I Heart the OSF

I'm thankful for notes I find tucked into my cell phone.

Thankful for a creative soul who encourages my own creativity.

For inside jokes.

For someone who likes staying home on Friday nights, too.

For honesty and realness.

For a boy who likes holding hands.

And cuddling.

For fun.

For simplicity.

For six amazing months of getting to know more about him each day.

And for more of these wonderful days ahead.

Second Annual Thanksgiving Overnighter and Subsequent Black Friday of Awesomeness

Second annual. Woot! I like making new traditions.

Thanksgiving was an interesting affair this year. Normally what happens is I call up my parents, figure out what we're doing, when, where, and who's going to bring what. I make food, clean the house, the fam comes over for a bit, we watch a few episodes of some old time TV program like The Andy Griffith Show (courtesy of me and whatever season I gave my dad for his birthday that year), and then they go home. Holiday over, no real conversation necessary.

Or my parents decide they want to go out for Thanksgiving and we try to go to Boston Market. It's usually too crowded so we end up at some hole in the wall breakfast place for their Thanksgiving special. Those are the years I'm thankful for a good stock of Dennison's chili at home, where my sister and I go back for a real holiday meal.

This year, my roommate Brittany decided she wanted to do a dinner for those of us whose family's are too far or not celebrating that day (i.e. Ryan and me). She went and got the turkey, Ryan brought (Boston Market's!) mashed potatoes and corn, and I tried my hand at a Pioneer Woman recipe: Roasted carrots. 

And, because I want to be just like Pioneer Woman when I grow up, I take pictures of my step-by-step cooking process. 

Except my kitchen pictures don't come out looking nearly as nice as hers. It's kind of not fair.

Before:

After:

While the carrots came out tasting fine, mine weren't the mouth watering vegetable goodness the recipe promised. But then again, I didn't use fresh thyme so maybe that's where I went wrong.

No matter. Ryan still looked excited about the carrots, fresh thyme be damned.

The overnighter started after dinner when we popped in season four of NCIS and the three of us settled in for the night with our laptops at the ready and the Union Tribune ads strewn about the floor.

Colleen and her roommate Ashley came by for awhile, as did Boy Jordan, and then finally Sonia and Lauren, who were participants in the first annual overnighter last year.

Although the troops this year were fewer, we managed to stay awake all night this time. In fact, Sonia thought I was lying when I told her it was 3:30 a.m., and we were all still wide awake and talking. We watched the movie Fireproof (great premise, but cheeseball acting), talked about boys (yeah, that means you, OSF!), and Ryan dozed on the couch (I think trying not to listen to us talk about boys). Russ and Jen came in around 4 a.m., having stayed up all night as well, and needing motivation to make it the rest of the way.

We split up into Team Best Buy and Team Wal-Mart and hit the road at 4:45. Sonia and I, on Team BB, thought it wiser to wait out the line in the heated car, as we reviewed our lists:

Best Buy was amazingly organized as usual. We got all five of the things on Sonia's list, then met Team WM at Target. 

The Target was absolutely ridiculous. The line pretty much went around the store twice. The good thing was that there were five of us, so it was easy to wander off and browse during the hour and a half wait in line, with at least two people guarding the cart at all times. But it was still pretty rough going, as Sonia demonstrates here:

And here we are, with the end of the line in sight, which accounts for our bright smiles (well, that and the Starbucks)! Poor Ryan, though. Actually, I'm pretty sure he's faking exhaustion here, because after we all went home and crashed, he went shopping at Fashion Valley (What?! Who goes to the biggest mall in San Diego on Black Friday?!) and then up to Costa Mesa for another Spring Awakening. Who is this guy?

After Target, Sonia, Lauren, and I did a quick stop at Michael's for beads and frames, then it was home for naps, much to everyone's relief. I hadn't been looking for anything big anyway, and I found nearly all the little gifts on my list- only have Ry left to buy for now!

