Thanksgiving Fun

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with fun, family and games. Wednesday I went to my parents house to help clean up and get ready for guests. Peter came over after work and then Abbie, Rafe and their dog Ruby showed up around 6:30. They drove down from the bay area. Ruby is 13 and Gracie (my family's golden retriever) 6 played a bunch. It was funny to watch Ruby bump Gracie with her nose and then spring backward and want to play. Of course Gracie would play, but she had more energy than Ruby, so Ruby would end up leaving the game first. We had a fun evening. Thursday was Turkey Day! Peter volunteered to be in charge of the bird. He brined it(soaked it in water and herbs and stuff) and that made it nice and juicy when it cooked. It was great!

After dinner which was rather early, we all took a nap. Several of us were out for a long time, which made it easy for us to stay up until midnight playing games. Peter and I introduced my family to Apples to Apples, Scum, Pit and we introduced Nerts (which is hard to play with a lot of people) to Peter. We also played Disney Scene It #2. Peter was at the end first, but he missed the winning question and I caught up and beat him :) My mom and sister clearly lost.

Friday morning we made apple pancakes for my family. They are like German pancakes (you cook them in the oven and they fluff up) with apples in them. They are oh so good! Peter's great at making them, and I love them, so we eat them often. Then Abbie, Rafe, Peter and I headed out to La Jolla. We went to the Mangelsen Gallery where we bought a poster of a bear holding a fish. Thomas Mangelsen's most famous photo is called "Catch of the Day" it is of a brown bear standing over a waterfall and a fish jumps out of the water and is headed towards the bear's mouth. My dad has that poster in his office. After that we headed down to the children's pool and watched some cute critters.
At one point there were two divers in the water and they spooked the seals. I took a video clip, but it's not working on this site I keep getting error notes...arg. Basically it was the seals moving rather quickly across the beach. Peter referred to them as giant caterpillars.

It was also low tide, so we went down to the tide pools. Here we have a ton of mussels and a beautiful wave. Next is a dead crab. We think someone purposely put it there because the water was really shallow and it was missing a few parts...We made Rafe touch it to see if it was dead and then for the rest of the day we told him he had dead crab hands. There were also sea anemones everywhere!


Saturday morning we finally decorated our Christmas tree! Then did a little shopping and headed over to raid the fridge for the last remaining pieces of turkey. We had sandwiches and watched a movie.

My break from work was wonderful...I had a whole week off! I got a lot accomplished that I wanted to. I even got to play in my garden. I planted sweet pea seeds and started moving some plants around. My mom informed me that she wanted to turn one of my garden spaces into a cemented area and put a storage container to hide all of the grandkids' toys. This meant me moving some plants around. I started with the strawberries and boysenberries and moved them to the back of the yard where I have other boysenberry plants along the fence. I put the strawberries in front of some roses also in the back area. I still have a bunch of gerberas, carnations, and geraniums to move as well as a few others. However she doesn't plan on cementing the area until after Christmas, so I think I will leave some plants in there so we don't get a muddy area for Gracie to play in. Plus it looks nice with some plants there. I need to get some snap pea seeds into the ground soon, then I'll be all set.

On Tuesday my nephew Joshua-6, came to see what I was doing as I was pulling weeds in the front yard. He asked if he could help and then proceeded to grab giant hedge clippers. I told him he could help trim one plant back by cutting the brown parts. Well thanks to him and my own accidental chop the root in half, we ended up pulling that bush out. He turns to me and says, "Does grandma know you're doing this?" Me-"Well sort of." Joshua-"I think she's going to be mad that you took out her plant." Me-"Well you helped me." Joshua then gets the look of I'm in trouble on his face and then says, "I think I'll go inside now." I reassured him he wouldn't get in trouble and he stayed and helped me awhile longer. I later told my mom and she said she didn't notice the plant missing. There are several out there just like it and they have roots that run. So somewhere it will probably start up again if it hasn't already.

Did we win?

Our Christmas tree is up already...did we beat you?

Yesterday Peter and I went out to lunch at In N Out (don't know what that is...you're missing out) and then went shopping for a tree. We stopped at Mervyns which is going out of business to check out their artificial trees and well they were pretty tacky. Then we headed to Costco and picked out a 7.5 footer with white lights. Peter tried to convince me we needed the one with the LED lights that cost about $30 more. He only wanted it because of the lights. I told him we could buy some LED lights to put on ours...so we got the cheaper one.

