Thanksgiving Weekend

Our first Thanksgiving as a married couple turned out to be a fun 4 day weekend. We spent Thanksgiving with my side of the family since we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with David's family in October.

Here is Lexi sleeping with our kitty, we brought her along with us.

Little Marissa is getting to be so big! It is so amazing how these kids grow so fast. She is smiling and laughing now. After eating turkey at my Grandma's house we went to spend some time with my father and ate some delicious bbq tri-tip! It was a nice second meal for us.

I always like to get in the "sister" picture when we are all together. Thanks to my wonderful husband for taking such a wonderful picture; he actually caught Marissa smiling!

My mom came out this weekend with Mike and Adam to stay in our new house. We had a lot of fun! My mom, me, Adam and Becky enjoyed a nice full day of shopping for Christmas decorations around town while the men hung up our Christmas lights. It was a fun weekend to have them over. I decorated my tree for the very first time...I still have a few more things to hang on it, but it feels nice to do my own decorating for the holidays.

We had my mom take a picture in front of our new tree before they left to go back home. I am sure Honey (our cat) is glad that Adam went home, I think she was getting irritable being picked up so many times. He told my mom that he wished he was my kid so he could stay here and play with the cat all he wanted. Kids are TOO funny! This will be our first Christmas family portrait!

We had such a wonderful weekend, we are so thankful for all the time we had to spend with our family during the holiday. Christmas will be here before we know it!

Moving Day!

Well, we finally did it! We packed and moved everything into our new house. It was a very tiring and stressful day, but we got through it. We love our new house, and can't wait to get rid of all these boxes!

David's parents came out and helped us move. Dave helped David set up all the big items, so all that is left to do is unpack all the smaller boxes.

Sister Lewis in our ward offered to bring us dinner for our first night in our new house. She is so sweet, she really treated us to a wonderful delicious dinner. Her presentation was beautiful too! We had beef stew, homemade biscuits, sliced fruit, salad, dessert and sparkling cider with 2 glasses to celebrate!

David was working on getting the TV and all his speakers together, and then our cat went and laid on him while he was reading the instructions. I thought this was a cute picture so I had to throw it in.

Finally David fell asleep on the floor along with our little kitty. He was exhausted from all the moving. I am SOOO glad we wont have to move again for a long time!!! I will post pictures of the house soon... :)

Help us name our new friend!

My husband brought me home a surprise today, he found our little kitten! He was walking to our apartment and saw that she was being picked on by another big cat, so he rescued her and brought her inside. We aren't sure what to name her....comment any suggestions please!!

She was pretty dirty so we decided to give her a bath. She didn't like it, which was expected - but it was much needed!

Even though it doesn't look like it here, she seemed to really like the blow dryer

Ta Da!! A big change isn't it! She doesn't look like a greasy dirty cat anymore! She was exploring while we were getting a little bit of packing done.

She fell asleep as I was brushing her, isn't she so cute!!

Hello Kitty!

I think the only thing I am going to miss about the apartment complex we live in are all the cats! There are cats EVERYWHERE around this place. They mostly hang out by the trash, but there are a few that are tame and hang out by the apartments to get attention. I love to sit and pet the ones that are friendly. Today I met this little kitten, she ran over 100 yards to come to me.

I petted her outside for a while, and then we let her in to feed her some tuna since she looked a little underfed. She ate a whole can of tuna, we had to break apart the pieces because she wasn't doing to much chewing.

After she ate, she played with me and David for a while... I wanted to keep her but we let her out. Maybe the day we move, if shes still hanging around Ill toss her in my car and take her with me as an outside pet. For the hour we had a kitty, it was fun!!

Blog Tag

My sister in law tagged me for this, I don't usually do these kinds of things but what the heck, here it goes...

