Merry Christmas!

Hope your stocking is filled with something great!

Vacation!

It is amazing how quickly you can get to work when there is no traffic. This morning I was running around my apartment like a chicken with my head cut off – trying to finish all my last minute packing (I was not left with much time last night, when I got home at 9:45pm from my work Christmas party). It is a good thing my roommates have already left because my stuff seamed to have exploded all over the apartment. After managing to cram it all into the suitcases I looked at the clock only to realize that I was extremely late. Like I was actually late to leave – normally I leave between 7:50 and 7:55 – it was 8:05. YIKES!!! I thought I would never make it to work.

I don’t handle being late very well – so I gave myself a pep talk about how it was ok that I was going to be late because I was packing yada yada it would have been done but we had a work Christmas party. Boy was I shocked when I pulled into the parking structure at 8:20am. I think I hit every possible light green and passed maybe 10 cars on my way – I don’t think anyone else has to work today.

So now I am here at work being so productive by blogging, and counting down the hours until 1pm when I will leave and officially be on Christmas vacation (and get to hold little Gavin) until next year. I have not had this many days off since college (granted that was not that many years ago) I am so excited!

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas!

The Weekend Events

The Christmas celebrations just keep on coming. Here is the rundown: Friday night we went to check out some wonderful Christmas lights. Major thanks go out to Lisa Brown he gave us directions to what I do believe may be some of the best displays of Christmas lights ever.

I can tell I am getting older because the minute we pulled up in front of these house which had every square inch of their property covered with one form of light or another, my first thought was, "man I wonder what there electricity bill is?" Yeah that's right I am full fledged electric bill paying adult.

My favorite part about these two houses is that they were playing Christmas music. You may be wondering how in the world we would hear the Christmas lights if we were driving/sitting in our car.................but naturally with the curiosity level of Angela we could not simply drive by with all the other cars. We had to be unique - we parked and then strolled around the lovely displays - which as I said earlier was made much more enjoyable by the music.

I must have gotten really smart over the weekend, because looky there riding on that camel I look like one of the wise men.

Since I know the rest of the world is getting covered in a deep blanket of snow, I would like to point out how cold it is here in southern California - you can practically see the coldness in this photo.

Celebrate Good Times Come On!

This post is worthy of celebration for many reasons. First of all it is officially my 100th blog post. I don’t really know if that is a big deal, but TV shows always make a big deal about reaching there 100the episode so I decided to make a big deal out of it. CONGRATULATIONS to me!

Reason to celebrate number two, today one of my coworkers became an official citizen of the United States. She passed her test and got sworn in. I learned a lot via her becoming a citizen – until now I did not know how any of it worked, so thanks to her I am fully educated in US citizenship.

Finally the third and final (quite possibly best) reason to celebrate today……if you are thinking I am going to say it’s FRIDAY, well you would be wrong. It’s Rachel’s birthday!!! For the next five months all members of the Penthouse will be 23 – I have to throw this out there because Rachel really likes to make it known that Angela and I are her elders and she is rapidly growing old and shrively. Not quite sure what that says about me?

Rachel and I suffer from opposite extreme problems, which makes cohabitating in the same apartment somewhat interesting. I am always hot (of course I mean more than just in appearance, but thanks for thinking I am attractive) and Rachel on the other hand is always cold. She often thinks the apartment is negative 100 degrees (her bed no joke has 7 blankets on it – and it always looks like there is a body under the covers which can be really creepy when you come home at the end of the day to a dark apartment empty all except the body like figure under the covers). Therefore this Christmas/Birthday Angela and I took it upon ourselves to prepare her for winter, with a plethora of cold weather items including an electric blanket.


Happy Birthday Rach!!

Dancing Queen

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Christmas Party - Penthouse Style

Friday night Angela, Rachel and I hosted a lovely Christmas party at our apartment. The first challenge of the night was figuring out how we were going to get all 25 guest into our teeny apartment. There was some furniture rearanging which left us with some broken decorations. But all ended well......................everyone fit very nicely and it was grand party. Here are some candid photos from through out the night. Covering all events including the gingerbread house contest and the gift exchange.

When It Rains It Pours

This morning I awoke like any other Monday morning, not wanting to go to work. Rachel told me it was raining and I snickered – thinking it was most likely drizzling. Since we don’t really get much rain here in southern CA. Then I looked out side and saw the downpour that was occurring. No fun! Thankfully I have a massive golf umbrella to keep me dry. As I descended the stairs from my apartment I was met with a frightful sight. Our apartment is located on the bottom side of a small rise, and because of that the path which I had to follow to get to the parking lot was submerged in a good 6-8 inches of water. There was absolutely no way to get around the puddle I had to go right through it. Naturally I was wearing flat shoes without socks. I thought maybe if I walked on my toes my whole foot/shoe would not get wet. No such luck on my first step my whole shoe filled with water. So gross!