Last year we decided to buy an artificial tree because neither one of us wanted to carry a real one up a flight of stairs to get it in the house. Nor did we want to have to constantly clean up the needles, and well artificial ones don't get dried up and pose as a fire danger. This one said it was flame resistant on the package. Anyway last year came and went and we tried to get one after the holidays for real cheap, but we didn't like any and they really weren't cheap. So yes yesterday we bought our first Christmas tree, and in a couple years or less depending on the prices of real trees it will have paid for itself.

So there you have it, we have a tree and it's up with lights on it. Perhaps we'll decorate tonight as we start making stuff for Thanksgiving.

More Babies

A couple days ago Peter informed me that he thought one of our platies and one of our guppies might be pregnant. We decided the guppy looked the biggest so we placed her in the breeding tank. The next morning Peter said the platy had her babies and found one...which later died. I haven't seen any alive in the big tank yet. Well that morning we let the guppy go as she was quite active. This morning Peter caught the guppy and put her back in the breeding tank as she wasn't eating...sure sign that she's going to give birth or has already started. So here is the best pictures I was able to take. So far we have 23 baby guppies and still a really fat mama. In the video I also show you the other breeding tank where we have our survivors from another pregnancy...there's one guppy and one platy left.

Conference, Fires and Disneyland Oh My!

This weekend was quite an adventure. It started out with my co-worker (Vicki) and I driving up to LA for a work conference Thursday night. We stayed the night at my friends house. Friday morning in the wee hours Vicki had an allergy attack which kept her and I up most of the night. Friday morning we knew we had to find another place to stay. On our drive to the conference hotel we called another co-worker (Karin). She did not answer her phone. We called Vicki's husband to have him find us a hotel to stay at (mind you this is within a mile of Disneyland so there are hotels everywhere). A few minutes later Karin calls Vicki back and we beg to stay with her in her hotel and we'll split the cost three ways. Karin retells the story to us: She was checking in when we called her and she did not hear her phone ring. The man checking her in told her there was a mix up and instead of giving her a room with one king sized bed, she was getting a room with two queen sized beds for the same price. The man then asked if she would like an extra room key. She originally said no and then changed her mind and said sure, she might have a friend that wants to freshen up or something. When Karin called us back she said "Things happen for a reason. There was a reason why I got two beds instead of one and there was a reason that I changed my mind and got an extra room key." Vicki and I were of course very grateful.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning were conferences. I only had one seminar that was completely pointless for me to go to, so I walked out. But that was only after about 20 other people had walked out too. Friday and Saturday night our last seminar was over at 5. So Friday we took the hotel shuttle to Downtown Disney and walked around the stores and ate at the Rainforest Cafe. It was fun! There were some fires burning Friday, the sky was a bit murky looking. Saturday it was pretty bad. The sky was quite orange and dirty looking for most of the day. We only went out for lunch and dinner and then stayed in the hotel to watch a movie(which somehow didn't end up on our final bill, though we did say that we watched a movie.) I wasn't feeling terribly well so I fell asleep during the movie. Sunday morning we went to one of the seminars and then headed out to Disneyland. Kim-my friend had to do a scavenger hunt thingy, so she got her friend to meet us in front of the last A in California and he got us into the park for FREE! Mind you it was a park hopper ticket so we got to go to both Disneyland and California Adventure for FREE!
We went to California Adventure first. Did all the major rides including the newest Toy Story which was a 3D interactive thing, it was so fun. While waiting in line there was a Mr. Potato Head that was talking to the guests. He said something to a little girl wearing a gray shirt and she was like "He's not talking to me, he can't be talking to me, he's a toy." It was funny. Then we went Grizzly River Rafting and we all got soaked!!!!! Luckily it was really dry and hot out so we dried quickly. We soared over California, did Maliboomer, California Screamin and the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror to name a few. Then we headed over to Disneyland got a Dole Whip (funny story behind the picture. It was supposed to be a picture, but Vicki somehow got it to do a video clip, so anyway enjoy the short clip of us totally unaware that it's a video.) . We enjoyed the Haunted House, Pirates of the Carribbean and a couple others. We were only at Disneyland for about an hour and then we had to run back and try to catch the 3:50 shuttle back to the hotel. We were there at 3:51 to watch the shuttle drive away. As we sat to wait for half an hour for the next shuttle, one pulled up. The driver said someone didn't show up to pick up some people from a hotel so he had to do an extra drop off and he was headed back to the hotel. So we hopped on. We left the hotel and were back home at 6. I was in bed by 7:30.

