Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Birthday Cake!

Stephen's birthday was two weeks ago and his wonderful mom sent him a package full of fun birthday items! Included were some ingredients and a recipe for one of Stephen's favorite cakes! And I have to mention that the recipe originally came from Mrs. Mindy Cagle, former Grace Jr High Pastor's wife, so you know that it is good! We've been so busy that I haven't even had a chance to make it for him until this week. So Tuesday night I finally pulled everything together and made him his cake. I turned out soooo good! Thanks for the recipe and ingredients, Janet!!! We took a pic of Stephen with the birthday hat on, but he wouldn't let me put it on here...probably something to do with all the colorful feathers on the hat haha! So instead you get a pic of me and our yummy cake...

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Up All Night

I can't believe January is already over. I have a feeling this year is going to fly by...

This past weekend we had a Jr High Lock-In at the church. When I hear the word lock-in, two things come to mind: lots of fun and NO SLEEP. And that's exactly what happened. I haven't been to a lock-in since high school, and all my memories of our youth group lock-ins are great ones. This one proved just as good.

Within the first 30 minutes, all 100+ junior highers (and probably some of the staff) had run around enough to create quite a stench, which stayed with them and only increased as the night wore on. If you've ever spent much time with junior highers, you know what I'm talking about.

Some of the highlights of the night were:
  • A mechanical bull, which everyone, including Stephen and me, got to ride
  • Stephen's team taking 2nd place and mine taking 3rd in the 1:00am DODGEBALL TOURNAMENT (which finished at 4:00am)
  • Getting to hang out with some awesome 7th and 8th graders
  • NO SLEEP (I don't know that we'd consider this a highlight....)
  • Going to bed as soon as it was all over

Needless to say, it was a lot of fun and very tiring. We definitely spent the majority of the daylight hours on Saturday sleeping. And then our bodies were so sore that we moved as little as possible the rest of the weekend. Who knew that a dodgeball tournament could create such pain. Maybe by the time it rolls around next year, we'll be ready to do it again!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

More Rose Parade

Ok, I know we posted about this a little while back, but like I said, we lost all our pictures from the parade. I just found some great ones and thought I'd put a few more on here. The floats were so cool. Remember they are made completely out of flowers or other organic material. Pretty impressive!
The China Beijing Olympic float, which cause a little bit of controversy with human rights protesters carrying signs and camped out around it. These little ponies were some of Stephen's favorites
The Hawaii float again!
My personal favorite...look at all the detail!
The end.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Happy 25th Birthday!

This week Stephen turned 25! In the midst of an incredibly busy week, we made it into downtown LA on his birthday to go watch the Lakers play the Phoenix Suns!!! Going to a Laker's game is one of the things we really wanted to do while we live here. The Lakers lost, but it was still a great experience. Here are some pictures from the game
We also drove down towards San Diego yesterday to visit a couple vineyards not too far from us and we discovered more of the beauty of California. I loved it! Los Angeles is NOT the beautiful California that I had always pictured, but north and south of LA are where it's at! We drove past beautiful coast lines, green rolling mountains, gorgeous palm trees...the works. We're planning a trip to San Diego in just a few weeks and I can't wait to see more of this beautiful state. Hooray for getting out of the concrete jungle of LA! (as Stephen likes to call it) :-)

Monday, January 7, 2008

We Got a Puppy!

*Disclaimer: This picture is not actually Tilly, it just looks like her.

Well....ok. We technically only got a dog for one weekend. Our friends from Texas (whoop!), Bryan and Lindsey, had to go home unexpectedly last weekend and we got to have their little yorkie, Tilly, come stay with us! She was so much fun. I have ALWAYS been a big dog person, but Tilly might have actually won me over. She was so cute! Stephen was hilarious with her. He would say the funniest things to her and she would just look at him. We laughed the whole weekend and she actually won us over to the point that she slept in the bed with us the last night. I think she was a little mellow for Stephen's likings - he needs a dog that will go crazy with him - but I loved the fact that she would crawl up next to me on the couch and just rest there while I read. Bryan came and took her back Sunday evening and it was kinda sad. We definitely won't be getting a dog while we're living in this apartment, but I wouldn't be surprised if we got one once we move into the next place, wherever and whenever that might be....

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008 everyone! We're a full week into the New Year and so far ours has been moderately laid back, although we did have some special fun on New Year's Day. We kicked off the new year by getting up at 5:00am to drive over to Pasadena to check out and watch the floats at the Rose Parade. It was AWESOME! All of the floats are completely made out of flowers and other organic materials. There were some incredible scenes and probably the most flowers I have ever seen at one time in my life...I was loving it! And Stephen even had fun too! We were able to literally walk right up to the floats and check them out...so cool!

We took over 200 pictures, but had a computer meltdown when we tried to download them and ended up losing all of them :-( Not too happy about that, but I was able to pull these off the internet so you can have a little taste of what we saw. Sorry the little ones are so little, but if you click on them, you can see a bigger version.

2008roseparade-168


2008roseparade-74
The Hawaii float!!! Hello honeymoon!

And the whole thing was completely FREE! Now that fits right into our newlywed budget. :-) It was a great morning, and we got to fellowship with the Bierhorst's, who are on Jr. High Staff with us, as they hosted a wonderful gathering just down the street from the parade. Then we headed home around noon for an afternoon of relaxing, football, and napping (for me!). It was a fun way to start the new year and something I'm so glad we did during our time here in Cali.

We hope you guys had a good start to 2008 and look forward to seeing what the year holds!