All up in my business....and I kinda like it!!

too busy

2008-12-17T15:38:00.001-08:00

i haven't been around in awhile. if you'll notice, my last post was when we closed on our house. we've been really busy w/that ever since then. here are some highlights to hold you over:

-i've been spending my off-track time getting wallpaper off of the walls in our house.
-we've been moving stuff little by little. we're getting a u-haul soon to move the bigger stuff.
-daisy is 4 months now and weighs over 20 lbs.
-maui was great! it was a wonderful place to celebrate our 1 year wedding anniversary!
-after we got back from maui, my parents gave us back our top layer of our wedding cake. we defrosted it and ate about 1/4 of it. it tasted great!! no lie. the rest is still in the fridge. yum!!
-while in maui, mckatie called and told me she got engaged!!! congrats to her!
-since we've been back mckatie asked me to be her matron of honor! i'm really excited about that!
-on our first night in our house both dogs got out......they slide under 2 different fences. it really freaked us out. but thankfully, we found both of them. buster was a couple of houses away but daisy got really far away. we were so freakin' worried.
-on black friday (day after thanksgiving) brian and i bought our first washer and dryer. how exciting!
-i went to elana's baby shower. she's due any day now! i can't wait for her to have baby hugo!

well, for now i have to get back to my dogs and taking off wallpaper. note to everyone: don't put up wallpaper.....what a hassle.

mi casa!!

2008-11-26T20:58:00.001-08:00

it is official.....brian and i own a home! we finally closed escrow today and own a home. now, we just have to start paying for it.....ahhhhh!!! we're going to start moving stuff tomorrow.

and then sunday morning we leave for maui!

and today i went off-track!! yippee!!

crazy busy

2008-11-19T20:44:00.001-08:00

i've been MIA for awhile. this is such a busy time. we're still in escrow......yes....still. we're suppose to go and sign our loan documents tomorrow. and having daisy here at the house w/buster is crazy. we need the house w/the yard for them. she's a lot bigger than the photos that are posted there.....she's 18 lbs. now. compare that to buster who's about 9 or 10 lbs. she has already outgrown him. and at work we've been testing our kids like crazy and having parent conferences and doing report cards. so, its been super busy and it still is. i go off-track next wednesday (the 26th) and i can't wait. maybe when i'm off-track i'll have more time to catch up.....

in 2 days is the day some of us ladies have been waiting for.....twilight, the movie, is coming out. i already bought my ticket pre-sale last friday for this coming friday. have to make sure i get in . and this past weekend i bought my shirt that i'm going to wear. *sigh* i can't wait. yes, yes, i'm one of those people that is crazy in love w/that series. i was able to get multiple other people hooked on it as well.....including my mom, thank you very much! so, i'm really excited about that!!

i never posted pics from our halloween party.....i'll have to do that soon!!

introducing....

2008-10-28T18:43:00.000-07:00

the newest addition to our family......we got a boxer puppy on saturday. she's adorable. she's a little over 11 weeks old now. so adorable. i got to name her since brian named buster. i named her daisy swayze (and then our last name). buster's middle name is butters (like from south park) and then our last name. we're weird like that, i know. i'll post some pics of both of them. prepare to fall in love w/both of my angels!!

this is buster. i don't know if i've ever posted a pic of him on here. he doesn't stay still too long for photos. he's a little over 3 now.

this is daisy!! so adorable!

brian holding her like a little baby. you can only hold buster like that in the morning when he first gets up.....otherwise he will squirm around. daisy doesn't mind it though.

brian already calls her "lazy daisy".

grrrrr....

this is how she fell asleep next to the couch. yes, the couch where we live now is blue. that couch is not coming to our house. imagine how disappointed i am. sike. but, back to daisy, i thought that she looked so cute/funny sleeping there like that.

so, now brian and i have 2 children. it has been craziness since saturday. we're enjoying have the 2 of them around though. we really can't wait to get into the house so they can have a real yard to run around in. speaking of the house....our estimated closing date is a week from today. hopefully that stays accurate. we'll see.

i <3 edward cullen

2008-10-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

yes, if you know what that subject headline means you know what i've been busy doing w/my free time.....which is one of the reasons i haven't been on here typing. and if you know what it means you probably agree w/me. sigh.

i've also been busy w/work.....which seems like a mile high pile of work to do. can't wait to go off-track.

also, we're at the "end" of escrow on our "fingers-are-crossed-should-be-our-house" in fullerton. our estimated closing date is november 4th (election day) but they do call it an estimate for a reason, right? i'm not holding my breath. we've been making progress but i've trained myself that i can't get too excited until the keys are in my hand. hopefully soon!!!

i signed up for my first ever 5K in long beach on thanksgiving morning. it's called the turkey trot. gobble, gobble.

brian and i are going to maui from november 30th-december 7th to celebrate our 1 year wedding anniversary. we traded our timeshare for maui this year (like we traded last year to go to o'ahu). so no matter what happens w/the house stuff we have a vacation for sure planned for my next off-track time. and it's finally close enough to talk about.....one month and ten days away. yes!!

what else? ummm....just been doing a lot of random stuff. watched "eagle eye" w/hanna yesterday. i've been playing a lot of poker. we're having our yearly halloween party on the 31st this year. tried out a new club in anaheim called "heat".....that was pretty fun. which reminds me....anne hasn't sent me the pics from that night! i need to e-mail her.

finished a book

2008-09-29T17:55:00.000-07:00

cheers for me! last night i was up until after midnight finishing a book entitled The Importance of Being Married (please pretend like i underlined the title....i still don't know how to do that) by Gemma Townley. yes, it's a fiction story. i just picked it up randomly at the book store when i was off-track in august b/c of the title. i also read the back and thought that it would be good. i really enjoyed it. now i have one more book that i bought on that trip to the book store. i should start that one soon. cheerio!

ESCROW BABY!!

2008-09-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

i've been MIA.....i know. everytime i think i'm going to sit down and type, i end up checking my e-mail, or reading gossip online, or looking for my halloween costume, etc. but i want to take a moment now to tell my online world (b/c there's a lot of you) that brian and i are in escrow on a house. finally!!! we actually went into escrow 3 weeks ago.....so when i posted my last post we were in escrow but i didn't write that b/c i wanted to talk about my vacation. so, anyways, yeah we're escrow and we're trying to get through the process. i'm really happy about it but i try not to get too enthusiastic b/c we're not actually IN the house yet. once we have the keys i'll be elated beyond belief. so keep your fingers crossed along w/ours that we get through this successfully!!! i'll try to keep udates about that coming more frequently. we're using CalVet for our loan so they made us put down a 60 day escrow.....so we're about half way through what they told us. we'll see how long it really takes. :-)

i've been busy

2008-09-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

it's true. being back to work, amongst other things, has really consumed a lot of my free time. i'm going to finally post pics from my august vacation w/brian. i'll let the pics show what we did and how much fun we had!!!

here is the cabin we stayed in during our big bear stay. and yes, that is my super, sexy honda parked outside.

while shopping in "the village" one day we went into this store and i couldn't resist this photo.

one morning for breakfast we went to this place. we had seen a huge wait outside on the weekend for it so we went there on a weekday to skip the wait.

i ordered the short stack of chocolate chip pancakes. yes, that is the "short" stack. i almost ordered the "normal" portion but then i saw another woman get her order and overheard her say hers was "short" stack and it looked like that.....i decided then to order the "short" stack. and it was totally filled w/chocolate chips. yummy!!

one day we hiked along the lake. it was beautiful there!!

brian and i.

another day we went out to a dock to rent a waverunner. before we did that we fed the fish and ducks. brian warned me that i'd freeze on the waverunner b/c of the cold spray. i didn't listen to him. he was right. we both froze our butts off. my fingers and toes were numb.

ok, i originally went into this place for ice cream. and yes, i did get some. when i was in there i noticed their very large candy and fudge section. i think in total i ate 2 lbs. of fudge. i also got some for my family and brian's grandma. ahhh, to die for!!

on my b-day we woke up and left big bear. we stopped by to visit brian's grandparents and great-grandma before we headed down to temecula. we stayed at the south coast winery. it was fantastic!!!

i took lots of pics of the inside but i was really in love w/the bathroom. the toilet is off to the left and the shower is to the right.....double shower head......ahhhh.......

they give you a free bottle of wine when you get there. brian traded ours for champagne. then we went out onto our patio which was surrounded by vineyards and drank our bottle. so relaxing and romantic!

here i am pretending to pop the cork! i just think i look cute in this pic!

for my b-day dinner we went to claim jumper. here is my dessert! brian said they just dumped a half gallon of ice cream on a plate and added some chocolate and stuff. i say.....way to go!

you know i'd conquer that, right? it was good!!!!

next day we woke up for our wine tasting tour. so much fun!! here was our first stop.

here we are outside the tasting room. it was a beautiful day!

another winery. we ate lunch here after the tasting.

the last winery we went to. there was a total of 4 stops on our tour.

we're inside the last winery. they had pretty interesting wine glasses.....not your typical style.

after the tour was over we were dropped off at the south coast winery. we had a free tasting we got to do there b/c you get a free tasting if you're staying there. we drank w/alana (our lady) pictured below for 2 hours. we were absolutely drunk when we left. good times!

then we ate dinner at the restaurant there. and this is a pic of me trying to get back to our room. and that night we actually made it to the pool and jacuzzi as well.

it was a great trip and a great b-day!! i had a great time. after we left there we drove to robby and mckatie's house in corona. we hung out w/them friday night and then robby dropped mckatie and i off at the glen ivy hot springs spa in corona. we stayed there all day and relaxed (mckatie got me a massage for my b-day gift), drank, and ate. it was good times.

:-)

The Freedom Writers Diary

2008-08-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

**just so everyone knows.....i know i still have to post vacation pics. i'll get to it.....soon.**

i'm coming towards the end of my off-track time. i had purchased 3 books to read. so far i've finished 1 and have just barely started the 2nd one. the one that i read first was The Freedom Writers Diary (pretend like the title is underlined.....i'm not sure how to do it on here). i had vaguely heard of them before and i remembered a movie about it but didn't really know anything about that group.....just knew it had to do w/teaching. well, i happened to see the second half the movie on t.v. one night and decided to read the book. it's a great book. written by kids in their diaries from 9th-12th grades. the high school is wilson high school which is located in my school district that i teach in. i found the book to be an amazing (and true) story especially since it's the kids words being printed and the changes you see in them throughout the years is exponential. they become independent, goal-orientated, caring, thoughtful adults....what you hope all kids that are going to lead our future will be. and it was phenominal how they grew to care about people of other races instead of just hating them b/c they were suppose to.....they learned tolerance and then moved on to teach it to others.

great book! great story!

cover my b-day first

2008-08-25T21:00:00.001-07:00

so, brian and i got back from our vacation yesterday but first i want to cover my b-day celebration last friday (the 15th). we went to the auld dubliner down in long beach by the pike. it was a ton of fun!! i had a great time celebrating so i'm just going to cover it w/some pics. enjoy!!

this is brian and i at the beginning of the night. we're sexy.....we know it!

angela (paul's wife) and i. time to open presents!

paul bought me a shot. i told him it had to be tasty....it was! and colorful!

doug and i are actually looking at the camera. you can see smith, paul, hanna, and laura (hanna's sister) in the background.

anne, kathrina, and i. smith is "trying" to lean out of the photo.....lean back.

anne, brian, mckatie, and john.

this photo cracks me up b/c so much is going on.....john and dalonda are talking to each other across the table, bobby is resting his head in his hands, i'm leaning forward laughing at something potvin said, doug's across the table possibly smelling his fingers, and james is chatting up kathrina. great photo!

james and brian w/smith looking freaky behind them...and doug off to the right.

me and mckatie. my tongue is trying to reach her.

anne and i! brian and kathrina off to the side.

doug and laura (not hanna's sister.....a different one).

hanna bidding farewell!

i had a great b-day! i'm glad so many people came out for me and partied for so long! it was good times! in the next post i'll cover our vacay....more pics to come!!

b-day celebration & vacay!

2008-08-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

it's late friday afternoon.....tonight we're heading out to long beach to celebrate my b-day. my actual b-day is wednesday (the 20th) but i'm celebrating tonight. then tomorrow brian and i are leaving on vacay!!! i'm so excited to get away w/brian. i think i already posted in a blog where we're going......i'll make sure i post lots of b-day and vacay pics when we get back!!! have a great week!

oh, and one other thing....brian and i have been using (or trying to use, shall i say) the VA loan to get a house. the cap on that loan is really low......especially for california. brian looked into using the CalVet loan b/c the cap is higher by over $100,000!! so, today i faxed over the form to them that they need to get a pre-qualification going and i also mailed out a form of brian's that they need to prove he's a veteran. so, we're hoping to pre-qualify for more $$$ and hope that that opens more doors for us in getting a house b/c the VA loan limit was really keeping us from getting a house. so, while we're gone this week that should get processed and hopefully when we get back that'll be approved and we can start looking at more houses w/our new limit. i'll keep the updates coming!!

no-go

2008-08-12T14:52:00.001-07:00

brian and i heard last night that our offer on the anaheim hills house is a no-go. i guess they received a higher offer than ours. they don't/can't tell you how much that offer is so you don't know if you're kinda close or just laughably far away from "winning"......but, we basically offered as much as we could so we had to let it go at that. obviously, this house wasn't meant to be ours either. hmmmm......

Cheers!

2008-08-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

another weekend over....boo. still off-track.....yeah.

friday: i went to lunch w/elana. she came back from visiting her husband in germany. and this was the first time i've seen her since she got pregnant. so i got to visiter w/her, have lunch, and rub the belly for good luck! she finds out this friday if it's a boy or girl!! i can't wait to find out.....then i can go and buy her some baby stuff! that afternoon i also went by lbusd building to turn in my paperwork to change my last name. since i had changed my banking accounts i could then change my name at work. i'm getting through this stuff step-by-step. that night people came over for poker. we had 14 people playing! we broke the game into 2 tables. i did ok. mckatie and hanna were there playing also so that was fun. after the 3 of us girls were out we took a trip to tgi friday's around midnight. time for sangria!! good times!

saturday: brian and i met up w/jesse to check out a house in anaheim hills. after we did that brian and i drove out to los alamitos to have dinner w/my mom. her actual b-day was the next day (sunday, august 10th) but she wanted to go out to dinner w/us on saturday. so, we met up w/my mom at the original fish company. it was good. that was the same place my dad had picked back in march for his b-day. we went home totally full. after a couple of hours of lounging back at home we went over to 31 flavors for some ice cream. yum!! i love mint chocolate chip!!

sunday: we met up w/jesse to put an offer on the house we'd seen the day before. this is officially our 4th offer. 4 offers!! no joke. isn't the 3rd time the charm?!? i guess not! ha, ha. who knows if the 4th time will be it either. we'll see. i'll post when i know. that night we went to dinner w/paul and angela at this sushi place that just opened up walking distance from our place called "ginza sushi". it was good....the people were friendly, the food was good, the drinks were tasty. then paul and angela came over for some wine at our place to hang out for a bit. and that was the end of our weekend.

things coming up:
1) i'm celebrating my b-day this friday in long beach. cheers!
2) brian and i are leaving saturday for vacay!! off to big bear, temecula, and corona (visit mckatie and robby and go to glen ivy out there). i can't wait to get away!
3) crossing fingers about house offer!!!

off-track is coolio

2008-08-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

i'm here. still off-track. still trying my best to be as lazy as possible. i shall succeed!

friday: i ended up going to my classroom to work. while i'm off-track there's this program at my school that's using my room so i had to clean up a lot of my stuff and move stuff around so they can utilize my room. so in 2 weeks i'm hoping they won't ruin/misplace/use/relocate too much stuff so my whole head won't have to explode while i'm cleaning up after them (note to everyone....that's what ALWAYS happens). then i had to get one of my tires patched b/c it had a slow leak. while that was going on i walked over to target and got some school supplies for my next batch of kids. that night people came over and we played poker. i got 2nd place=$$. yeah!!

saturday: brian and i ran errands. then we drove out to rancho palos verdes to go to a wedding at the south coast botanic gardens (http://www.southcoastbotanicgarden.org/). the person who we knew that got married was hanna's younger sister, laura. i don't have any pictures yet but if hanna sends me some i'll post them. after we left there (we left 15 minutes before the wedding was going to end) we drove back towards home and stopped at a bbq that john/dalonda/kathy were having. after that it was time for bed.

sunday: brian and i went to look at a house in la habra that we had been watching for awhile with our realtor, jesse. we loved the house and really wanted to put an offer in on it. we found out the next day (monday) that the house was a short sale and is about to foreclose. none of this was listed in jesse's notes.....they tried to hide that it's a short sale. boo on them. and, of course, they were trying to hide this fact b/c short sales are pointless and a waste of time. point blank. so, after all of that we went to the cheesecake factory for dinner.....my favorite!!! got some dessert to go. i got something new on their dessert menu.....their 30th anniversary cheesecake. that's its name. it was okay. i didn't even finish it....gave the rest to brian. later on i swung by borders and bought 3 books to read and went by blockbuster and rented 2 movies. that night we watched "match point". it was a movie that had been reccomended to me awhile ago and i happened to see it on the shelf. it was kinda weird.....twist at the end.

monday: besides going to the gym and then being lazy i started reading one of the books i bought......The Freedom Writers Diary (pretend like the title is underlined) by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell. it's about the students at wilson high school in long beach unified and their english teacher erin gruwell. i saw the end of the movie on t.v. and decided to read the book. and that night i watched the other movie i had rented "definitely, maybe".....which i loved!!

tuesday: Today! i went to the gym and visited my family. got my new driver's license in the mail....i really like my photo! also went to an open house in fullerton. it's kind of run down and also out of our price range.....we'll see.

my man cooks.....what's up?!?!