That leads me to today. I stayed home from work today and slept all day. I think conferences are cursed. I went to a conference in New York a couple years ago and came home sick. I went to this conference and came home sick as well. Go figure! I hope to be back at work tomorrow, with a box of tissues.

Where's Waldo?

Last night Peter and I participated in a live action Where's Waldo game down at Fashion Valley Mall. We showed up 30 minutes before the rest of the people and were told to go shopping and groups would come and find us, take our picture and then get our signature. There was a Waldo who had the striped shirt and hat. You got more points the faster you found Waldo. There was a cowboy, business people (Greg and Ellen), a rastafarian (Guy that looked like he was from Jamaica), a Chief's Fan, a girl in a zebra striped shirt, and we wore nearly matching hawaiian shirts and khaki pants, we were tourists. It was quite a fun game. I think nearly every group if not every group found us. One group found us inside of a toy store, two groups found us inside SEES candy, two groups found us at the food court, one group found us as we were going down an escalator, one group were sitting on benches and we walked right in front of them and a couple others spotted us as we were walking the mall. It was hilarious, people would yell tourists and then come running to get a picture with us. We got several funny looks from other people shopping at the mall. The groups after they found us they would see us again later on and shout and wave. It was quite a fun night! This was a regional singles ward activity that we were asked to participate in and boy we had so much fun we would totally do it again.

Afterwards we met up with Chris and Mary and headed over to the Cheesecake Factory. I got lemon raspberry cream cheese cake and it was delicious! I was the only one to eat all of mine. Peter got a super rich chocolate mousse, Mary got a peanut butter kind and Chris got dulce de leche. We sampled each others, I liked mine best but Chris' was a close second. Peter's and Mary's were really rich, a wee bit too rich for me.

Grocery Shopping

Reasons why you should not go grocery shopping on an empty stomach:

1. 1 Cherry cheesecake
2. 5 Bags of Chex Mix, yes not one, not two, but five bags!
3. 2 Boxes of granola bars
4. 3 Snack packs of fruit cups, you haven't bought these since you were little, yet they jumped into the cart.
5. 3 bags of potato chips, we got these first then went for the 5 bags of Chex Mix.
6. 1 bag of Hershey Heath Bar Baking Chips-never know when we'll need this.
7. 1 box of banana bread mix-I like the fresh stuff better, but this sounded good too and I was hungry.
8. 1 container of Pillsbury Orange rolls (enough for 8 people)
9. 1 container of Pillsbury Cinnamon rolls (enough for 8 again, or two really hungry stomachs)
10. 3 boxes of Toaster Strudel (makes a great breakfast....for the next 18 days)
11. 4 Marie Calendar's TV dinners (for those days that neither one of us wants to cook)
12. 11 frozen burritos (makes a quick lunch at work)
13. Taquitos-they didn't have my favorite kind so, this kind better taste good.
14. 2 bags of cookie mix-perhaps we'll put the Heath baking chips in them.
15. Our Vons has a Panda Express inside it. We ran into Greg and Ellen and they were going to pick up Panda Express for dinner, so we decided that sounded so much better than one of the TV dinners that we had planned on. So 1-3 item meal rounds out the items that jumped into our cart.

Yes we did manage to get some healthy stuff too. And the bill rounded out to $100.73. We bought nearly everything on sale and saved $61.34....not bad. Though there's a lot of things that we wouldn't normally buy and especially not in large quantities.

We also went to Henry's first and bought all of our fresh fruits and veggies. Only a few were items that grew legs and jumped into our cart.
Oranges, kiwi, two different kinds of apples, grapes, peaches, red and green bell peppers, zucchini, leafy lettuce, potatoes, a yam-anybody know how to cook yams?(this one clearly jumped into the cart because we don't know what to do with it), and caramel apple dip. So yes we do buy healthy stuff too.

Random Survey

This is for Kira and whoever wishes to do the same or learn a little about us.

Mandy's response
1. Do you like blue cheese? Nope

2. Have you ever smoked heroin? I think this is a dumb question, but no

3. Do you own a gun? No

4. Wax or Shave your body parts? Shave yes, wax-are you kidding me? No way!

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Depends, but generally no.

6. Real or Fake nails? Real, but super tiny because I bite mine, and fake ones only last for so long before I get tired and bite those off too.

