Suzanne + Lance = Suzance

Happy Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T20:57:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s so crazy to think that next Valentine’s day we’ll be celebrating with our little Popper! Lance and I have a funny relationship with Valentine’s day. We don’t hate the day, we just don’t do anything special. I guess it’s because since we starting dating in 2004, we’ve been able to go to nice dinners or travel whenever we felt like it and whenever we had the money. We didn’t need one day to do something special. Maybe after we have kids we’ll start celebrating with each other just because we won’t be able to do what we want when we want. Hahahaha We have definitely decided that when Popper is two or so, we’ll start some new family traditions. Ones that will probably involve baking heart shaped goodies,cards, candy etc. Celebrating Valentine’s Day with kids sounds like so much fun!

Our latest appointment was last week and thankfully, the baby and I are doing just fine. Last week when I was at the doctors I was 16 weeks, thus making me 17 weeks this week. 17 weeks. WOW! I can’t believe we got to 17 so quickly. I’m sure I’ll be thinking the same thing at week 40. Popper measured at about 4.5 inches last week and my handy dandy Mayo Clinic book tells me that at 16 weeks most babies are between 4 and 5 inches long. Perfect, right on schedule.

I lost another 3 lbs at my last check up, for a total of 15 lbs lost since November 21st! My doctor said that if I continue with my eating habits and exercise I could end up not gaining any weight this whole pregnancy. Well how sweet would that be? Sounds pretty fan-freaking-tastic to me. All this hard work is paying off, and will pay off the most when I deliver a healthy baby boy or girl.

Speaking of boy or girl……we weren’t able to find out last week if we were having a boy or girl. It was still too early to tell. I will say, we do have the best doctor ever, and he sure did give it the old college try. He tried from every angle possible, but it was just too early. We have a big ultrasound scheduled for February 29^th, which is when I will be 19 weeks. The big ultrasound is with their fancy machines that will give us a great picture like the one I posted on January 20^th. I am very much looking forward to February 29^th, however, they require that I drink 24oz of water before the ultrasound. Drinking 24oz of water sounds doable until I realized that I have to be finished with my 24oz of water an hour and a half before my scheduled appointment. Then I have to wait for my appointment, have some technician push down on my bladder while trying to see Popper, all without peeing myself. Yep, should be a fun day indeed. They better have a bathroom very close to the ultrasound room! Thankfully there is a good payoff for holding all that water in my bladder for 2+ hours!

So, we’ll be leaping on leap day. Either for a boy or a girl we’ll soon find out. Everyone is pretty neutral so far on whether they want us to have a boy or a girl except for Auntie Cat. She wants Popper to be a boy; and she’s 100% sure it is. Popper, if you’re reading this one day and you turned out to be a girl, Auntie Cat will still love you, she’s just going to make sure you are a tomboy!

Love,

Suzanne

P.S. here is one of the best pictures of our latest ultrasound. Maybe you can tell if we are going to have a boy or a girl! :)

Appointment Update

2012-01-25T18:03:00.000-08:00

We had another appointment this afternoon, and it was a really good one! We had another ultrasound which looks like that is going to be the norm, and I'm totally ok with that because I really enjoy seeing our little Popper every two weeks!! Our doctor was very pleased with how the baby was progressing. Unfortunately none of the ultrasound pictures he took produced a good picture but on the screen we could see him moving around and he even waved again. He moves his arms so much I think he's going to be a baseball pitcher! This time when he moved his arm we could clearly see him move his fingers. They showed up on the screen so well even our doctor seemed surprised saying, "there are his digits!" hahahaha

I'm going to laugh if we end up having a girl. Poor thing is going to read this blog one day and ask why we keep referring to her as him! We might actually be able to find out the sex of the baby at the next appointment in two weeks. But, that's a big maybe. So I'm trying not to get my hopes up just in case we aren't able to find out. Hopefully Popper will be cooperating and give us a good show!

So the baby is doing well and my doctor is very pleased with how I'm doing as well. I think I've mentioned on the blog before that my glucose numbers in my second month of pregnancy were all out of whack. I've been on a strict diet with lots of exercise. Thanks to the diet and exercise I've lost 12 lbs so far! My doctor said he knows I'm not lying to him about my diet and exercise because the scale doesn't lie. He said women come in and tell him they are following the diet and exercising but then gain 6 lbs in two weeks. I see no point in lying to him. It doesn't help me or the baby, so I might as well do what I'm supposed to do. Plus, I'm an overachiever so if I'm instructed to do something you best believe I'm going to do it right, and well. I would blame my mom for the overachiever trait, but my dad's guilty of it too. He just pretends to be a rebel. :)

Well, sorry I don't have a picture for you. Hopefully in two weeks we'll have a good picture and know if we are having a boy or a girl!! How exciting!!!