After I sloshed my way through the winding path that led to the parking lot – I was forced to cross the rushing river that used to be the parking lot to get to my car. Whew I made it to my car and thanks to my umbrella I was dry minus my feet and shoes. So I took of my shoes put them on the floor next to the vent and cranked the heat. Needless to say the commute was extra slow due to the rain. I left a good 10 minutes earlier than normal and arrived 10 minutes late. Nothing like a good 50 minutes to go 6 miles. Most of the roads I traversed were covered with 1-2 inches of water (I had needed a car wash but no longer). Then I hit this lovely intersection which was completely under water. Seriously the car in front of me the water was above his tires. My car is still a little new to me I did not know if it had great submarine like qualities yet as this was the first rain I have driven it in. But I am happy to report that I traversed the lake like puddle just fine.

The best part of the whole thing was I arrived at work late – but figured it was no big deal everyone would be a little late due to the insane rain right. Well it was not raining at work one bit. Not even a little drizzle. Completely dry. Everyone was already at there desks taping away at their computers when I got there. How is it possible that it is practically flooding where I live a few miles away and it is completely dry here? My rain excuse was not truly understood by my coworkers, they had a hard time believing the rain was as bad as I made it sound. Ye of little faith.

At Last!

I was awakened this morning to a door bell at 4:42am. My first response was who in the world is at our door at this hour? Then I remembered we don’t have a door bell at our apartment……..what in the world. Oh wait my text messages make a door bell noise. My thoughts immediately jump to frustration…………who would text message me at this hour? “Seriously this is way to early.” If you did not notice already, I am not completely coherent when awoken in the early hours. I opened my phone and see that the message is from my mom and immediately realize it must be about Lindsey/Gavin. Ok I read the message and was a little confused by what it said (something about “them” breaking her water) until I realized I had slept through the earlier message I had gotten informing me that they were at the hospital and she was getting her epidural (ok so the “them” was the doctor – not Kevin and my mom – you may think I am crazy but remember it was early in the morning and just days earlier I had joked that I was going to break her water with my knitting needle to get things moving along). I rolled over said a little prayer for Lindsey and went back to sleep.

When I awoke 2 hours later to my alarm I thought he would have been born already. I double checked my phone to make sure I did not sleep through any more texts. Nothing……hhhmmm how long does it take to get him out of there?

I went along getting ready, sent a little message to momma making sure I did not miss anything. And then whala as I was driving to work I got a cryptic message that said 8lbs 15.5oz. Good thing I am such a good detective I was able to figure out what this meant. It was of course followed by this lovely pic.

Gavin Edward Holt
12/12/08
8lbs 15.5ozs 22in

The (Holiday) Show

Last night was the December/Christmas edition of “The Show.” Angela and I attend like last time, and got the royal treatment with reserved seating as well. I could definitely get used to that kind of life. Since most of you are unable to attend “The Show” which I so highly recommend I have put together a few clips for you. The following are two digital shorts that have appeared on “The Show” at one time or another, staring Jake. Enjoy!

Tree Number Three

This week has been and continues to be extremely busy. I feel like I have waited all year for December to come around so that I can enjoy the holiday season – and then December gets here and it is just so jam pack full of stuff that it goes by way too fast. One of my multiple activities last night included helping Ashleyann decorate her Christmas tree. It was supposed to be a gathering of all of the women in our grace group, however some of them ended up getting sick, so it was really only four of us. But we still had a grand ol time. It ended up being one of the most fancy trees I have ever partaken in decorating.

Tori and I got a little tangled in the lights.

I got to do the honors of putting the angel on the top of the tree, but first it had to be trimmed down.

Naturally with a tree so lovely we had to take turns poseing with it.

Angela

and me

I think that Ashleyann thought we were going to work up a major appetite decorating the tree, she made cookies, cherry cobbler and brownies for us. What a treat!



After the tree was finished we sat around chatting, drinking coffee and eating all while enjoying the holiday ambiance (aka the tree and Christmas music). It was so nice to relax and enjoy the girls company for a short while - before rushing off to catch the 10pm showing of "The Show."