2008-07-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

so a weekend has gone by.....today (monday) is my first "official" day of vacation!! yeah!! here's what went down:

friday: i had a meeting at work to go to and then i worked in my classroom for awhile. then i went to the dmv to renew my license and change my last name. fingers are crossed for a good picture on my new license! that night brian and i just hung out at home b/c brian had a test to take in the morning.

saturday: brian left early to take his test. i ended up getting up when he did. i went to starbuck's. then i just did a few things on my to-do list. in the afternoon brian and i ended up going w/our realtor (jesse) to see a couple of houses. there was one that brian liked but i wasn't feelin' it. then we went to the cheesecake factory for dinner and bobby met up w/us. yum!! i had been craving their buffalo blasts and finally my dreams came true. we got dessert to go and went back to our house to hang out. that night the 3 of us went to the yard house and smith and doug met up w/us and we drank in the outside patio area at the yard house. good martinis!!! :-)

sunday: lazy day. brian woke up and decided that he was going to cook. he's a great cook....unlike myself. doug had stayed the night so the two of them walked over to the store and got stuff for brian to cook with. i decided to take pictures.

below is brian cooking the spicy sausages on the bbq. those things are yummy!

then he started to cook the chorizo in the kitchen. if you haven't had chorizo before it is delish.

this is brian's finished product. he cut up some of the spicy sausages and put it in w/the chorizo. then we made burritos out of it. i'm licking my lips now just thinking about it.

there is one of the burritos that i ate. added some cheese and tapatio and it was ready for consumption. pic is a little blurry though.....i guess i was more focused on eating! oh, and drinking mimosas too!! cheers!

later after doug left bobby came over and we all watched the movie "the bank job". i had heard that that movie hadn't done that well in theaters but was worth watching so we decided to watch it. i really liked it.

time to go and enjoy the rest of my first "official" day off!!

6 years done!!

2008-07-25T19:46:00.001-07:00

yesterday i finished my 6th year of teaching. time goes by so fast! i can't believe that i've been teaching that long. this was a long, long year for me. thank goodness it's over!! now, i can be lazy. well, technically, i'll still go to my classroom to work in it and organize for next year....but there'll be a lot of lazy time in there....i'll make sure of it!

today i picked up my engagement ring and wedding band from the jewelers. i had dropped them off last saturday b/c my engagement ring has always been 1/2 a size too big so it wouldn't stay totally in place. so, i wanted to get it resized and cleaned. the lady was like you should leave your wedding band too so it can get cleaned so they'll both look the same when you pick them up. so, i was like ok. therefore, my hand was naked for 6 days!! what a weird feeling not to have my rings on that finger. but, when i got them back they fit perfectly and are back to shining just the way i like it.....blinding me!! ha, ha!

and then today i also went to the DMV to change my last name on my license.....and take a new photo.....it was going to expire next month on my b-day anyways so it was the perfect time to change my last name on it as well. next step is to go to my bank and change my name on my accounts. maybe i'll do that tomorrow......we'll see.

what else? oh, brian and i have a week long trip planned in august. we're heading out to big bear on august 16th and will stay there til august 20th. then we're driving from there to temecula to stay til august 22nd. then we're driving to corona to robby and mckatie's house to stay the night and wake up that saturday (the 23rd) and brian's sending (sending=paying for) me to go to glen ivy day spa w/mckatie. after that we'll probably head home. so, that's our vacation for my off-track time. my b-day is august 20th so temecula and then glen ivy are my b-day presents. we're staying at this really cool place in temecula that is a winery and then you get your own villa to stay in. i can't wait for the trip!! i'll post pics afterwards......of course.

the weekend is here!!! yeah!!

disappointing......

2008-07-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

so, after the last post we found out that following monday that both houses were off the market. the one in fullerton accepted a higher offer (BOO!!) and the anaheim one just went off the market but we're not sure for what reason. now we are back at square one AGAIN. i feel like everytime we start to get out of that box we get shoved right back in again. so, it's the middle of july and we're still renting and living w/frank (brian's cousin)....for all of you that don't know we live in a 3 bedroom/2 bath......so it started out w/brian, frank, and joe (frank's brother) and joe got married and moved out.....brian and frank lived together for awhile just the 2 of them and then eventually i moved in.....that's why we have frank. and we stay b/c our rent is super cheap b/c brian and i get to split half the rent. so, while there are lots of "negatives" to living here still the positive side is that i get to save money (every check some goes into the savings and the rest goes into my checking for me to play with!). but yeah, so no updates on getting a house.

last night we played poker. i lost. i just got super tired of playing. it was almost midnight and i was starting to not pay attention. i got 3rd. no money for me.

tonight we're going out to celebrate anne's b-day. her real b-day is the 31st but she picked tonight to go out and celebrate. mckatie is going w/me and we're going to a place in newport beach called "tapas". we're eating, drinking, watching a flemenco show, getting a salsa lesson, and then dancing salsa. anne's all into salsa dancing so that's where we're going. ole!!

as for work i have 4 teaching days left of the year. whew. thursday is my last day w/them. now this past thursday we went on a field trip to the carpenter center at long beach state and saw "the wizard of oz". it was great!! my mom came along as my chaperone to help me keep my class together. there were a TON of kids there. i thought the show was great and the kids really loved it.

and friday is my DMV appointment. i need to renew my license b/c it expires on my b-day next month. i also need to change my last name on my license (already did my social security card) so i can start to change everything else.

what are you selling? i'll make an offer.

2008-07-12T19:37:00.000-07:00

last night was a long night. i'm too tired to write about it now......maybe later. but what i did come to write about is about brian and i putting offers on 2 different houses today. i don't know if i ever wrote this before (so if i did, feel free to read it again) but the house in fullerton (short sale) that we put an offer in on ended up foreclosing and hasn't relisted yet as a foreclosure. so our offer on that is void. today we put an offer on a house in anaheim and a house in fullerton. i'm feelin' good about this. fingers are crossed. hopefully something good happens! udates will keep coming!
:-)

Vegas Baby!!!

2008-07-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

so last weekend was the vegas extravaganza! we had such a great time!! we left thursday when i got home from work and stayed til monday afternoon. i'll just post a bunch of pics....check them out. oh, and i got my hair done the wednesday night before we left. i decided to go w/the red again but add some blonde streaks. mama likes.

brian at the rio. we stayed at the gold coast casino but we also spent a lot of time at the rio and the palms b/c they're next door to and across the street from the gold coast. we love poker!!

the foxy ladies in the crew....me, lexi, mckatie, and laura. those drinks were $20 and will mess you up!! no lie. i had pina colada in mine and i was crunk. but then again i did tell the bartender to put A LOT of alcohol in mine and not to be shy. turns out he listened to me! oh yes, that is a tamborine on the side of the drink that you could bang on and it made noise!

brian's trying to flash his camera friendly face while double fisting drinks. the 4 of us girls had stopped at the ice cream place in our hotel and the guys had swung by to say hi. but really the important thing was getting a good shot of my hair, right?!?

saturday night for dinner we went to the mexican place called "garduno's" in the palms. the only people missing in the photo are me (i'm taking the picture) and doug (don't know where he went). the food was really good there!! yum!

here we are at the mexican place. i had to get in a photo.....come on now!

sunday was brian's real b-day.....turned 30! we did whatever he wanted to do. he wanted to check out this place called the "hapbrahaus".....don't mind my bad spelling of it. basically it's caddy-corner from the hard rock and it's a german beer garden/hall like they have for oktoberfest in germany. when brian went backpacking in europe this was the beer garden/hall that he ended up in during oktoberfest. so we went there. they had other drinks as well which was good for me since i don't like beer. i actually had my first COSMO....pear flavored. yum!

and to eat we got (99% for me to eat, 1% for brian) this huge ass pretzel w/2 types of mustard and then their cheese concoction. it was really good!

for dinner we went to the restaurant at the top of the palms called "alize". it was yummy, expensive, and had a great view. i had told them when i made the reservation that it was my husband's 30th b-day.......so, when we sat down and opened our menus brian's had "happy birthday" printed inside of it. in this picture you can see it if you zoom in. i thought that was cool.

here we are w/our view. it was great!

after dinner we went back to the gold coast and changed into comfy clothes, went to the ice cream place and shared a 2-scoop sundae, brian wanted to smoke a cigar, and then we played video poker and drank at the bar. it was fun!!

:-) so, that was vegas!! i love vegas. hopefully there'll be another trip this year.

california HEAT!!!

2008-06-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

my weekend has come and gone.....way too quickly like most weekends. anyways, here's what went down.....

friday: after school my school had their yearly carnival. i worked the ski ball booth. it was fun....and blazin' hot. i was sweating so much. but the kids were having a ton of fun. that night people came over for a pre-vegas poker game. we played a $20 buy-in first game and $10 buy-in the second game. i got 4th in the first game.....but no money for me. the second game i didn't do as well but i was tired (my excuse).

saturday: brian and i went to the harley dealership b/c we'd filled out this survey thing and when you brought it in you got to spin the wheel. i've been waiting forever to spin the wheel. so, i spun it. i won a free t-shirt. and while we were there brian bought a lot of stuff to "spruce-up" his motorcycle. after that we had an early dinner at the cheesecake factory. yum. then we walked over to the brea mall and did some shopping. the best time to shop is after you've stuffed yourself w/food and drinks. anyone disagree? i think not. after that we went back over to the cheesecake factory and i got dessert to-go. we came home and i happened to end up watching this movie on t.v. called "the object of my affection". it had jennifer aniston in it and the guy from clueless. kinda weird but i couldn't stop watching.

sunday: i was productive.....even in the heat. i went to the gym to do my thursday workout b/c on thursday i won't have time for the gym b/c we're heading out to vegas. i swung by rite-aid to get some stuff. i got a mouse for noodles. i did 4 loads of laundry. i placed my kids book order. brian worked on his motorcycle and put all of the stuff that he had bought on saturday on it. then we went to dinner at red lobster. it was tasty. then it was home to relax.....bobby came over for awhile to hang out.

monday: today i went on a field trip w/my class. my mom came along also. we went to the L.A. zoo. it was really fun. it was outrageously hot but there was so much to see and they did a really great job w/it. i told brian that we should go back together. so, i recommend it to all of you out there. check it out!!

how much longer can this drag on?

2008-06-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

so, it's monday. i have an update about the house that we saw on saturday that we were thinking about putting an offer on. well, jesse called brian today to let him know that someone's already buying that house. jesse said he asked the person he talked to why it's still showing that it's available when really it's not and the guy didn't have an answer for him. bah-hum-bug. so, that was a waste. i think we're kind of thinking of putting an offer on another house but we worry that our limit is below what it'll go for. we'll see. i feel like we've been looking forever and we keep on getting let down. it's a bummer.

other than that....last night while we ate chinese food we watched "national treasure 2". i thought it was good. i liked both of them.

anyways, i'm exhausted. my kids wear my down every single day. i think they make a point to do that to me.

give me a house NOW!!!!

2008-06-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

so, it's sunday....father's day. happy father's day to all of the dads out there. a little shout out for you guys. i thought i'd share my weekend thus far.....

friday: i wrote that other blog. we didn't do too much. a couple of people came over and we just hung out. no poker. we took a breather from that.

saturday: brian and i ended up meeting up w/our realtor (jesse) a little before 11 a.m. at his office. we were going to check out a couple of houses. it turns out that the open house he was going to do that day decided not to have one so we had jesse all to ourselves. we drove around and house hunted for 3 1/2 hours. we got back to his office at 2:30 p.m. it was exhausting! i never knew it would take so much out of me to sit in the backseat of a car, be driven around, get out and look at houses, and then do that again and again but it did. i was totally tired. i would say we went inside about 10 houses......3 in fullerton and rest were in orange. a couple of them were short sales but most were foreclosures. brian and i talked about it afterwards and we decided that there were 3 that we liked. i think we might end up making an offer on a foreclosure in orange that we saw.....possibly. we're having jesse check into it and see if anyone's made an offer on it yet. hopefully he'll let us know about that tomorrow. *side note about the fullerton house that we already have an offer on: from what jesse has looked up about that house.....it should foreclose on the 23rd of this month.....if the bank decided to do it at that time. so, he's thinking that that house will foreclose. if it does and we still want it, then we'd have to resubmit an offer b/c our offer for it as a short sale wouldn't carry over. so, we'd probably offer less than our original offer. but, again.....we have to wait and see.* so, that night we headed out to corona to visit mckatie and robby at their house. it took us an hour to get there......traffic, blah. then we headed to "on the border" for dinner. YUM! that place has my favorite quesadilla and a wonderful drink menu as well. mckatie and i had some yummy drinks and were feelin' good....the guys just looked at us like we were crazy. then we stopped by kory and kari's house (mckatie's brother and sister-in-law) who also live in corona. the guys had some cigars outside and the girls stayed inside to talk and play w/their 2 weiner dogs.....so adorable!!! then brian drove us home late.

sunday: today.....i went out to lakewood to visit my dad and give him his present. did some teacher planning. now i'm waiting for brian so we can get some chinese food to-go and come home and watch a movie. then it's back to work tomorrow. boo.

p.s. i can't wait for vegas! brian's real 30th b-day is 2 weeks from today. he only has 2 weeks left of his 20's!!!
p.p.s. i'll keep posting about house stuff. we are so ready for a house!!!

late update

2008-06-13T19:00:00.000-07:00

it's already friday night and i'm about to talk about last weekend. i know, i'm behind. anyways, here's what happened last weekend....

friday: after work i went to the dermatologist to have a mole removed. came home. played poker. i lost. boo.

saturday: brian and i went to his yearly work picnic. last year they didn't have one and prior to that we never went. but, this year we went and it was held at irvine park. that place is huge. it was catered (bbq) and a lot of people were there. they had a softball game. i watched brian play. those guys are pretty funny so it was fun to watch. after we left there we came home so brian could shower and then we headed to the cheesecake factory. i had dinner there and got my dessert to go. i'm addicted to their chris' outrageous chocolate cake. it is the BEST chocolate cake i've ever had. it makes me drool just thinking about it! then i hung out at home and watched t.v. and ate some cake.

sunday: brian and i went and watched "indiana jones" at the theater. it was good. i liked it. then we got chinese food to-go from our favorite to-go place. then we came home, ate chinese food, drank champagne, and watched t.v. it was good times.

random stuff:
1) still nothing about the house. short sales suck balls.....usually big, fat, hairy balls. i think this weekend we might meet up w/our realtor to check out a couple other places. we'll see if that happens and how it works it.
2) i cannot wait until this school year is OVER. my last day w/these kids is july 24th. testing ended this week so at least we got over that hurdle. but, these kids are off-the-hook. no joke. i have 5 girls and 14 boys (19 total....1 kid moved). so many freakin' boys. not that my girls are perfect b/c they're not but it is so unproportional it's crazy. every single day these kids are doing the most ridiculous stuff. i'm over it.
3) in 2 weeks we'll be in vegas for brian's b-day. i am so excited!!!
4) brian brought home flowers for me last week. so sweet! i have the best husband!!!
5) tomorrow we're going out to corona to hang w/mckatie and robby. good times!

sex and the city

2008-06-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

here's how my glorious weekend went down:

friday: after work i came home to get ready for the "sex and the city" extravaganza. me, mckatie, kacie, jennifer (kacie's friend i met that night), and bobby went to the 7:50 showing of the movie in brea. mckatie and i got there a little bit after 6 to get in line. we ended up at the front of the line. i really did enjoy the movie. it was like a really long episode. so if you like the show, you'd like the movie. now, there was one part i didn't enjoy (if you haven't seen the movie and don't want a spoiler, don't read the next couple of lines) and that was when samantha left smith.....really?!? someone would leave his sexy ass?!? let's get real. i really hope that in the second one they bring him back b/c that's the only man samantha's ever loved.....and she just turned 50 on the show. i say bah-hum-bug if they don't. okay, so after the movie bobby went home to hang w/the guys while the 4 of us girls went over to the yard house to drink. i was going to try a cosmo but instead just drank mojitos. yum!! potvin picked us up and took me home.

saturday: brian worked. i slept in and rolled over to starbuck's like at 11 a.m. then i did some teacher stuff and walked buster. after brian got home we went out to dinner at rutabegorz in downtown fullerton. i had the seafood enchiladas.....yummy!! then we drove by the cheesecake factory to get some dessert to go. then we came home and watched t.v. while i ate my dessert. double yum!

sunday: our 6-month wedding anniversary. we met up w/our realtor, jesse, at a house in la habra that we wanted to check out. after we did that we saw an open house sign in the same neighborhood so brian and i drove by and checked out that house as well. the first one was a short sale and needed more work than we wanted to give it and the second house was really great w/a view and everything but it was a bank repo and they want more than we really care to spend on a house. we don't want to never go outside anymore once we get a house (brian calls it being house poor). then we drove by another house in fullerton on the way home just to check out the outside. for dinner we went to chomps in downtown fullerton to eat sushi. that place is so freakin' good. i love it. then we drove by blockbuster and rented 2 movies....went home drank some champagne and watched 1 of the movies....."rambo". it had a lot of good action in it. i liked it.

monday: back to work. yawn. we start state testing this week. today was the practice test and the real testing starts tomorrow. i have a feeling my kids this year aren't going to do so hot. just a prediction.....we'll see next year how the scores turn out. and somehow my principal sent out an e-mail seeing if anyone is interested in teaching 2 weeks of intersession at the end of july/beginning of august when the school year ends and i replied YES. agghhhhh! well, i figured it's not as long as a normal day and she said we'd get paid for 5 hours a day and it's the first 2 weeks after the school year ends so i'd have about 4 1/2 weeks off still. we'll see if there ends up being funds for it and if she needs me. i figured i'd do it to make some extra $$ incase we do get a house and we need a ton of stuff for it......then it'd be nice to have extra $$.

bliss, oh bliss

2008-06-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

today is the 6-month anniversary of brian and i being married!! woot-woot! half a year has gone by already since we got married. time flies.....literally. i can't wait for the 1 year mark to come.....we're going to be in maui to celebrate that. yeah!!

i'll update my weekend later. adios.

