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.

A week of Christmas

The entire week of Christmas (besides Christmas Day) Josh and I spent with his family. His cousin Marlo and her family flew down from Oregon, Lynnea and her little boy, Makenna, flew out from Hawaii, and Dreason flew here from Rome (he is on the US nat'l water polo team and tranes in Italy). The whole week we spent lounging around, going to see Christmas lights at Balboa, visiting Atlantis park, going out to dinner, etc. Over all it was a good time. Here are a few pictures from our week.

Paige, Griffen, and Makenna

i know. everyone wants my sun glasses. ;)

There were bunnies running around at the park! we got so close to one of them!

Josh was in love with little Aiden....

...but not as much as Janice..she was head over heals for the little guy. can't blame her though. he was adorable and always smiling.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas day went really well. Josh was able to spend the day with me, get the house ready, relax together, lots of family came over, and of course we all looked forward to seeing baby Landon. My cousin Eric and his wife Amber (whom i love dearly) gave birth to Landon 10 months ago ON MY BIRTHDAY! ha! so special. anyways, he is darling, and in love with animals: specifically dogs.

If any of you know my dog Missy, she is ever so hiper whenever anyone come to our house. she will jump on you and sit ON your foot until she gets your undivided attention. But when she sees babies, she definitly realizes how fragile they are and makes a point to keep her distance. She will push herself against you and be running around, but the second she sees a baby she will bow her head down, slowly walk over to the baby, sniff, and just sit there carefully, making sure no harm comes to him. This time she totally ignored the baby(which she has never done) and just let him coo and giggle at her as he was estatically trying to reach for her. It was the cutest thing.

Missy lay just out of Landon's reach as he would try to reach for her. Landon was shaking his arms uncontrolably at one point becuase he was so excited to see her. :)

Sadly, Missy was diagnosed with bone cancer on Christmast Eve and the vet does not expect her to last much longer. maybe another month. :( Tragic thought to think of losing such a key part of our family. Its hard to see her in pain, but i know that God will help us through this like he has carried us through everything else.

Work or Play?

So for the few of you who haven't heard...i don't babysit anymore!! well i do on occasion, but i have a real job now! I was casually praying about possibly needing a job and God obviously heard my prayers, and put it on the hearts of those at Calvary to ask me to work at the Bible College! so now i am the admissions, registar, and secretary to Erik Tribble at the extension campus at Costa Mesa. This is my third week and i am loving it so far! Jessica and i share the duties of running the Bible College, so it is really chill and we get along great. Now that i work 40 hours a week, it is hard for me to regularly see my peeps and thus i am missing you guys! come have lunch with me sometime and we'll catch up!
Yes, we had to work half day on Christmas Eve, but we spent the day having tons of fun playing Jenga, Mad Gab, and going to Brueggers Bagels for Breakfast.

In the EYE of the beholder

In this case, we are talking about a FISHeye. heck yes. I got a fisheye converter for Christmas. Let me just say that I am stoked. So I was browsing the internet one day..actually that sounds like most of my days..this time looking for fisheye lenses. I was getting discouraged when all i could find were $500-$1,000 lenses. Sheeeesh! I went on Yahoo!Answers and found out that you could get a lense converter that just sits on the end of your current lense, gets the same job done and only costs $30-$40! What a deal! So I told my mom this would be something that i would want for Christmas (cuz they are always asking and i never know what i want..until now!) so suprisngly my mom was like, "Ok, go ahead and get it!" So it came in the mail on Wednesday and I was able to take it to church and mess around with it a little bit before I had to surrender it to my mother to wrap for me..to REopen on Christmas morning. :)

aawwww...AbraHAM has a sensitive side. ;)

i love the angle of way the computer bends!

so its kind of weird using a fisheye because you have to get barely an inch away from whatever you are photographing for it to bubble like that. (Ex: Grant was so close to our faces when he took this last picture, that i honestly thought he was only taking a picture of Josh's eye. ha!) I'm so excited and can't wait to mess around with it some more.

School is out for the Winter!