Eight Favorite TV shows:

1. House
2. Lost
3. What not to wear
4. Flip this House
5. Jon and Kate plus 8
6. House Hunters
7. Law and Order SVU
8. CSI

Eight Favorite Restaurants:
1. Zachary's Pizza, San Ramon
2. China Chili's
3. Fresh Choice
4. Macnamera's
5. Mimi's Cafe, they have the BEST muffins!!
6. La Pinata, Bay Area
7. Nordstom Cafe
8. Sticky Chicken

Eight Things that happened yesterday:
1. We bought pedastools for our washer/dryer
2. Looked at LED Christmas lights for our new house
3. Checked out Water Softeners online
4. Slept In! =)
5. Took a wonderful afternoon nap
6. Did laundry
7. Ate some yummy popcorn and watched a movie with my hubby
8. Went to Home Depot and looked at stuff for our house

Eight Things to Look Forward To:
1. Moving into my house next week!!!!
2. Setting things up just the way I want in my new house!!!
3. My new kitchen table!
4. Decorating my house!
5. Going to the temple for my first time
6. Being sealed to my husband in March
7. Spending time with family at Thanksgiving
8. Getting out of my apartment!

Eight Things on My Wish List:
1. To have a baby next year
2-8.
(All my wishes already came true within this last year! Not sure what else I can add....)

Eight Things I Love About the Fall:
1. I LOVE wearing scarfs
2. Drinking hot tea all day!
3. Thanksgiving dinner
4. Sleeping with the heater on, although this might be my first year without that since now I'm paying the pg&e bill!
5. Getting ready for my endless yummy Christmas creations
6. Christmas music in November =)
7. Get to take out and wear all my jackets
8. UGGS! I get to wear my Uggs EVERYWHERE!!!

I am supposed to tag people, but the people I would tag probably already got this....so I tag anyone that reads my blog :)

My Husband loves me....

I have been dreaming about this table I wanted at World Market for a while, and I knew it wasn't something we would buy until sometime next year, but I got a Friends and Family coupon for 25% off through my email, and thought we would go see how much we would save. Well -- we got there and they already had a sale on their dining sets, plus we got the extra 25% off!

I didn't expect my dream to come true but my wonderful husband decided we would never get that great of a price for it, so he bought me an early Christmas present this year!! It matches our cabinets and has the distressed look I loved, it extends to seat 8 people comfortably. I am so excited for my new kitchen!

Happy Halloween!

My friend Nikki the past couple years has hosted a pumpkin carving party, but since we moved we missed out on the annual fun, so we decided to still hold our own pumpkin carving party. We drank root beer, watched Hocus Pocus and carved our pumpkins. They turned out pretty good! We figured since we wont be going to any Halloween parties or dressing up, this would be our Halloween fun.

David was concentrating to make it perfect.

I made my own pattern to try to make a scary looking jack-o-lantern, mine never look as cool as David's - but I don't think I'd have the patience to do all the small details.

I love his hugs & kisses, but I REALLY love when he does those dishes!

My husband is so amazing! After I cook dinner he does the dishes - this is mostly an every night routine that goes on in our home. He even has fun with it, seeing how high he can pile the drying pile. I love him so much!!! :)

Canadian Thanksgiving!

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with David's side of the family this year. This isn't an annual celebration, but since my sister-in-law is having her baby right around Thanksgiving, she didn't want to miss out on the meal, so we celebrated it early. David and I are excited because this year we will get 2 Thanksgiving meals. We had a lot of fun visiting and playing with the kids. We had an American Idol contest on the Wii, Lexi won first with me coming in second place...and we all got to rock out on Rock Band. Me and David learned an important lesson, you can't leave ANYTHING in reach when there are little kids around...and that our little nieces LOVE make-up. :)

All the food was amazing!

My mother & sister-in-law made trifle. It was soooo good! I was sad that I didn't get anymore than a scoop full, but now I know how to make it :)

All the kids were excited for dessert. There is my pumpkin cheesecake - it was delicious!

Jenna took us to this really yummy ice cream place called Pink Berry. Its fresh frozen yogurt and all the toppings are fresh cut fruit. It was REALLY good! I am sad that there isn't one out here in Fresno.