Love,

Suzanne

First good picture of Popper

2012-01-20T10:44:00.000-08:00

I had another appointment last Monday as part of the California disabilities screening. The ultrasound I had at that appointment was my best one yet. It was very clear and we had one of the best pictures of our little popper. Popper is our nickname for our cute little baby. I tried to take a picture of the ultrasound printout and this is what it looks like. I hope you can see him.

In this picture he is only 3 inches long. It's crazy to see how big his head is at only 3 inches long! My test results came back with low chances of having a child with a disability like Down's Syndrome and some other disabilities that the doctor told me about but I just can't remember.

I start my 14th week of pregnancy on Sunday and I feel really lucky and grateful with how things have been going. I've been tired, I've had spotting, I've had to change my diet (for the better so no complaining there!), but I haven't been sick! I am so so so grateful for that. I can't even imagine being sick everyday for a few months, ugh, miserable. I am lucky and I know it!

I'm reading a great pregnancy book by the Mayo clinic and it has been so helpful. It explains everything week by week and it has been pretty spot on with the different things that are happening to my body. It's nice to have that to reference since I can't reach my doctor 24/7. Though that would be nice if I could. He'd probably block my number though! :) All funniness aside, I am much less stressed as I start my second trimester. The first trimester brought stresses that I didn't even know were possible. I think Lance and I both are starting to finally enjoy this process and are really excited for July to arrive. Though we do have a TON of stuff to do before July does arrive so we better get to it!

I start school on Monday which I'm excited about but it's definitely going to be a juggling act. A full time job, Dr's appointments every two weeks, class twice a week, homework, a planned trip to Las Vegas, Arizona for Spring Training, and Colorado to visit the grandparents is going to make for a crazy couple of months. But really, if my life wasn't super crazy, I'd be bored, so bring it on!

Have a great weekend!

Love,

Suzanne

Finally!

2012-01-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

We are so happy to finally announce we are pregnant! I found out November 18th thanks to a pregnancy test yes, indeed it was true, we were going to have a baby. Lance and I had been trying for a year to get pregnant and it is so funny how quickly the shock and excitement turned into sheer panic! hahahaha The panic has slightly worn off for now and we are just enjoying telling everyone. We truly feel blessed at how supportive everyone has been.

We really enjoyed telling both sets of families at Christmas time. We have some wonderful memories of Papa and Nana and Grandpa and Grandma realizing what their picture frames were telling them. The excitement they showed when realizing a grand baby was coming their way was so awesome.

At this point in my pregnancy I am about 12 1/2 weeks. I am very excited to be starting my second trimester. I am starting to see my stomach change and a baby bump is starting to form. I really am looking forward to being able to feel the baby moving. That is going to be awesome when that happens! I have been so lucky that I did not have one day of morning sickness. Lucky party of 1 indeed! This pregnancy hasn't been all full of rainbows and cupcakes. I have had some issues during my second month of pregnancy with elevated glucose levels. Which has been an added stress I really didn't need, but I will handle it. So far thanks to careful meal planning and lots and lots of walking, my glucose levels have remained exactly where we need them to be which is making this future mama very happy!

Lance has really stepped up and has made the first few months of pregnancy as easy on me as he can make it. The elevated glucose level issue has really changed our day to day lives and how we prepare for our day and I really could not have done it without him. The planning and exercising 3 times a day has just become a part of our daily routine and is not so overwhelming as it was when the madness first started.

Lance is over the moon at the thought of becoming a daddy. People have asked if we want a boy or a girl and we really have no preference. Just a healthy baby is all we really care about. We are going to find out though, I'm not a big fan of surprises. I'm a planner; and I have no desire to start planning the nursery, clothes etc. after the baby arrives! During these blog posts I'm going to refer to the baby as him just because I don't want to type them or he/she every time.

