Toot toot toot-

You're probably wondering what I've been doing instead of blogging these last few weeks. Well, let me see.

1. Movies- Oodles and oodles of movies
2. Not Reading- Weird, since I need to finish book 9 of the Wheel of Time before next Thurs. I guess I could renew it. Nah. I can do it!
3. Making Food- Boston Creme Pie, Cream Puffs, Bread, and Chicken Broccoli were made with love
4. Eating Food- Charles was a champ and made loads of food for our lovely break. Thanks Champ.
5. Finding Money- That's a family tradition. We go in age order to the living room and gather as much change from the floor as we can. No scouting quarters before the money run. No cheating. The best part of this practice is stacking and counting your loot after the gathering.
6. Hearst Castle- An extravagant castle built by William Randolph Hearst located relatively near our apartment. I took notes.
7. Griffith's Observatory- A lovely adventure in stargazing. We saw some great videos and also went through some excellent displays.
8. Pacific Aquarium- My favorite animals were the sea horses, sea dragons, and sea lions. Super fancy. You know I like fancy. Sadly, we missed the penguins- we didn't realize that until we were shopping for pants later that day. Lame.
9. Talking- I love seeing my family and friends from out of town. Although we didn't get to see all the people we know and love over the holiday weeks, we were able to spend a significant amount of this break reading considerate cards and newsletters, skyping, and talking face to face with some of our treasured framily.
10. Laundry- We completed 9 loads of laundry, I don't mind laundry. Now all the clothes in the world have been washed.
11. Beach- We only went to the beach twice, but we also saw the Butterfly Garden and saw sea lions up close and personal. Then we went hot tubbing- woot! Well, we have one at our apartment, but you can't just go hot tubbing all the time.
12. Sleeping- We may or may not have slept in every day of our break. Nice, but now we're back to 8 am classes and work. Go us.

Turns out I love: sea lions, legos- because they are miniatures and I love tiny representations of life-sized things, babies, good stories and the beach.

After I told her she was so big, my niece Noelle said "I'm not big, I'm tiny." She is tiny, and so cute.

The Good: We saw the Paul Wards, the Schulls, the Peterson singles, the Brett Cherry family, the Mike Mouritsen family, the Don Francis family, and some others via skype. We made a new friend- Liz. I planted a million lemon seeds into a tiny yogurt container yesterday. We shall see if they grow. I just want to keep the bugs and the cats away from them to one day have a lemon tree. We shall see lemon tree. Adrienne had her baby- Congratulations Adrienne! We got some sweet stuff for Christmas! Thanks everyone for our sweet haul. You should be receiving your Thank You Notes in the mail soon.

The Bad: Charles still has some double vision and dizziness after being diagnosed with Bell's Palsy. Gradually he's getting better, but I drove to and from Irvine. Hopefully he'll be good as new soon. Soccer was a little more challenging with two balls coming at him when we played with our family singles. I missed seeing Kimberly again by about 5 hours. Dang it. Kimberly, I saw you in my dream last night. I haven't eaten enough bananas lately and have a Potassium deficiency. My eye's been twitching like mad for 2 weeks. Get this girl a banana. No seriously, it's twitching right now.

The Ugly: That caterpillar never changed into anything, it just came out of its shell and is eating everything in our garden again. Ugly mystery caterpillar.

Christian- I think we still have your suitcase handle over here. And we also have someone's battery/charger for their camera.