Tree Troubles

Here is installation two of stories from Phoenix:

Lindsey had pulled out all of the Christmas decorations for our arrival, all that was needed was a tree. Unfortunately for you I do not have a picture to accompany this tale – oh how I wish I did. I guess that just means I have to do a really really good job of describing it to you. Alright here we go. The five of us (Kevin, Lindsey, Reid, Nate and I) piled into the Camry and headed out to Home Depot to get a Christmas Tree. That in it of itself was probably a site – seeing all of us LARGE people pile out of the car probably looked something akin to a clown car.

Upon arrival the tree is picked out – and manicured, it needed to lose a few branches on the bottom. Now this is your average Christmas tree, not overly wide, on the thinner side not extremely heavy but probably about 6 feet tall. The man who trimmed the tree kindly gave us a piece of plastic twine to tie it to the roof of our car. Then he asked if we need another one. It was determined that yes we would indeed need two pieces of string to secure the tree properly.

While waiting in line we realize that the HD worker was so extremely generous in his string cutting. One piece was apprx. 2 feet long and the other may have been 4. Now please explain to me how a 2 foot long piece of string is going to help us tie a tree to the roof of a car? Yeah I don’t think it will. Did we go back and ask for more? Of course not the guys were determined that they could get the tree home without tying it down.

Now I know what you are thinking – your probably picturing a car loaded down with people traveling at oh 4.8 miles an hour trying not to loose the tree sitting loosely on their roof. As funny as that would have been, that is not the case here. With Nate in the front and Reid in the back they rolled down their windows reached out and held on to the tree. Thankfully the Holt home is very close to HD. As we exited the HD parking lot and started to venture across the street we see multiple police cars about a block down. Is it illegal to hold a Christmas tree on top of your car? Yeah we don’t know either. Instead of risking it we quickly diverted through the Albertsons parking lot only to be given many questioning looks as we cruised right through to the Holt home.

We arrived in record time with the tree and all appendages intact. The best part about this adventure was that it took aprox. 2 seconds to get the tree down from the car. No hassling with the cords or knots. Pretty sweet! Maybe you should give it a go next year.

Take Me To Your Leader

Ok so I have never been the type of girl who just drops everything or rearranges their schedule for a guy. Until now that is. Gavin is not even born yet (yes that is right – still after a trip to AZ not here) and I have been changing my schedule left and right to accommodate him. But in the end it is ok because I had a great weekend despite the fact that he has evidently decided to permanently retain residence in my sister.

I shall try to catch you up on all the happenings of the weekend – but it may happen in multiple posts, as I have many good stories to tell. Lets start with the drive over. As I said in the last post Lindsey and Kevin organized a lovely carpool, I met up with Nate and Reid and got the pleasure of being a backseat passenger for the entire trip. To me road trips are so much more enjoyable when I don’t have to drive. I hate driving.

So we have been on the road for a good couple of hours it is getting late and it is extremely dark. Then it happened. We were abducted by aliens. Ok maybe that is stretching it but we did see a UFO. All of the sudden out of nowhere there is this bright light straight in front of us just floating in the sky. All three of us tip our heads a little and sit staring trying to figure out what it is. After about 3.287 minutes of staring it gets dim. What is the world could it be? It is way to bright to be a star. It is not moving whatsoever so that rules out a plane and there is absolutely nothing else around us besides desert.

At this point we unanimously decided it is a UFO and watch it with a heightened intensity. What will it do? Where will it go? It just sat there in mid air for about five minutes and then all of the sudden it starts shooting straight up at light speed. We see it for another 2.8963 minutes and then it is out of our view for good.

It made for quite an exciting road trip probably my one and only UFO sighting in my life.

My Second Home

This evening I am headed back out to Arizona. Thankfully Kevin and Lindsey were able to round up a carpool for me, so I don’t have to drive myself (since Jake and I did that last weekend). At this point Lindsey is not actually in Labor, but the signs are showing that it could be anytime now. So I am not taking any chances on missing Gavin’s grand entrance into the world. And it sounds like there will be a pretty big crew there to welcome him.

I will be sure to put some great photos up if and when he is born. Because I know you are all dying to see him pretty much just as much as I am. I actually know that is why you are reading this blog, you have no interest in me or my life what so ever – it is all about Gavin. It’s ok I don’t blame you he is a lot more interesting than I.

Crazy Cards

Three weeks later I am almost finished with my Christmas cards. And boy did they change from original plan. After spending 3 hours (no exaggeration here) cutting out Christmas trees I discovered that it was not going to work out how I wanted. But of course at this point I had invested so much time into the trees I did not want to completely scrap them; I had to figure out a new way to use them.