We did get to see the baby last week when I had one of my appointments. The baby was actually starting to look like a baby and not an alien which was so cool. Lance and I were both speechless. As soon as the baby came on the screen he waved at us. He may have just been moving his arm, but I'm counting it as a wave. And I'm sure he was saying "hi mom and dad!!" but we just couldn't hear him.

I'll keep everyone updated on how my appointments are going and how we are holding up. We probably won't stop worrying and stressing until the baby arrives in mid July. Then after that we will have 18+ years of worrying ahead of us. hahahaha What have we signed up for?!?!?!!? :) I always knew I was a worrier, but I didn't realize until just recently I may have married someone who worries more than me. This poor kid. His parents are crazy and he doesn't even know it yet. Poor thing will realize it when we wrap him in bubble wrap before we let him outside to play!

Love,

Suzanne

Memorial Day 2010

2011-02-20T21:54:00.000-08:00

As promised in my previous Valentine's post, here are some more blog posts! I pretty much did not do any blog posts on this site last summer because I was moonlighting as Rachel's "head of communications" concerning her cyst. It was a good gig while it lasted, but I am certainly glad it was a short term gig.

This blog post will be about our road trip to Colorado. This trip was an interesting one because it was dad and his three girls and the open highway. Can you say T.R.O.U.B.L.E?!?! Since it was a long weekend due to the Memorial Day holiday, my dad, Cat, Rachel and I decided to take a few extra days off work and drive out to Colorado to visit family. It's about 10-12 hour drive (depending on who is driving!) and I don't think I've been on a road trip with my dad and both my sisters since I was a kid. Well, I wasn't disappointed! The laughs started before the car was even warm. Cat made personalized CD's for each driver and we were dying laughing when she put the CD she had made for dad in. It was supposed to be a CD full of dad's favorite songs and there were plenty of songs that made you scratch your head and say, "dad likes this song?" And more likely than not, dad would pipe up with the emphatic NO! hahahaha It was so funny!

Well, I was going to upload a bunch of pictures of the BBQ we had and pictures of my dad and my uncles. But apparently, I have none. I guess those were all on Cat's camera and I don't have them on my computer. It seems as though the only pictures I took on this road trip were of.......Oliver. I love this kid. Oliver is the son of my cousin Doug and I just can't get enough of those chubby cheeks and big blue eyes. Oliver was only about 6 months old when we were there in May, so now he's a walking fool. A fearless walking fool at that. Clearly you can tell what my picture taking priorities were and that was Oliver, since I do have about 20 pictures of this super cutie!

This trip will always stick with me because one, I love road tripping with my dad and sisters. And two, because this trip was the first time Rachel was starting to realize something was wrong. She didn't know she had a 25 lb cyst, but she knew something wasn't right. Did she mention anything to any of us? Nope, she sure didn't. I won't stay mad at her for too long because of that. Maybe just for the next 50 years! :-P

Love,
Suzanne

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T21:24:00.000-08:00

I know it's been awhile, and I hope to get more blogs done this weekend. We were without a computer for the last 3 1/2 months, but we have a new one now!! yay!! Now if I can just find the time to blog......I have to get all of last summers updates done before this summer rolls around!

So today is Valentine's day and I thought what better way to make sure my husband knows how much I love him than to blog about it!

I love this man. He never fails to remind me who is in charge! hahaha I can't wait to see what our next chapter in life will be. Whatever that next chapter is, I know all will be well. My husbands constant support is more than I could ever ask for. We have built a life that I truly love. We are blessed with awesome family, wonderful friends and are lucky enough to travel and pretty much do whatever the heck we want! :)

Lance, you are my rock. Today at the gym when I was listening to my iPod, James Taylor's, How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You, came on. What a perfect song. I can't think of a better song to be our anthem for 2011. I appreciate your patience, your humor (Bov) your love and your knowledge of Star Wars. One day your knowledge of Star Wars is going to make us rich, I just know it!

Good night, I'll be blogging at you soon!

Love,

Suzanne

Baby Shower

2011-01-02T14:55:00.000-08:00

This summer I was lucky enough to attend a baby shower for my dear friend Marlana. Marlana is the first one in our circle of friends to have a baby. It's fun to have a new member in our group. Hopefully in 2011 we can all manage to see each other more!

Marlana and Adrian had decided they wanted to be surprised at the sex of the their baby who was due in mid July. So, for 9 months we all had to shop for neutral colors when deciding on what to buy for them. Adrian made the cutest diaper cake ever for Marlana's baby shower. He did a really great job!