3-day weekend

2008-05-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

i have no idea where i left off last time since i was in american idol-mania! anyways, here's how the 3-day weekend went:

friday: we played poker. i actually stayed up for game #2. mckatie was there. i'm sure that's where my burst of energy came to stay up later. but i didn't make any money. boo.

saturday: brought in my teacher stuff from the car but didn't work on it. then brian and i went over to john/dalonda/cathy's bbq at their house. we got there at 4 and hung til 6:45. then we went to chili's for dinner. yum! after that we met up w/mckatie and robby at TGI Friday's for some drinks. i always forget what delightfully yummy drinks they have there.

sunday: this time i actually did some teacher stuff. hanna came over around 1:30ish and we went to blockbuster and rented "we own the night". then we got some dessert to go from cheesecake factory, came back to my house and ate it while we watched the movie. then we went out to dinner at carnitas......the mexican restaurant that brian and i always go to but he wasn't feeling well so he stayed home. then i came home and felt really full the rest of the night.

monday: NO WORK!!! yippee! i woke up and went to the gym. brian and i were going to go to pomona for brenda's graduation bbq but brian still wasn't feeling well so we stayed home and relaxed.

random updates:

1) still no word on the house. i believe we've entered week 7.

2) only a month til the vegas trip for brian's 30th b-day!!! so exciting!

3) this friday "sex and the city" comes out. we're planning on going that day. i'm hoping that we get tickets and are able to sit together during the movie. can't wait!!

4) this sunday is my 6 month wedding anniversary! half a year has gone by so quickly! i think we're going to go out to a nice dinner. brian thinks we should only celebrate the year marks. i say we celebrate when i want to......so celebrate on sunday we shall! cheers!

5) today my fabulous friend, elana (a bridesmaid), is getting married!! i'm so excited for her. i couldn't make it b/c it's wednesday and she just told me 2 weeks ago. otherwise, i would've been there. they're just doing a quick courthouse ceremony.....and a big party later in the year. congrats to her and greg!!! :-)

voting virginity......

2008-05-21T19:21:00.001-07:00

i lost it. it wasn't as painful as i thought it would be. i watched the "show-down" b/n the 2 davids last night on american idol. it took me 45 minutes to not get a busy signal so i could vote for DAVID COOK. oh yeah, i did. hope he wins!! ;-)

DAVID COOK

2008-05-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

now, seriously, i am very saddened by the fact that i just last week realized who david cook is. i was randomly flipping stations on "normal" t.v., which i never do, and i saw him perform sometime last week and i was like who is that?!? so, i youtubed him and watched his other songs. hello! i am definitely going to be watching the finale this tuesday. the other guy he's up against....seriously, i wouldn't buy a concert ticket for that dude. david cook, oh yes, i'd buy that ticket and be up front. i'll be watching david.....i think i'll even vote. gasp!

what comedy!?!

2008-05-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

hola!! i'm here again on a saturday morning. the only difference is that this saturday it is balls hot outside already......it's the middle of may, come on now. anyways, to recap the rest of last weekend first......sunday was mother's day. i had got my mom a gift card to glen ivy so i drove to my parent's house to visit my mom and give her her gift. she loved it. i got her a gift card to a different spa place once for a massage b/c she'd never had one before and she freakin' loved it. so, i thought she should try out glen ivy b/c it's so fantastic. then i came home, hung out w/brian and we went to dinner at carnitas.

so, another week at work went by. ahhhhh, the joys of teaching. here's a story for you....on tuesday one of my third graders got suspended for the rest of tuesday and all of wednesday b/c he brought.....drum roll please......CONDOMS to school. no joke. true story. aren't kids great? then when he did come back to school on thursday he and another one of my kids decided to beat up the boy that had told on them on tuesday.......they were in the bathroom at our last recess and were pushing the kid around and stuff. so, needless to say my 2 boys got in trouble and then they were both suspended friday. that's how my kids roll this year.

so last night (friday) i had gotten free tickets to the improv in brea so mckatie and i went. robby dropped us off. we sat right in the front. i think the comedians had a great time talking/looking at us!!! :-) it was funny times. good drinks, good jokes. then after the show we went 60 feet away to the yard house to drink some more. yummy! we left around midnight. brian ended up picking us up and taking us home. a big thank you to the guys for taking care of us!

now saturday is here and today is the relay for life in san pedro. i'm walking at 3 pm. i think brian's going w/me to walk. that'll be cool so i have someone to talk to. we'll probably leave around 1ish b/c the google directions say it takes like 40 something minutes to get there and then i have to check in and all of that good stuff. so, that's today and i'm excited about that. it always feels good to help other people or do something for a charity. then after all of that i think we're going to go into long beach down by the pike and have some dinner....we'll see how crowded it is and stuff and decide if we want to stay or not.

btw, still no word on the house. how many weeks has it been now?!?!

good morning!

2008-05-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

ahhhh....saturday mornings! gotta love 'em! no work (well, for me at least), doing things at my leisure, going to starbuck's.........

well, yesterday (friday) my stimulus check from the government came through along w/my normal paycheck. yippee!! what a nice surprise. so, what did i do w/my $600? i put half in my savings, spent $100 on my mom for mother's day (gift card to glen ivy), and spent $100 on me at the mall. so, i still have $100 floating in my checking for whatever i see that i want. i figured that saving half of it was good enough. every paycheck i put some $$ in my savings. so i put the $300 along w/what i'd normally put in. so, i think that was a nice chunk to boost my savings. does anyone else feel this great sense of accomplishment when you see the amount of money in your savings increase? or is it just me??

so, after all of my mall escapades i went home. people came over for poker. i played for 1 hour. yes, just 1 hour. that sucked. the cards just weren't working for me and i was irritated......plus i'm on my period so i get irritated really easily right now. so, i graded some papers and called it a night at 11:30.

today, so far, i've gone to starbuck's. that's it. i'm about to go for my uphill walk, shower, do some teacher stuff and then mckatie's coming over at 1 to finish watching season 6 of "sex and the city". we have to finish before the movie comes out in 20 days!!! we are so freakin' excited to see the movie. that movie is going to make so much freakin' money....it's crazy. then we'll go to dinner w/brian and potvin. then mckatie and i are heading to long beach to meet up w/anne and company at the mai tai bar to hang out. it'll be good times. aloha!

any updates?? hmmmmm.....
1. our realtor called brian on wednesday and told him that he selling agent on the house had sent our offer to the bank. so now we're waiting to hear back from the bank. and remember they can take their sweet ass time making a decision. we put our offer in 4 weeks ago. that's how long we've been waiting. it feels like its been forever.

2. i'm doing a relay for life cancer walk in san pedro next saturday. that should be fun. i think it'll be a rewarding experience....just like the 3-day breast cancer walk was that i did.

3. found out that buster has a partially collapsed trachea (went to the vet last friday.....8 days ago). he had been throwing up and i was worried so i took him to the vet. got him some medicine and changed some things that we normally do to help him out so nothing messes around w/his throat and hopefully he'll be ok! :-) so far, so good.

4. VEGAS is next month for brian's b-day!!! so exciting! i can't wait! we leave june 26th which is a thursday after work and returning monday, june 30th. it's going to be a 4 night extravaganza!

Bullshit!

2008-05-07T18:44:00.001-07:00

i just wrote this long ass blog about my weekend and all kinds of other stuff and this "blog" ate it up and lost it. i'm not typing all of that again. sorry. the weekend was great. a lot of stuff happened. the end.

where do the weekends go?

2008-04-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

the weekend is already gone......and my monday work day is over. only 4 more days til the end of the week!! here's what happened this weekend:

friday: i went by my parent's house after work to hang out w/them. then at night people came over to play poker. i wasn't getting any good hands at all. kinda sucked. but mckatie came over to play so it's always good times bullshitin' w/her.

saturday: i did teacher stuff during the day. btw, my body woke me up at 7 a.m. why? i have no idea except that my stomach wanted starbuck's. that's my only guess. probably the right one too! then in the afternoon brian and i drove out to universal city walk. we walked around for a bit and then went to dinner at a mexican restaurant place called "camachos". it was pretty good. yum! then we walked over to "cafe tu tu tango" and sat at the outside bar and got a pitcher of mojitos. i've been drinking those more and more lately. they are really refreshing! then we headed over to the gibson ampitheater that is there to see CHRIS ROCK! oh my god....the show was great! we loved it! he is so freakin' funny! totally worth the money. he says some of the funniest stuff i've ever heard and it's usually pretty spot on. the only part that sucked was that it took us like 2 1/2 hours to get home. yes, i'm telling the truth. traffic on the freeway like at midnight wasn't moving at all. dead stop. i was so exhausted i couldn't keep my eyes open. brian drove and i fell in and out of sleep.

sunday: actually slept in for a bit. then just hung around the house during the hot ass afternoon. then brian and i walked buster at about 4. it was still balls-to-the-wall hot. after that we headed to downtown fullerton for dinner and ate at "rockin' taco". yum! i love me some mexican. can you tell? after that we walked over to red cloud which is a cigar shop in downtown. we each got a cigar. then we came home, put up our hammock in the front yard, and relaxed smoking our cigars. it was peaceful. then we came in and brian had received an e-mail from barbara (our loan processor) that said she needed the rest of our stuff to get ready to do our loan. so, we stayed up pretty late faxing stuff. i went to bed at midnight.....knowing i'd have to wake up at 6 a.m. the next morning. yawn.

updates:
1. only 2 months til vegas for brian's 30th b-day!!

2. we haven't heard anything back about the house in fullerton. its been 2 weeks today.

3. going out to celebrate mckatie's b-day this saturday.

4. i have open house at work this thursday. i better get on that!

5. i'm still writing thank you cards.

updates-r-us

2008-04-19T08:42:00.000-07:00

it's early on saturday. i woke up at 7:30. damn that being at work thing. when i'm off-track my body readjusts to sleeping til like 10 or 11 but as soon as i go back on track my body likes to wake me up fully rested on the weekends. i went to bed at 11:30 last night, so i got my 8 hours but i thought for sure i'd sleep til 10 or so. oh well. i got up and went to starbuck's and now here i am. lets see what has been going on:

1. on monday brian and i put an offer on a house in fullerton that we checked out last saturday. it's a short sale so basically we have to wait to see what the bank says......and they don't have a timeframe in which they must respond. they do it at their leisure. so, we'll see what happens. it would be so great to get a house and start making a home for us (us being me, brian, and buster....oh, and the rest of our animals of course).

2. finally i got started on our thank you cards from our wedding. yes, i know, we've been married for 4 1/2 months but i just started. i've mailed off 8 of them so far. i try to do a couple everyday. i'm hoping to be done before the price of stamps goes up!

3. this was my first week back on track and boy was it a LONG one. it seemed like it took forever to get through it. and now when i'm done w/this blog i have to go and work on teacher stuff to get ready for next week. ahhhhhhhhhh....................

4. last friday i taught hanna how to play poker. i told her it's a good way to meet guys. believe me......check out a poker room.

5. brian passed his c-10 test on wednesday which is some type of contractor's license test thingy. so, we're going out tomorrow to celebrate!!!

6. tonight is a girl's night w/mckatie, lexi, and kacie. good times are bound to happen!! can't wait to hang out w/them!!

7. oh, and next saturday i'm so excited b/c brian and i are going to see chris rock!!! i've never seen his live comedy performance.....that'll be great!

cruisin' along

2008-04-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

wow! it's april! i didn't write before i left for the cruise and then i've been a slacker in writing since we got back. boo on me....i know. we'll last week brian and i were on a 5 day cruise. it was nice and relaxing.....just like we wanted! we visited catalina and ensenada and spent some days at sea. besides us on the cruise there was brenda/nick/their 2 boys and brooke/kevin (brian's cousin and her boyfriend) and ivy/anita (brenda's friend and then her friend). so, there was a good number of us on the cruise and that made the trip even better. enjoy the pics below...oh, and you can see my new red hair as well.

this is in catalina. we took a tour up to the top of catalina where the "airport in the sky" is. our cruise ship looks tiny in the background.

same background but w/me and my redness.

up close and personal w/some wildlife. they came down the hill to a watering hole. i think in total there were 8 or 9. and below (this blog is acting funny and won't let me type b/n the 2 pics below) is brian and our newphew, luke---who is the cutest, funniest 2 year old EVER!!

back on the boat. catalina is in the background.

this is where we spent most of our time drinking in ensenada. yum!!

then we went to papas and beer to drink some more.

brenda and i in the club called "REX" onboard the ship. we drank and danced.....hence the sweatiness that i will call a "glow" in this photo. good times!!!

on another note......besides the cruise here are some other happenings:
1. i saw "stop-loss" w/mckatie. hotness. the only word i have for it. channing, i give you two happy thumbs up. love the underwear scene.
2. i finally went down the the social security office and officially changed my last name!! they say it takes 2 weeks for the new card to come in the mail.
3. we're planning our next vacation for my next off-track time....i'll update when it's set for sure.
4. we're still house hunting.....checking out a place in fullerton on saturday.
5. went to the angels home opener last friday after we got back from the cruise. they lost....but figgins got on base everytime he was at bat. woot-woot!!!

figgins here i come!!!

2008-03-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

i'm so freakin' excited!! when brian and i come home from our cruise next friday we'll be heading to the angels home season opener against texas!!! oh yeah! i can't wait. i've been trying to get good tickets since they went on sale and everyday when i checked they either didn't have any at all or they had the nose bleed seats....and i'm not paying any money at all to sit that high up....no way. so, today when i checked i was actually able to get good seats.....bought those up in an instant. i cannot wait to see my man on the field!!! :-)

i will matrix you

2008-03-27T22:28:00.001-07:00

okay, so i've finally seen the matrix trilogy.....i think i'd seen the first two before but the third one wasn't familiar at all. brian, bobby, and i watched the first one on sunday, the second one on tuesday, and then watched the third one tonight. i think the first time i saw the first two i wasn't exactly sure what in the hell the movies were about.....this time around i actually understood! exciting, huh?!? check them out if you haven't watched all three close together. the action scenes were pretty TIGHT!

redness & infinity

2008-03-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

so, the weekend has gone by....and it was a fun one!

friday: we had people over for poker. i didn't make any money but i had a great time. crashed at about midnight or so.

saturday: i drove out to cerritos for my 10 a.m. hair appointment. i had decided awhile ago that i was going to try a new color w/my hair. it has always, always been blonde in some form.....i was born a blonde bombshell and over the years as my hair turned a dirty blonde i started to dye it....i've done the black on the bottom/blonde on top, the mostly blonde w/red streaks, etc. but i've never completely given up my blondeness.......i think it partially defines me. i personally believe that blondes usually (depends on their face and stuff, of course) are hotter in general.....get more attention and the sort. but, i decided that after my wedding i'd try a new color. i didn't want to do it before the wedding and possibly regret it and not be able to get back to blonde......oh, the horror. so, on saturday morning i dyed all of my hair red!! and got it trimmed. i decided to keep the length for now. then i went by my parents house to give them their wedding album which i had picked up theirs and ours on friday after work. by the way, they turned out great!! love them! my dad was shocked by my hair but said that it works well w/my skin tone and stuff (that being WHITE.....sans tan). then i went home and shocked brian w/it. he knew i was going to go red but i think he was still surprised. then brian and i went by coldstone....yum and headed to the discovery science center in santa ana for an event that i bought tickets for. when we got there a mistake that i'd made was discovered....the event was actually at the california science center (not the discovery science center) which is in LOS ANGELES.....MY BAD! and our tickets were for 4 o'clock and it was that time and we were in santa ana. i called the right place and they said we could come and use our tickets when we got there.....whew! so, we ended up in l.a. for the 5:30 show/viewing of Body Worlds 3. if you don't know what that is.....look it up. it was pretty cool. they use real bodies to show all parts of the human anatomy. it's worth the $.....not too expensive. so, after that we drove back to fullerton to eat dinner at chomp's at 8......i was hungry! we actually ran into smith there eating dinner for a friend's b-day. brian and i had walked by a tattoo place on our way into dinner and were talking about getting a tattoo after dinner (neither of us had tattoos to begin with). so smith came w/us and brian and i got our first tattoo together and it matches. it's on our right wrist (underside) and it's of the infinity sign. we're happy w/them. i'll need to post a pic of my red hair and the tattoo......soon.

sunday: easter! brian and i drove by a couple of houses that we wanted to check out since we're still looking for our "home sweet home". then we took buster to a new dog park in fullerton that we'd heard about. then we swung by his parents house to say hi. then we drove to tustin to eat at on the border (we tried 2 mexican places by our house but they were both closed). then we came home and bobby and james came over....brian smoked a cigar w/them and then we all watched "matrix" together.

so, now i'm off-track for 3 weeks from work. thank goodness!! and a week from today brian and i will be on our 5 day cruise!!! can't wait!

here i am

2008-03-19T18:09:00.000-07:00

i know it's wednesday but i'm here to talk about last weekend:

friday: brian and i hung out at home and watched some of our shows together.....the daily show and the colbert report. i also made dinner for brian.....burritos....yum.

saturday: i hung out around the house and did some teacher stuff b/c i knew that mckatie was going to drive by and get me at 4. she picked me up and we drove out to her sister's house in l.a. then the 3 of us met up w/lexi at el torito for dinner. then we went back to kacie's place to call a taxi to take us to our dancing destination which was called "ritual". the place was pretty fun. typical l.a. where it cost too much to get in and the drinks are overpriced....but hey....what else would you expect from l.a.?? we stayed there til about 1 a.m. and then took a taxi back to kacie's place and we all stayed there.

sunday: mckatie drove me home in the morning. brian and i hung out and searched the internet for houses. then we drove by 3 of them on our way out to dinner w/my dad. we met my dad at 5:40 at the original fish company in los alamitos. i wanted to take him out for a b-day dinner (his real b-day was the 18th which was on tuesday). so we had dinner there. that place has really, really good seafood. i'd been there before and i think it's great! after that brian and i went home and got ready for the next day.....monday....work.....

so, this friday i go off-track for 3 weeks!!! thank goodness! and i have to have report cards done by then so i can send them home. i'm still working on those. i cannot wait for those 3 weeks of sleeping and doing things leisurely at whatever pace i'd like. also, i need the time to plan for after i go back on-track.

b/c everyone cares what i do

2008-03-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

this past weekend was fun!! and mildly (who am i kidding?? for me, VERY) productive!

friday: after work i went grocery shopping b/c we were totally out of food....and champagne. then at night people came over for a poker game. there ended up being 12 of us so we had to break into 2 tables and then down to a final table. i made some $$. the game did go on forever and ever.....i didn't get to bed til after 1 a.m. i was exhausted. it's hard being me.

