Weekend Pictures

I just uploaded our pictures from Marie's visit. Enjoy!

Here she is after getting off of the plane...she was so happy!

We headed to lunch at Panera!

George and Marie when we first arrived at Disneyland. Can you tell they are excited?

I had to take these pictures of the ice cream shop on Main St. b/c they serve Dreyer's!

Inside the Main St. ice cream parlor

Planning out the day while I waited in line for ice cream :)

Ridiculously delicious

Another one of our favorite Disneyland treat, Pineapple Dole Whip!

Our crazy driver on Indiana Jones

Visit with Marie

I am writing this post as Marie, George, and I are watching the movie Hairspray. Marie (George's little sister) flew in yesterday morning from Phoenix. It was Marie's first time flying by herself and she did great....in fact, I think she could get used to it. She was so happy when she walked off the plane.

We went to lunch and headed back to our place. We relaxed for a couple of hours and waited for George to get off of work. George's parents got us a hotel in Anaheim so we headed down to the Disneyland area for the night. Marie was very interested in going into the hotel pool...and convinced George to go in too :) After the pool, we headed to dinner at Outback and headed to bed pretty early knowing that we had a long day ahead of us.

So, this morning, Marie woke up very excited to head to the park. We managed to get every one of the "big rides" in. Marie and George both said that Splash Mountain was their favorite, but I am die-hard Tower of Terror fan (that ride never gets old)! Of course, we also got managed to indulge in our favorite Disneyland treats...Pineapple Dole Whip (I LOVE PINEAPPLE DOLEWHIP...haha, Mom), George's beloved cream cheese filled pretzel, and ice cream on Main Street.

I captured some great pictures and will post those soon!

I head back to work tomorrow, but George has the day off and will take Marie to the airport. This week is a short week for us...we are heading to Phoenix for a 4-day weekend on Thursday night (and return on Monday evening).

I hope everyone else had a great weekend!!

Blogs and Pinterest

Hi Everyone! I am writing this post after browsing blogs and Pinterest for a couple of hours! Time goes by so fast when I do that (which is often). I am really obsessed with this blog right now: http://tatertotsandjello.blogspot.com/. This lady has over 14,000 followers and posts everyday and sometimes multiple times per day. All of her posts are crafts, ideas, decorating/design tips, occasional recipes, etc. It must be a full time job for her. The other time wasting activity that I mentioned is pinterest.com. It is a website dedicated to "bookmarking" anything that catches your eye. Everyone has multiple boards and the boards are categorized...for example, "Sewing Ideas" or "Recipes". So anytime you are on the internet and come across a recipe that you like (and want to remember for later), you just "pin" it to your recipe board. And you can look at your friend's boards too and re-pin any of their pins that you like. Get it?! :) Hmm...what did people do before the internet...what a time waster!!

We went to Disneyland on Saturday with Sergio, Andi, and their son, Keziah (he is 1.5 years old). We have Disneyland tickets that are expiring at the end of the month, so even though we are going again this weekend with Marie, we figured we might as well go two weekends in a row. It was Keziah's first time and it was so funny to see his reaction to stuff. At first he was just taking it all in (no smiles, just staring at everything)...but after our walk down Main Street, he started to realize that Disneyland is pretty cool and couldn't stop smiling! It was really funny.

My Dad came into town last night on business (finally!!...he used to travel to S. CA all the time for work) and George and I got to meet up with him for dinner. It was great seeing him after a busy Monday at work...even if it was just for a few hours.

Which reminds me.....Happy Anniversary to my parents!! Today marks their 31 blissful years of marriage :)

With that....I am off to the gym! Goodnight!!

Yummmm!!!

George and I went to a deee-licious bakery called Porto's on Sunday. I found this place on Yelp and it had so many 5 star reviews....so, I knew we had to try it out. Ya know, eating and trying new places is our favorite hobby! I was so enamored with all of the baked goods, I had to take pictures.

You walk into the bakery and are immediately overwhelmed by all of the choices (they serve "real" food in addition to the baked goods)

We started off with lunch and then rushed back to check out the case full of pastries

How are we supposed to decide??!

Thankfully, I spotted this delicious looking Creme Brulee...and then the decision was easy :)

(I am IN LOVE with Creme Brulee)

And I washed it down with some refreshing passion tea

Yeah, so that is all I remember about the weekend. Haha :) Actually, we had a great weekend.

We are looking forward to the next few weekends...in two weekends, George's little sister, Marie, is going to visit us and we are going to take her to Disneyland. It will be her first solo plane ride! Then, we are heading to AZ for Labor Day weekend!!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend as well...off to bed.

Productive Day

Yay for a productive day! George had to work so I cleaned and washed my car, ran a couple of errands, studied for the GMAT, went to the gym, and now I am waiting for George to get home. Actually right now, I am thinking about taking a quick nap :) I love the weekends!! Haha.

I have kept up the running. I am consistently running 3 miles about 4-5 times per week. It is getting easier (still not easy), so I think it is time to bump up the speed. My gym has this awesome "Cardio Cinema"...basically a bunch of cardio equipment in a theater room with a movie playing. It's a great distraction from the workout!

As promised, I wanted to show you all some of our finds from the San Diego craft show last weekend. These are just a few (I need to take pictures of the rest).

Love these little gift tags that my mom picked up. We plan to replicate them with the Cricut machine that we have!

There were lots and lots of cute headbands at the craft show. This is one for Hannah to wear on Game Days at her school (their colors are red and blue)

A set of burp clothes (also plan to replicate these...great baby shower gift!)

I love cute paper/stationary! It is hard to see, but the zig-zag underneath the bike is stitched on. I can't wait to try it out!