Since they didn't know if they were having a boy or a girl, Adrian put both of the names they picked out on the diaper cake. They had a girl, so Makayla it was.

Marlana and Adrian had decided on a jungle theme for their nursery and they registered for some pretty adorable stuff. Lance and I got them some green and yellow outfits and a really cute monkey rug for their little monkey.

The nice thing about getting together for weddings, baby showers etc. is that it's normally a mini Disney reunion! I don't get to see theses girls nearly enough!

Well, Marlana was the first of our group to get married, now, she's the first to have a baby. I guess that means the rest of us better catch up! :)

Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Love,

Suzanne

San Diego

2010-11-17T06:37:00.000-08:00

After our trip to Arizona for Spring Training back in March, we had another trip planned to San Diego to attend the wedding of my previous boss. Since it fell on one of our 3 day weekends we decided to spend the whole weekend down there. We drove down there on Friday and decided to hit up the zoo after checking into our hotel. Lance and I both hadn't been to the zoo in at least 10+ years so we were both excited to check it out. We were a little bummed that the polar bear exhibit didn't open for another week, but we still had a great time checking out all the other animals. Here are some of the pictures from our day at the zoo.

Rally monkeys!!

Don't wake a sleeping tiger!The San Diego Zoo has a ride that is just like the old Disneyland ride the sky buckets! My sisters and I went to Disneyland and rode the buckets on the last day before they closed the ride forever. We loved the buckets! Needless to say, when I got to the zoo and discovered they had a ride that was just like Disney's buckets I was super excited! The only thing it was missing was traveling through the Matterhorn!

We both had such a great time at the zoo. We can't wait to go back. We had absolutely perfect weather and since it was a Friday there weren't a bazillion kiddos. We both worked at Disneyland for years and years so we have no desire to go to places that are hot with a bazillion kids!

Love,
Suzanne

Kayaking Trip

2010-11-14T19:11:00.000-08:00

6 months between blog updates huh. Yikes! Well at least I wasn't completely MIA since I was doing a little blogging here and there on Rachel's site. I have a whole bunch of posts to get caught up on, so let's get started.

When I finished my last blog update back in May, we were leaving the Grand Canyon heading to Vegas to go kayaking. We had a GREAT time kayaking. It was so much fun and I highly recommend the tour group we used to go on the tour with. I have never been to the Hoover Dam either so seeing that was amazing as well. Keep in mind as you read this post, it may be November now, but we actually took this trip over Memorial Day back in May.

The picture above is the new bridge they are building to take you over the Hoover Dam instead of through it. It's supposed to cut down on the time it takes to get from the Arizona side to the Nevada side. I'm glad I was able to drive through the old way before they opened this bridge. Since these pictures were taken 6 months ago, I think this bridge is now open!

This is a cave we got to go hike in. It was extremely hot in there. We all had to carry flashlights because it was very dark as we continued back. The pictures we took in the back of the cave didn't come out since the camera kept fogging up.
We saw some amazingly beautiful sites on this tour. The rocks, the water, it was all totally awesome!
The day we picked to go kayaking was the most perfect day ever. The weather was perfect and we didn't have any wind.

The water was like glass! Thank goodness because we had to kayak 16 miles from start to finish, so if we would have had a lot of wind, it would have made the trip a little tougher than we wanted it to be!
This is the emerald cave. It's in commercials, and print ads and was one of the coolest parts of the tour. There is something about where the cave is positioned, and the position of the sun, it makes the water green!So so so beautiful!

This is definitely a bridge I wouldn't want to walk on! Our guide said this bridge was built back when the Hoover Dam was being built and this is how the workers got from one point to the other......no thank you!
Lance had the camera almost the whole 16 miles so when I finally was able to steal it from him I took a picture of him! There he goes leaving me in the dust. I think it was pay back for paddling ahead of him the whole time. You sure do paddle a lot faster when you don't have a camera in your hands! :)

We had a great experience kayaking on the Colorado. This sure was an awesome first anniversary. Between the Grand Canyon and kayaking the Colorado, I couldn't have asked for a better vacation!