saturday: i woke up a little after 8 a.m. not sure why. i had this big plan in my head that i would sleep a really long time since the weekend before i had been deprived of sleep and the work week had been long. but no, saturday i was up earlier than i thought i would be. so, i went to starbuck's b/c every good morning should start w/starbucks. then i came home and filed my taxes! then i drove by the mailbox to mail some stuff that had been sitting around waiting to get mailed and then stopped by petco....got noodles a mouse and buster some toys. then i came home and fed my snake (noodles). then i cleaned the bathroom (brian had cleaned the countertop the night before but i cleaned everything else). once brian was up and we got ready, we decided to go check out some houses that we'd been looking at online. the first one we went by happened to be having an open house so we went inside to check it out....no on that one. and then we drove by 2 more houses just to see the outsides of them......both looked pretty nice. later on for dinner we met up w/mckatie, robby, and bobby at on the border in tustin. that's the quesadilla that i get all excited about! i had it there again....yum! then we all went over to a bar called auld dubliner in the irvine district for a going away party for this guy tim. we hung out there for a long time. i've been to that bar before but the one that's in long beach. it's a good time! we hung out on the patio w/the heat lamps and drank.......

sunday: we were lazy. i actually did sleep a lot this night....plus when i woke up i had to give away another hour b/c of daylight savings. so by the time i got up it was after 11 a.m. again i visited starbuck's. then i graded papers and did some planning for the upcoming week. then brian and i took buster for a walk, got ready and went out to dinner at the yard house. and then we just hung around the house the rest of the night.

monday: i was back to work. but that night i FINALLY e-mailed our wedding photographer the 60 photos that we want in our album. it took me this long to do that. next, i have to tell him which 216 photos we want copies of. i'm hoping to have that done by the end of the weekend. it's good to have goals, right?

this saturday i have a girl's night out w/some of my sexy lady friends.....going out to l.a. should be good times. and then sunday i'm taking my dad out for his b-day dinner (his real b-day is the 18th which is tuesday). don't know where he wants to go yet; he hasn't told me. oh, and i need to get him a gift!!!

my swayze

2008-03-06T20:09:00.001-08:00

patrick swayze has pancreatic cancer. the horror. i am truly saddened by this. he must pull through.

my lack of sleep weekend

2008-03-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

here's how it went down....

friday: brian and i stayed home b/c we had to get up really early the next morning to go to the airport.......he was leaving for orlando. so, i did 3 loads of laundry, vacuumed, and made dinner. i felt really productive. we didn't go to bed til after 1 a.m.

saturday: woke up at 5:50 a.m. to drive brian to lax. i was so freakin' tired. he went to orlando b/c he got tech of the year in 2007 and the reward is that you get to go to florida for 5 days for an all expense paid trip......w/o a significant other. they basically plan out everyday for you and have an itinerary for you. so, if i was there i wouldn't really get to hang out w/brian anyways. boo. so i dropped him off and came home. i then took a 2 hour nap (vetoed the idea of staying up and swinging by starbuck's......my head was too tired). then i got up and did teacher work, swung by the gym for a small workout b/c it was drizzling and i couldn't walk buster, and then got ready to go out to corona to see mckatie again. i got there ready to watch sex and the city but we ended up talking and talking for hours. all of a sudden it was dinner time and her boyfriend robby, another guy nugent and her brother cory drove us to dinner. we went to chili's and the 3 guys went to b.j.'s. then they drove us back to katie's place and we finally got going on our sex and the city episodes. were able to finish the rest of season 4 and all of season 5. hence, us going to sleep at 3 a.m.

sunday: woke up w/the sun shining on me at 6:40 a.m. and i was like hell no this isn't happening. there aren't any blinds on those windows yet b/c they're doing all kinds of work to the house. and so the bright ass sun woke me up. i threw a pillow over my head and went back to sleep til 8:50 a.m. then katie and i went to starbuck's. i stayed there talking to her and robby for awhile til i drove home. i took care of buster and stuff at home and then i left at 2 p.m. to meet up w/anne at the long beach town center to watch the movie "step up 2: the streets". my, oh my. i thought i would only love channing tatum's guest appearance but in reality i fell in love w/the leading guy in this one also. his name is robert hoffman. he is a fabulous dancer.....no joke. so is tatum......and tatum is also super sexalicious....yum. but, this guy hoffman has an adorableness about him that i find scrumptious as well. so, before anyone tries to make fun of this movie: 1) check out the hotness and 2) try to dance like that yourself (bet you can't!!). then anne i went over to tgi friday's to meet up w/sara and her husband reggie for dinner and drinks. i didn't get home til after 9 p.m. and was exhausted and still had to get ready for monday. so, needless to say i didn't get as much sleep as i had originally intended to but i had a great weekend! :-)

monday: back to work. blah. now i have teacher stuff to do and do many other things that i have floating around in the back of my mind.....like taxes, wedding photos, etc. oh, and brian comes home wednesday night!!! yippee!!! can't wait!

recap

2008-02-25T20:59:00.000-08:00

my weekend was relaxing/fun but it came and went too quickly.

friday: brian and i went out to dinner at chili's w/his family to celebrate his youngest brother's b-day......the big 1-3! so, now jacob's a teenager. then he came back to our house to spend the night.

saturday: i drove out in the afternoon to hang out w/mckatie who about a month ago moved to corona w/robby b/c they bought a house there. so, i swung by the cheesecake factory and got us some cheesecake to go and then made the drive out there to hang out. we watched 9 episodes of sex and the city. then on the way to dinner she got a really bad migrane so we had to turn back so she could get home and try to sleep it off. she got pretty sick from the migrane that night. i ended up coming home instead of staying the night there b/c she just hit the sack. so, i came home and spent the night hanging out w/all of the guys that were over here.

sunday: brian and i watched the movie "american gangster" b/c i rented it. it was fantastic! i loved it. and we even watched the bonus features to learn about the real guys that the movie is based on. then we went over to orange to drive by a house for sale that we'd seen on the internet. people are still living in it so we couldn't get out and get too close. but, we saw the neighborhood. it was okay. not sure if it was exactly what we're looking for...but, we're always looking and hoping to find "the one". then we drove over to tustin and ate at on the border. they have the BEST double stacked chicken quesadilla i've EVER had. the sauce that comes w/it is wonderful. mmmmmm......that and a couple of margaritas and i was good to go!!! :-)

and then today, monday, was back to work. no 3-day weekend for me. boo. and i cannot wait to go off-track on march 21st. oh happy day. bring those 3 weeks of vacation to me....i've been waiting.

oh, and another thing.....i have finally paid off my car. the last payment has been made and the money is out of my account. 5 1/2 years of car payments finally done. i have finally finished paying for something that is expensive. it feels so good to have finally finished paying for it. whew!

forgot to mention....

2008-02-20T18:59:00.001-08:00

i just realized that when i typed my weekend blog i totally forgot to mention who we saw at one sunset on saturday night......tim the tool man taylor....that's right, tim allen was there. random, i know but thought it was worth mentioning.

my weekend

2008-02-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

i had a fun weekend. today, monday, i had off b/c of president's day so i had another 3-day weekend in a row. next weekend....not so much (unless i take a day off ;-)) but, anyways, i had a fun weekend. here's how it went down:

friday: we had people over for poker. i got 2nd place in the first game!! i'm in the money! that was nice b/c i hadn't won in awhile. then i found out via e-mail that our confirmation for our time share trade went through. if you don't know about time shares, you have to "bank" your week and then wait for the trade to happen to see if you got it, etc. so, we had "banked" our 2008 week in the middle of january to go to maui for our 1 year wedding anniversary. and then on friday the trade went through!! so, we got our week in maui!!! now we're starting to look for flight/car combos to book. brian went to maui before i met him w/paul for another guy's wedding. i've never been to that island, so i'm really excited about it!! that gives me something to look forward to for the end of the year!! back to poker....the guys were going to play a second game but i got tired waiting so i went to bed while they played another game.

saturday: i curled my hair in the afternoon and then drove to anne's house to meet up w/her and another girl to go get our make-up done at mac in the cerritos mall. there we met up w/anne's sister kathy, and annie. the 5 of us got our make-up done. after that we headed to l.a. to go to dinner at a place called asia de cuba. it's at some hotel in l.a. but i can't remember the name. some other people met up w/us there as well for dinner. we were out that night to celebrate kathy's b-day. now the place is pricey (don't get me wrong about that) but the view is beautiful and the food is really good......and they even give good portions (food and desserts!). after that we went down the street to a place called one sunset for drinks. and we hung there til closing.....which was about 2:15ish. it's not a club but we made a little area by the bar to dance and have fun! so it was a great night. by the time we got back to anne's place and fell asleep it was 4:15 a.m. i was exhausted!

sunday: came home in the morning. woke up at 9 a.m. for some reason and just decided to swing by starbuck's and drive home. brian and i took buster for a walk. then we got ready to go out on our valentine's day date. brian took me to newport beach to fashion island. we walked around for a bit. then we went across the street to the movie theater and saw "fool's gold" while eating a huge bucket of popcorn.....dripping w/butter and covered w/salt. yum! then we walked back over to the main area and ate dinner at a new restaurant for us called daily grill. it was good! we had a great time there. then we walked over to the cheesecake factory there and got a slice of cheesecake to go. then we came home and watched some shows from last week that we had dvr'd and ate the cheesecake and then hit the sack.

it was a great weekend. a lot was going on and i had a really fun time doing all of it.

tomorrow is back to work. sigh.

some wedding photos

2008-02-16T10:00:00.000-08:00

okay people, here are some wedding photos. these are not the "professional" ones....these are from other people's cameras who forwarded them to us. enjoy!!

p.s. i'm the girl in white.

us at the altar. i know the pictures aren't crisp....but you can get the idea

us and the wedding party. one of my girls is cut off at the end.

me, anne, and hanna at the reception. and lexi in the background taking a different photo.

this is my parents "cutting a rug"......so to speak!! they had a great time and partied all night w/us!

me feeding cake to brian. the cake was the freakin' bomb! no lie. and i am a dessert fanatic.....so trust my judgement! the bottom and very top layer (which is frozen in my parents freezer) was chocolate cake w/peanut butter filling (it had really peanut chunks in it) and the middle layer was lemon cake w/raspberry filling. both were phenominal! and our cake topper was hilarious. the guy has a ball and chain connected to his ankle and the girl is holding the key! that's how we roll here!

our kiss. i know i'm posting out of order but i'm looking through the photos that people gave us.

my dad walking me down the aisle. we're sexy....we know!

it's official! WE'RE MARRIED!!!

i really love this photo! you can see my dad giving me away, brian looking like he loves me (good think we captured that!!!), the back of my sexy ass, and 4 of my 5 girls looking gorgeous w/the most wonderful smiles on their faces. i think this photo captures a lot! :-)

our room set-up. the place looked fantastic! i was really happy w/the way it turned out.

well, those are some pics. hope you enjoyed them! maybe once i get the professional ones i'll post more....we'll see!

3 days off was nice....very nice

2008-02-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

can every weekend be a 3-day weekend or is that just greedy of me? or would i then become way too use to a 3-day and then always want a 4-day? let the dream continue....

anyways, the weekend was nice. friday we just hung around and our friend bobby came over to hang out. saturday we drove by a house to see if a open house was going on but it wasn't. oh well. then we came home and watched 3:10 to yuma. that was a really good movie. i reccomend it. then we took my brother out to dinner for his 20th b-day. then we drove over and visited brian's parents. we left there at 10 and i really wanted some ice cream but 31 flavors was closed so we went to the store and got stuff for ice cream sundaes......yum! then sunday we went to the shooting range w/our friend james and shot a bunch of guns.....very american of us, i know. then we came home and hung out for a bit.....james left and then brian and i went out to dinner w/paul and angela. then yesterday, monday, i slept in, went to the gym, did a load of laundry, and did a bunch of teacher stuff. and then today, tuesday, i had to wake up butt-ass early and go to work. but it's only a 4 day work week. gotta love that!

and only 2 days til valentine's day. love is in the air. i don't really like to go out on valentine's day b/c there are too many freakin' people out and about. forget that. i'd rather celebrate another day and just chill on the actual day; which is what we'll probably do. have a great love day!! :-)

rantings and ravings

2008-02-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

i decided i need to get back into the groove of blogging. i enjoy it but frequently forget to actually sit down and type. here is just a bunch of randomness that has been going on:

1. this is my 6th year of teaching and i am ready to declare that this year is the year that i have the worst kid i've ever had. and don't be fooled....i've had A LOT of crazies through the years. this kid (can't use his actual name here, but feel free to ask me)......we'll call him zorro....is absolutely horrible. no joke. and i haven't even had him all year. i got him when i went back on track after my winter break. that means i've had him a little over a month. in this time he has already been kicked out of my room 5-6 times and has been "suspended" like 3-4 times. sounds like a winner, huh? and what makes it really bad is that the rest of my class needs a lot of attention and all zorro did is turn my class into more of a struggle. i even had to get him a single desk yesterday so he could sit all by his lonesome. the rest of my class is set up in tables using the double desks. so, i had to get a special one just for him so he could sit alone. and i could tell hours and hours of stories about him...but i won't. just know....i don't get paid enough to deal w/someone like him.

2. this is a 3-day weekend for me!! thank you lincoln!

3. brian and i have been looking here and there for houses. i've made a file on the computer under favorites for all of the ones that i like the look of and the size of. we've gone and seen a couple in person but nothing has come of all of that yet. some people like to post pictures (or just 1) of their place and then you go and see it and you're like huh? that's not what the picture(s) looked like. but, there's a place that is suppose to be having an open house this weekend that we saw online and drove by the outside of.....so we might go by that this weekend. but we are really searching. our goal is to have a house by the end of this year. since this is the year to buy or so they say w/the way real estate is flopping. and for us that would be good b/c we're first time buyers and we are ready to get a good deal!!! fingers are crossed!

4. we just booked a 5-day cruise during my next off-track time!! yeah! i've only been on a 3-day cruise twice. once i did it w/2 girlfriends and the second time i took brian for a b-day present. and we both wanted to go on a longer cruise b/c we liked the one we went on. and during this last week brian's older sister, brenda, text to see if we were interested in going and if i was off-track during the time. and we were interested and it is while i'm off......so, we paid for that a couple of days ago. yeah!! march 31st we leave! it is so great to have something to look forward to. the cruise goes to catalina and ensenada which are both places we've been to. but we went to catatlina a couple of months after we were together so it was like 4 years ago. it'll be nice to go back there and then hit up ensenada which is fun to party in!!! good times are a'comin!

5. and we're also planning a big extravaganza for brian's 30th b-day which is this year! we're going to do a 4 night trip to vegas!!! so, that'll be happening at the end of june. not booked yet but that's what he wants to do so that's where we'll be! :-)

6. i still need to get going on ordering my wedding pics. i'm lazy about looking through them and picking the ones i want. maybe, just maybe, i can accomplish that this weekend. setting high goals for myself, i know.

i'm such a slacker

2008-01-28T19:52:00.000-08:00

i know, i know....it's the end of january! where in the hell have i been? working, being sick, and being lazy! those are my excuses and not necessarily in that particular order. but, i'm going to post some london pics now.....enjoy!!

everyone needs to be in one of these telephone booths in london. i was surprised to find nudey girly adds in there.....like the ones they try to hand out in vegas......naughty.

there's something about this view across the thames river that i really love!

brian and i up in the london eye. what a great view!!

these are the guards that stand outside my palace and make sure no one gets in......i know what you're thinking....it looks like the guards at buckingham palace. i'll have you know that the queen stole that idea from me!! ha, ha!!

brian and i in front of westminster abbey.

we visited the hard rock in london. it is the original one....it all started there.

this is brian and i at the ice bar. the whole bar is made of ice and you even drink out of ice blocks. you can only stay in there for 40 minutes. it was pretty cool. and don't overloook the cool outfit they give you to wear in there.

we are at the funnest place to drink in london (i think) called "be @ one". they had a drink special every night.....buy 1 get 1 free. we were double fisting the whole time. i really loved that place.

the famous tower bridge. we walked across the middle part at the top and got some great views of london.

that was our honeymoon! i still need to post some wedding pics. we'll see how long that takes me! ahhhhh!

the honeymoon!!! part 1: paris

2007-12-28T17:41:00.000-08:00

as promised, i'm here to post some pics from our honeymoon. we were gone for 2 weeks and went to paris and london. we had the best time!! i loved it! we came home w/about 715 photos, so i won't post them all but i'll post as many as i can before the waiting for stuff to download bores me!!! enjoy!

this is the type of car people drive in paris. a steep contrast to those gas guzzling, destroying our environment types of cars that people here drive. hmmm. it's called a smartcar.....really.

brian and i at the eiffel tower. ahhhhh......

me in the courtyard at the louve......if stuff isn't spelled right, too bad.

brian standing underneath the sign for the "main" shopping street in paris that is really famous.

the arc de triumph....we loved the view from the top!

brian and i inside the louve. here's the "answer"!!

brian outside of notre dame....he's standing in the middle on top of that miny pillar thing.

mona and i......chillin.

we visited the palace of versailles. i declared the throne mine. thanks so much!

inside the musee de orsay. it is an old train station that was turned into a museum. it has a really cool set up and a lot of artwork that is well known.

we went to an absinthe bar. it was fun to try it but i really didn't care for the taste too much.

did you know that moulin rouge means "red windmill"? i didn't. and there were tons of sex shops and stuff around this.

in the train station. waiting to get on our bullet train to london.

well, i'm tired of posting pics. i'll do london pics in the next blog.....

the big day recap

2007-12-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

so, my wedding day was fantastic!!! our photos are up online but i don't have my copies yet so i can't post any here....yet. but, eventually, i will. i'll cover some of the highlights and stuff.....overall the day went so wonderfully well i can't believe it! you think that things must go wrong but things went so well that i felt so relieved and just let loose and had a great time!

i'll start w/the things that went well:
1) everyone came to the rehearsal the night before. high school katie left right afterwards but everyone else came out to dinner and stuff w/us.
2) i rented a hotel room for the night before the wedding so mckatie, hanna, and elana stayed in the room the night before w/me and we had so much fun hanging out together!
3) my hair turned out fantastic and stayed strong the whole night through....thanks to my hair katie!!!
4) mac make-up did such an incredible job w/my make-up!!! no joke! i looked wonderful. the only thing that sucked about going to mac was that it was outrageously crowded there (since it was a saturday) and even though we (everyone except high school katie) had appointments it felt a little hectic when i got there w/my hair done and stuff wondering if it was actually going to get done or not. but, in the end, it did and it looked....stunning......if i do say so myself!
5) when we got to the church to get dressed my family was there and so was the first photographer. my family was wonderful that day....they had a laundry list of things to do that day.....including picking up the flowers (all except the centerpieces which got delivered to the reception). and they were there taking care of business.
6) i decided that we needed 2 photographers that day. it turned out wonderfully. i'm glad i did that b/c we ended up w/so many photos. and what one person would've missed we got b/c we had double the coverage. good choice.
7) the reception went really well. brian looked great! and so did my girls and his guys. everything looked so well put together. i loved it.
8) the reception was so much fun!! everything about it was great: the food (mexican...yum!!), the music, the dancing, the cake (oh shit balls, that cake looked great and tasted even better!!!), the set-up of the whole room, the cigar area, the speeches, the bar, bouquet and garter toss, etc. brian and i had such a magnificent time that we were so happy talking about it the next day on our flight. our reception was scheduled to end at 10 but so many people were still there dancing and partying that we paid for another hour and partied til 11!!! that was another decision that we made that we are really glad we did!! that extra hour was so much fun! i'm so freakin' happy that we have friends and family that partied w/us all night long...it made the wedding so much fun and memorable for everyone that stayed. so for everyone that partied and celebrated w/us brian and i thank you and love you!!!

things i didn't like:
1) i really didn't appreciate the 21 (yes, i typed the number 21) people that rsvp'd yes and then no-showed to the wedding. that cost us (yes, by us i mean brian and i) about $900. so to those people a big "suck it" goes out to you and i'm sure one day you'll be repaid for your actions. peace out.
2) that was about it. nothing else really bothered me. we had some weak sauce people that ate real quick and then ran out of the wedding after they ate the free food and had some of the free alcohol....but, that's kind of what you expect from some people...so if you already know they're going to do it, you don't get surprised, right?

so, the wedding went so great....don't you wish i'd look in a thesaurus or something and find some synonyms for great?? ha, ha! but i won't! but really we had the best night and the people that shared it w/us we are truly thankful for.......

next post.....i'll cover the honeymoon...that i do have photos of!!!

i'm married now!!