7. Favorite Christmas song? Just about any, though I really like the Manheim Steamroller classics.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Orange Juice

9. Can you do push ups? Haven't tried recently though I doubt I could. Or maybe I could do one or two, but that's about it.

10. What is your favorite piece of jewelry? I always wear two-my wedding ring and a ring my mom gave me.

11. Favorite hobby? GARDENING!

12. Do you have A.D.D? I don't think so.

13. What's one trait that you hate about yourself? Uh, I don't know...I'm pretty happy with the way I am.

14. Middle name? Lynn

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment? I'm hungry. Sweet my hubby just brought me breakfast. I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

16.Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Water, Orange Juice, Raspberry lemonade and occasionally Italian Sodas.

17. Current worry right now? Uh. Don't know

18. Current hate right now? Writing conference reports...ugh!

19. Favorite place to be? In my garden...or with my hubby

20. How did you bring in the New Year? At Greg and Ellen's

21. Like to go? To gardens, or garden centers like Armstrong and Andersons.

22. Name three people who will complete this? honestly? Whoever wants to

23. Do you own slippers? Yes, they're pink and fuzzy.

24. What color shirt are you wearing? White

25. Do you like sleeping on Satin sheets? I don't have satin sheets, so I don't know

26. Can you whistle? Yup

27. Favorite color? Purple or blue

28. Would you be a pirate? Nope

29. What songs to you sing in the shower? Whatever is in my head.

30. Favorite girls name? Emily

31. Favorite Boys name? Peter, but for a baby I don't know

32. whats in your pocket right now? I don't have pockets in my pj's

33. Last thing that made you laugh? Probably Peter

34. Worst injury you've ever had? Uh I did something to my achillies tendon when I did high jump in high school.

35. Do you love where you live? Yeah, we have a bunch of friends that live so close

36. How many TV's do you have in your house? Two

37. Who is your loudest friend? I'm not sure

38. How many pets do you have? A bunch of fish

39. Does someone have a crush on you? Peter loves me, that's so much better than a crush.

40. What is your favorite book? Probably the Harry Potter Series

41. What is your favorite lollie? Just about any.

42. Favorite sports team? I guess Chargers or Padres, though I don't watch them much.

43. What were you doing 12am last night? Sleeping

44. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? Ahhh I got to sleep in a little bit, sweet!

45. Worst habit? biting nails

46. Do you play an instrument? If you count two years of piano when I was seven or so, sure.

47. How long does it take you to get to work? 10-15 minutes.

48. Plans for the weekend? Well yesterday I went to my work's Halloween carnival and went shopping with Peter. Today I got to sleep in a little, until Peter woke me up.

49.If you could eat anything in the world right this second? Exactly what I'm eating right now, though its hard to type and eat at the same time-Apple pancakes.

50. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Nobody sent it to me, but Kira told me to do it on her blog, so yes I like Kira!

Peter's response

1. Do you like blue cheese? Nope

2. Have you ever smoked heroin? I think this is a dumb question, but no

3. Do you own a gun? Yes my grandpa gave me a shot gun

4. Wax or Shave your body parts? Shave yes

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Depends on what they're doing

6. Real or Fake nails? Real

7. Favorite Christmas song? I like them all

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning? Orange juice

9. Can you do push ups? Yes

10. What is your favorite piece of jewelry? I only have one-My wedding ring

11. Favorite hobby? Playing video games

12. Do you have A.D.D? No, though some beg to differ

13. What's one trait that you hate about yourself? I'm losing my hair

14. Middle name? Janos

15. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment? How am I going to kill these flying things? How do I get enough money to kill these flying things? Oh crap they got through. (Yes I'm playing a video game)

16.Name 3 drinks you regularly drink? Water, Orange juice, Italian sodas

17. Current worry right now? My hair-I'm losing it

18. Current hate right now? Flying things (video game)

19. Favorite place to be? At home

20. How did you bring in the New Year? At Greg and Ellen's

21. Like to go? Vacations

22. Name three people who will complete this? I don't know

23. Do you own slippers? Yes, they are giant bear claws

24. What color shirt are you wearing? White

25. Do you like sleeping on Satin sheets? Haven't tried it before

26. Can you whistle? Yes

27. Favorite color? Blue or green

28. Would you be a pirate? Maybe, depends on if the parrot is included

29. What songs do you sing in the shower? Everything I know and some made up ones too.

30. Favorite girls name? Mandy

31. Favorite Boys name? I have no idea

32. whats in your pocket right now? Yarn :)