Love,

Suzanne

Grand Canyon Part II

2010-05-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

On the last post I recapped our day one visit to the Grand Canyon. Today we are going to see pictures of our hike. We knew since we had decided we were going to the GC we were going to hike down into it, we just didn't know how far down. We knew we weren't going all the way down to the bottom because Lord knows I would have had to spend much more time (MUCH MORE) at the gym to get ready for a hike all the way down to the bottom. We read some info about the trails and all the experts said if this was your first time hiking the GC (me-check), or you were leaving late (check), or you didn't have the proper equipment to spend the night (check) you should do the 3 mile round trip down Bright Angel trail. So that's the trail we did. I think I might have mentioned yesterday a time or two that it was FREEZING and Saturday morning for our hike was no different. We were totally dressed in layers. Which is new for me! I've hiked numerous times growing up and even as an adult. I've never hiked in pants, jackets and scarfs before! The canyon requires layers however because it's much warmer as you hike down.

Here are some pictures as we started our hike. The weather was chilly, but less windy than the day before. It was also very clear which made for some nice shots!

LOL These look like the same picture! Oh well, they are pretty!

As we started our descent down we saw......SNOW!

I know, I know, it's not a lot! But, I can safely say this is the most snow I've seen all winter long! So, it's a lot to me! :)

Lance kept taking pictures on the way down and I don't know how he was doing it. I would have totally tripped over something and fallen flat on my face.

He even took pictures of himself! hahahaha silly guy!Here are some sights as we head down the mountain.

On our way down we had to keep stepping over donkey poop and yet I still had not seen any donkeys! Then we had to move out of the way for these guys.

At the rear was this guy. It was so funny to see him on his cell phone. He must not have AT&T because Lord knows AT&T would not have worked down there! :)Well, there aren't many pictures of the trip back up the canyon. For a few reasons. One, we took a lot on the way down, and the way back up is all the same scenery. Two, it's stinking hard to climb back out of the canyon. You're at 7ooo feet and the air is THIN up there! It's very steep and every time we stopped we were pretty much just trying not to die.

On the last post, I mentioned I would show a picture of the photographer house that was sitting on the side of the hill so here it is.

You are able to see this house on the last switch back on the way back up and out of the canyon. I've never been so happy to see a house on the side of a cliff before! That meant we were done with the uphill climb. LOL It actually wasn't that bad. It was the thin air that was the hardest to deal with. I did enjoy my rest against the rock though!When we got back up to the top we celebrated! :)We had a great time on our hike. And now that I've done the 3 mile loop I can't wait to go further down next time. I was so nervous when we first started out not knowing what to expect. But with the 3 mile loop under my belt, and knowing I can get back up the canyon, we need to start planning for our next trip down! I would love to hike down, spend the night and then hike back up! That sounds like a lot of fun!

Next post.......kayaking! And Vegas too!
Love,
Suzanne

Anniversary Trip-Grand Canyon

2010-05-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

I love vacations. We tried to win that $229 million Mega Millions jackpot before we left for our vacation so we could vacation all the time. But alas, we returned back to work Wednesday. Only to find out the single winning ticket was sold about 20 miles away from us. Oh, so very close to us! :)

When we went on our honeymoon a year ago we had the most relaxing vacation ever! We never set an alarm and spent a majority of our days at the pool or the beach. It was awesome! We wanted our 1st year anniversary vacation to be a little bit different. And different it was! This vacation was full of a lot of firsts for me. I have never been to the Grand Canyon and that was our first stop. I hadn't ever been to the Hoover Dam, which was our second stop. I had never taken a kayaking trip on the Colorado River which was our third stop. I have been to Vegas though which was our fourth stop! All of this in just 4 days! We were busy busy people! :)

I will start off with the Grand Canyon since that was stop number 1. It only took us about 7 hours to get there from our house, and that's including an hour to stop and gas up and eat in Kingman. Kingman is where Lance's grandma used to live. Kingman is also great because it has a Chuy's!!! I only get my Chuy's fix when I go to Arizona and even then, not always. I think the last time I had Chuy's was for my Bachelorette party when I went to Spring Training! Alright, enough about Chuy's......I just really wish they had one in the OC! :)

After checking into our hotel in Tusayan we headed into the National Forest to check out the Grand Canyon. We had to put on warmer clothes since we were both in t-shirts and flip flops and it was freezing when we got to the GC!

I'm really glad we went Friday evening to check out the GC because we had some awesome clouds out there. I know the clouds in the above picture don't look so great, but they moved through (without raining on us thankfully!) and left us with some absolutely breath taking views.