Many trials and many errors later I reached an alternative design. And I am pleased with the way the turned out. Although they are a lot smaller in size than I had intended the look pretty good. Now I just have to write in them and send them off. Hhhmmm it may take some doing to find all of the necessary addresses – I should get organized and write them all down in an address book, but no. Every year I email my mom and have her give them too me. Ha she must love it.

Sorry the photo quality is not very great here - I promise they look better in person. Who knows you may be on my list, and getting one of your very own. If your Lucky.

Next project: shower invitations.
I have decided that simple is good, hopefully avoiding the issues I had with the Christmas cards.
But no worries Lindsey just because they are going to be simple does not mean they will not look AMAZING!

Tis the Season

Now that Thanksgiving has passed it is time to get ready for Christmas. Last night we dug out the great green bin from the bottom of our storage closet. This bin held all of our Christmas decoration – the best part about decorating for Christmas is that you forget all of the great decorations that you have. Or in our case we forgot what we had because we purchased most of them at the after Christmas sales last year and have never used them. We have a miniature tree.

And lots of other festive things, that have brought quite a glow to our little apartment.

It is now time to enjoy all Christmas music all the time……………….well until Dec. 26th that is.

The Morning After

Today I was faced with the harsh reality of going back to work. Not a dream come true. Besides having to wake up early and go to work I realized that I had very little edible food available in my apartment. That made making lunch somewhat of a challenge, but after a quick scavenger hunt through my cupboards, the fridge and the freezer I was able to pull together something somewhat edible looking.

But all those unpleasantries were well worth the four fun days I got to spend in Phoenix. I was however unable to sweet talk Gavin out of his warm watery home. He has evidently decided that he does not want to listen to his Auntie Mandy.

You probably all already read Lindsey's blog about the weekend - for once she beat me to the punch. I guess me sitting in traffic for 10 hours with no Internet gave her a bit of a head start. Therefore this may be old news for you all, with that in mind I will just give a brief recap of some of our amazing activities followed by none other than and AMAZING photo slide show.

1. Jake and Mandy arrive in Phoenix (everyone goes to bed)

2. We lounge, drink coffee with peppermint mocha creamer, watch tv and paint picture frames

3. Head to the Schells' house - it was basically like walking into a Pottery Barn catalog

4. Eat far too much and of course miss Grandma Floch's AMAZING mashed potatoes

5. Watch Home alone

6. Lindsey and I decided to head out at 11pm to the outlet mall (it opened at 11pm) but quickly turned around when we saw that the freeway was backed up due to traffic into said mall. We were not that ambitious.

7. Drink more coffee -watch more TV-paint another layer on the frames

8. Go shopping

9. Have a mexican feast, as is our family tradition to eat mexican food day after Thanksgiving

10. Watch Elf and knit

11. Drink coffee yet again, bust many a myths, head out to Frontier Land

12. Enjoy the Glendale Glitter Spectacular

13. Eat really good pizza

14. Rearrange the Holts furniture

15. Go to Church (yes I drank coffee again)

16. Have lunch with Kathy at her new favorite restaurant

17. Endure 10 agonizing hours of traffic home.

The Good and The Bad

My alarm did not go off this morning (my cell phone is having major issues these days) But mom ordered me a new phone which is waiting for me in AZ. Thanks mom!

My legs still hurt from Saturdays workout, but last night the work out fairy left icy hot on my door step, pretty sweet!

I don't want to go to work tomorrow, but we only have a half day, and that includes lunch.

I have a 7 hour drive ahead of me (YUCK) but, I now have a car with a CD player, a brother to do most the driving, and food family and fun at the final destination.

Jake and I am headed out to Arizona tomorrow to spend Thanksgiving with Lindsey and Kevin (maybe Gavin will even make a guest appearance - here's hoping). Therefore there may not be any posts for the rest of the week.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving all - eat lots and lots of mashed potatoes.

Thanksgiving Preperations

I take Thanksgiving very seriously. There is a lot to be thankful for and a lot of food to be consumed. Therefore in preparation for Thursday I enlisted the help of my dear friend Carlos. Angela and I asked Carlos to lead us in a Saturday morning workout in the park (we needed to make room for all the food we will be eating later in the week). Sounds pleasant right? A good way to start your weekend. In case you don’t know Carlos, he is a workout enthusiast, this is of course why we asked him to help us. It also does not hurt that he was previously a personal trainer – so I guess you could say going into it we knew he would lead us in a challenging work out. But was Mandy up for the challenge?

