My Poor Hubby

Yesterday it rained all day long. There were short periods of sunlight while the clouds were getting ready to drop another load of rain. We stayed inside for the most part. Later on in the evening Peter decided he needed to go to Vons and pick up some groceries. He left while the rain had stopped for the time being. Shortly before he returned the rain started pouring down. He arrives looking like this:
He is sopping wet. The picture doesn't quite do it justice. His jacket was quite soaked, his pants were all wet. The groceries inside of the bags were all wet too. It rained hard for about 5-10 minutes and then cleared up again...Peter was bummed. He enjoyed a hot chocolate after that.

An Eventful Day

This week our plan was to visit the Zoo on Monday and go to Sea World on Friday. Neither of our plans worked for their designated days. So we decided we would try to go to the Zoo on Saturday morning so we could see the animals all awake. Well after staying up past midnight all week long to watch the Olympics, there was clearly no way I was going to get up early. We managed to arrive at the Zoo by 12:00. To our surprise all the animals we visited were awake and many of them were being fed.

Here are a few of the friends we encountered
The newest baby panda (Notsobiggus Pandus) about 6 1/2 months old.

Here's the momma (Biggus Pandus) being allowed back into the exhibit. She was in her bedroom while keepers entered and cleaned up the exhibit a little bit

This Zookeeper said this little gazelle (Hoppagus Alotagus) is a grandma, she was the only one that would take food out of the bucket. She was very friendly. He also said she was overweight. Shocker, huh? The others waited for him to throw the food out.

These little meerkats (LionKingus Timonus) were super cute.

Let me out! (Longus Neckus, Flingus Poopus)

We enjoyed the sky ride. Look at the beautiful sky, the weatherman predicted rain all day and it didn't rain until late at night.

We stayed at the Zoo for a couple of hours. I love having passes-we go see a few things and don't have to spend the whole day running through the park to see everything. So we left the park and went to get lunch, then we headed over to Sea World. We met up with a few more friends.

The Sea lion Show is my favorite

Feeding the ducks (Loudus Quackus) is one of Peter's favorite things to do.

Peter touching the bat rays (Slipperius Fishus)

The gardens

We stayed at Sea World for a couple of hours and then went home. It was quite an eventful day!

Seaport Village

This morning we dropped my parents off at the airport. Now I should have learned from our last experience of dropping people off at the airport and take a camera with us. However, I clearly forgot today...so sorry no pictures.

After the airport we originally planned to go to Sea World, but Peter forgot a hat and sunblock and although it was a very overcast day, Peter easily gets sunburnt, so we decided not to take the chance. We headed to Seaport village which is right on the bay and is full of cool shops. There's a kite shop, toy shops, candle shops, several Hawaiian shops, apparel of all sorts, a hammock shop, wind chimes and flags, basically you name it they probably have a shop of it. We walked into one called The Little Viking that had a bunch of Scandinavian things. Peter's favorite was Captain's Cove, it was a cool pirate shop.

After Seaport Village we stopped at Fashion Valley Mall. We visited the Container Store, ate lunch at a Japanese place in the food court, picked up cinnamon pretzel bits from Wetzle's and then topped it all off with two slices of cheesecake at the famous Cheesecake Factory. We've been nibbling on the cheesecake as they are seriously rich. They're going to last a few days for sure. We bought a raspberry lemon cream one and a chocolate tuxedo one. Oh so yummy!

Valentines Day

Valentines Day started yesterday as we were out shopping. We walked by all these Valentine cards. Peter picked one up with a puppy on the front and it says "I woof you." He exclaims that this valentine is perfect for me. I agree and then was like "you're really awful at keeping surprises from me." Our conversation for most of the time shopping went a little like this:
P-Well it's hard to keep it a secret while shopping with you.
M-You could've conveniently picked it up without telling me about it and just told me not to look at it.
P-You still would've known what it was.
M-Yes I would've known it was a valentine, but I wouldn't know what was on it.
P-Oh
We continue shopping a bit and later on as I'm looking in one department he says, "I have to go get something, I'll be right back."
P-Don't look in the cart.
M-I woof you too. :)
P-Oh man
We finish our shopping and head home.
Later in the evening we are at my parents' home. Getting ready to watch a movie.
P-I need to run an errand, I'll be right back.
M-Okay
He returns much faster than I was anticipating.
M-That was fast...Where did you go?
P-Vons
(For those outside of CA, Vons is a grocery store...It is always open, and they sell flowers...Peter always buys me flowers from Vons.)
I'm chuckling at this point.
M-hmm I wonder what you got. (Yes I was giving him a hard time...but wait it gets better)
P-It's hard to keep secrets from you.
M-Well you could just lie a little about your whereabouts...then I wouldn't know what you did. So let's try this again. Where did you go?
P-Umm to get the windshield wipers cleaned.
M-Really, what place is open at 10pm?
P-Vons
(laughing a lot here)
Well there you have it I married an honest to goodness good guy!


