We've been tagged!

We were tagged by my good friend in Ohio Valerie to join in the Happy 101. How it works is you list 10 things that make you happy and then tag some people to pass it on to. Then they HAVE to list ten things that make them happy. Okay so here it goes...

10.Joe's Italian Ice (vanilla soft serve dipped in banana shell and then rolled in rainbow sprinkles-to be specific:-)
9. Christmas time
8. Cafe Rio pork salad
7. A freshly vacuumed home
6. Trips to Arrowhead
5. Going to Church and book club (okay, I know that is two things but the book club is with my church girl friends so I think it's okay)
4. Music- especially when I get to sing with my husband
3. Date night
2. Dancing
1. My Husband

Once I get started thinking about what makes me happy it was kind of hard to just narrow it down to 10! A LOT of things make me happy and I'm grateful for all of them in my life.

Okay, now this is who I am tagging...

Stories from Apartment Managers (because I think it will be fun to see what makes an apartment manager happy:)
Braden * Jodee * Brighton
Abe & Holly

Happy In Love

The peterson's

Have fun!

The flood of 2010

We had 5 days of rain storms. It is amazing to me how Southern California is not prepared for rain. So, the streets were flooded and I had two roof leaks at my property but Aaron and I LOVED IT! Aaron lucked out and only had to work two days this last week so he could stay home and enjoy it with me.

Check out this beautiful rainbow Aaron recorded on his drive home yesterday.

We don't have to run the sprinklers for like a month now! Anyone else secretly love these storms?

I know all of you Midwest and East coasters are probably laughing at us out here:-) It has been like a normal spring time week in the Midwest and East coast. Give us a break, we are delicate over here.

Chop Chop!

When we were doing our wedding registry we registered for a set of knives. Our criteria for picking them out consisted of "well, those will match our color scheme". Four years later this is what my knives looked like...


Ewwww, gross! And really embarrassing when we have dinner parties. I really tried to fix them by scrubbing them, soaking /cleaning them with CLR (which just ended up making them worse). When one day my wonderful husband said "Okay, we are going to buy you new knives TODAY."

So, we headed out to Target (because we had a $50 gift card for Target from one of my great residents) later that day and came home home with these.

I don't really enjoy spending money (even if I have a gift card) so Aaron had to do his best sales pitch, but we decided to just spend a little extra for a good set so we don't have to repeat this in another 3 years.

Out with the old! And in with the new!

Next on the list.... New pans. Anyone have a good suggestion for pans that you love? Otherwise, I'm going to just end up going with the "well, those will match our color scheme" method. And we all know how well that works ;-)

Two exciting things this week...

Yesterday we were down in Newport Beach for an appointment and so we decided to take a little trip for lunch and went here...




Oh sooooo good! They had "I would sell my soul for a pork salad" painted on the wall, well, yes the pork salad IS that good. We were surprised that we didn't see anyone we know there. However, we did feel like we were temporarily transported to somewhere in Utah. The LDS members were everywhere:-) Love it when I can get caffeine free, diet coke at a restaurant!

The next exciting thing is that Aaron started up a new semester teaching at USC today. He wore the new outfit I bought him for Christmas (all UCLA colors) for his first class. I bought it specifically with his teaching at USC in mind. We are UCLA fans in this home:-) He does such a good job and his students love him. I love to see how happy this job makes him.

Other than that and me being sick AGAIN( why is it that Aaron will get a "tickle" in his throat and then be better and a few days later I will get a "tickle" in my throat and then be full on sick for days!?) there is nothing else going on around here.

Ringing in the New Year Medieval Style

"What are we going to do for New Year's Eve?"
"What do YOU want to do for New Year's Eve?"
"I want to do something fun for New Year's Eve; what can we do?"

I swear we start saying those thing to each other in October. About 1 week till the big night (still with no plans) I got an email from my favorite travel website with some deals, and I saw that Medieval Times was having a New Year's Eve Extravaganza. They were offering $20 off each ticket, and the deal sounded good. For $50 per person we got 2 tickets into the show, 2 tickets into the Museum of Torture, hors d'oeuvres before the show, 4 course dinner, a celebration package for the countdown (noise makers, commemorative cup, champagne/sparkling cider), a dance w/DJ after the show, balloon drop with the countdown, and a continental breakfast after that. Compared to everything else I found to do it was a great deal. Now, we were a little worried that it was going to be too juvenile, but we were pleasantly surprised. Actually, we kind of liked that it was a little more family-friendly.

When we arrived we were welcomed by friendly staff, and the courtyard was beautiful.

Next we went through the Museum of Torture. It was crazy! Yes, this is a chastity belt...

After we had hors d'oeuvres we were seated and the show started. We were on the green team which happened to be the bad guy's team. But we had fun cheering for the villain:-)

While we watched the show we were served a 4-course dinner that was really yummy (it surpassed our expectations). Eating with our hands turned out to be fun!

The show ended at 11:30pm, and then we headed to the dance floor and danced while we waited for the countdown.

Then there was a bunch of kissing, toasting, noise, and balloons!

We took a few pictures with the stars...

...and paid a visit to the horses. They were so beautiful!

Then we danced some more, and, finally, we enjoyed our continental breakfast.

Overall it was a wonderful night. I would recommend it for anyone--even those of you with kids. There were plenty of kids there and they were having a ball!

2009 was a great year for us, a step in the right direction. We are excited to see what the Lord has in store for us in 2010. We hope you had a great night and that you have a fantastic 2010!


P.S. I can't really think of any clever saying for 2010 (like "Feeling fine in 2009" etc.) Nothing really rhymes with 2010. Can you think of anything?