The scene we arrived to: Carlos with his clipboard which contained I diagram of our activities, and a look or intensity. This was about the time that I realized I got myself in too deep. I know I am out of shape and at no physical level to workout with Carlos. YIKES!!!

Over the course of an hour he led us in a series of exercises ranging from jumping squats, side lunges, abs, to calf raises. To say it was intense would be an understatement (at least for those of us who work out oh lets say maybe once every 2 months).

I somehow managed to persevere………..after many embarrassing attempts at pushups. I was actually able to complete everything with lots of water and encouragement from Carlos. Now two days later, I can barely move because my legs are so sore – like really extremely I have never been so sore in my life sore. But alas it will be worth the pain come Thursday when I can eat mounds and mounds of mashed potatoes.

2nd is the BEST!

My congratulations go out to team Drift Wood - who places second place in the Biola intramural volleyball championships. It was a close match to the finish taking it to the full three with a nail biter of a finish. Jake - maybe the number one player (I might be a bit biased) had quite a few amazing saves and some rather dramatic spikes that drove their score up.


The previous night (I was unfortunately not alerted of and therefore not present at) Jake's team won the Dodgeball intramural championships. Wahoo!

I am not that skilled at taking action shots - my camera is a little too slow, so this was the best shot I got of Jake maybe about to pass the ball.

Freaky Friday part 2

For some reason today has not been my day. As you read earlier, I had issues with my alarm. Now I am having issues with the printer/scanner/copier at work. A coworker just asked me if we had more toner for it because it says it’s out. I thinking I am going to save the day go into the copy room grab the toner off of the top shelf and tell her I will change it for her.

Here is where the problem arose. I open the front of the machine, and I am pulling the old toner out when all of the sudden it shoots out a thick cloud of black powder (the ink) that effectively covers everything. And trust me I do mean everything. It was on my face, my hands, my pants, the floor, the copy machine, the file cabinets, and disgustingly in my mouth.

GROSS!

Luckily it was pretty easy to clean up with a few damp paper towels, but I did have to walk down the hall to that restroom looking like I had just been through an explosion. I got some questioning looks, but no one was brave enough to ask what happened.

Freaky Friday

I am big on routine/schedules and being on time. I have the tendency to freak out if I am running a mere 3 minutes behind schedule. There are many a morning when I run across the apartment screeching about being late…………and yet what that really means is that I am late to be early, so I will be just plain ol on time. I only tell you this so you can understand the panic that I was feeling in the two situations I am about to share.

Last week I was laying in bed when I hear Angela ask me “hey Man are you going to get up?” I grunt say “yeah, why?” And she kindly explains to me that it is 5 minutes past the time when I normally get up. I yelp and get up/sprint to the shower faster than ever before. Thanks to Angela who knows how I react when late, the Crisis was averted, although I must admit I had to give myself a calming speech about how I was not going to be late, five minutes was not a big deal, I am usually ready 15 minutes early – stay calm stay calm stay calm. I survived.

That brings me to this morning……………..major alarm clock drama. Doot doot doot my alarm goes off. I look at the screen it says 6:45am. I get up look around and realize that Rachel is not up yet. Think to myself that is odd, she always gets up before me. At this point I know if I wake Rachel and she gets to the shower before me I will be running late…………but I also know that Rachel will be even later than I, so I decided to offer her the shower first. Rachel looks at her phone and tells me that it is 5:45 and she is not getting up yet.

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I check my phone again. It definitely says 6:45am. So I stumble to the kitchen check the 3 clocks in there. Coffee Maker 5:45, Microwave 5:45, wall clock 5:45.

Back to bed I went. All the while wondering how in the world a cell phone goes from working fine to gaining an hour over night.

Why is it that strange things always happen to me?

A little Pre Thanksgiving Thankfulness

Seeing as it is Thursday now exactly one week before Thanksgiving, which may just be my second favorite holiday, I have decided to share with you all something that I am thankful for. That being said I will cut to the chase, I am thankful for my roommates. Not only are they my roommates but two of my bestest friends. I am continually blessed by them, and do not tell them enough how much I appreciate and cherish their friendships and the roles they have had in my life.


So Angela and Rachel, thanks for befriending me – encouraging me, listening to me, helping me, making me laugh, laughing at my incredibly stupid comments, praying for me, holding me accountable, making me do my chores, throwing me an amazing birthday party, and all around loving me. You guys are the best!