2007-12-16T12:51:00.000-08:00

hey everyone! i'm back and i'm married and i've been to europe!! so much has happened. whew! i don't have time to start typing now but i will....promise. i'll start w/a wedding blog and then move to the honeymoon blog. i had the best time w/all of it!!! the mrs. will be back soon! :-)

the time has come!!

2007-11-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

i'm getting married tomorrow!! can you believe this? tonight is our rehearsal and then boom it's time for the big day. after the wedding we're staying in a local all suites hotel and then sunday morning we leave for our honeymoon!! off to paris and then on the bullet train over to london. 2 weeks of seeing the sights and eating a ton of pastries...my sweet tooth can't wait. we both packed last night....i always worry that i'm going to forget something that is vital to my survival. but i haven't thought of anything yet that i'm forgetting that i must have. we'll see. i'm bound to forget something, right?

well, here goes a years worth of planning to marry my brian! i can't wait!! next time i write...i'll be a mrs.

miss me!

marriage license

2007-11-26T18:53:00.000-08:00

only 5 days left now.......

today we went and got the marriage license.....does that make it ligit??? ut-oh.

1 week

2007-11-24T14:32:00.000-08:00

that's right folks.....1 week from today i'll be married!! how quickly time flies! whew!

anyways, i had a nice little turkey day. brian and i went over to my parent's house in lakewood. so my mom, dad, brother, brian and i celebrated thanksgiving together. it was yummy!! and my parents gave us some more wedding gifts. they figured they don't want to bother carrying anything to the wedding so they just give us gifts every now and again. so, we did all of that family stuff and then went home for a bit. then we went to the movies that night and saw "hitman". mmmm....mmmm.....mmmmm. i liked that movie. that guy was kickin' ass like no other.....just the way i like it. then yesterday (friday) brian and i ran errands during the day and played poker at night. i made some $$. yeah!! and today i have a hair appt at 4:30 to get rid of my roots and get my hair trimmed. thank goodness b/c my roots are out of control. and then i'm meeting up w/hanna for dinner afterwards. yum.

so, i'm off track now....time to get crackin' on all of the little wedding projects that need to get done. yesterday i did the favors and the table numbers. and earlier today brian and i figured out our seating arrangements. now i just have to make the seating cards so people know what table to go to......projects, projects, projects. oh, and yesterday we went to get our marriage license but they decided to have a 4 day weekend so that was a waste of time. we have to get it sometime during the week but they're only open til 4:30 mon-fri. sucks. w/brian's work schedule that's hard to do but we'll have to fit it in sometime.

ONLY 1 WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my excuses for being MIA

2007-11-21T16:29:00.000-08:00

i have excuses.....doesn't everyone? well, i never posted about my 60 mile breast cancer walk in san diego. I DID IT!!! that's right. along w/brian's older sister, brenda, i completed walking 60 miles over 3 days. that was november 9-11th. and we slept in a tent both nights and it was balls cold. no joke. i think the walk was one of the most rewarding things i've done in my life thusfar....you really feel as if you're making a difference in someone's life. it's a good feeling. there is so much support along the way while you're walking as well. besides people holding up thank you signs there are also kids handing out candy and stickers. needless to say, walking 60 miles didn't make me loose any pounds.....candy is good.....my bad!!

then after that, i had report cards to get ready for work b/c parent conferences were about to get start. so, along w/all of that i've been doing a ton of wedding stuff. busy, busy, busy. but today my conferences are finally over and i've gone off track. i don't go back to work w/my kids until friday, january 4th. yes, we go back on a friday. so i'll work that friday and then have another weekend to relax. now that's the life!! so, from now until next saturday (the wedding) i can work on small wedding details that need to get done. i've been going around the past couple of days paying people the rest of their money. imagine that.....they want my money. well, it's only 10 days til the wedding.....i'll try to post before that.....

thunder from down under

2007-11-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

okay, i'm back from my bachelorette party!! it was so much freakin' fun. i'm too wiped out to type it all now but 10 of us were there and we partied ALL weekend. basically we went to the cheesecake factory twice, thunder from down under (yum), v bar at the venetian, hung out poolside at ceasar's palace, gambled at the flamingo, and partied at pure at ceasar's palace. both nights we went to sleep after 4 a.m. yes, you read that right...4 a.m. we're rockstars like that!! i really want to post some pics...i need to see how to attach them to here from my e-mail. and i cannot reccomend enough how much every lady MUST go to thunder from down under.....those guys are scrumptious!!! :-) pics hopefully to come soon on here...

oh, and then this weekend is the 3 day breast cancer walk in san diego. so, i'm off to do that. i'm so freakin' worn out. like 3 1/2 weeks til the wedding and so much is going on. and this weekend brian is off to vegas for his bachelor party. wonder if they'll go to thunder? hummm.....

time to par-tay!!!

2007-11-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

this'll be quick. today is 1 month until my wedding day. can you believe how quickly it has come??? it's crazy. i'm so excited about it though. so much to do still. last day for rsvp's is tomorrow. as of now we're at 80 yes and 14 no. come on people, hurry up!! a month from today i'll be married!!! yeah!

also, tomorrow i am off to vegas in the morning for my bachelorette party!! no work and 3 days of partying w/my girlies!!! good times await. oh, and yesterday mckatie took me to get my nails and toe nails done. they turned out great. so, now i'm typing w/acrylics on and it's taking forever. but, that's the price you pay for beauty, right?

well, let me post a couple of pics from the halloween party this past weekend:

me, mckatie, flo, and lexi.....sexy ladies!!!

lexi, flo, anne, me, annie, and mckatie.....party time!

brian and i. anne has a funnier pic but this'll do.

hanna and i. i'm investigating her boobs.

crazy busy

2007-10-27T09:39:00.001-07:00

life is just that nowadays. so much freakin' stuff is going on. i don't even know where to start. this will probably just be random thoughts. let's see....

tonight is our 4th annual halloween party. i made the jell-0 shots last night. and i finally found shoes for my costume last night. i will definitely post pics after the party. brian got a keg.

our rsvp count as of this morning is 71 yes and 8 no. we're still missing a lot of people. friday is the last day before people start getting the nasty "you don't know how to return an envelope that already has a stamp on it" call. that's right....i'm about to school some people up.

i think either brian or buster sucker punched me in the nose while i was asleep earlier this week b/c my nose bone is in extreme pain and i can't figure any other reason out as to why it feels that way. it hurts if i touch it, if i sneeze, if i blow my nose (and i have a stuffy nose i need to blow), if i scrunch up my face in any way, etc. good lord.

a million wedding things of course.....only 1 month and 5 days left. this has gone by so freakin' quickly. no joke. i can't believe that halloween is here already and that it's almost november. next weekend is my bachelorette party. i'm not working friday and we're flying out to vegas and then flying back on sunday. i've made the rehearsal dinner invitations....now i just need to address them and mail them. we got our card box but i want to decorate it in some way. i ordered the pics for our table numbers and the big 8X10 photo of us that's going into the signature mat for people to sign around. yesterday i had my final dress fitting.....now my dress is hanging in the computer room (where i'm at now) waiting to be unleashed on december 1st. also this past wednesday i did my hair trial....it turned out just like i wanted it. the only thing was the curls didn't last as long as i wanted, so i have to make sure that i tell her that so she can fix them the day of. what else? well, my to do list is really long so i won't even bother listing it all. i know that in the end it'll all get done but getting there is stressing me out! ahhhhhh......

2 days straight

2007-10-19T17:10:00.000-07:00

this'll be quick.....just like my last entry. i thought this was totally weird......yesterday (thursday) and today (friday) we haven't received any rsvp's for the wedding. and yes, there are plenty of people who haven't returned them yet. they're not totally due for 2 more weeks but i figured we'd get at least one per day but things have slowed down and we're at a 2 day drought. if we don't get any tomorrow i'm going to begin questioning the mailman as to why he's stealing my shit.

faster than a speeding bullet

2007-10-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

brian and i just booked our bullet train tickets for our honeymoon when we go from paris to london!! how exciting!! now it actually feels close...the wedding and my first trip to europe. i can't believe it's coming. one less thing to worry about now.......

p.s. it takes 2 1/2 hours on the bullet train to get from paris to london. fun fact of the day.

javier's.......and the aftermath

2007-10-16T17:32:00.000-07:00

so, i'm back. saturday night turned into a doosy of a night. first, during the day mckatie and i did go shoe shopping and then to kohl's. fun times. i dropped some cash in those places. after that we met back up w/brian and robby to go to the irvine spectrum for dinner and a movie. the night didn't go quite like it was planned. this is seriously what happened.....bought movie tickets before dinner and then went over for our 5 o'clock reservations. ate dinner and ordered 2 pitchers of margaritas (keep in mind we've done this before). after dinner strolled over to the theater to watch "the heartbreak kid". ended up being in this tiny ass theater so we were literally in the VERY FRONT row. okay, my alcohol intake could not, i repeat could not, handle this. i had to get up during the previews and leave the theater. i felt outrageously drunk all of a sudden. mckatie came out of the theater feeling the same way did. we eventually made it back to robby's car to lay down and pass out. before we did that though she had gone back in and told the guys that we needed to lay down. so, we slept in the car while they watched the movie. it felt like they were in there for like 5 minutes but really they watched the whole movie together. then we got back to mckatie/robby's place and mckatie and i decided to eat a half galloon of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream together in bed while watching "troy". then we went to sleep. the guys hung out and did their own thing til like 2:30 in the morning. that night didn't quite go as we had planned. i'm not sure how we didn't handle the margaritas as well as we had other times. oh well.

so, after we ate breakfast the next morning w/mckatie and robby, brian and i finally headed home. we just hung around the house. i vacuumed and did some laundry, etc. then we went out to dinner to islands b/c i was feeling like a hamburger. and then we hung at home.

now, it's already tuesday night and i can't wait for the weekend. mostly b/c i'm tired and want to sleep. tomorrow i have a consultation w/a plastic surgeon about removing the mole thingy on my head that i had the biopsy done on before. biopsy was benign but my dermatologist said that i should still have it removed.

wedding stuff....as of today we have 63 yes's and 4 no's. where are more of the no's at? that's what i'm currently wondering. i don't want to make a list of the things i have to get done but w/only a month and a half to go....i need to start tackling the small stuff.

Angels have retired for the year.

2007-10-13T10:44:00.000-07:00

it's sad that the angels went out like that. last sunday we met up w/some friends and went to the yard house to watch game 3 where the angels got destroyed. it was sad. boo. but after that we went to cold stone and then to the halloween store where brian bought his costume for our party on the 27th.

well, my week went by really fast. we've been receiving rsvp's back in the mail everyday this week (except monday which was columbus day) and that's exciting to come home and know you're going to have mail. we have a lot of yes's so far and only 2 no's. so, we'll see by the beginning of november how many we actually have coming. people are suppose to rsvp before november 3rd. we'll see who can follow directions and who can't.

last night we had a poker game which i ended up not winning but that's okay. after mckatie and i had both gone out we went and watched "step up" in the bedroom. now, for anyone who hasn't seen that movie, it's a must.....well, for straight women and all gay men. have you seen channing tatum??!? that man is fa---zzzinee! whew. i had to buy that movie this past week at best buy b/c i loved it so much in the theater. now today, saturday, i've gone to starbuck's so far. that's it. in awhile i'm going to go shoe shopping w/mckatie and then we're doing a double date w/her and robby at night. no big plans for tomorrow yet.

oh, and i woke up yesterday morning w/a sore throat. that needs to cease and desist. that's the correct phrase, right? i think so.

$33.....that's it?!?

2007-10-06T14:56:00.001-07:00

i never got around to writing about my bridal shower from last week. it was great! i just had such a busy week that i never had time to sit down and actually write about it. my bridal shower was great, the people were fun, the mexican food was fantastic, the cake tasted good, the games were fun, and i got a ton of great stuff (for which i am currently in the middle of writing thank you cards for)......half of which was lingerie!!! ooooohhhh----lah----lah!! 4 of my 5 bridesmaids that were there did a fantastic job. i had so much fun. i don't think i can link any pics to here b/c the pics were taken from other people's cameras and then e-mailed to me. sorry.

i'll leave all of the other details from last weekend behind b/c i really can't remember right now what went on. oh well. i'm tired, that's why. yesterday (friday) after work brian and i went to dave and buster's at the block for a party thing his company was putting on. they were having a pool tournament and stuff like that. i was the dd. boo. anyways, some of the other guys met up w/us so i talked to them most of the time. also saw the angels lose their game....not good. we got home around 10:30 b/c we had to get up early today for a yard sale. i set my alarm for 5 a.m. this morning.....an hour before i even wake up for work in the morning. brian got up too. i set everything up in the front yard, in the dark, for the yard sale b/c i had posted signs that said it was starting at 6 a.m. well, we stayed out there til 11 a.m. and i made a total of $33. wow. and then i had to clean it all up. and then a couple of hours later i had to put it all into frank's durango and take it to goodwill to donate it. this was an ALL DAY EVENT. but the profit was only $33. and the reason i'm do freakin' bummed (besides the fact that i had to wake up so early to do physical labor) is that the reason i had the sale was to make $$ for the breast cancer walk that i'm doing in a month and i still don't have enough $$ raised. oh well. at least i made something, right? it was just a real let down. i'm really bummed. no more yard sales for me. now we're really tired so we're going to have an early dinner and hang at home.

tomorrow i have a bunch of little things to work on. oh, and wedding invites were mailed on tuesday....we've already started getting rsvp's back!!! :-)

how did another month slip by?!?

2007-10-01T18:13:00.000-07:00

this is going to be a quick blog just to say.....2 months from today is my wedding day! oh my goodness!! it has been flying by so quickly. i can't believe october is already here. i'll write more and hopefully post some pics soon. gotta focus on getting the wedding invites out!

a million things at once

2007-09-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

that's how i feel right now. i have a million things running through my head every minute of what i need to do, what i should be doing, what i think i've forgotten to do, etc. ahhhhh!!! i think it's a combination of my kid's lack of common sense that wears me down DAILY and wedding stuff....combined w/my "normal" life. whatever.

last friday after i posted, we played poker at our house. saturday i woke up butt crack early (much to my dismay). that night (b/c i currenly can't remember what i did all day long) brian and i met up w/mckatie and robby at chili's for dinner. yum! awesome blossum=love. after that we headed over to dalonda's place b/c she was having a little get together. and this was the first time i'd been over to her new place so that was cool. we hung out there for awhile and then came home around midnight. i drove......brian enjoyed his beers. oooooh, i just remembered saturday during the day.....i drove to lakewood to visit my family and then i went over to hanna's house to start addressing wedding invitation envelopes. ahhhh, my memory is back. sunday brian and i went and saw the movie "resident evil: extinction". i liked it. that girl whoops on people like no other. kicking ass.....i like it. then we went over to our mexcian restuarant "carnitas/salsitas" for dinner. i can never remember which name it has now.....one is its old name and the other is its new name.

and then i had a whole week of work. and 2 more trips to hanna's house during the week to finally finish addressing the envelopes. now i have to work on stuffing those little suckers so i can mail then out on monday. we'll see if i meet that monday deadline. oh, and i ordered my halloween costume and it's suppose to be delivered tomorrow. hope they mailed me the right size....last year it took them like 3 or 4 times to actually mail me the right size. b/c it's really hard, i guess, to read what size to mail and then put it in an envelope and mail it. takes practice.

anyways!! tomorrow is my bridal shower!!! i'm so excited! a lot of people i love are suppose to be there. others have disappointed me....but let's not name names.

so much going on!!! ahhhh!!!!

