Memorial Day

One of my students asked me at school this week if I would ever marry someone who was in the military, or if it would just be too hard. Sheesh. Where do these kids get these loaded questions from?

I told her a story about my friend Jon from college, who had a girlfriend break up with him when he sat her down one day to make sure she understood what the Air Force meant to him, and that flying for our nation was his place in life. She broke up with him. She couldn't handle it. 

Anyway I'll always remember this story he told me as we drove to a $5 country concert in Lakeside years ago. His dedication is remarkable, and I'm so glad he did find the right girl eventually- he asked her to marry him on a trip to Korea earlier this year.

So would I ever marry someone in the military?

I'm just glad I don't have to make that decision.

Along with pondering these kind of thoughts on Memorial Day, I also spent the day with my favorite person in the world, as well as the other Ch(K)ris' and their wives. We barbecued up at Mel's mother's house while Holz and Mel were housesitting.

I watched my babe swim:

Ate some fantastic carne asada and chicken:

And watched this guy eat. everything. all. day. long.

Happy Memorial Day! Thank you for everyone who does what they do to keep us safe. I love you all.

Valentine's Day

So... Chris has had a Valentine's surprise in the works which he had been taunting me with in the weeks leading up to the 14th. Well, okay, I guess taunting isn't accurate. It was more like:

Me: "What are we doing?"
Chris: "Not telling you."
Next day:
Me: "Where are we going?'
Chris: "Wouldn't you like to know."

What a punk!

I did know we were going out to eat. Had no idea where.

I figured it out when we reached North Park... and the street started looking really familiar....


Flashback- May 13, 2009


The First Date


The week before Sonia's wedding, the OSF took me out for our first date. We went to a restaurant he'd been to recently called Vagabond- a client at his work had taken him and few of his co-workers there for a thank you lunch. I had a yummy caesar salad. I think I was also sick. And the OSF was so forward as we walked back to his car that evening- just reached for my hand like he already had me won over. (Okay, he had.)

So there we were, wandering down a street in North Park, until he spotted Vagabond and we parked. We were among the first couples there and got a great table to the side. They had a set menu for the night, where we had three choices for our appetizer, salad, and main dish: We each chose the filet mignon for the main dish, and oh my gosh, it was amazing. I was very said when that part was over. ;) We got free champagne, too, and a little cake/mousse thing for dessert. It was such a nice little dinner with my favorite person in the world! I love him to pieces!

That was the end of the planned surprise, he said, and I was ecstatic about that, since I'd felt soooo tired all weekend, even throughout our dinner. So we went home and started a movie, Winter Passing, that he'd grabbed from his parents' DVD collection when were up there for his mom's birthday. The movie had Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrel in it, so we figured it was going to be a winner.

We watched to the part where Zooey Deschanel's characters drowns her kitten in the river, before Chris reached for the remote and snapped the TV off. "Valentine's Day downer movie!"

And after that we talked and snuggled.

It was a great night.

Notes from the Big V

We're off for our Valentine's Day date! Have fun, everyone else!

New year, new blog, new name

As you can see, I've updated the ol' blog just in time to ring in 2010, as well as updated the name. Last year it was Don't Do Sadness, which fit well in the beginning of the year (especially since it's pretty much a catch phrase around here now, thank you Spring Awakening), but this year I felt I needed to spice it up. And since I'm feeling pretty fabulous about life right now, This Fabulous Life was born.


Hurray for new years! I love the feeling of starting over fresh. :)


Check back in later tonight or tomorrow, as I'm planning on spending today updating and filing in the pictures I've taken over the last week: Bachelorette party, New Year's, Mandy's wedding... so much!

It's 2010!

Top: Breanna's boyfriend, Justin, Brandon, Lily, Jesse

Bottom: Breanna, Jenafer, Jordan, Chris

We rang in the year with some of my favorite people!

Jen and Justin are all moved into their fabulous new house, and with some prodding, they decided to have New Year's at thier house... and invite a whole bunch of us over to celebrate too. We had snacks, drinks (Jesse created a new drink: the Melted Slurpee), and played Catch Phrase until we were sick with laughter (and the drinks). ("Lady who helps people... Mother Teresa!"... "It means crazy, and... and... the other word for 'it'... Wild Thing!")

Awesome. I love my old friends.

Woot! New year ahead!

I'm Ba-ack!

Well, my Christmas rocked this year. How about the rest of yours?