FYI

I just keep on moving up in the world. More and more responsibilities, how ever will I handle it all. Today I received and email that was entitled FYI. I take a moment to ponder what I am about to be informed of, make a good guess before I open the email and read. Today my guess was………………”Due to the horrendous amounts of smoke and ash I have decided to let everyone take the rest of the week off of work.” Maybe it was more wishful thinking than an accurate guess.

Shockingly my guess was incorrect. The email was actually the new 2008 updated tenant contact sheet for our office. Now you may not think that is something worthy of a blog post………………..but I have not given you the details yet. This list contains my name, phone number, and email address more than one time. I am now the official Emergency Contact, Information Contact and After Hours Contact. WHAT?!

Again thanks for the heads up. At least I did find this one out before someone calls me in the middle of the night to tell me our office has been broken into. At which point I will tell them “why are you calling me? What can I do about it?” Seriously, what am I going to do if something goes wrong at the office after hours? Well I will tell you exactly what I would do. I would call my boss, which makes me wonder why in the work he would not make himself the after hours contact person. Since he will ultimately be the one handling the problem.

Weird.
I embrace the new responsibility.

One Of A Kind

Every Sunday after church we head over to Fresh and Easy to pick up grocery’s for the week. It is always a funny little adventure as it is full of grace people, so really it is like a continuation of fellowship time. This week upon our exit from church we were walking back to our cars, which is actually quite a trek, as we are currently in the middle of building a new sanctuary, the parking lot has been closed off. Some of the neighboring businesses have allowed us to use their parking lots Sunday mornings. So as I was saying we were walking through Mike’s Burgers parking lot when we spotted this:

What is that thing? It rendered us completely speechless.
Would that be considered a stretch prius or a station wagon prius? Never in my life have I seen a vehicle with so many doors.

P.S. You can tell by the discoloration that we are still surrounded by smoke and ash, but thankfully the fires are now under control and I believe it is safe to say we will not need to evacuate. However we may get lung cancer from second hand smoke.

Smoke, Ash and Fire Oh My

This morning I was sitting in the comfort of my apartment, sipping my coffee when my mom called. She asked me if the fires were near me and if it was extremely windy. So what did I do I looked out my bedroom window and saw the sun shinning brightly, no wind and no smoke in sight. I laughed and said "no the fires are not any where near us." And with that I went about my Saturday like any other day.

Once I exited my apartment I could see that I had in fact been wrong when I told my mom the fires were not near us. We could see dark smoke billowing up near the Brea mall (about 5mi from our home) and continued on to said location to do some shopping. As you can tell we still were not concerned about the flames, as we were driving into them. After our shopping we did learn that the fire had jumped the freeway and both the 57 and the 91 had been closed.

Here are some photos of the smoke, taken by Angela, who chose to live dangerously by taking photos while driving. (Don't worry due to the freeway closure the traffic was insanely bad - and no one was hurt in the process of taking these pictures)

Thankfully we are not in the evacuation zone, so far. After a quick phone call to the folks correcting my earlier statement about not being near the fires, I was reassured by them that we were in fact safe - and not needing to evacuate...........................................yet.

I'm A Thief

So I basically stole this post from my sister's blog - so many of you may have already seen these. I have never been especially skilled at looking at ultrasound photos. I would stare and stare and then smile and nod when people asked me if I saw the baby. "Oh yeah, he's ssssooooooo cute." But no longer. Lindsey gave me specific instruction on how to view these, and magically it is as if the scales were removed from my eyes. I can see Gavin. Can you?



The fist one is of his hand, I could actually see that one without any help. Then if you look at the third one you can see his whole head (if you are lacking skills like I was I will help you out, his head is sideways with his chin to the left). 3 weeks to go!

To Craft Or Not to Craft

I have the incredible urge to craft something right now. That’s what happens when you spend too much time reading design/decorating/refurbishing blogs. But I must share with you my new favs: Scrappy Girl Decorates and 86n’it. I have always liked to refinish and craft things, and these blogs have just further inspired me. Some day I would love to partake in a project a la 86 n’ it. But, reality check - I think for tonight I will have to be satisfied with working on my Christmas cards.

The Show

This morning I used some delightful peppermint mocha coffee creamer in my morning cup of joe at work. It was good, but not quite as good as the real peppermint mocha I had at Coffee Bean last night. Did any of you go hit up the freebies? It was amazing. Angela and I went with time to spare, expecting the place to be packed out massive lines, everyone gathering trying to get their free coffee. We were a little shocked to see that there were no such crowds. We did not even have to wait. Not only were they giving away free holiday drinks, but they had a wide array of holiday treats to sample as well. We tried quite a few options, and Matt the friendly barista gave us each a full size chocolate peppermint biscotti to take home with us. So great!