This next find was one of my favorites. It is a cake/cookie stand made out of a plate and a candlestick...what a good idea!!

Sorry, those pictures did not have the best lighting, but you get the idea. Well, I think that is all for now. George just called and said he got a $20 tip from a client of his at work...guess we're going to dinner!!!

Weekend Visit

We had such a wonderful weekend with my parents! They arrived on Saturday morning and were "on the go" until they left early Monday morning!

One of the big highlights of the weekend was our day trip down to San Diego. My mom and I had heard on a blog about a craft sale in San Diego (most of the vendors are also big time bloggers), so we convinced the guys to go :) And I am definitely glad we did because it was awesome!! I definitely was inspired by many of the crafty ideas...and now I have several projects on my "to do" list. Here are some pictures from the craft show:

There were three rows like this of vendors (I think approximately 50-60 vendors total)

Many of the vendors set up adorable little booths

NEED to remember this idea for Paisley's 1st birthday!

I was loving the beautiful fabrics they used for different crafts

One of my favorite booths - I took this picture to remind myself to make some of these pillows with the ruffles

Cute idea for a birthday or party decoration

iPad holder...if I had an iPad I think I would have bought one!

Banners for parties or holidays

Once I realized that it was OK to take pictures, I went a little crazy! Haha. I will post pictures of some of our purchases in a separate post later this week! By the way, the craft show was called the Queen Bee Market. I think that they are holding another one in November!

While we were in San Diego we also decided to hit-up Phil's BBQ. We read about it on Yelp.com (website with reviews for pretty much anything you can think of) and heard about it from friends. I guess you could say that we knew it must be good when we showed up and the line looked like this (at 2:30pm):

We had plenty of time to check out the menu while we were in line :)

My dad about to "dig-in"

Come on, who could say no to these??!

George figuring out his "plan of attack"

After Phil's BBQ, we rolled ourselves back to the car and drove back to the LA area. My parents got to see our new place and meet our friends/landlords, Sergio and Andi (Andi is a girl, just in case you were wondering).

Sunday was also a fun-filled day. We started off the day with church in Fullerton and then headed south to the Huntington/Newport Beach area. We had a nice walk around Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in HB. On our way to Newport Beach, we drove along the Pacific Coast Highway and all of the action on Main Street in Huntington...the U.S. Open of Surf happen to be going on and it was BUSY! We dined at the delicious Mama D's Italian Kitchen. That was our second time there and once again, it did not disappoint (VERY good service and great food if you are ever in the area). We headed back to our place and shortly after, called it a night.

Here are a couple of pictures from Bolsa Chica:

I wasn't exactly prepared for the walk, but we made it work!

Entering the Reserve

Definitely a great weekend with my parents!! Now we are looking forward to our visit to Phoenix in just a few weeks.

Correction!

I posted the incorrect address last week! I was wondering why I hadn't received anything in the mail :) The actual address is:

1218 W. Barbara Ave.

West Covina, CA 91790

I just got back from a good workout. Ran for 40 minutes...nonstop! I wasn't running very fast, but I told myself to run the entire time - I did it!! AND NOW... my face is really red! The thing I love about this new gym is that they have a lap pool. I have been swimming every other night and I must say, it is such a good workout. I am exhausted after swimming for a bit, but at the same time it is one of the only exercises that I find fun.

Work is still busy, busy, busy!!! Things are crazy with our ice cream and pizza integration, but I continue to learn a lot about the business and how manage people. Before I started working here I thought that managing people would be easy...turns out, it's not as easy as I thought. Even though it is tough at times, I'm thankful for my job and all I've gotten to experience so early in my career.

Well, with that, I am tired and need to get some sleep because I have another busy day ahead of me! Have a great weekend :)

August

Whoa, it is August! Crazy...where did July go? Actually where has the summer gone?? I'm looking forward to the fall though. It is definitely my favorite time of year - Halloween, cooler weather, the anticipation of Thanksgiving and Christmas...I love it!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. It seems like my blog posts are less frequent these days. I was at work today and made myself write down "BLOG" so I wouldn't forget! I will try harder to remember :)

We are really enjoying our new place. We are renting a room from Sergio and Andi so it is less space than what we had, but it doesn't bother us at all. We were both saying that it is kind of nice to have a full house again. George and I both have bigger families and grew up with people constantly around so we feel right at home. Sergio has 2 daughters and Sergio and Andi have a son together.

We had a wonderful weekend...it felt GREAT to relax after moving last weekend. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings on Friday night with Sergio, Andi, and Sergio's two brothers. I got the most mild wings they had and they were still WAY TOO SPICY for me...everyone else got the really hot ones and they were fine. I'm a wimp when it comes to spicy food! On Saturday, we went to a nearby park and did this thing called shark boarding (I think that's what they were calling it). It was a lot of fun...probably dangerous too (I sat through a 7 hour safety meeting at work on Friday so now I'm all paranoid). On Sunday, George and I went to church and then out to eat at a Greek restaurant in Brea called The Olive Pit - it was so good...I love Greek food, very flavorful! Last night we were invited over to Sergio's parents house for dinner. They are Mexican and served some delicious Mexican food...carne asada, corn tortillas, rice, beans, and homemade salsa - DELICIOSO! Greek and Mexican food in the same day...the bowl of cereal for dinner tonight was a bit of a disappointment after that! :)

Anyway, back to the daily grind today! We're looking forward to a visit from my mom and dad this weekend :)

Here are a couple of short video clips from the park (I apologize, but you will have to turn your head to see these...now I know for next time!)

It's hard to make out, but that is George on the board with Sergio's daughter Juliette on the back!