Here I am reading a sign about 2 brother photographers who built their house/photography studio right on the side of the cliff. And there weren't kidding. On the other side of that railing is certain death. I'm pretty sure that's not a house I would want to live in. Gusty winds would make me think we were heading over! I'll post a picture of the house/studio tomorrow.I would however like to live at the El Tovar! It's set a little further back but still has amazing views. We really wanted to stay at the El Tovar while we were in the GC, but they were all booked. I'm guessing you probably have to make your reservations there many many months if not years in advance!When we walked out of the El Tovar we saw some deer come straight up the side of the mountain to start eating some of the grass. It was the craziest thing ever! I've never been so close to deer!And finally, some pictures of us!

I can see why so many people travel to the GC. It's so beautiful. We could have spent hours there just taking it all in.......but we were freezing, so as the sun got closer to setting, it was time for us to head indoors!

Next entry will be our hike down into the canyon!

Love,
Suzanne

1st Year Anniversary

2010-04-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today is our 1 year anniversary! WOW! I can't believe it was 365 days ago I said "I do" to the love of my life! This year has flown by and we really have had great time. 365 days ago we were doing this......

I loved April 25, 2009. I had one of the greatest days ever! That day was so full of love and fun I wish I could have bottled all that love up and keep it forever and ever!

Today was pretty low key since we are going to be heading to the Grand Canyon and Vegas soon to celebrate our 1 year anniversary! For my anniversary present Lance got me hiking boots!

Since we will be hiking in the Grand Canyon, I needed some new footwear and Lance bought me these lovely things. There really is nothing more unattractive then hiking boots, but they are a necessary evil and I do actually love them!

I decided to do something unique for Lance's gift and have some figurines of our family made.

I found this artist on Etsy who makes these awesome wood/clay figurines and I knew I had to have one made for our family. When we have kids we will be able to have her make them on the remaining N, O or L so that we can just keep adding until our family is complete! Of course our kids will have to be decked out in Angel gear too! I just love the little figurine of Murphy. The artist did such a great job of capturing Murphy's look. I just love our little NOWELL people!

We didn't have to worry about freezing the top of our cake last year because our bakery gave us a free cake for our 1st anniversary!

We had a little bit tonight and it was super yummy! I ordered the one with the raspberry filling since neither Lance or myself got to eat any of the cake on our wedding day except for the little piece we cut together.

I was out training this morning (I will explain at a later date what I'm training for) and I got a text from Lance that said 'Go babe Go'! Just what I needed to keep me going. Then I got home and found these waiting for me.

Yellow flowers! Does it get any better than that?!?!!?! My husband is awesome! And I love him so much!

Happy Anniversary Lance! I hope we have at least 60 more! :)

Love,
Suzanne

Spring Training

2010-04-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

After we returned home from Morro Bay, we thought we didn't have anything planned until our San Diego trip in March. Well, that changed quickly when we realized every weekend of Spring Training except for one was booked for us. Luckily that one weekend we had free was our approaching 3 day weekend and we decided we would travel to Arizona to see our boys in red play some Spring Training baseball! We were watching the weather and one day it would say it was going to rain in Phoenix that weekend we wanted to go then the next day it would say sunny. We finally decided 2 days before we left for that trip that we were going to go. I'm not normally so spur of the moment. Spontaneous is not my middle name so it was driving me crazy with yes were going....no were not....yes we are. The weather held off though so we hit the road. We had a great drive out to Phoenix on our off Friday and even got there for the Friday Angel game at Diablo. Lance had never seen an Angel game at Diablo so I was so excited he was able to finally see a game there!We didn't buy tickets before hand to this game because we weren't sure we were actually going to make it to the game in time. But alas, we made it on time and we bought some phenomenal tickets!Oh ya! Nice and close! We were about 8 rows back! We were actually very close to Mr. Arte Moreno himself! Arte is the owner of the Angels for those that aren't familiar with the Angel organization.The beard is new this season for him, and we are doing awful so I think it's time he get rid of it! :)

Here are some other pictures Lance took during the game.

My in-laws drove out from Tucson on Saturday to catch a game with us as well. We loved being able to see them! Some how though we didn't get any pictures of them. But I swear they were there!! :) We had really good seats for that game as well! And we were in the shade the whole game! Bonus!!