Appendicitis!

We had a good scare on Tuesday, well - I guess I had a good scare. David went to the doctors because Monday night he had horrible abdominal pains and didn't sleep all night long. A friend was nice enough to take him to Kaiser Tuesday morning and stay with him all day, and it turned out that David needed an emergency surgery to get his appendix removed. I was in Southern California training for work, so I drove back home once it was confirmed he was going under the knife.


Even though this was a routine procedure, I was still worried. Everything turned went well and I was able to bring him home Wednesday afternoon. He is in a lot of pain and it is hard for him to move around, but he will be alright. He isn't a needy sick person, I think I keep bugging him more asking if there is anything I can do for him. He should be back on his feet by next week. Thanks to everyone who called and came by the hospital to visit...we appreciate your concerns!

Our First Harvest

In Madera the Church owns an 80 acre vineyard, and once a year everyone comes out to help for the Harvest. What is interesting is that these grapes are used to make raisins that are shipped all over the world for the needy, and what is left over is sold to Sun Maid and the profit is put back into maintain the vineyard. We went out Saturday morning to start picking. It was actually really fun, minus seeing all the spiders.

We didn't know that the grapes were really "sun dried", but found out that they really are. They are laid out, and in a week someone goes out and turns them to make sure all of them dry out, then they put all the dried vines in bins and take them to get washed and whatever else they do to them to get the raisins we eat.

Here is my adorable husband picking grapes under the shady vine. He was very sweet, he let me choose the spots with less spider webs and spiders so I could pick in peace.

We got down and dirty, sweaty, and I even cut myself, but it was a different thing to do on a Saturday morning. In January they go through again and tie up the vines on all the wires, but I think I'll let David take care of that -- it pretty cold here in the winter from what everyone tells us. I'll stick to helping out in the nice summer mornings.

Our Vegas Vacation

We decided to take a vacation to Las Vegas for Labor Day weekend and also in celebration of David's 24th birthday. We left Thursday morning and drove to Vegas, the drive wasn't so bad, we stopped a couple times on the way at some outlet malls. We stopped at the Tulare Outlets, David bought some shirts and I came out empty handed. It wasn't a bad 6 hour drive... I got in a pretty nice nap :p

This is my friend Delica and her adorable family! Delicia was one of my good friends from the 8th grade, and then moved her Freshman year to Manteca, CA. We lost touch after that and then years later found each other on Myspace (who would have thought!). She lives in Henderson, NV - which is only 15 from Las Vegas. Our first night in we went to her place to visit and got to spend time and meet her husband and adorable little girls. Regan, the older one LOVED David, she ran to him almost right away to pick her up. Delicia says she loves tall men, but I love how children just flock to David all the time, he'll make a great Daddy one day!

We stayed at Planet Hollywood, we got an awesome deal on a Suite facing the Strip. It had a round bath tub in the middle of the bathroom that was so big I could lay lengthwise inside. There were 2 big flat screen TV's, on by the bed and the other in the sitting area. The best part was the view, we had an amazing view where we could see the fountain show at the Bellagio perfectly. When we came back from our first day walking the strip, we were surprised with a delicious fruit tray, and a cheese tray with an assortment of all kinds of cheeses and crackers, and some chocolate covered strawberries. We definitely were treated well.

Our first day we walked around the Strip, it's SOOO much longer than it looks! The hotels are so huge and elaborate. I couldn't imagine working in a hotel similar to these.



The fountain show at the Bellagio was by far my favorite part of visiting Vegas. I could sit and watch the show forever. Since our hotel room had a perfect view of the show, at night we just sat by the window and watched, a different one played every 15 minutes... it was so amazing watching it at night with the lights.

The main highlight of our trip was we went to see The Phantom of the Opera, in the theatre built especially for this performance. It was amazing! I had seen it before in San Francisco and it was David's first time. I have to say this show was way better, the feel of the theatre and the stunts in the place were unbelievable. To make it worth seeing, this is the place to see it at.