2007-09-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

okay, so it took me a week and a half to get back here. my bad. right now is kinda hectic in my world. i never even did a weekend recap from last week. well, i'll just give an overview of what went on last weekend......poker, watched 2 tapings of the def comedy jam in l.a. w/mckatie, cheesecake factory (yum!!), movie "perfect stranger", dog park, looked at a townhouse, teacher work, movie "breach". that's about all that my last weekend consisted of.

and then my work week was busy as well. i can't remember if i stated this before but my kids this year are DRAINING!! to say the least. i don't want to say anything too bad but i feel like they need constant attention all day long and a lot of them are lacking common sense. kinda sad and frustrating. and this week i had a dermatologist appt., dr. appt., and back-to-school night at work last night. it's like the week that wouldn't slow down. at least now it's over. and then tomorrow (saturday) they're doing a paid training at my work from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. and i will not be in attendance. even for $200 i don't think i can do that to myself right now. oh, and p.s. traffic has been shitty as well....it has been taking me over an hour to get to work each morning.......blah. all i have to say now is....praise the lord it's friday and i'm home now!

what else?? umm...my bridal shower is next saturday. i've been looking forward to that forever! so exciting!!! tomorrow i'm going over to hanna's house to start addressing my wedding invitations b/c they're suppose to be mailed out october 1st...which is only like 10 days away. i meant to do a little everyday but that didn't happen. hopefully i'll get them all done tomorrow. we'll see. i still need to make an appt. for my hair and make-up trial....and i need to get brian to go to the tux shop. maybe he'll go next saturday while i'm at my bridal shower.

one last thing....people who can't follow an rsvp suck!!!

comedy & baseball

2007-09-11T18:35:00.001-07:00

so, the rest of my weekend was fab-u-lous! here's what happened:

saturday---brian worked and i hung around all day and was lazy. i intended to do some teacher work but did very little.....graded 2 math tests. my kids are really weak in math facts this year. after brian got home we got ready to go out. we walked down to our mexican restaurant salsitas. it's about 3/4 of a mile from our place. both of us wanted to drink so we just walked there. we ate some yummy mexican food and had plenty of margaritas! then we walked out of there in time to get in line for the 9 p.m. comedy show at the brea improv. we were there to see mo'nique. so, we went in and the first 3 comedians were really funny!! then mo'nique came out and she was sort of funny but not as funny as we had hoped. the people that went before her we found funnier. it sucks when you expect someone to be fall over funny and then they're okay. she had a really "preachery" way about her comedy which made a lot of it not really funny. then we walked/stumbled out of there and made our way home. got home like at midnight. zzzzzz.....

sunday---today i actually sat down and did some teacher planning. on the weekend!!! oh my goodness. around 3, hanna came over and then the 4 of us (me, brian, frank, and hanna) went over to the restaurant "the catch" across from angel stadium and met up w/paul and angela there as well and the 6 of us had an early dinner there. then we walked over to watch the 5 o'clock angel game. the tickets were all free b/c it was a work event for brian's company. it was good times. the angels lost but figgins went 1 for 1.

hanna and i sitting in the stands.

brian, paul, angela, frank, and hanna. nice picture, huh? credit is all mine.

and that was my weekend. and yesterday, monday, was back to work. i'm exhausted. blah. this is my opinion so far of my 19 kids: their behavior for the most part is okay. they sometimes like to make noise or talk for no apparent reason....it's like they lose what they're suppose to be doing and i have to be watching over them like no other. as for academics....i think this is where we're going to hit some walls. literally. besides their math facts being really weak, they have a really hard time following basic directions. most of the time they act as if they learned nothing in 2nd grade. so, only time will tell but that's what i see so far. ahhhhhh......

i've had a bit to drink.....

2007-09-08T00:08:00.000-07:00

that's the truth folks. i went out tonight w/brian for a friend's b-day. now i'm home. brian has to work tomorrow so we left earlier than i'd normally leave anyplace. oh well. so, that gives me some time to blog. i'm not tired....yet. i have A LOT to recap b/c i've been so busy since my new school year started.....oh boy.....here we go:

last friday---stayed home. didn't do much. brian went to bed early b/c he was going to leave really early to go hunting.

saturday---went over to anne's place. hung out w/her, her sister jeanette, jeanette's husband john and their cutie daughter nina. we went down to the pool also to hang out. sidenote...anne picked me up a slice of cheesecake. yum! :-) later anne and i went to irvine spectrum to meet up w/annie to go to javier's for drinks and dinner. so good. then we visited cold stone. after that we went and watched the movie "rush hour 3". a lot of it was filmed in paris which got me really excited b/c brian and i are going there for the first week of our honeymoon. yeah!!

sunday---hanna came out and we went to the brea mall. i got the spend the gift certificate at sephora that i had gotten from angela and paul. that was a fun time....spending gift card money is so much fun. then we headed over to the cheesecake factory for dinner. always a good meal. then we drove over to the brea improv to watch the comedy show there. i had received free tickets to that show. the people that perfomed were really funny so we both enjoyed it. after that i went home and brian had come back that night from his hunting trip.

monday---holiday. brian and i went over to visit my grandma, aunt terre, and cousin justin. i thought we'd hang out for like an hour or so....that ended up being a 4 1/2 hour visit. i had fun though. then we came home and bbq'd.

tuesday---had my day before school starting meeting. ahhhhh.....

wednesday---first day of my 6th year teaching. let the games begin. pure craziness the first day of school is. i was really shocked this day b/c brian came to my work at lunchtime and totally surprised me w/a bouquet of flowers.....carnations to be exact. that was totally sweet of him!! i love them.....and him! the flowers are in a vase in our bedroom now. perfect. then after work i met up w/my high school friend katie and we hung out for a couple of hours at a coffee shop. it's always good to catch up and hang out w/her.

thursday---second day of school. not too much happened. dermatologist appointment.....not for acne but for a mole thingy of my head. they did a biopsy. the results will be back in like 11 days. 2 stitches on my head. ahhhhhh....it's okay though.

friday (today.....even though it's after midnight so it's technically saturday)---worked. visited my parents. ran errands. went out to chronic in newport beach (i believe) for sara's b-day. we rocked it for awhile and now brian's in bed and i'm here. wah-lah. i have some fun plans for saturday and sunday. i'll write about those after they happen......

3 months....

2007-09-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

3 months from today brian and i will be waking up and it'll be our wedding day! it feels like just yesterday it was the beginning of august and now it's already september 1st. this is crazy! i blink and months are flying by. i'm so excited!! still so many little things to do!!

yes, yes, i'm home right now.......

2007-08-31T21:01:00.001-07:00

it's friday night. i'm home. no poker. brian's leaving like at 2 a.m. to go dove hunting w/his family. he'll be gone til monday. boo. so, i decided to just hang around the house. i went to kohl's to visit their labor day sale and then headed over to big 5 to get a cooler for brian to take on his trip. now, here i am. i have some plans for the rest of the weekend.....so, i'm sure i'll have something to share when i recap the weekend.

also, on a sad note.....my friend, hanna, has a dog named jake. he's 15. he's a golden lab. he is the dog that made me love dogs. i was always scared of dogs until hanna's mom made me come out from behind a door and let jake sniff my hand (no, this wasn't recently......more like 14 or 15 years ago) and ever since then i've loved jake. it made me want a golden lab so BAD!! so, on tuesday night when i went over to hanna's house to go to the cirque de soliel show, i went out back to visit jake. he looked thin to me and really tired. but, he was still the sweetest dog......wish i had a picture to post w/this. so, yesterday (thursday) hanna called me w/some bad news that jake had passed away in his sleep. it was so sad. i loved that dog. but, i know that after i saw him on tuesday that he really was ready to rest....and i'm sure he's happier now.....eating doggie treats and hanging out w/all the hot bitches. so, this was my ode to jake. i'll miss you!

more good times

2007-08-29T09:58:00.000-07:00

the weekend was great.....but my break is coming to an end too quicky! ahhhh! here's the low down:

friday---during the day i just ran errands (not erins). that night we met up w/dalonda and some other peeps at the yard house in brea to celebrate her b-day. it turned out to be a lot of fun and the mojitos were delicious! we got home pretty late that night.

saturday---brian worked during the day, which turned out to be good b/c at 11 a.m. i had a dress fitting at david's bridal and had to lug all of my wedding stuff out to the car to take it w/me. the fitting went well. but, let me just state that that place is so freakin' EXPENSIVE for their alterations. i just went w/them b/c i didn't want to bother looking around. the alterations cost 1/2 as much as my dress did! totally crazy. but, i go back to pick it up at the end of october.

that night, brian and i headed to my 10 year high school reunion at "the grand" in long beach. i took our camera but so many other people had theirs that i didn't want to add another "here, take one w/mine too" to the growing pile of cameras. therefore, i'm still waiting on people to send me some pics. was it fun? i would have to say that it was ok. i'm glad that i went so i can say that i did but i only saw a couple of people that i was interested in seeing that i don't normally see. the rest of the people that i hadn't seen in 10 years, that i was interested in seeing, weren't there. oh well. and the food was ok and the dj's SUCKED. it was the worst dj'ing i've ever heard/seen in my whole life. oh well. i went.

sunday---we lounged around the house all day. i was really eager to finish reading a book that i had bought at target called baby proof by emily giffin. (http://www.emilygiffin.com/index.html) i love her books. this was her third one. she wrote something borrowed and then she wrote soemthing blue. those 2 went together. this one, baby proof, is about totally different people. i like her writing. so, after i finished that book, brian and i headed over to taps to watch the steelers football game. we ate and drank, and drank and ate throughout the whole game. we ended up being there for 3 1/2 hours. wow. then we came home and wathced a movie that needed to get returned to blockbuster the next day...pathfinder. it was ok. had a lot of action in it.

tuesday---i skipped monday b/c nothing too big happened on monday. but, yesterday (tuesday), my friend hanna took me to see the new cirque de soliel show that's in los angeles. it was my b-day gift from her. it was totally cool! http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/CirqueDuSoleil/en/showstickets/corteo/intro/intro.htm
i had a lot of fun. those people can do some crazy stuff w/their bodies! :-0

well, that's it for now. i'll be back soon.....or at least i'll try!

i'm 28 biz-natches!!!

2007-08-20T18:31:00.000-07:00

that's right....today is my 28th b-day!! i had a great weekend so let me tell you all about it. i might even throw in some photos for your pleasure!! ;-)

friday---we were going to play poker but no one really wanted to come over and play. so we "folded" that idea...ha, ha!! you like my poker reference?? so, anyways, we met up w/paul and angela at a local bar in downtown fullerton called hero's. we got a table out in the back and a group of people met up w/us and we hung out there for a long time. it was fun. they make great sex on the beaches there. brian drove home and paul took a ride on the hood of my car! it was good times!

saturday---brian actually got up like at 9:30 in the morning. this NEVER happens on the weekends. he usually awakens like at noonish or later. so, after my morning starbuck's run we took buster w/us to petsmart b/c brian's younger brother, randy, works there. we've never taken buster w/us to the pet store. we always leave him at home but randy said that he'd wash buster for free. we went there but randy told us to come back at 2. so, we left there and took buster to the dog park. i was really sad we didn't have the camera w/us. i didn't know we were going to end up there. so, anyways, this was buster's second time at the dog park and he did so much better this time. his tail wasn't stuck between his legs the whole time and he ran around and did a bunch of ass sniffin'!! that's my boy!! ha, ha. then we came home to shower and stuff. then we went back to petsmart and dropped buster off. then we went next door to tilly's and did some shopping. then picked him back up......did you know that they have such a thing as dog cologne? they do. and buster got the deluxe treatment that day and rolled up outta there in pimp style. you know this!

seemed like we needed a paragraph there. so, after we dropped buster back off at home we headed over to beverly's bakery in fullerton for our wedding cake tasting. here's the link to their page.......http://www.beverlysbestbakery1.com/home.nxg so, it went wonderfully well and we booked them to make our wedding cake! it tasted so good and the pricing was excellent! we're having 3 tiers (the very top one we're keeping for a year in the freezer). the bottom layer is going to be a chocolate cake w/peanut butter filling and the middle layer is going to be lemon cake w/raspberry filling, and the top one is going to be the same as the bottom one. and we liked the traditional icing the best. and the design we picked, which is too hard to describe, is wonderful. we loved it!! after the wedding i'll definitely post some pictures. and they were really sweet through the whole process.

after that, we went home and got ready to go out that night. before we left we had frank (brian's cousin) take some photos of us. we bought that signature frame to use at the wedding as a "guest book" and we need a cute photo to put in the middle. here are some that we took outside of our house:

i know what you're thinking.....how can those 2 sexy ass people stand to be around each other? well, we realize our hotness and don't let it get to our heads.

that night we met up w/mckatie and robby for dinner at rockin' taco in downtown fullerton. they have great mexican food. after that we headed to stubrik's where i decided to drink the night away. some friends showed up and it was good times. i'll post some pics from there too. oh, and brian really sweet and took care of me.....it was a LONG night after we got home. my body didn't know what to do w/all of the alcohol!

this is me, dalonda, and mckatie.

this is mckatie, me, anne, and kathy.

this is how brian looks at me when i decide that my new seat will be the pac-man game. for some reason i love this photo.

sunday---i had to recover. we hung around the house. we went out for a late lunch to roscoe's in downtown fullerton. we hadn't been there before and it was good. huge sandwiches and great side dishes. then we came home. i took a 3 hour nap. then we were going to go to golden spoon but the line was crazy long. i said no to that. i only wait in long lines for certain things and that's not one of them. so we hit up 31 flavors and got some sundaes. then we went to blockbuster and rented 3 movies. we watched "idiocracy" w/luke wilson last night. it was funny.

monday---did a starbuck's run and did a very minor gym trip. then i met up w/allison and tiffany (friends from work) for lunch at bj's at the brea mall. we ate lunch.....their treat and then we headed over to our 1 o'clock massage appointments at glen ivy. it was so freakin' great! i love glen ivy!! :-) after that we hung out at the brea mall for a bit and then i came home. i checked the mail and i had received a b-day card from my family and i got my invite from anne to my bridal shower!! i'm so excited! the invites are so cute. anne did a great job w/them! i can't wait for my bridal shower on september 29th!! :-) i'll post pics afterwards. right now brian just got home from work and is in the shower....once he's out we're heading over to the cheesecake factory for dinner! i can't wait!

our wedding invitations

2007-08-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

i waited all day today and finally at 5 o'clock.....our wedding invitations arrived!! i'm so excited. i quickly checked them for spelling errors b/c i was the only one that proofed my work. they look better than i thought they would. i wasn't sure how the response cards and reception cards would look but they turned out great! i love them. now, i have to attach the ribbons to them and figure out how i want to address them. they'll be sent out at the end of september/beginning of october. i have a month and a half to get that figured out. they're here!! oh, and i used the web page http://www.exclusivelyweddings.com/ incase anyone wants to know. and they do send a free sample if you want to see one beforehand.....we did that. it was nice to see the quality/size/detail on a real invitation so you can decide if you want that invite or not. :-)

i'm still here...no worries

2007-08-14T09:43:00.000-07:00

so, my break is going great; probably b/c i haven't done anything work related yet!! but, that's about to change....i have 2 trainings this week, one on thursday and one on friday. but, they're both paid trainings so i'll be in attendance. wide awake and alert in long beach at 8 a.m.

but, anyways, here's my weekend:

friday---after 2 of my bridemaids got off of work (anne and mckatie) they came over to my house to pick me up and all 3 of us went looking for bridal shower invites for my shower on sept. 29th. anne wanted to make sure that the invitation was something that i liked so she wanted me to go along w/them. we went to the brea mall, a hallmark not in the mall, and to a target greatland. it was there that we found the cutest invitations!! :-) i was so excited! so, anne bought them and she has them now and is getting them ready to be mailed out. it's getting closer!! yeah!

after that, we played some poker at our house. we actually had what i would consider TOO MANY people playing at our table. we were all squoosed (spelling?) in at the table. i didn't win. crap. but, brian did get 3rd place. rock on!

saturday---we woke up and got ready to go down to escondido. this is where brian's timeshare is at. they had called and offered us a 8 day, 7 night stay in a condominium anywhere in the world as an incentive to come down. so, we went. basically they were trying to get us to "upgrade" the timeshare that we have now. we just wanted the free stuff.....the timeshare we have now is enough for us! so, we ended up w/the vacation room, 2 movie tickets, a free wine tasting and bottle of wine. good enough for us!

then we drove back to fullerton and went to dinner at taps. it's a nice seafood restaurant. yummy!!! it was really good. then we walked across the street and went onto birch st. and bought our tickets to see the bourne ultimatum. we had an hour and a half til it started so we went across the street to starbuck's and had some hot drinks there. then we saw the movie. i loved it!! we had a great date night! :-)

sunday---this was a lounge around and do nothing all afternoon kinda day. i did finally leave the house at 4 to drive to lakewood to pick up my mom and take her out to dinner. her 55th b-day was friday and i wanted to take her out to dinner. we went to the elephant bar restaurant by the lakewood mall. it was pretty good. the appetizer wasn't very hot so that was okay but the sandwich i got was good (needed more fries though) but my mom's dinner (asian stuff) looked really good! then i dropped her off at home and i drove home. then i just hung around here the rest of the night.

trip to leo carrillo

2007-08-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

this past weekend brian and i went camping w/his older sister, brenda, and her family/friends. it was good times. we had also gone w/them 2 years ago....so, this was our second time there together. we drove out friday after work and stayed til late sunday morning. here are some pictures from our mini-trip.

this is brian and i hanging out by the bonfire.

this is brian w/his 2 nephews....on the left is lucas who is 1 1/2 and in the middle is nick who is a little past 3. those are my 3 guys right there!! so adorable!

you know this is so freakin' cute!! don't lie!!!

this is brian's older sister, brenda, and her husband, nick. AKA the parents of the cutest kids EVER!!! and AKA 2 of my future in-laws.

here's one more of us!