This morning he let me sleep in, then made abelskivers. My flowers looked pretty on the table, along with the I woof you card. I had picked up a card for him a week ago and it had two puppies on it. We woof each other :)

Facial Cleanser Bleck!

A little funny thing happened a few minutes ago. Peter and I were getting ready for bed. I was in the bathroom putting on facial cleanser while chatting with Peter. At some point he leans over and kisses me on the cheek and then pulls back and starts spitting and washing out his mouth. I am head over heals in laughter. I don't know why he didn't realize that yes I was putting this stuff all over my face, and why yes it was still on and I hadn't washed it off yet. He said it was the taste of an orange and tide laundry soap. Yummy!

Culinary Adventures

Peter loves to cook! He loves experimenting with new recipes too. Most of the time he finds a recipe on the internet and decides that it sounds good enough to try. He gives it a shot and sometimes it turns out well and sometimes it does not. He admits that sometimes its not the fault of the recipe, after all he went to engineering school and not cooking school.

He remembers having four disasters recently and wanted to blog about them so here you have it:

Disaster #1 Ebelskivers-These are a Danish filled pancakes about the size of a muffin. After our trip up the coast awhile ago we stopped in Solvang and had some of these at a restaurant. Peter then thought it would be great to make some of our own, after all he has an ebelskiver pan at his parents' house. Now the problem with the pan was that it was cast iron so we needed something other than a glass top stove. We took the idea over to my parents' house and tried making them. Well something went horribly wrong and they all stuck to the pan and it looked and smelled awful and we gave up quite quickly and just made regular pancakes.

Disaster #2 Enchiladas- Now we've all had delicious enchiladas so really what could go wrong here? I'm sure the recipe was probably just fine....but the taste was absolutely disgusting!!!! When buying sauce in a can, DO NOT PICK THE CHEAPEST KIND! BLECH! Lesson learned, we tried it and they were not good. To make matters worse Peter hands me a plate and then starts staring at me. I asked him why and he said he wanted to see my reaction to the first bite. Now thinking this is some kind of joke, or perhaps maybe not, I take a bite. It's in my mouth, I'm thinking how I should react to this nasty thing in my mouth. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I told him I didn't particularly like it, but would eat it anyway. He then takes a bite and says it tastes bad. I picked all the chicken out of mine to eat and then the whole dish went in the trash. It was pretty bad.
He would also like me to point out that he was trying to make a non-dairy type so I would enjoy it. On his side he used cheese sticks :( We'll just say the whole thing was a fiasco.

Disaster #3 Burnt soup! Peter made my favorite type of soup. All was going well until he decided that simmer meant leave the stove on temperature 6 and play a video game with me. Needless to say the stuff on the bottom got burnt and then he stirred it which stirred up the burnt pieces. The soup really tasted fine if you just scooped the stuff on top. So that's what we did. When it got to the bottom we threw it away. It wasn't that big of a disaster but he wanted me to include that in the list.

Disaster #4 Neither one of us can remember what disaster 4 was, but Peter insists there were four....so just assume there were four and we'll continue with the cooking success stories.

Success # I don't know....Peter makes a lot of tasty things like stir fry, sweet and sour, apple pancakes, crepes, and smoothies to name a few. I bought him a new ebelskiver pan that we could use on our stove that was a nonstick type. It got really good reviews from amazon, so I bought it.

So today Peter made ebelskivers.
They were delicious! The ones on the left plate were filled with homemade raspberry jam :) The ones on the right were plain. Both were very tasty! Now they don't look perfectly round, but really it was the first time trying so how perfect do you want them to be? And they shouldn't be gushing jam all over the place either...but they tasted really good. Peter blames his German heritage...he wishes he had some Danish heritage too.