Bennett | 1 Month

Oh boy.

Talk about a heartbreaker. 

I mean, look at those eyes!

This kid is going to be smart, I'm pretty sure. Only one month old, and he followed my camera around the entire time. Since when are one-month-olds that alert? 

He's just so cute, I can't stand it!

Thanks to Mel and Chris Holz (my Chris' best friend from elementary and high school) for making a little cutie pie, and then letting me play photo shoot with him! Also for totally getting into the whole thing, including the Naked Baby (a necessity for any newborn photo shoot, obviously) and dashing off to find props which included a pencil and a violin. Loved hanging out with them and Bennett!

Also: Congratulations Chris Holz for getting the OSF over his anti-baby-holding stance. Turns out all you have to do is surprise him by immediately handing him a swaddled child the second he walks in the door. With no time to react, he just accepts the bundle.

 

He looks good with a kid, doesn't he?

Don't worry, OSF, I know, I know: "Don't get any ideas."

I'm just saying.

You know. Maybe for later

Way later.

Cabaret!

Cabaret time!

Not the musical, mind you. People keep getting confused when we talk about cabarets. 

Let's clarify. 

There's Cabaret, which according to Wikipedia "is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions."

Then there's the type of cabaret we went to on Monday night: "a form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue—a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables (often dining or drinking) watching the performance."

If I understand correctly, there are cabarets in Cabaret. Hence the name.

The cast of Spring Awakening has been doing cabarets for their charity (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids) in the past year and a half they've been on tour. Ryan and I have depended on the people who've gone to past cabarets to video tape and youtube the experience. Our favorites can be seen here, here, and here. 

And finally we got to actually go to a Cabaret ourselves.

On Monday night, the cast performed a cabaret called Girls will be Boys will be Girls will be Boys at a popular venue in Hollywood for Upright Cabarets. Ryan got us dinner tickets and we were set to go.

Even leaving at 3:30pm didn't get us there in time for our 7pm reservation, dang L.A. traffic. But we made it early enough to get center seats at the third from closest table, so not too shabby. We ordered drinks, dinner, and set in to wait for the show.

Since the show was all about boys singing girls' songs and vice versa, our first taste was Chase Davidson, singing Wendla's role in Mama Who Bore Me... complete with confused facial expressions and gestures. It was made of awesome.

More of the boys- this time singing My Junk.

The girls followed it up with the traditional boys' pieces in Touch Me.

Then it was time for the individual pieces. Steffi D did a very... unique medley of patriotic sounding songs. That's all I'll say.

Christy Altomare sang a song she wrote for a friend to sing to his girlfriend. Apparently she's always wanted to be able to sing it herself, so 'girls sing boy songs' night worked out perfectly for her to sing "Alessa." Loved it. Christy Altomare is going to be a household name someday. And we'll be able to say we knew her as little ol' Wendla Bergman. :)

Krystina Alabado sang a fierce version of "Lost in the Wilderness" from Children of Eden.

Kimiko (she's so cute!) Glenn sang a song called "You and I," which I'd never heard before.

There were much more, of course, but the blogger uploader's being slow, so I'm skipping right ahead to the end of the night. Here's Shingledecker singing one of the encore songs.

The girls hugging after a little Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise).

And the finale song, led by newbie swing Kayla Foster, "Let the Sunshine in."

After we left the cabaret, Ryan and I decided to re-enact our TGO friend date of six months ago; so off we went in search of a Little Caesar's. We found two. Neither were open. Don't they know we were trying to have a moment! Eventually we had to settle on a Wendy's for drinks and fries. It was meh. 

Timeline Part Two

So we left off at pumpkins. Next was the OSF's birthday at Disneyland.

... followed by our first day of road tripping, which ended with SPRING AWAKENING in San Jose...

... which was followed by American Idiot in Berkeley on Saturday....