33. Last thing that made you laugh? The last question

34. Worst injury you've ever had? I don't know, I've broken a finger and I've stepped on a nail.

35. Do you love where you live? Yes I do, it's home

36. How many TV's do you have in your house? Two, but only one is HUGE!

37. Who is your loudest friend? I don't know

38. How many pets do you have? We have fish

39. Does someone have a crush on you? Mandy loves me

40. What is your favorite book? I don't know, I like lots of books

41. What is your favorite lollie? Probably a blow pop

42. Favorite sports team? Padres when they're doing okay

43. What were you doing 12am last night? Sleeping

44. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up? I need juice

45. Worst habit? Buying video games

46. Do you play an instrument? French Horn and a little bit of piano

47. How long does it take you to get to work? 5 minutes driving, 20 minutes walking.

48. Plans for the weekend? Went shopping with Mandy, set up curtains in bedroom and enjoying video games.

49.If you could eat anything in the world right this second? More apple pancake

50. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Mandy got it from her friend and then had me fill it out, so yes I like Mandy...a lot!

My Slimy Friend

On Saturday I enjoyed spending time at Armstrong Gardens and Home Depot in the garden department of course. I picked up a ton of my favorite plants and some pest control stuff. We had to redo all of our flower boxes because we got infested with white flies that decided to move in and kill all of my beautiful flowers. I am prepared now, white flies won't be eating my plants anymore. So as we were taking out all the old potting soil Peter sees something move. He pokes at the dirt again and sees a slimy worm in the soil. At which point he grosses out. He backs off of the flower box and decides its time to take the trash out. I continued working on the box and tried finding the worm. I picked up a bulb and handed it to Peter to put into a pot, he jumped back thinking that I was handing him the worm. I had the box nearly empty and we hadn't found the worm. I put my hand in, felt around and found my slimy friend. I picked it up and Peter wasn't thrilled. I was then a naughty girl and put it in his face, knowing full well that he wouldn't like it. He didn't like it. Then I had a hubby and a worm squirming. He forgave me though. :)

The Air Show

This weekend was the famous Miramar Air Show. Peter tried getting a hold of friends to go see the show on Saturday, but everyone he called saw it on Friday. He was definitely down in the dumps, he wanted to go but not alone. Now I have never had any interest in the air show, so of course I was of no help to the situation. At 11:30 on Saturday my mom called and asked what we were doing for the weekend. I told her that Peter was looking for someone to go with to the air show. She suggested that my dad would probably go (he goes every year). As I asked Peter if he would like to go with my dad, he jumped off the couch and said he would go shower and be over there immediately. I told him not to get too excited my mom still needed to ask my dad if he wanted to go. Peter was already in the shower as my dad said yes. Shortly thereafter we were on our way out the door. On the car ride to my parents house Peter asked me to put the Top Gun CD on. He sang the whole way there. His words, "I've seen six year old children less excited about Disneyland than I am to go to the air show." He was one happy boy.

After the show Peter gave my mom and I a detailed account of what they saw. Including hand movements and swishing noises to help tell everything he saw. They showed up right when a F-16 was flying around. There were mock bomb runs and other war demos. They walked up next to a F-22 right as it was about to take off. This was the first year the F-22 has been there. (It's so brand new, they're still producing them. Peter had never seen one before.) It was as he says, uber cool. He says there were a flock of other airplane enthusiasts all staring intently at it as it took off. It was definitely the star of the show, except maybe the Blue Angels that were back this year. The Blue Angels are really hard to compete against. As the Blue Angels took off they played the Top Gun anthem and everyone clapped. Peter might make me watch Top Gun this week. They also had a MV-22 that sat there, several C-130's a C-5/17 he's not sure which one it was. Lots of helicopters and a few vintage aircraft. He touched the tail of a F-18, tax dollars well at work. They also saw an A-10 as they were leaving.

While the boys were off watching airplanes, my mom and I went and saw the movie The Nights of Rodanthe. It was a good love story, but very sad at the end. There wasn't a dry eye in the theater as we left. Afterwards we ran a couple of quick errands and then went home and played in the garden. I loved being able to dig in the dirt, I miss my garden.

A couple weeks old

If you look in the top right side of the baby tank you can spot five baby platies. We had a hard time getting a good picture as the glass kept reflecting back at us. The top of the tank is reflecting a couple of the baby fish back too but it was the best picture we took. We definitely have 6 platies and 1 guppy.