When it rains it pours

Now I knew perfectly well that when I posted the last post about our beautiful weather that there was a series of storms headed our way and that the beautiful weather would be short lived, but would also return. So about a week or so ago we had the rainiest weather all week long. One storm after another hit us back to back. By Thursday the ground was saturated and the biggest of the storms was pounding down on us. This is what it looked like out the back door of the school I work at. I was standing up a step and was still inside peering around the corner to catch this picture. If I had taken a step down I would've soaked my shoes.
On this playground there are two drains fairly close to each other. Both were clogged with leaves and such, causing this wonderful flood. Vicki (one of the teachers) was preparing her lunch in the kitchen when she saw some students' jackets floating on the playground. She went outside and gathered up about 10 jackets that were clearly not hanging on the hooks that they were supposed to be hanging on. They were soaked. The kind of scary part is that the students all went outside to pick up their lunches and brought them in to eat. 15 minutes into eating the whole playground was flooded. Yes it rained a lot! Vicki was the only one who had rain boots, so she was nominated to go unclog the drains.
I stood in the kitchen laughing hysterically as the rain came pounding down. Then Vicki suggested that I take a picture. So this is kind of an after picture. Here the drains are trying hard to do their job as they're not clogged anymore. A couple minutes later the heavy rains stopped and sprinkled for a little bit. We all laughed! Vicki went out when the weather was the worst.

I don't remember the exact amount of rainfall we ended up getting, but on average we get about 8-10 or so inches a year. That week we received about 8-9 inches. Looks like we got our year's rainfall in a week....so the weather should be beautiful the rest of the year :)

Top 10 Reasons to live in Southern California

In lieu of a Christmas Card or newsletter or really anything of that sort since we didn't have pictures taken or anything this year. We decided to write about the fun things that we can do in December and January that you can't do as comfortably everywhere else. So are we rubbing it in about our beautiful weather? YES WE ABSOLUTELY ARE! Now one might ask why we would do such a horrible thing to all our friends that live elsewhere...hehehe (snicker snicker) and our answer is-because we can :) Aren't we wonderful?!

Now where did we get this ingenious plan? Peter was surfing the Internet one evening and pulled up a picture of the weather in the united states for that particular day. Sadly we didn't take a screen shot though we wish we had because the entire US was covered in blue and purple...meaning frigid temperatures. While a small part of the CA coast and of course where we live had the only green coloring on the entire map. We feel so blessed to live here. So here goes our top 10 reasons to live in Southern California:

Number 10: The weather is amazing! On New Year's Eve I took down the Christmas lights on my parents' house. Every year I put them on the roof and every year I take them down. This year I put my blow-up Pooh and Tigger onto the roof. It was really cool at night. My brother and I were talking about it and my dad said it wasn't possible it would lean too much. As soon as my dad left to run an errand, the ladder came out and I was soon on the roof with my brother handing me the equipment. It worked out well. My dad thought it was pretty cool when it was all up. So I put the lights up about a week or so before Christmas and I took them down on New Year's Eve. The weather both days was amazing!
Number 9- Sea World Fun

On New Year's Eve we went to Sea World. For the holidays the animals all got a special treat. The penguins here got a penguin snowman. We needed a special treat so we went and got our usual funnel cake. Normally we get strawberry, but this was a special caramel apple flavor, it was delicious!
Number 8: We have a beach close by...Why yes we can take long walks on the beach...even if we don't go that often...we still have one close by :)

Number 7: The Wild Animal Park
On New Year's Day we went to the Wild Animal Park. I hadn't been since Peter and I were dating. While dating we fed the lorakeets and had a blast. We relived the experience.
The meerkats enjoyed their holiday presents. So did the lions, gorillas and basically all of the other animals. It was really cute to watch them all play with their gifts.
Number 6: The weather
We can run to the grocery store without putting on heavy jackets or several layers. In fact on Tuesday I wore capris and sandals to work.

Number 5: LA Adventures:
Disneyland and Disney's CA Adventure are just a mere 2 hours away
The Getty Museums are amazing-we plan on visiting the Malibu one soon.

Number 4: The weather
Do your rose bushes look like this in January? I bet not.

Number 3: What doesn't grow well here?
Now we are totally jealous with our friends' gardens and the bounteous fruits and veggies they are able to produce...with that said there's always fresh fruits for sale at the local farmers markets and grocery stores. We bought strawberries today, yes they were grown in CA.

Number 2: No snow hereNot only are the animals out and about, but check out the mountains. We don't get snow at our elevation. That means no slippery roads, no sliding into other cars, no slipping and sliding while walking to the car. Gosh I love living here.

And the Number 1 reason to live in Southern California is tomorrow's forecast is 70 degrees and sunny. Can't beat that! How is the weather where you are?