UPDATE: after i posted on here on friday, our cake cutting/serving set for the wedding got delivered. it is totally cute! invitations are still being made. they're suppose to send me an e-mail when they get shipped so i can track them. what i'm currently working on is compiling all of the addresses of people who are invited to the bridal shower so anne, my MOH, can send out invites around the middle of this month. i'm about a 1/3 of the way through my list. i need to finish that this week! more to come, i'm sure.................

quick update

2007-08-03T11:14:00.001-07:00

i'm going to fly through last weekend really quickly. friday was poker at our house. on one hand i got 4 of a kind!!! yep! saturday was the big extravaganza for anne's b-day. a group of us girls headed out to the standard in downtown l.a. around 2 p.m. and checked into the biggest penthouse they have at 3 p.m. and then we just partied it up the rest of the day and night there. they have a bar/dance floor/pool on the rooftop, so it's nice to hang out up there on summer nights. we stayed the night in the penthouse. sunday i hung out w/brian but i was exhausted. we made it to costco and out to dinner to our mexcian restaurant, salsitas.

this has been my first whole week off from work. it was delightful. all the sleep i got and the strolling into the gym and not being in a rush. it was nice. oh, and last night brian and i went w/paul and angela to the wine stop in brea. it's a new wine bar that opened just recently. it was so much fun. we were there til like 10:30 p.m. i would've stayed longer but they were closing. i want to go back!!

and this morning, i ordered our wedding invitations!!! i'm so excited for them to come. it'll be a couple of weeks til they get here though. i checked, double checked, and triple checked them for any type of error. hopefully nothing got by me. i'll post again when they come. less than 4 months to go. time is flying by. oh, and i'm still waiting for the cake cutting set that i ordered......

well, i must get ready for this weekends adventure. after brian gets off work (in about an hour and a half) we're heading out to leo carillo to go camping. his older sister goes every year. we went w/them 2 years ago and we're meeting up w/them there this weekend. so, we'll be back sometime on sunday. it's not too far away....like in malibu. so, you get to combine laying out w/camping!! fabulous! i'll post when we get back! have a great weekend!!

4 months left.....

2007-08-01T09:53:00.001-07:00

yep, that's right.....today is august 1st. 4 months from today brian and i will be getting married! oh my goodness, time is flying by! 2/3 of our engagement has already come and gone. so much to do still. i'm so excited though!!! i can't wait!!

oh, and i did have a great weekend, i just don't have time to cover it.....maybe later....

my break has officially started!

2007-07-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

yesterday was my last day w/my kids. they're officially 4th graders now. i'm so.......so sad to see them go. i really am. this was my 5th year teaching and these were the best kids i've EVER had. they were the smartest (not like rocket scientist but better than other classes i've had.....well, i retract the rocket scientist comment; some of them could accomplish such feats!!) AND the most well behaved. this year i really never came home w/story upon story of what my kids had done wrong that day.....which is how my daily recap has gone daily every other year....ask brian, he knows! i never got burnt out. i never had to walk away b/c i felt like i was going to blow up. i never felt like the end of the year wasn't coming quick enough. you get the idea. i loved this class. loved!!! and now, i know that i'm going to end up the exact opposite next year.....it's time to swing back to the other end of the spectrum. so, come september, don't be surprised if i have daily stories. we'll see how it goes. but for now.....i'm officially on BREAK!!!

so, today i had my day after the last day meeting. then i went to the gym and to my parent's house to say hi and use their shower. then i met up w/hanna (one of my bridesmaids) at starbuck's. i got to see her pictures from her recent trip to costa rica and stuff; somewhere that looks very fun to go to. now i'm at home and i want to walk buster but it's so freakin' hot i need to make myself get up and do it. then tonight brian and i are going out to dinner w/paul and angela to catch up w/them and see their honeymoon pictures from italy.

then tomorrow, friday, i have a doctor's appointment in the morning. i decided that it was time for a physical to check up on my body. i'm really anal about my body and making sure that everything is ok w/it. and about 2-3 weeks ago i started feeling a little "off". i'm not sure how to describe it. i tried to describe it to brian but i don't know if i did a very good job. it's like i feel kind of off-balance.....as if my body is trying to sway a certain way. or i could describe it as like when you're buzzed (from drinking) and you're focusing on someone talking but you feel as if you're slightly moving and you're not sure why. see that sounds weird. but i don't know how else to describe it. but i don't feel like that all of the time. some of the days i feel fine the whole day and then other times i'll feel like that for a bit and then i'll feel "normal" again. but, off to the doctor's office i go.....b/c i always make appointments if something is off. we'll see what they say. and then after that i have to come home and get trixie (our ferret) to take her to the vet to get her yearly shots. i bet she's excited about that! :-) the rest of the day is pretty much open.....we'll see what happens.................

no poker this weekend.....huh?!?

2007-07-23T17:29:00.000-07:00

i had a great, action packed weekend. that's how i choose to describe it. now, there were pictures taken both friday and saturday but not w/my camera so i have yet to receive the photos. who knows if they'll ever get posted now......

friday---i went to the mall after work to do some shopping. i came home w/1 pair of high black flip flops from steve madden; which happens to be my favorite brand of shoes and there's a whole store of them at the brea mall. then i came home and walked buster and stuff. then i had to get ready to go over to anne's house (my maid of honor) who lives in foothill ranch. there were a total of 5 of us girls that went out that night. we ended up going to a place called "chronic cantina" in newport beach. we stayed there til about midnight and then went next door to another hot spot called "sutra". we stayed there til after 1 a.m. it was a fun girl's night filled w/drinking, dancing, and laughing!! loves those girls! and they'll all be in vegas for my bachelorette party!!!! yeah! went to sleep on anne's couch at 2 a.m.

saturday---first of all anne's 2 cats were running around like crazy and sneezing. yes, i wrote sneezing. one of them sneezed on my hand at 6:30 in the morning. ewwww. had to wash that hand. then my alarm went off at 7 a.m. AHHHH!! not enough sleep. i then drove about 20 minutes away in my pj's to mckatie's house in tustin to get ready to go wine tasting in temecula. me, mckatie, lexy, and kacie were heading to temecula for the day/night to go wine tasting for kacie's b-day. so we needed to head out in the early morning. we went on a wine tour through temecula and we hit up 4 wineries. i hadn't gone wine tasting in temecula before so i thought that was fun and we all had a great time. then we went to el torito for dinner out there and hit up cold stone afterwards. we were really tired from the long day (and i was also tired from my long friday night) so we went to the hotel and watched some t.v. and other stuff and then hit the sack.

sunday---came home! saw my brian and my buster!! :-) i missed them! i talked to brian for a long time to see how his weekend was and to tell him all about mine. then we went to the brea mall together and then out to chili's for dinner. yum!! then we came back and relaxed. ahhhhhh.

monday---went to work. wednesday is my last day w/my kids. so sad.

but, when i came home from work today the flutes that i had ordered awhile back came in the mail!! i love them. they forgot one of my bridesmaids flutes so i called them to tell them and they said they'd make it and send it out. i'll be waiting for that. what else??? ummmm....i bought myself a mrs. erin boeglin zip up jacket and i've received that. i couldn't resist. also i had ordered these really cute, personalized handkerchiefs for my parents and brian's grandparents and they've come also. i loved those too. and yesterday brian ordered the organza bags that i want to use to put our wedding favors in and the votives that i need for the holders that we already bought. so, things are coming along nicely. one by one we're doing things. we've also picked out our wedding invitation and the wording that we want to use....now we just have to actually buy them. i'll probably do that by the end of the week or this weekend. updates will be coming......

the american past time

2007-07-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

sorry it took me til tuesday to get here. monday wore me out.....and today i've had a headache practically all day but i'm a trooper---look at me. ha, ha!! anyways, here's my weekend update:

friday---people came over and we played poker. i got 3rd place.....almost made it to the $$. next time!

saturday---after walking buster and stuff i got ready to go out and about. translation=i got ready to go to cold stone. oh yeah! that was good!! after i got back brian got up and we headed over to the harley dealership where he had purchased his harley back in december. he had received a coupon for a free hat as a b-day present from them. so we went by to get that. and then we swung by his parents house to say hi and to check on our turtle, spot, that roams around their backyard (he got too big for the cage we had him in and we don't have a closed yard to put him in......so he hangs out at brian's parents house). after that we went to stubrik's (where we had gone for his b-day night) to have some drinks b/c the restaurant we were going to eat at didn't open for 1/2 an hour. so we had some drinks. then we headed across the street to chomps, it's a sushi restaurant. yummy!! well, i was buzzed so when we got home i kinda fell asleep early. whoops! i was out of it. i got a long nights sleep that night.

sunday---brian and i went to the angels vs. texas baseball game in the afternoon. it ended up going 11 innings. here are some pics from the game. oh, and they lost 4-5.

here's brian and i in our fabulous seats. i actually got seats on the 3rd base side. i was there to see this guy............................

that is chone figgins #9 sliding into 2nd base. this slide captured in this photo is the one that shows him breaking the record of most bases ever stolen by an angels player. that's my boy!!!

and this is figgins playing 3rd base!

this was a glorious game. after that brian and i went to dinner at a mexican restaurant by our place called salsitas. it's like "our" mexican place. then we came home and put up our hammock that connects b/n 2 trees in our front yard. then we got in it and we relaxed and brian smoked a cigar. then we came in and looked on the internet and kind of figured out how to get from place to place on our honeymoon in france and england. so exciting!!! then it was bedtime. i need lots of rest at my age of 27. that's right! it was fun weekend.

has it really been that LONG???

2007-07-10T19:41:00.001-07:00

i just purchased 2 tickets to my 10-year high school reunion! can you believe that? i guess it makes sense mathematically....but, come on now......10 years!! the actual event isn't until saturday, august 25th but the tickets had to be purchased this month otherwise the price would go up $10 a ticket.....and considering they cost $89 in in the first place, i decided to buy them today so i wouldn't forget. i'm sure i'll have an update about that come the end of august!

wedding and transformers

2007-07-09T18:03:00.000-07:00

this weekend was a ton of fun!!

friday---i rushed home from work b/c our friends paul and angela were getting married at 4:30 at a church in fullerton. brian and i got all dressed to impress....ahhhh yeah! angela looked FABULOUS!! so pretty! and paul looked nice also in his suit (no caps for him....only for girls). the ceremony was a catholic one so it was like 50 minutes long. after that we headed over to the mukenthaler center in fullerton for the cocktail hour and the reception. beer and wine was served in the art gallery.....yummy....wine. i guess i gave away what i was drinking all night! then we saw the grand entrance, ate dinner, danced, etc. the dj played really good music and everything really did seem to run very smoothly so i was really excited for them. i also got to take home a centerpiece which i was thrilled about b/c they were beautiful! brian even came out and danced....it was a really fun night. we were there til the end!! and that was like the first wedding i've ever stayed til the end for. after that we headed home b/c we were tired. let me post some pics.

this was angela's grand entrance.

here is mckatie, me, and dalonda at the reception.

this is paul and angela walking into their first dance.

brian and i at the wedding.

this is when they stopped by during the reception to say hi. i think they look great in this photo!

saturday---we hung out at the house for awhile....starbuck's, walked buster, went to old navy, etc. then we headed over to potvin and mckatie's get together at their place in tustin. mckatie made deviled eggs (WONDERFULNESS!!), chicken nachos, chips and dip, and she even brought out her chocolate fountain. i like to call it "a little slice of heaven". oh, and they had even gone to bevmo and got bottles of spumante and asti. i was in heaven. we spent the night there.

sunday---drove back to fullerton and we stopped over to our starbuck's and hung out there for awhile. then we came home. we ended up going over to the movie theater on birch st. to watch "transformers". we tried to get tickets to the 3:15 show but that didn't work, so we had to buy tickets for the 4:00 show and then use that time inbetween to wait in line. i liked the movie though. i thought some parts had some useless dialogue but overall it was fun to watch. after that we walked across the street to the yard house and had dinner there. i love that place! after that we came home and looked at some of brian's family's old photos that we had downloaded from frank's computer. then it was nighty-night time!

pachenga and the 4th

2007-07-05T21:51:00.000-07:00

i should be in bed since i have to work tomorrow but here i am! anyways, here's what has been going on.....

tuesday---i worked. the end. j/k. no, really, i did work but there's more. that night brian and i drove out to pachenga to meet up w/potvin (it was his real b-day), mckatie, kacie, kory, and carey. we got there like at 8:30 p.m. neither one of us had been there before. we've been to morongo a couple of times b/c brian's grandparents live by there and sometimes we stay the night at their place and then play a poker tournament on sunday afternoons. but, pachenga was a new experience for us. we played some live poker there. i didn't win. boo. i'm not playing limit anymore w/live games.....you can't push anyone out of a pot. blah. we stayed there til midnight. i was EXHAUSTED! so, brian had to drive home and i slept all of the way back. we got home at 1 a.m.

wednesday---4th of July!! no work! that was nice. we hung out around the house and then some peeps came over around 3ish. we bbq-ed and then, randomly, a poker game broke out. huh??!? what a surprise! it was nice to lounge around and not work on a wednesday. but then when i got to work today (thursday) i felt like it was monday and my week was just starting.....but, no! my week is almost over! yes!

anyways---that's it for now. did i mention in my other blog that our cake topper came? if i did, then hear it a second time....it not, we got it and i love it! it cracks me up! and tomorrow, friday, we're going to paul and angela's wedding. they got engaged august '06 and their 11 month engagement is over. it went by so fast! so, i'll have to post later about how that goes....i'm sure it'll be wonderful!

Julian, CA

2007-07-02T19:04:00.001-07:00

what a great weekend we had! i had a blast....

friday---today was brian's 29th b-day!! he came to my school for career day. my kids had such a blast w/that. after work we went back to fullerton and went to starbuck's to hang out for a bit. then we went home. i made brian a nice home made dinner (doesn't happen very often). it was enchiladas for all who are interested in knowing. then that night we went out to stubrik's in downtown fullerton to celebrate brian's 29th and potvin's 28th b-days. their b-days are close so we just celebrated them together. stubrik's is a restaurant and bar on the bottom and the top has some pool tables, darts, foose (spelling??) ball, etc. to do while you hang out and drink. a lot of people came out for that so it was fun. it was good times.

saturday---in the late morning we headed out to julian, CA which is located in san diego county. this weekend trip (saturday and sunday nights) were my b-day present to brian. we drove and eventually found the place i booked which is called "shadow mountain ranch b &b". it was so cute!! if you happen to google it check out the "gnome house". that is the one i wanted to book but they didn't have it for both nights so we ended up in the victorian room. this place was so nice and relaxing. we loved it. and the husband and wife who run the place are like grandparents to you when you're there. so sweet! when we got there, they gave us a welcome hug and then showed us around the whole place. we got situated and then headed into town for some dinner. we ate at a steak/chicken/meat house kinda place. i had a buffalo burger and brian had some other type of meat. it was okay. nothing was wrong w/it but it wasn't fabulous enough for me to name it. after that we walked the whole length of the town checking out the shops from the outside b/c they were all closed by that time. we went back to the same restaurant and headed to the back where the bar was. i had some chocoate cake dessert and brian had some irish coffee.

sunday---9 a.m. breakfast was served!! we went down ready to eat. it was so GREAT!! that woman is a great cook. we've never stayed at a bed and breakfast before so this grandiose breakfast was new to us. it was so good....i'm glad we got up for it. after that we headed into town and drove to mine for one of their tours. julian started off as a mining town so they have a tour you can take. a guide takes you down into the mine and walks you through it and tells you all about it as she does it. after that we drove down the hill back to the "main drag" and parked so we could go shopping. we did that and we also stopped at the miner's diner for a snack. i had a mint chocolate chip shake (yum) and brian got a sasparillo. after that we decided to go wine tasting. there are a couple of wineries not too far away. we got to 2 of them. after we went to the second one we went back to the first one to sit in the back (in the shade, of course) and drink some glasses of wine. the winery we really liked was called something close to megnihini. it was good!! after that we headed back to the "main drag" and went to a mexican place called margaritas for dinner. it was good too. really laid back. we were so freakin' full at this time that we had to literaly roll ourselves to our car.....whew. and then i remembered that julian is really known for their apple pie and i hadn't even had any. so brian got in the car and i walked a couple of shops down to the the julian cafe and got a slice '0 pie to go. and she made me spend more $$ to use my debit card so i pointed out a carmel covered apple as well. she told me i had to do it b/c you had to spend $10 to use a debit card but when she rang up those 2 things it cost $7. so, i'm still wondering why i had to buy that carmel apple (not that i'm complaining too much b/c i ate it monday morning at 7 a.m. when i got up). then we drove back to shadow mountain ranch and got into bed. i consumed the pie...yummy w/the crumbs on top. and then we, no joke, fell asleep into food coma at like 6:30 p.m. true story.

monday---woke up like at 7 a.m. yes, 12 and a half hours of delightful sleep later. oh, and if you're wondering why we're not at work......brian took his b-day, monday, and tuesday off from work to hook it to the 4th of july to make a nice long break for him.....and i took the day off b/c i know my kids like to see other people besides me.....it's almost the end of the year anyways. so, back to the story......9 a.m. we were back at our favorite breakfast spot....gram's cooking was just as delightful this morning as well. yum!! and then we headed out on the road home after breakfast. and then we got home.....i went to the gym, then we watched the movie "the fountain" which wasn't what i thought it would be like and didn't really care for it, walked buster and now i need to shower. so, that's it for now.

update---today in the mail our cake topper came! so excited! i love it. oh, and yesterday (sunday) was the 5 month mark til our wedding......so, that would make today one day less than 5 months til our wedding!!! :-) time is flying by like no other! so much to do.....i better get on it!

my countdown

2007-06-27T19:36:00.001-07:00

i've always loved these countdown things.....here's my newest one. i could only get it to show up at the very BOTTOM of the page. boo. i wanted it on the side by my picture but i couldn't get it to work. so, if you want to see how long til i walk down that aisle in a white dress scroll to the bottom of the page....

me w/some of my favorite things

2007-06-25T16:58:00.001-07:00

i had a super fabulous weekend. brian was off to vegas for paul's bachelor party. so, i wasn't invited.....bummer. i stayed here and had fun girl time.

friday---after work and stuff i headed over to mckatie's house. we ate our healthy dinners together and felt good about that. then we started out "sex and the city night". i at one time borrowed all of the dvd's from angela; so, i've seen the whole show from beginning to end. mckatie hasn't seen any of it. we decided it was about time she blessed herself by watching it. so, we watched all of the first season friday night (12 episodes). went to bed like at 1:30 a.m. oh yeah it was wild and crazy. i forgot how much i LOVED that show. so many funny parts and characters.

saturday---since i stayed over at mckatie's, we woke up and headed over to starbuck's to our fix. then we came back and watched the first 3 episodes of season 2. then i had to go home so i could walk buster, clean trixie's cage, etc. after i did all of that and got dressed i headed back to mckatie's place and then we drove to irvine spectrum to meet up w/hanna at the cheesecake factory for dinner. let's skip the dinner chit chat and go straight to the cheesecake. so, there's a new one the girl said that i had to try b/c it sounded SO good....it was white chocolate, caramel, macademia nut cheesecake! WHAT!!! oh yeah, it was as freakin' fabulous as it sounded! i'm still lickin' my lips. after that hanna drove home and mckatie and i went back to her place. we returned season 1 to blockbuster and got the rest of season 2 and then we stopped by the store to buy some spumante......yum! then we went back to her place and watched all the way through episode 12 of season 2. went to bed at 3 a.m. see how addictive this show is??

sunday---we woke up, hit starbuck's again, and then came back to watch the rest of season 2 (there are 18 episodes total). then i went home to walk buster, shower, and relax til brian came home from vegas. when he got back we went out to angelo and vinci's for dinner. they have my favorite pizza there. so, we ate together and i had some margaritas. it was fabulouso!! contrary to the past 2 nights i was asleep at 8:30 that night.

wedding update---i was suppose to have my cake tasting this past sunday. that didn't happen. she flaked on me and tried to postpone it til the end of july. no thanks. that got me thinking that i should look into bakeries and have someone reliable and easy-to-get-ahold-of make our cake. so, i called a bakery right here in fullerton that i've heard a lot of good things about and their pricing seems very reasonable. i made a consultation/tasting appointment for brian and i for saturday, august 18th. so, if everything goes well that day i'm sure we'll be putting down a deposit. too bad some people don't return e-mails or phone calls in a timely manner at all. i don't like excuses.....i never have.

brian's b-day present update---i FINALLY decided where to take brian for his b-day present. i'm taking him this weekend (saturday and sunday nights) to julian, CA. i've never been there but i found it on the internet and it sounds like a ton of fun. it's in san diego county. it started as an old mining town and from the looks of it kept it old-fashioned looking. there's all kinds of apple goodness there (cider, pie, etc.), hiking, gold mining stuff, wine tasting, etc. i think we're going to have a lot of fun!! i'll let you know how it turns out!

i'm baaaaccckkk!