Our last night we met up with Delicia and John and they treated us to dinner at a really nice seafood restaurant.
We really enjoyed the time we were able to spend with them, we are so glad we were able to see them twice on our trip! Even though Delicia and I lost touch after Jr. High, we seemed to pick up right where we left off, it's a shame we don't live closer to each other. We are excited that they might come and visit us on their way up to the Bay Area to visit family.

Before we left Vegas for good we had to take a trip to see the Las Vegas Temple. It was beautiful as they always are.

David's sister Jenna's house is halfway between Vegas and home, so we stopped to spend the night on Sunday night and BBQ for Labor Day. We had a lot of fun visiting them as we always do and getting to spend some time with the kids.

Calvin is getting so big!

My Last Day at the Sheraton...

On Thursday, August 21st was my official last day at the Sheraton Pleasanton. I am going to start working for the Fairfield Inn by Marriott in Clovis. I had worked at the Sheraton hotel a little over 7 years! I started right when I turned 17 as a Junior in High School. I started working the Front Desk on weekends, to the Sales Admin, to the Revenue Manager. My last day happened to be on the Annual Kick Off Party for the Goodguys Car Show, the best time of year to work.

This is my amazing team (missing a couple people...) but many people here have seen me graduate high school, graduate college & get married. You can say I grew up here and some of these people have been there the whole time. I am truly going to miss being with these people on a daily basis!

We were graced with the presence of Elvis, my boss got a special song dedicated to her... she loves Elvis and is always singing his songs.

David stayed for my last day, I love him so much!! He was even helping out making and serving some popcorn to the guests.

This is the most amazing boss in the world! Debbie has taught me so much, and is the one who gave me the opportunity to get where I am today. She has such a big heart and leaving her is the hardest part of leaving the hotel.

Aunt Sandy's 60th Birthday

We had a great weekend visiting the Bay Area. On Sunday we went to our old ward in Dublin and got to see some old friends and faces. After that, we got ready to celebrate my Aunt Sandy's 60th birthday! There were a ton of family and friends that came, it was good to see everyone there. We were missing some key players, but we still enjoyed the time we spent with everyone.

My Aunt Sandy, Uncle Bob and Uncle Eloy with us kids :)

We missed my Mom, Aunt Kathy, Elizabeth, Jill and Donna and her kids - who weren't able to make it.

Grandma Lena, Karrie and Marissa. (3 generations in this picture)

Auntie Mimi and little Marissa - she is a little over 1 month old now. She is starting to fling her head around as she is getting curious to what's going on around her. She is so adorable!

Adam looks forward to going to Aunt Sandy's house every year for her birthday. She lives in the Castro Valley hills and there are tons of lizards. His thrill is to catch one, well, at least to have someone catch one.....Neil caught it for him this time. This is a picture of Adam with his new friend Fireball. (Don't worry - Fireball survives)

Uncle David and Adam horsing around, as usual. :)

Celebration for Janelle & Steve's Wedding

On Saturday, August 9th we had the opportunity to celebrate Janelle & Steve's marriage! They got married last year right before they moved to Texas, so they decided to do a reception in the nice weather. It was a lot of fun to see many old faces and to spend some time with our friends (now that we have moved!). It's rare that all of us get together so it made it a little more special.

The Greenes

All my girls together (minus Nikki).

We both owe lots to Janelle ~ she is the one who introduced the two of us almost 10 years ago!

After the reception everyone was going out, since Janelle had a babysitter she took full advantage of everyone being together. We went to this place in downtown Hayward and it turned out to be karaoke night. Being that we all used to be in the Mt. Eden Choir we rocked the place.

Molly sang to "White Wedding" in dedication to Janelle & Steve. Molly is so awesome, I love how she just goes for it! (And that she reads our blog!) It came out pretty dark, but I wanted to keep it up here anyway!

David and I sang a song for Sarah that she picked out. This was a first for the both of us to karaoke, we didn't do too bad!