Christmas Adventures

This year there were only two things that we were missing. 1-Nativity set and 2-Angel tree topper. Peter's mom bought us a nativity set while we were in Utah and we kept it when we got home so we could set it up. Then all we needed was an angel. We went to Canterbury Gardens in Escondido which is a totally Christmas exploded inside the shop type of place. They had a Santa tree and an everything purple tree, angel tree, star tree, green tree, red tree, basically you name it they had a tree with everything. We looked at the angel tree and really didn't like anything that we saw, so sadly we left empty handed. Then Peter did a search on the Internet and found this, showed it to me and we decided it was perfect. So no, we don't need an angel we have Tigger and that is so much better. :)
Before Christmas Peter got this urge to try a couple of fun recipes. We made peanut brittle and English toffee (pictured below). Both went very fast! We made a second batch of brittle and have yet to make more toffee, but it is on the list. We also made a ton of peppermint fudge.

For Christmas Peter and I gave each other a Wii! Peter convinced me that we needed one. Now after playing Mario Brothers I agree it was a good purchase. It's also a ton more fun to have multiple people playing...we need to get another remote. Some of our other gifts include a Bugzooka pictured here.

This thing was so fun to play with. Basically what you do is push the bottom part in, aim the top at a bug and then push a button and it sucks in the bug into the top part. The bug becomes stuck inside the top and then you can either let it go outside or you can put it in the freezer to kill it and then throw it out. Last night I found a spider and Peter got to try out the Bugzooka...it worked! He chose to put it in the freezer as quite frankly neither one of us wanted the spider back in our house, and nobody wanted to be that close to a live spider. This thing is really cool, but even with a 2 foot reach pole, once the spider was inside, it still seemed like it was really close, so of course Peter was jumping around and doing a spider dance. :) I was just glad it wasn't me.
In the above picture you can see the live spider at the bottom of the metal part. Sorry we had the smokey film on. It also came with a clear tube for observing the live creature...like seriously who would want to watch a live spider? Crazy people!
Last night we had Chris, Mary and the girls over for Pizza. The girls each made their own mini pizza. They had fun.
Not to worry, the pizzas for the adults (not pictured) were more elaborate and tasty.

Other fun gifts include:
Peter-A yodeling pickle, dress pants, the most annoying sponge bob puzzle (only 100 pieces, but seriously gave you a headache), pajamas, A Bug's Life-blu ray, apple slicer/corer in one and a video game.
Mandy- Two video games, pajamas, Topsy Turvy plant holder, puzzle, build a bear gift certificate, Pooh/Eeyore/Piglet/Tigger antenna balls, a book and a desktop calendar.
Together we got the Bugzooka, a book about how to avoid bug stings and a bottle of sting eeze in case we get stung by a bug. We also got a jelly bean dispenser too.

We had a great time hanging out with family and friends...it's sad that our vacation time is quickly coming to an end. 2 weeks seem to have flown by. (1 week for Peter...he's so bummed.)

The Getty Museum

This morning Peter and I drove David and Laurel to the Los Angeles Airport (LAX). On the slightly over 2 hour drive I slept (that's what you're supposed to do on a car ride), David fell asleep at one point and Laurel kept Peter company. We arrived at LAX around 10:15 for a 1:15 international flight. Laurel was panicked that we would be late on the way up...we made it in plenty of time even with a quick stop to Walmart on the way so David could pick up deoderant and shaving cream. While at Walmart there was police crime scene tape around some poles and several police officers in the same area. Laurel and Peter were speculating what was going on. The famous axe murderer was one possibility. We drove around in circles waiting and realized that it was a recruiting area, they had a table and everything set up. It gave us a good laugh.

After we dropped David and Laurel off at the airport we decided to head to the Getty Museum for a couple of hours. It was a spur of the moment decision. On our way to the Museum Peter asks, "Did you bring the camera?" "Nope." I didn't know I was supposed to bring the camera to drop people off at the airport...I'll remember that next time. :)

We were at the museum until about 2:30. In the medieval manuscript room, I learned how to draw a castle in three easy steps. They had tables, papers and crayons set up to use and step by step instructions to draw castles, boats, borders and something else. While we were in that room a ton of little children came in and started grabbing for everything, so we decided to head out to the next gallery.

We visited van Gogh's Irises, saw the illuminated manuscripts collection from the 800's-1500's, saw how sculptures were made, looked at the most interesting works of wood possible and much more. Peter's favorite words, "This one is really famous." He said it so often and at basically every painting he recognized. I was like, "Really, no way."

We saw lots and lots of paintings and we saw them all in chronological order. Another Peter funny-He enjoyed pointing out that most of the museum was made out of travertine and he kept asking if we should put travertine in a bathroom of ours. I kid you not he said it a ton of times. They even sold little chunks of it in the gift shop and he wanted to take it home.

We also liked the tram. It's like a ride and a show. I really enjoyed walking around the garden and looking at the different fountains. Now Peter wants to go to the Getty Villa in Malibu. Better bring the camera for that trip. :)