For the first time in a loooooooong time, I had a real family Christmas. The OSF took me along over the weekend to celebrate with his family, and I had a marvelous time! Here's a list of just a few of the amazing factors of the weekend:




*Watching movies all day: Up, Paper Heart, and Julie and Julia (which was great!)
*Yummy crab and shrimp dinner
*Yummy lamb dinner
*Yummy cheesecake with cookies n' cream ice cream
*Yummy food all the time!
*Diamond earrings from the OSF!
*Awesome gifts from the rest of the family- including cookbooks, recipe books, and a handmade apron!
*Sleeping in waaaaay late
*11p.m. Christmas Eve service with an... interesting choir (Those of you who were there know what I'm talking about. ;)
*Repeatedly telling the story of how Chris and I met
*Wearing Christmas socks all day- not just because they're fun, but because they were necessary!


That's what I came up with off the top of my head. It was seriously a rad Christmas. Thanks to the T family for letting me share their holiday time!


Now that we're back in ol' San Diego, it's been all about running errands, getting groceries, and of course cooking up meals out of the new cookbook. (Monday's dinner: Ahi-ahi kabobs with rice, broccoli, carrots,and bell peppers, yum!) We're gearing up for a non-stop rest of the break what with Mandy's bachelorette party, Chris' golf day, New Year's Eve party, and Mandy's wedding the next day. 


I've been thinking about my goals for the year too, especially now that I have my very own 3hree 6ixty 5ive book to use this year, courtesy of that cute Italian boy. Last year the words I focused on were Fun and Freedom, and I'll have to write sometime about how I feel I fulfilled those goal-words over 2009. This year I think I'm looking at Health and Faith. And maybe a third word, but I'm not set on it yet. More to come on that later. 


I'm re-vamping the blog for the new year, too. I've already got the template ready to go, so look for a new and improved set up at the end of the week.


I had my parents over tonight while I tried to solve their computer printer woes. For whatever reason, no printer will install to their computer and it's driving everyone crazy. But mostly me since they think I should be able to solve all computer problems. So, since this printer problem has been known to cause strife and tension, I made them come to my house, where I could control things. Hee. I fed my dad Dennison's chili and set my mom up on Wii Tennis, and everyone left the house a happy camper- despite the still non-working printer. 

December Staycation: Day Three

Hello, blogger people! Allow me to show you around the Getty Villa, which is the location of our third staycation day.

Here's something cool about the Villa: You're not allowed to bring your own umbrellas, because they supply them for you. At every single door, there are bins of umbrellas. When you go inside one of the buildings, you simply drop off the one you were using, and when you exit, you pick up a new one. So instead of seeing all kinds of ugly umbrellas and slipping all over puddled and muddy museum floors, you just see pretty matching khaki umbrellas and you're feet say in one place on the floor.

The above picture is the view from the main entryway, through the main hall, through the middle courtyard (where the statues are), and out the other door, where you can just kind of make out a fountain, which is flanked on both sides with these statues:

The best part was watching him try to hold this pose.

And here we have another of the Chris', except this one is actually Kris. With a K. He's the only individual of the group. 

Here, Ryan and I re-enact our infamous TGO/buddies pose from a similar time at a fountain in February.

This is Kris' wife, Becky. Becky, as you can see, has beautiful curly hair that I'm jealous of. 

This is my hair curly. I know you feel my pain.

The umbrellas are a bit blown out here, but they're realky a pretty tan color, kind of like the rolled up standing umbrellas in the background. 

We went on a guided tour, complete with little headsets, and learned all about Getty himself, and why he collected things, and how he got so many things he had to build a separate building to house them for all the people to come and see. And that's how we got here today.

Irony is using your camera phone to take pictures when you have a beautiful Rebel camera hanging around your neck.

This is one of the outside gardens. At either ends of the pool are naked statues. After exploring the entirety of the Villa museum, it seems naked people statues were very popular in Greek culture. 

While we were standing under this awning thing, taking cutesy couple pictures, this photographer guy came up and posed us "better" for the pictures Kris was taking. Thanks, random photographer guy.

We also got some cutesy pictures on the steps outside the main entrance.

Umbrellas make for good props.

So our day at the Getty was rainy, non-slippery, and full of naked statues. While I'm not a huge museum fan overall, it definitely was an interesting place to spend a few hours. I think a non-rainy day would have been more fun to explore the grounds though. Next time, I suppose.