After hitting up the freebies we scooted on over to the Biola production center to catch the second ever episode of The Show. We arrived 20 minutes early and the line already had about 30 people in it. Good thing we were on "the list," with reserved seating. I had a totally “I feel like royalty moment.” Imagine that you are trying to get into this great club right and you are waiting in a line wrapped around the block, your freezing thinking you are never going to get in. Then the bouncer walks up to you and says oh you’re ___________(insert last name here). You reply "yeah that’s me." Then he takes you to the front of the line, passes you through the velvet rope and escorts you straight to the VIP section. Yeah pretty much that what it was like. Here is Jake and I with our front row reserved seating. So official.



If you are wondering what “The Show” is, I shall give you the details. It is a student run live sketch comedy show at Biola. Jake is one of the many students that puts it together. I think he is pretty high up in the ranks, but then again that could just be the whole sister bias thing. He was not in any of the sketches last night, but he did star in one of the digital shorts entitled Laundry Date. It was all extremely fun – if you are in the area of Biola the one night a month that The Show happens to be going down, I highly recommend that you stop by.

Learning New Things

The Internet makes all things possible. Or so it seams. Almost any question I have can be answered by searching the Internet. It's amazing! Friday I put the information super highway to use. I decided I wanted to learn how to knit. Whala 10 minutes later I was printing out step by step instructions with pictures.

It was quite exciting. All that was needed was some yarn and knitting needles. After those were purchased I put on a movie and settled in for a night of knitting. Unfortunately it was harder than I anticipated. As good as the directions were I was still having some issues. Which soon led to frustration. I mastered the casting on stitch and could even get the first row of stitches after that. But then I hit trouble – I don’t know why, I don’t even know what happen, but it was a disaster. I think I started over at least 8 times in 2 hours. At that point I decided to give up for the night. I was more than a little frustrated.

But have no fear, a new day dawned and I had fresh eyes for knitting. I would hardly call myself a master, but I showed definite signs of improvement, I even made some great progress on what will some day be a scarf.

Free Free Free!

If you were not able to go hit up all the great freebies last Tuesday for voting I have another great opportunity for you. That is if you all like free things as much as I do. Tomorrow from 5pm-8pm Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf is giving away free 12oz beverages. They are welcoming in the holiday season by giving out their holiday drinks. Good think there is a Coffee Bean across the street from my work. I am a huge fan of the peppermint mocha.

Send Out Search Party

A couple of days ago I purchased something online and it was to be delivered to my apartment via UPS. Upon my arrival home from work Wednesday I found a UPS sticker on my door informing me that a delivery attempt was made, but the package required a signature. Bummer. I quickly got on UPS.com and changed the delivery address to my work. Problem solved. I checked the tracking number Thursday morning and was informed it was en route to my office. Wonderful!

Well the day passed on and no package arrived. This morning I again entered the tracking number only to discover that the package had been delivered to my office building and Gloria signed for it. Where was it delivered? And who is Gloria? I asked the security guard if anyone had brought down a package that was wrongly delivered. No such luck. I called UPS to try to find out what suite it was delivered too. After holding for many minutes I was told that my package was signed for and locked in the office. My building has no office – so it is not really possible that the package was signed for there. Again I asked what suite it was delivered too, by this time the girl was a little annoyed at me but she searched and informed me it was delivered to suite 800. SCORE! However she did not end there she told me that since it was not delivered to me I had to call the shipper and have them send out a search – after they searched and found the package they would redeliver it to me.

Uh I think not. I got in the elevator went to the 8th floor and asked the receptionist if they got a delivery yesterday for Mandy Floch. She told me I was lucky she still had it because UPS was on their way to pick it up. Whew! Package finally delivered.

However I do have a few problems with this situation 1) why was it delivered to the 8th floor? It clearly has my office name and suite number on the package. 2) Why did Gloria not just bring it down to the 2nd floor? Weird weird weird. But really none of that matters, I was able to use my killer detective skills and track it down before it got shipped off again.