2007-06-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

the weekend was great....i love them so much....and then like that, they're gone. so sad. anyways....here's the scoop:

friday---after work i ran a ton of errands (not erins as brian likes to call them). then i came home and that night people came over to play poker. i didn't win the first game but at the end of the night i learned how to play 7 card stud which was totally new to me. that was cool. i'm broadening my horizons, so to speak.

saturday---woke up early and walked buster. then i got ready and drove out to the long beach museum of art in long beach to meet up w/most of the other 3rd grade teachers at my school and however many of our 3rd graders would show up. basically the museum came to our school and did an art project w/each 3rd grade class and at the end of it gave all of the kids a free 4 person pass to the museum. we thought it'd be a good idea to pick a saturday that we'd be there and then the kids could meet up w/us and hang out at a museum. well, i'd say a total of like 10 kids showed up....only 1 of which being mine. but it was fun and i'd never been to that museum before (well, my parents say they took me as a kid but i don't remember things that far back). after the museum i drove to my parents house in lakewood to give my dad his father's day presents. he liked them. i hung out there for a bit and then hit cold stone on the way to the freeway. mmmmm......such goodness! hung out at home w/brian for a bit and then at 6 i left to drive to sierra madre to pick up my friend elana (who's a bridesmaid) who flew down from up north to visit. we hung out in downtown/old town pasadena. we ate dinner and had drinks at the cheesecake factory and then walked around and did some shopping. i love that girl! she's my most favorite teacher!! oh, and she had gone by the david's bridal in brea earlier and picked up her dress....how exciting!! :-) then i drove home and i was exhausted. people were over playing poker. i chatted for a bit and then hit the sack.

sunday---i was very productive. mark this day on the calendar b/c it won't be happening like this for awhile. i did 4 (yes 4) loads of laundry. and that takes FOREVER here b/c there's only 1 washer and 1 dryer so you have to wait for stuff to finish. in the midst of all of that i also cleaned the bathroom.....FULLY! that took awhile but it looks good. note to everyone....let's keep it that way. then brian went through his whole wardrobe (drawers and all) and pulled out stuff he didn't want anymore and gave it to me for the yard/garage sale i'm going to do in july. that came out to 3 1/2 bags full of stuff. i also walked buster. then we got ready and went out to dinner together to salsitas....and had some yummy margaritas! :-) then we just relaxed at home after that.

other stuff---a thanks to mckatie for donating over $100 to my breast cancer walk. she worked a garage sale w/her grandma this past weekend and donated the earnings to my walk! a big thanks! what else? oh, i'm doing the cake tasting for our wedding cake this coming sunday. i can't wait!! so many flavors....so little time! and brian and i bid on a cake topper on ebay last night so we gotta wait to see if we won it. yes, it's new and in the box. i wouldn't be using some old, worn out cake topper at my wedding. seriously. and less than 2 weeks til brian's 29th b-day! woot-woot! well, that's all i can think of for now....have a great week everyone!

just realized......

2007-06-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

i just looked at my post and realized that it came out kinda spread out and the photos aren't big enough.....next time it'll be better.....promise!

bringing the 60's back!

2007-06-13T16:22:00.000-07:00

well, it's already wednesday and i'm just now going to cover my weekend...i know, i know....i should've been here sooner....oh well. oh, and i think i know how to add photos into my blog, so if you see any here today then i succeeded. ok, here goes nothing.

friday---i met up w/mckatie at the brea mall to do some shopping after work. we needed to get some stuff for the 60's party that we planning on attending the next day. i got some stuff at charlotte russe and then some plastic jewelry at forever 21. that night people came over to my house and we all played poker. i lost. sad, but true.

saturday---saturday i got picked up at 3 by mckatie and her sister kacie. we drove out to santa monica to get lexy. then the 4 of us went to el torito for dinner. after that we hit up the 60's party. the party was hosted by a co-worker of lexy's. it turned out not to be too happenin' so we only stayed for a bit.

YES!! i posted a pic! i rock....so, from L to R it is lexy, kacie, me, and mckatie. those were our rockin' outfits. anyways, on w/the story. we left the 60's party and went back to place in santa monica that we'd been before called busby's. it was fun. we got there like at 8 and hung out at the bar area until the dance floor opened around 10.

above is us at busby's before we started dancing. anyways, we stayed there for a long time and then went back to lexy's place and crashed for the night.

sunday---got home. relaxed. brian and i went over to aaron brother's to get one of those frames that has the area around it you can sign.....it's for the wedding, it's like our guest book. then we drove out to huntington beach for dinner at FRED'S! ohhhh....my favorite nachos! yum!! after that we walked on the pier together and then drove home. and.....since it was sunday we watched our "charm school" together.

that's what has been happening....now it's wednesday after work and it's almost time for the weekend! yeah! i'll be back soon.

i've been tagged!

2007-06-08T18:56:00.000-07:00

Here's how this game works....Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write their own blog with their 7 things as well as these rules. You need to tag 7 others and list their names on your blog. Remember to leave a comment for them letting them know they have been tagged and to read your blog.

as a quick warning.....i only know like 2 other people right now that do this....so i can really only tag julie....alyssa already got me! i know i'm not popular yet....give me some time....i'll get my reputation going.

1. i have a certain way that i MUST drink my frappichino's and eat my crumble coffee cakes. frappichino's: take off the lid, lick the yummyness off of the lid cap, then use the straw to eat the whipped cream, then put the lid back on and drink it.....if there's goodness left on the sides that take lid off and scrape w/the straw. yum. crumble coffee cakes: take home, flip over and heat in the microwave for 22 seconds, then pull out and eat the bottom (which is now on top), then eat the yummy top last. it's the way things are done here.

2. i love patrick swayze. i have since i was 8......he got me w/dirty dancing!

3. i have what most have coined "double ankles". i, for some odd reason, have like 2 bones on each foot that both look like ankles. it's hard to describe....you'd have to see it.

4. i have food aggression. i don't like people to randomly touch, take, or reach for my food.

5. i CANNOT stand to have my eyelashes touched when i have mascara on them. w/o mascara is ok but w/it.....oh, that's a no-no in my book.

6. i allow myself 1 sweet dessert a week. i try to make it worth my while every weekend...it's usually cold stone, 31 flavors, or cheesecake (only from the cheesecake factory).......

7. i play poker almost every weekend and love to play!

oh, and i just realized today that people have left me some comments on some of my blogs.....i didn't realize that til right now. nothing popped up to tell me so i just randomly saw them. sorry to those fans of mine that i haven't responded to.

ducks won!!

2007-06-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

that's right folks.....the ducks won the stanley cup. brian and i went over to paul's house to watch the game b/c he had it in HD. it was fun to watch them win.....i admit that i don't really know the sport of hockey that well, but still it was fun to watch the ducks win! yippee! :-)

and then he was going to have a poker game after but i was too tired to stay....brian stayed and i drove home. i still am tired but here i am. i still gotta make my lunch for tomorrow and pick out my outfit i'm going to wear....yes folks, i always do that the night before my next work day. why? so i don't have to wake up so freakin' early!

oh, and i finally figured out what to do for brian's b-day (i haven't bought his gift yet but i've figured out the day of activities). first he's taking the day off (friday, june 29th) and i talked him into coming to my school for career day...i thought that would be cute! and he's not coming til the afternoon so he gets to sleep in. then that night i'm going to make him dinner (meal not yet determined) and then we're going to meet up w/everyone that wants to go out at stubrick's in downtown fullerton. we're also celebrating potvin's b-day....his actual b-day is tuesday, july 3rd but we figured that we'd combine them so everyone can celebrate w/both of them at one time. it'll be good times! :-)

look at me...i'm so interesting

2007-06-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

here i am....the weeknd is over and my monday work day is complete....ahhh. so, here's the recap.

friday: we played poker here......drank some champagne (some=a bottle and then a glass from a bottle that mckatie brought over). i wasn't sure if i'd already covered friday in my other blog. if i did, pretend like i didn't.

saturday: i went out to riverside to be in my high school katie's wedding. now she's married. riverside is way the hell out there. it took me an hour to get there from fullerton....there was some traffic...blah. but other than that it was how i pictured it. i was really interested in her florist b/c i'm using the same one....and the flowers were pretty. i even took my bouquet home, put some water in a vase, and put those suckers in there. and the food was mexican....always a plus since that's my favorite food! :-) i left at like 9:45 and drove home to drop off my stuff and change out of my outfit. then i drove over to danny k's to meet up w/brian, mckatie, potvin, smith, and doug. we closed that place down. i was so drained after katie's wedding that i just sat down in a chair and relaxed....while talking to mckatie. then brian and i drove home, showered, and looked at the pictures that we had taken at the wedding. sleep didn't happen until 3 a.m. whew.

sunday: i had a 60 problem math test that i HAD to grade and do data analysis on and turn into my principal on monday. it took FOREVER. after that brian and i went and saw the movie "knocked up". it was funny....i liked it. i didn't like a certain birthing angle that i saw but that's okay. i had my buttery popcorn and some laughs and i was good to go. after that we met up paul and angela (a couple who's engaged and getting married on july 6th) for dinner on birch st. called gaucho grill. it was the first time i'd ever eaten there. it's an "argentenian steakhouse" but i had a chicken provolone sandwich. i'm not a fan of steak. after that we went home. that night we watched "our" show that we watch together which is charm school! how funny is that...it's our sunday night show.

monday: today! not a weekend day but hey i'm here. went to work, the gym, the store and now home. i need to walk buster now so i can eat dinner. and the ducks game is going on and i should watch some of that. and i'm currently trying to plan brian's b-day b/c it's the 29th of this month. i have an idea....i'm waiting for a call back from a guy that owns a place i'm thinking about using. we'll see what price he quotes me....that'll determine A LOT! that's it for now....no tears...i'll be back.

bridesmaid time

2007-06-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

so, today katie (i have 2 katies in my life....one is mckatie and the other is high school katie) the high school one (she got that title since i met her in 9th grade) is getting married today! her day has come. and i am one of her bridesmaids. this is my first time w/that title. she's the first person that i've been really good friends w/that has taken the plunge, so to speak. and then next in line is me. so, i'm happy for her and i hope that everything runs smoothly today. it's at 4:30 in riverside.....crossing fingers it's not too hot....no one likes sweaty pits.

other than that not too much is going on. brian and i have one day less than 6 months left til our big day. i need to find a way to put the countdown timers on my page....i love those things. i'll work on that later.

last night we played poker at our house on the new poker table that brian bought last weekend. it was fun....i had a bottle of spumante to myself and then mckatie came over w/a bottle of almond champagne for me to try so i had to have a glass to be polite ;-) it wasn't as good as the spumante in my opinion. i didn't hit the sack til 1 a.m. and it ("it" being my world) was spinning. it was good times. and then today is the wedding.....oh, and the ducks play at 5 p.m. GO DUCKS!! and hopefully tomorrow i see the movie "knocked up" or "mr. brooks"....i think that they both look good. we'll see. that's it for now. i'm sure i'll post later about how the rest of the weekend turned out. peace out!

the week

2007-05-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

this week has been so busy...and i've realized that time is passing so quickly. tomorrow when i wake up it'll be june 1st which is exactly 6 months until brian and i get married! can you believe that?? so, tomorrow we'll be 1/2 way through our engagement. at first it seemed so far away and now it's like dang where did the time go? i'm really excited for the wedding though so i'm glad it's going so quickly....and i'm doubly glad that we didn't have a longer engagement. i'm ready to marry brian; i'm ready to party; and i'm ready for the honeymoon!! since i've never posted anything about the wedding on here i'll update as i accomplish things.....so far we've got the date, the church, the reception, the food, the cake, the dj, the photographer, the florist, the vases, my dress, my veil, my shoes, 1 of my garters, the honeymoon booked, brian's bought his groomsmens gifts, preacher/pastor to marry us, organist for the ceremony, bridesmaids dresses are done, save the dates went out, votives have been ordered and were mailed to us today (should get them next week sometime), registering is done (just have to finalize the lists online).....what else?? hmmm.....that's all i can remember right now. there are other things that i know we want but just haven't bought them yet.....for example, our favors, our table numbers/place cards, rehearsal dinner location, candles for votives, etc. i feel like i've done so much yet i know that there's so much more to plan! i've enjoyed it so far so i hope it keeps being this enjoyable....i still have to figure out bridesmaids gifts.....hmmmmm......anyways, that's it for now. i'm sure i'll be back soon! :-)

100 things i love.....

2007-05-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

got this idea from alyssa's blog......they aren't in any particular order.....

1. being w/my brian
2. my dog, buster
3. playing poker
4. frappichino's from starbuck's that are made to my standard
5. cheesecake...from the cheesecake factory
6. whip cream (the thick, yummy kind)
7. chicken nachos w/all the fixin's
8. carnations
9. the feeling i have when i'm done working out
10. traveling all over the world w/my brian
11. getting my hair done
12. going to vegas
13. hanging out w/my friends
14. visiting my parents and telling them the latest gossip stories
15. patrick swayze
16. my engagement ring
17. my kids this year who make all of my days go by so quickly
18. being off-track
19. receiving flowers from brian as a surprise
20. hugging brian's nephews
21. going to clubs
22. coldstone....or sometimes 31 flavors.......depends
23. going to the movies
24. asti spumante.....mmmmm.....
25. putting pictures in frames
26. wearing my american eagle jeans that i think make my ass look great
27. gossiping
28. spicy food
29. the improv
30. old navy
31. charlotte russe
32. snoop dogg......you know this!
33. the color violet
34. planning our wedding
35. chone figgins....#9 bitches
36. gus hansen.....nice play in the aussie tournament
37. angels games
38. wearing flip flops to work
39. receiving mail.....not bills
40. massages
41. south park....i love cartman
42. knott's berry farm
43. jokes that brian and i have together that make me laugh
44. looking at wedding web pages
45. blogging
46. new york.....been 4 times....want to go back
47. sex on the beach......ahem....the drink
48. reading fun, random facts in magazines
49. US magazine
50. bowling
51. driving a stick shift
52. receiving a tax return
53. talking on the phone
54. batting cages
55. frosting
56. watkins clan
57. getting perfume from anne
58. martinis
59. margaritas
60. hawaii.....i've been to kauai and o'ahu
61. reno 911
62. jewelry
63. thongs
64. dressing up for halloween
65. wrapping presents
66. collecting shot glasses
67. bon fires
68. seeing cute pregnant ladies.....the ones who don't look pregnant from the back
69. kids who are polite
70. putting my cold feet/hands on brian "accidently"
71. reading fiction books
72. laying in bed and watching "whose wedding is it anyways?"
73. jamba juice
74. popcorn at the theater w/way too much butter on it
75. wearing a new outfit
76. chocolate
77. suduko
78. taking off in a plane
79. holding brian's hand
80. standing in the ocean water where you can look down and ACTUALLY see your feet
81. hearing a funny joke
82. bbq'ing
83. chorizo
84. watching the sunset
85. candles that smell good
86. yogurt
87. how the grinch stole christmas
88. getting pj's from brian's mom to wear on x-mas eve
89. thinking about my honeymoon
90. majong
91. my wedding dress
92. putting together photo albums
93. propel water
94. wink-wink
95. mixed cd's that have only the songs i like on them
96. deviled eggs
97. candy corn
98. cadburry eggs
99. kissing brian at new year's
100. celebrating valentine's day w/brian.....

I'm back!!!

2007-05-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

Back to blogging that is!! Everyone knows that I quit myspace after being on it for like 3 1/2 years....and what I loved about it was posting pics, having my countdowns and posting blogs! And I was sent this link from a friend (and teacher) that I know......named Alyssa. She started blogging and I was checking out her page and was like this is a fabulous way to get back into what I liked about myspace BEFORE it became the web of ridiculousness that it is now. So, here I am. I am really excited about this. I'm going to send the link out to all of the cool cats that I know and if you want to know about my wonderful life....here's where it'll be! Thanks Alyssa! :-) Time to let the people I like in....and keep the losers out! Movie time....gotta go!