After the Getty, Chris, Ryan, and I went back to Sarah's apartment to settle in for the evening. We stopped for Peruvian food, which was good, but pricey, then made it back to her place right when the rain was really getting crazy. The rest of the day was spent watching TV, making Pioneer Woman's pear crisp dessert (in which we had get to get creative, substituting crushed pecans with bran cereal-- Chris' idea), and stringing some new jewelry (me). It was a nice cozy night, just resting up for our final day of Staycation... Disneyland!

December Staycation: Day Two

We saw crazy seahorses on day two.

Disclaimer: This is not my picture. But I saw this seahorse at the Birch Aquarium. But I didn't take my camera with me that day-- it was too rainy.


Kind of regretting it now, because there were some crazy seahorses there.


And Chris found out that seahorses are the only known animals where the guy gets to carry the babies. (He was also a bit alarmed, I think, from a video of the birth process. Ah, science.)


This is the seahorse species whose sign read something to the effect of: "It is still unknown how the egg is fertilized in the male." To which Chris then asked, "What, do the seahorses keep going behind a rock or something?" Then he laughed, like, 'how ridiculous are these scientists, anyway?' And so I had to follow up with an awkward birds and the bees of the sea sort of conversation on his behalf. Yay, science.


After running some errands (CVS, Joann's, and Justin and Jen's house) we headed down to Chula Vista for Chris' friend's church play. I think I've mentioned before that Chris' best friends are all named Chris; this is the other Chris who lives down here with us, the one who just had a beautiful baby that I took pictures of. 


Anyway, so this particular Chris, Chris Holz, happened to be the Captain/store owner in the Christmas play. And let's just say, he was very amusing in his role. 

(Check in for Day 4, when Chris gets his Space Mountain picture pose inspiration from Captain Chris Holz!)

December Staycation: Day One

Let me tell you a little something about the OSF: He is a list-maker.

He loves him some lists. 

Also schedules.

And so, when presented with four whole days to fill for our staycation, he took out a single sheet of lined paper and made a schedule of our weekend.

Everything from addresses to exact times to notes about what to do while at each place. 

I like that OSF. :)

Well, as you'll no doubt read on his blog, the Mexican lunch we had was not up to par. However, the place had excellent light, and I got this great picture...

... which he and Sarah feel is his, "I'm about to go out and kill someone" look. But I think it's cute. Any outside comments? Is this serial killer or hot guy headshot?

This is an Indian.

We roamed around for awhile, ducking into the little stores of little knick knacks (and Beanie Babies!) until five o'clock began to creep up on us. As anyone who's ever visited Julian knows, the town closes at five. As in, you can't even pump gas past five. 

Famous Julian Pie was on our list, so we ducked into the Famous Julian Pie place for a slice. I had the cherry apple with a scoop of vanilla that was really good. Chris got some cider that he loved, but he wasn't so much

of the pie.

 

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!

A Very Disney Halloween

Announcement! Announcement!

Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming!

The Christmas Announcement Party was simply splendid this year. Just a nice October evening spent celebrating the arrival of everyone's favorite holiday. (Except mine. My favorite holiday's my birthday.)

The CAP, for those not in the know yet, is a celebration started by Jarrod's family from way back when he was just a little tyke. Over the years, Jarrod's spread it to our group of friends, and we've held it every October for the past four years. 

It's magical.

For whatever reason, this particular year's gifts were much funnier than years past. Hence, pictures of everyone in their most joyous Christmas moods.

Co, Kim, and Brad watch David open a gift.

Apparently it was really funny. Jess thought so, anyway.

Oh! Just kidding, David hasn't even opened it yet. Apparently it's just the process that's 

cracking everyone up.

Okay, I do remember what happened here. Justin stole Genessee's phone and was sending out fake texts to people in her contacts, including the youth pastor. Good thing Gen's got a sense of humor.

Woot! It's me and the OSF! This guy went to the mat for me during the gift exchange; he stole the only good gift of the lot, a fluffy soft blanket that everyone wanted- especially me!

Playing with the gifts. In this case, those foam sea creatures that form in water. 

They didn't work.

Co didn't come in an ugly Christmas sweater, but he made up for it with the hat.

More gift opening with Tori and David.

Oh, Ryan Poole, you can hold up the gift you picked all you want, but no one wants to steal it from you.

And yet somehow he ended up with another silly gift to try to pawn off on other people.

Ryan Cerutti became the proud owner of a leftover party favor candle from 

David and Tori's wedding in 2006!

And we'll end our Christmas festivities with a classic David portrait:

Merry Christmas (in October)!