San Diego

Welcome. Let me give you the tour. You open the door and see this!

Walk in and to your left you'll see....

Our dining room! (We saved some money on our table....)

If you were to look on your right instead of left

when you walked in you'd see...

BRENT! Doing the dishes! In our KITCHEN!

Walk past the kitchen and on your right you'll see...

Our living room! Not fully organized yet...

Starting to make sense?

So our "bedroom" is adjacent to the living room.

From the front door, you walk in, past the dining room

and it's on your left!

Don't ask me why I'm posting a picture of it when it's so messy... when I took it I was so pleased we had unpacked, everything looked clean to me... at least there are vacuum lines on the carpet, focus on those.

We love our walk-in closet! I gave Brent almost half of it!

He said, "I get ALL this?!" And he meant it, he was expecting much less :)

And our bathroom... the shower curtain has since been raised to an appropriate height.

I work on the 6th floor of a building in downtown, and I love the view!

You can see a tiny sliver of water between the buildings.

I sit here and answer phone calls and schedule appointments when I'm not in the back doing exercises with the therapists and clients.

The plants all have names, I've forgotten most of them, but I know the one on the left is Bernadette.

So on Wednesday, we got all ready to go to the San Diego Temple.... but it's closed for cleaning until the 8th of February. Oops!

So we went to Bed, Bath & Beyond instead.

Friday was Brent's birthday! I let him sleep in while I went for my first California driving adventure in search of an appropriate birthday breakfast...

It took about a half an hour on the phone to make this happen, but it was worth it!

We were determined to go the temple before the month ended, so on Saturday we drove an hour and a half to the Newport Beach Temple. It was gorgeous!

Besides the Krispy Kreme and Papa John's, (which don't really count cause it was birthday food) we didn't go out to eat all week, and we were pretty hungry after the temple... it was inevitable really.

I'm in the very front, Brent's right behind me. (We didn't want to get wet) About 15 minutes from the temple is a magical place called Disneyland, I'm sure some of you have heard about it... We splurged and got annual passes. We figured we'd just have to force ourselves to go enough to make it worth it. What's nice, though, is that we live in Southern California now, and hence, were eligible to purchase the SoCal annual pass! Unfortunately, we didn't have any proof of address, but fortunately, the lady just had us tell her our address and she gave 'em to us!

For anyone familiar with my hiccups: After a ride, we walked off and I, you know, hiccuped. We were behind a group of teenagers and you know what happened next? They all started echoing me! One after the next, it was a chorus of hiccups. They didn't turn around and laugh or anything, they just kept imitating the sound. It was pretty strange. Brent just informed me the ride was Indiana Jones. Must've been a memorable moment.

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California Dreamin':

A couple nights ago, I had a crazy dream about ants.

They were inside my skin, on my chest, a bunch of 'em. (Have you ever seen Mummy, where you can see the beetles crawl around under the guy's skin? It was like that.) And in my dream, I was FLIPPIN' out! Then, all the ants gathered and I could see them moving down my left arm, into the palm of my hand, forming an under-skin anthill.

In this dream, Brent was driving, and I kept trying to show him the ants in my skin and he kept asking what was wrong and I'm thinking, "Isn't it OBVIOUS?" So I got frustrated and yelled, "I'm not talking to you anymore!" The ants began to chew through the skin around the border of the base and when they had just finished coming full circle, I grabbed the sack of ants and threw it out the window. Sick, I know.

So I woke up and told Brent and he goes, "Ohhh!" Because apparently I had been mumbling in my sleep, and he was trying to ask me what was wrong, and then I just yelled at him, "I'm not talking to you anymore!"

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Well, folks, that's about it for this week. We are both looking for jobs, still. Brent's working hard at his online classes. I'm working hard at my internship. And we have a blast at home, making meals and watching TV and movies. We would be goners if it weren't for the GPS we got ourselves for Christmas. We went to our ward today, it's definitely, well, a new ward, but I'm sure we'll get used to it! We miss you, we love you, and we'd love to see you and hear from you!

HoneyMOONers!!

Our first honeymoon pic. I don't know why we didn't get any at the lodge, but this is where we started taking out the camera. Somewhere between Orem and San Diego, this pup is cruisin!

Elegant night on the cruise.

My new handstand photo buddy.

p.s. Our ship is not the big one in the middle, but farther back,

you can just see it on the left.

Just before we went parasailing! My lifejacket was HUGE. Not very reassuring.

Before

After

We got off the ship pretty early Sunday morning, and spent the rest of the day driving around San Diego, exploring for Costco's, Wal-mart's and Target's. It was way fun, but terribly exhausting.

We got this dolly at Costco for 20 bucks. It greatly aided the unloading of our car.... it's a long walk down the hallway to our apartment when your arms are full. On top you'll note a Little Caesar's pizza box. When we passed it, Brent's eyes lit up like it was Christmas so we bought one.... and the lady told Brent she was looking for a girl to hire part time who can speak a little Spanish! Yeah, I know. It's Little Caesar's. But a job is a job and if nothing else is available, we'll be grateful for a little extra cash. Assuming I even get hired. But anyways.... it was exciting.

A couple (ok, a few) highlights:

Got seated with a group of older people for breakfast one day, and as we left them with their oatmeal (literally) to go on our parasailing adventure, someone said, "Cute couple!" I could have turned around and kissed them, but I refrained.

It took Brent and I about half the glass to decide that the virgin pina coladas we had ordered were anything but.

A skinny, tan, beautiful young woman who sat in the hot tub with us one night said, "Comedy, is like, SO funny." Genius.

A man in the market said, "You must be on your honeymoon. And that must be why you look tired and she looks happy."

Another man in the market was going to give us some sunglasses for 15 down from 18, but then accepted 10 because we were Mormons. Said he'd like to find himself a nice Mormon girlfriend.

Our parasail boat driver pointed to Brent's wedding ring, then grabbed a rope, threw it over a pole above his head, and proceeded to act out his own hanging, tying a noose around his neck and making dead faces.

We were waiting for dinner one night, and it was cold, and Brent was hugging me, I was wrapped inside his jacket a little bit. An old man passed, slugged Brent on the shoulder and said, "I didn't see anything, keep going!"

I try to be like Grace Kelly....

Ok. So I've been to my fair share of bridal showers. And I've teased the bride and rolled my eyes every time she blushed. Get over it. We all know what's going on, what's there to be embarrassed about?

But then today rolled around.

Tonight is my night.

To blush.

To want to hide under a rock and die.

Why?

Because it's MY bridal shower tonight, and I am the recipient of the embarrassing presents.

Even worse, it's the "family" shower. Which means I have my sisters, who will get me something to wear that probably isn't even ok in the bonds of marriage.... and my mother-in-law-to-be.... who will probably get me a card with a picture of the temple on it and... a hymn book?

A GRACEful bride-to-be would handle it all with poise and the right amount of humor and gratitude.... I'm afraid I'm going to choke, literally, and asphyxiate.... people will come up to me... poke me with a stick... and say it's a shame I never got to you-know-what.

I've been waiting for this year to come!!!

I just wanted to put a post up cause I think it's cool to have a post on the first day of the new year.

Also. I had my bridal pictures taken today, here's a shot of the bouquet (well, it isn't a great shot of the bouquet, but that blob by my face? That's it). It's so pretty (trust me, it is) and kind of expensive and now, it's like, what do I do with this thing?