Then we came back for a week of work, and on Friday Chris and I left early to start the journey to Fresno to stay with his Aunt Mari and Uncle Moose and play Wii games with Jessica. 

Saturday morning we all headed an hour and a half north of Fresno (to Mantica?) for Chris' cousin Kelsey's wedding (which was freezing!):

Then one last morning of playing with Jessica (tug of war this time): 

And back home to a normal life with no traveling!

Timeline

I feel that with my new methodology, the timeline of the last month has been thrown off. So I'm here today to bring everyone up to speed on the goings-on of mid-October to now-November. I'm just going to start from where I left off on POTD #285:

This picture came right after this one:

I was trying to get a good picture of Chris' little work station he set up for a TV Monday night as his place. The rest of us were squeezed onto the couch and a couple of chairs in the living room, but Chris needed some more space to do his farming. (See Facebook: Farmville.)


And somewhere in between clicking this picture, checking it, and setting up for another shot, he bounded up the stairs in sneak attack style. 


It was a good sneak attack.


Hence the blurred picture of the day. I felt it told the story better than the first one.




I also scrapbooked somewhere around this time. Must've been a Wednesday when Chris was at golf.

Yep, it was definitely a Wednesday, because here's the beautiful quesadilla I made him for dinner that night:

(I'm getting good at this cooking nonsense.)

Let's see. Friday night was Wii night at Ryan's house, preceded by a trip to the Studio Diner for dinner. Went against my better judgment and got buffalo wings instead of the wonderful breakfast I had last time. They were good, but when Britt and Ryan's breakfasts came out, I'll admit it I was coveting their toast and eggs. Mmmm... toast and eggs... Studio Diner....

Back on the farm (I mean Ryan's apartment), Ryan had lain out four controllers and nunchucks across the coffee table. We played his new game, Rabid Rabbids (which some may remember from last year's birthday party) and had some wine and mixed drinks. Muy fun.




That Sunday was the Christmas Announcement Party. 

What? I haven't written the blog about the Christmas Announcement Party yet? I could've sworn I did... oh. Turns out I only uploaded the pictures and forgot about it! Blog to come soon. Blog now here!

Some more POTD's...

 

Whoo, this is getting long. Part two coming up soon!

Picture(s) of the Day

Thursday night, we finally got back into the swing of things and had our first TV Thursday in a few weeks. How I Met Your Mother, Glee, the Office, and Big Bang Theory made for a fun night, as per usual. But I think the best part was the container of leftover Irish Car Bomb cupcakes Ryan had in his fridge. Yum.....

Aw, shucks, he's cute....

And look what he did when I wasn't looking! That's what I get for leaving my computer on at his house, I suppose...

I heart black and white photos.

I know, I know: we are sickeningly cute.

"Nobody likes you, Everyone left you...

... they're all out without you...

     HAVING FUN!"

Such a mocking song... that was in American Idiot the Musical!

Saturday of our musical road trip extravaganza, we woke up, checked Ryan's computer for directions to our next adventure, and packed up and piled in the cars to head to Berkeley, California. 

Berkeley is really cute. I kind of wish I'd gone to college there. Just for the cute town.

American Idiot was play at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, a really awesome, very modern looking, theater along a whole row of theaters just down the street from the university.

In the spirit of my OSF Chris, who steals nearly all of his demonstrative pictures from online (or from me), here's a pic of the Berkeley Rep I found online: 

We were sitting on the closest side, but it's mirrored from the side you can see here. Chris and I were seated in that first "balcony" on stage left, and the others were seated front row underneath us. The theater overall is very small, so we would have had good views from nearly anywhere. 

Outside the theater, we wait for the show to start. Chris flashes our tickets:

We pose at the sign.

All right, here's some more Chris-style (aka, not mine) pictures of the actual show:

This one's mine! I am the queen camera smuggler! Well, only at final bows when the ushers aren't watching anymore.

And the OSF, as he waits for Ryan and I to have our fill of talking with John! Gallagher! Jr.!