Beach Adventure

I'm a bloggin' fanatic right now! But if I didn't do it now, it might not happen anytime soon. So on we go. Eric took a turn spending the night. I couldn't sell another Blue Sky adventure to Eric, but he wanted to see the ocean. I am never one to turn down seeing the ocean or going to the beach, so a beach adventure we had! Eric was the one after all who bemoaned when I went away by asking, "Who's going to take us to the beach now??" So my mom and I took Eric down to Torrey Pines and walked on the beach along the cliffs. Mom showed Eric some fossils in the rocks and we climbed up and down from some and jumped from rock to rock in some places. Despite the high tide, we made it to flat rock without getting too wet. We climbed the sea stairs and got a view. All in all, it was a good adventure.

Blue Sky Adventure

My niece Rachel spent the night and I had been craving some hiking, so I told Rachel we were going on a nature adventure. She bought into the excitement and I planned to take her over to Blue Sky. Blue Sky used to be one of my favorite places. It was burnt to a crisp in the Witch fire over a year ago, but it is starting to recover and I wanted to see how that recovery was going. Michelle called mid-morning and needed a babysitter, so I asked Rachel if she didn't mind if Nathan went on the adventure with us. She had no objections, so now we had an extra friend to play with on the adventure. We went down to Blue Sky and despite some burnt trunks and some denuded landscape, it was just as beautiful as ever. The Creekside trail still had many solid California Oaks in their groves. We had fun playing games like "I Spy" along the trail and "Red light, Green light". While trying to think of games to play Rachel asked, "Is there anything else here to see besides Nature?" Had we had enough time I would have dragged the kids up to Ramona Lake, but since I had another commitment that afternoon, we settled with Poway Lake. We stopped by the lake and had a lunch of peanut butter sandwiches. I think Nathan could skip up and down hills forever! Rachel was a little tired by the end, but Nathan still wanted to race. All in all it was a good time and a good adventure.

It was pretty windy.

The Lake at last!

Fun with the Magnifying glasses.

Apparently a video is all my little blog can handle in one post, so I'll continue the last post here. Nathan and I definately had some fun with the magnifying glasses.

Favorite Christmas Day Moment.

My favorite part of Christmas morning was going over to Michelle's. As noted in a previous post, Nathan wanted a magnifying glass for Christmas. Well, he got two. Michelle got him one and then I found one too and wanted to get it for him. In the video, Nathan expresses his own word for magnifying glass. I enjoyed that very much. When I first got there, I wasn't sure he'd be happy to get a second magnifying glass, but we managed to have fun with them still.

Christmas Eve

So for the first time in a few years we had enough kids old and young enough to do a Christmas Eve performance. We got out our old costumes and Michelle and Nathan made crowns for the kings. All the kids helped out and Jordan and Bekka also jumped into the mix. Lucas read from our old bible and Cassie and I provided music. It was great fun to have everyone over and to see an old tradition revived.

all the kids waiting their turn.

Cassie and I playing the tunes.

Bekka being an angel and Jordan playing the Shepard.

Kings worship. Lucas reads.

Kids are cool!

I love my nephew! He is so cool :D So when I went home for fall break we all went to Julian. In one of the stores my mom decided to buy something. At this point Nathan was ready to leave the store. I told we couldn't leave, but I'd show him something cool. I put a magnifying glass in front of his face and told him to make whatever face he wanted. Then I took a picture. I showed him and he enjoyed it very much. Today, I talked to my mom and she said that Nathan asked for a magnifying glass for Christmas! That made me happy :D

Christmas

Yesterday, it snowed up here. Snow is not my favorite, but I don't mind the wet stuff that melts away quickly. My opinion of snow is that it belongs up on the mountains and not in my driveway. Despite all that, snow has made it feel like Christmas is really coming soon. I haven't been able to do any Christmas decorating, so I thought I'd decorate my blog. It was pretty easy, I must say. Right now, I'm going through my first finals as a grad student. It's not so bad actually. It's not great, but it's liveable. I still love my program and I'm still happy to be at school, but at the same time, I am really excited to go home for Christmas.

Cecil is my Homeboy!

Today, I got up super early to go grab basketball tickets for this Saturday's game in SLC. After I picked up my tickets, I walked down from the Marriot Center to my class on campus. As I was walking towards the ASB, who should be parking his car and heading to work, but Pres. Samuelson! He said hello and we chatted about the basketball game. What a nice guy to stop and chat with me, when I'm sure he's got plenty to do.

Thanksgiving Break- the Beach!