Oak Glen

On Saturday Rachel, Angela, Ashleyann and I decided to welcome in November by going to Oak Glen. It was lovely almost fall weather and we got to enjoy all things Apple, including but not limited to apple picking and apple pie. Take a look:

The Wait Is Over

A while back I told you all how we had a staff photo taken. Well today I went and picked up the pictures. They were terrible. Not in the sense that the people looked bad - it was the photos themselves. The lighting was not good, some of them were blurry, the overall appearance was not attractive. Major bummer, I am pretty sure we are going to have to retake them.

But the individual photos came out pretty good. Therefore I am going to give you all a sneak peak of my never before seen business portrait.

What a professional I am.

Muddy Monday

We had a celebratory office lunch today. It was one of my coworker’s birthdays, so we went out to VIP Buffet. Buffet food is really not my favorite, but who am I to turn down a free meal. After lunch we were all stuffed to the brim, and walking back to the cars. As I approached the vehicle that I arrived in, I stepped up onto the small grass median, to await the car being unlocked. Unfortunately for me I did not see the gaping hole in the grass. My left foot quickly sunk into the hole, and I could feel is slowly submerge below the oozing mud. Yes that’s right MUD. Naturally I screamed and all my co workers came running. They all stopped short when they saw me wobbling on one foot as I pulled the other one out of the hole minus my shoe which came off in the mud. Their concern quickly turned to laughter as they all scrambled to find me a napkin or something to try to clean up my foot.

With the help of a single napkin I was able to remove most of the mud from my leg and foot – however the shoe needed a lot of attention. For lack of napkins I had no choice but to go back to the office with one shoe on my foot and one in my hand covered in mud. I got quite a few funny looks i we came back into our building and proceeded to the bathroom to clean up. Gross gross! I think my shoes are going to pull through just fine, however one of them is currently soaking wet – wearing wet shoes is no fun. And I was able to get the majority of the mud off of my clothing, thank goodness.

Happy Day After Halloween!

Halloween is a funny holiday to me. Some people so completely over-board in their way of celebrating and others do not even acknowledge it's existence. I think that I lie in the middle. I LOVE candy, and I LOVE dressing up. When I arrived at work on Friday I parked next to a nun, rode in the elevator with a witch needless to say I was feeling the festiveness of the day. Then I walked into my office and was greeted by a coworker commenting on my Orange shirt. She asked why I was wearing Orange, because I never wear Orange. I explained that it was my way of dressing up for Halloween (no way was I going to wear a costume to work - I am not that brave) and her response was "oh, right I guess it is Halloween." And so the day passed on as any other with no Tricks and certainly no Treats.


Upon arriving home from work I went to work on my actual costume for the night. Halloween is actually my friend Michael's birthday, so each year we get to celebrate with a little costume party. I must say the ladies of the Penthouse had the most creative costumes of the evening (pictures will follow). We had a lovely non spooky evening filled with Chili, Nachos, lots of candy, games and a classic viewing of Psycho (in which Angela had a small crush on Norman Bates). Unfortunately there were no trick-or-treaters to be found, oh well all the more candy for us.

Here are some photos of the great costumes:

Rachel and Allen were a smore.

Angela was Van Gough's Starry Night.

Billy was Carlos.


Michael and Bethany were Bruins.

Carlos and Heidi were Batman and Joker.

And I was a Cereal Killer.

Thriller!

I the spirit of tomorrow’s Hallowed eve I have here one of the best music videos of all time. THRILLER. Guaranteed to get you in the Halloween spirit.

<

Thriller lyrics - Michael Jackson lyrics

Thriller Video - Michael Jackson Music Videos

Music Videos by VideoCure

The Pumpking Problem

Something eerie happened in the wee hours of the night. There was a loud crash – it startled Rachel awake. Unfortunately Angela and I slept right through it. Upon hearing about the loud noises in the morning we were all left pondering it’s source. Was it a car accident outside? Did someone try to break in to our apartment? Or was it actually in Rachel’s dream? It was an unsolved mystery.

Well it was unsolved until I got to work this morning, turned on my computer and opened up the Internet. There on the front page of MSN I see Angela’s and my pumpkin staring back at me. That’s right, here is the pic:


Incredible, not only are they giving Martha all the credit for our beautiful creations, but they had the nerve to steel them off of our front stoop in the middle of the night. Of course they are very good thieves as they stole the pumpkins, put mice in mine, had a lovely photo shoot and then replaced them at our door all before we woke. They almost completed the mission without us knowing. Had they not created a small ruckus waking Rachel it would have gone unnoticed. We would have simply assumed that Martha shared our ideas, however due to the noises in the night we know what really when down.

Really Martha……Really? Next time carve your own pumpkins.