens! More pictures to come. :)

This poor fly is about to meet his Maker. This type of plant has fine, sticky hairs on its stem and leaves to that bugs stick to it! ...somehow the plant later eats them i think. 

look at the cool colors on this tree!!!



this plant closes up when you touch its leaves! 

Bri couldn't figure out how to get the microscope to focus. i think she was getting frustrated
the COOLEST bridge in the garden

We share the same birthday!

Yesterday Josh and I went over to my aunt's house to help celebrate my little cousin, Landon's 1st birthday! His party was postponed for about a month 'cuz the poor little guy was in the hospital for about a week. But now he is completely healed and could not be any cuter! He thorougly enjoyed his first cupcake smothered in chocolate icing. Suprisingly he did not have any trouble consuming the whole cupcake. :) 

My dad fell asleep (which is a regular occurance whenever he has a spare moment or two) and Josh decided to cuddle with him. To bad my dad woke up at just the right moment. ha!

I'm 19!

So let me just start out by saying that I have the sweetest boyfreind and the type of freinds that everyone wishes they had. uh huh. Their awsome. :)

My birthday (was yesterday) but started on Saterday when Josh took me out to celebrate all day. He planned a whole day for us and we had such a fun time.We started out at this delicous honey baked ham shop, got some sandwhiches and sat down at the hill overlooking corona del mar. Honestly, that was probably one of the best sandwhiches i have had in a long long time. After driving up and down Laguna Beach for a while, we went to Olive Garden for dinner then went and saw Mall Cop. Hilarious movie. If you are not a fan of Kevin James (originally from King of Queens) then you won't appreciate the humor.

The birds at the park were fearless! Full wing span going straight for the sandwhich!

Yesterday (actually birthday) Batstone, Nina (and the babes), Danielle, Lauren, Lindsey, and Jessica met me at Chipotle for lunch! I had such a great time just spending time with my lovelies. When Nina opened the car door I saw Char sitting in her chair holding a "Happy Birthday" balloon for me. It was the cutest thing. 

The girls brought be a balloon and flowers!
Look at the card she made me! Its me and Nevaeh at the park..next to a flower. I LOVE it. :) 

Both of the girls attached themselves to Jessica right away. It was really sweet.

Thank you everyone for taking time out of your day to come to lunch! i greatly appreciate it and had such a great time with each of you.

P.S. Danielle makes THE COOLEST cards! (as does Nevaeh)

Girl time.

Nina, Nevaeh, Bri, and I had some serious girl time last week...we got our nails done! that was my second experience going to a nail salon (and it is a unique experience each time). I got acrilycs (spelling anyone?) for the first time and i really like them! even more important josh really likes them. ;) however, i keep fearing they will fall off if i bang them at work one more time, and ill admit that it is much harder to type. but they are so worth it. i had a great time with my girls that night. pure fun. nevaeh was excited to get her nails painted (bright red with sparkles) and hopped right up in the chair and put her hands up on the towel ready to go.

After we got our nails done, we checked out the new Cherry on top by Calvary. FYI their plain tart yogurt with fruit is delicous!

As you can see Nevaeh LOVED her ice cream.

Picnic in the Park

Nina suprised me last Monday with the great idea to go on a picnic! Nevaeh came with an old, oversized trucker hat, ready to battle the sun. We had a healthy and delicious lunch (as always) prepared by Nina, then spent a few short minutes on the playground before I had to go back to work.

...She let go to soon and was so very trusting that i would catch her. Thankfully I did, but obviously I wasn't so sure of myself.

Hello Stranger!

So ever since I started working I've been really lazy about posting on my blog. Sorry. So with that in mind, let me just combine a few stories. :)

Last weekend I had the pleasure of going to Disneyland with a few of my girls. Batstone and I headed over to Rachel Pocketts house after church so enjoy an afternoon/evening at Disney. After waiting (literally) 40 minutes to get INTO the parking structure we were able to have quite the enjoyable time waiting in other lines the rest of the day! haha. actually it wasnt that bad. we headed over to California Adventure and we enjoyed taking Batstone on her first time riding the new Toy Story Ride (for those of you who haven't been..your missing out) anyways, it ended up gettings really cold around 6 and i was sick anyways, so we decided to head out without seeing the snow/fireworks that night.

Friday night was Date night! We have had some 'dinner giftcards' for the longest time and we finally decided to use some of them and went to Red Lobster (my first experience there). The food was delicious, but the restaurant itself seemed like a higher end average restaurant..does that make sense? haha. In the front of the restaurant there is a lobster tank with maybe 15-20 live lobsters in it, to look at while you are waiting to be seated. as we were leaving, we passed one of the cooks carrying on of those lobsters back to the kitchen on one of those plastic trays. It was quite a commical site...but im sure a rather tragic end for the little guy.

After dinner we went to the movies and saw Valkyrie. very well done movie on the asassination attempts against Hitler. Very clean and well done. Comes highly recommended, especially for all you history buffs. but anyways! we walk into the theatre and literally NO ONE was there! Granted, we were like 30 minutes early, but we seriously thought we would be watching the movie by ourselves and the movie real man. Almost right after I took this picture a few families mosied in, but it was fun while it lasted.

Happy New Year!

Josh and I have been enjoying Disney a lot lately, so why not go on New Years too? We got there with the mindset that it would be extremely crowded and probably would not be able to ride too many rides. Yes, it was crowded, but not as bad as Disney made it out to be. they completely closed off some of the paths inside the park, making one side of the 'street' an entrance and the other an exit (basically making an inconvenient circle around the park). I'm not explaining it well enough for you to sympathize with our frustration, but basically it made it very difficult for us to get where we wanted to be. Needless to say, we went on a few rides here and there (walked right onto the Monsters Inc ride) and watched the fireworks at 9:30. After that we left the park to get away from the annoying people and find some good coffee. Instead of going back into Disney for the midnight fireworks we decided to head over to California Adventure and experience the New Year from a much less crowded, yet just as exciting stand point. Both parks had a stage and DJ, but the Disney side was more family oriented with mickey mouse dancing around on stage and California Adventure was more of a dance party. Both parks were enjoyable, but i think we both enjoyed the atmosphere at California Adventure much more: and there was probably only a few hundred people vs a few thousand. :) (I'm not a fan of big crowds so this worked out perfect)

New Years Day we celebrated with a group of people from the Bible College and had a blast hanging out and exchanging white elephant gifts. My boss (and former teacher) Erik and his wife Lynette have four kids, their youngest being Chloe, who is simply a doll. She is the most chill baby (maybe even more so than Josh's little cousin Aiden..previous post) and pretty content to entertain herself. Definitly does not give smiles away to just anyone (josh snuck a small smile out of her and of course 'daddy' got plenty of smiles), but is still one of the sweetest babies.