The day before I left, I finally got myself to the beach. My old roommate Melissa was in town, so we got together and had a sort of photo shoot at Carlsbad State Beach and Torrey Pines State Beach. Oh, it was a beautiful day! I loved it :D

Thanksgiving Break- Thanksgiving

So, I didn't take any pictures of dinner. Everytime I wanted to take a picture, grandma did, so I just let her have it. I took some other random pictures. Here are a few: a couple of us went to see the Twilight movie between dinner and dessert. That was good for digestion I think. The movie was so-so. Michelle made a ton of really yummy pies, but I have to say that the apple was my favorite :D Then, while everyone was sitting and talking or playing games, Jake was wandering around wearing my Legoland wizard hat. Good times :)

Thanksgiving Break-Legoland

My brother Chris had gotten a bunch of Get a person in Free with your membership passes to Legoland in the mail, so Michelle, Nathan and Mom went with us to Legoland. We had a blast! I bought a dopey hat and had a great time. Here's a few pictures.

Jake-not the hat I bought

Nathan and Caity huggin'

Rachel going down the slide

Eric wearing the hat I did buy

Thanksgiving Break-Julian

So, I've been a blogger loser. I just haven't been super motivated to do it, but I wanted to blog about something funny that happened today, so I'll catch up. I left early from school and had a nice long (9 days!) break. On Monday of break, Mom, Grandma, Michelle and Nathan and I went up to Julian. It's an old tradition in our family to go up to Julian in the fall. We have cider, get pie, shop for cutesy stuff and leave tired and happy. Here's some pictures. Grandma put some on her blog too.

All of us together

Drinking cider!

Sleepy Time--->

Jeph and Hannah's Wedding

So the day before Jeph and Hannah's wedding, I went over to Rita's and helped with the flowers and chat. Mostly I chatted, but I was able to make a boutonniere. We had a good time pretending we knew what we were doing, but we figured it out. Well, Rita and Kathryn figured it out and Jacqui, Grandma and I just tried to help. But in the end they looked good.

The wedding was very sweet and the kilts were cool. It was alot of fun and Jeph and Hannah and company all looked very happy and excited. All of the food was great, but the cake that Hannah's friend made was delicious. Rita gave me some leftovers in a cream puff bucket. Me and my roommates termed it our "bucket of cake". It was delicious and, between us all, was gone in 24 hours.

My new toy!

So, I went over to my friend Nate's house to play games last week and he got himself a new phone in the mail. When he opened the package there was an air puffed plastic thingy for cushioning. Being the way I am, I naturally started to play with it. I played that game you play when you're a kid and you have left over balloons from a party. You know what I mean right? The "Don't let the balloon hit the ground game". Because the puff is rectangular, it goes in some rather interesting directions when you hit it. My roommate Michelle named the puff Swahili. So Swahili and I have been friends this past week. Whenever I get bored of reading for my classes, I'll take a break and play with Swahili. Unfortunately, Swahili is fragile. It won't be long before he can't stay in the game anymore.

Being able to take study breaks and be active has been really useful, so I've racked my mind to try and figure out an alternative when it comes time for Swahili's demise. I've decided on badminton! I used to play it during summer school with the students at Springall. I got pretty good, and I feel like I should keep up my practice just in case I go back to Springall for the summer. So I looked in to it and a good set with a bag, 3 shuttlecocks (birdies), net and 4 rackets costs around $40. My friend Aileen works at Sports Authority and can get it for me for $30! Sooo.. the next time I have 30 extra dollars (hahahaha! Like I EVER have that...), I'll be able to get a nice replacement for Swahili :) And badminton actually burns a lot of calories! It's really fun too!

Stewart Falls

Last Saturday I went with my roommate Michelle and my friend Vanessa to hike Stewart falls. I hiked it once like 5 years ago, but this time it was a little different since it is winter season. Stewart Falls is a pretty mild hike up in Aspen Grove near Sundance. It was very pretty and just nice to be outside. Plus the smell was just woodsy and fresh because of the recent rain. I hada great time :)

<--Michelle and Vanessa on the trail

Getting Friendly with the trees

<--These trees were all bent, probably from a past avalanche

We made it!

Down at the bottom there was more water.

Halloween

Most of Halloween day I was working really hard to finish my work hours. About 4 p.m. I was finally able to get to work on my two pumpkins. In our house we have a tendency to name EVERYTHING! So of course we named out pumpkins. My roommate Michelle named her Dedrik, Mary named hers Burt which is short for something in arabic, and I named my big guy Charlie and my very ugly, small pumpkin Toby.

I figured in the dark Toby will still look cool :)

Charlie, my 20 pounder!

Mary and Michelle's pumpkins.

My boys lit up! They look great!

Almost immediately after we finished carving, Michelle and I dashed off to the HFAC on campus with Jaime and Tom, where Dr. Ohman was doing a silent movie! I'd been to a few before and they are a blast! You've got live music, plus you're actually supposed to yell and interact with the movie! For Halloween night they did the silent film version of Phantom of the Opera. I must admit the whole time I was going through the different songs in the musical, but this version was more funny than scary, simply because of the way silent films are acted. It was great! I highly recommend silent films when they are performed with live music and a fun audience. It's an entirely different way to watch movies.

Overall, it was a great Halloween!