Check out Oakland's catcher. He's practically standing up waiting to catch the high heat to Napoli. I'm sure Napoli fell for it and struck out! *He's Cat's favorite and has not been so impressive this year!*

We had a lovely quick trip to Arizona and even though I'm not a spur of the moment type of girl I'm really glad we went! We lost both games we watched, but I think that's just the type of season the Angels are going to have this year. Oh well, chalk it up to a rebuilding year!

Love,
Suzanne

Finishing Our Hearst Castle Trip

2010-04-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Well I'm finally getting around to doing the final post to our Heart Castle trip.....which we took in February! hahaha Opps! We've just been so busy but a good busy! Work has been insanely busy but we sure are keeping up with the motto "work hard, play harder!"

So, to continue on from the previous posts, after we left the castle on our final tour, Wendy had mentioned she wanted to find this beach with seals that a co-worker told her about. We headed away from the castle and it didn't take us long to figure out which beach she was talking about.

The beach was covered with these things! During one of the Hearst Castle tours they said on a clear day you can see this beach from the top of the hill and it looks like the beach is covered in driftwood. It was a pretty interesting thing to see all these seals cover the beach.

This picture does not do justice of how big this guy was. He was HUGE and LOUD! Good thing there were no houses in the area that could hear these guys. They only bothered each other!

After we checked out the seals on the beach we headed over for the sunset and to check out Morro Rock.

We had an absolutely wonderful time in Morro Bay. We finally got to see a great sunset on our last night there thanks to the storm passing through. I'm really glad Wendy came with us. I really don't get to spend enough time with her anymore so now when I do I make sure I really really cherish it!

Love,
Suzanne

Hearst Castle Tour 3

2010-02-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we took our final tour of the castle. It had rained most of the night and was still sprinkling that morning. We were really hoping by the time we headed up to the castle the rain would be gone since we didn't want to get soaked. When we got to the visitor center the rain had cleared! I think I even made a Facebook comment about how mother nature must be smiling on us! What I wasn't thinking about was the fact that the weather is much different at the top of the hill than it is at the bottom of the hill. Duh! It rained on us when we first got off the bus, but it wasn't too bad. Just cold!

There are many parts of the castle that are unfinished. Hearst's health was failing him so he left the castle to live in Los Angeles to get better care. He was supposed to go back to the castle and continue on with his vision but he never got better and died about 4 years after leaving San Simeon. He died at the age of 88 which for that time period was very very old. Back in Hearst's time the average male only lived to the age of 56! Here is the unfinished grand stair case. I'm sure if he could have finished it, it would have been beautiful.

And guess what we got to see again........That's right, my favorite pool!

I didn't realize until looking at the pictures that Lance took that tour 3 was clearly the tour of light fixtures! Lance cracks me up!

There are more pictures of lights trust me, I just decided to only add 4 to the blog! :)

In one of the last rooms we were in, we looked out the window and noticed this beautiful sight.

The sun was finally coming out! On our last tour. As the bus was heading down the hill. I think I shall call that a case of Murphy's Law!

Love,
Suzanne

Hearst Castle Tour 2

2010-02-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

We did tour 2 on the same day we did tour 1, but boy was the weather different! When we got off that bus we about froze! It was so cold we could see our breath and that doesn't happen to us SoCal kids very often! I think I mentioned on the last post that every tour stops at the indoor pool. Well, every tour also stops at the outdoor pool. And being that we just saw the outdoor pool on the last tour, and now we were completely and totally freezing, we just wanted to get inside! But, we managed to snap some more pool shots!

The fog is coming! The fog is coming!

Well.....the fog is here! See what I mean about our view from tour 1!These next few shots are from the tour of things Lance found interesting.

This next picture is of Hearst's bedroom. It's actually really small. I guess since he had hundreds of other rooms to hang out in he didn't feel the need to have a big bedroom!I'm not sure if other people do it, but when I walk around the castle, I look at each bedroom and think to myself, which one would I pick if I lived here. Ever since I was a little girl it has been this room. This room is awesome. It's at the top of one of the towers and it's a round room. I have a thing for round rooms. I wish when you fill out questionnaires about what kind of house you are looking for, they had a section for round rooms. Because I would check that box every time! Of course I would probably need to redecorate slightly since the statue overlooking the bed is a bit creepy!

On tour 2 we also got to see the kitchen! All the food you may see in the pictures is plastic. They said they go through and clean the plastic food about once a year. That was just an FYI for you, it maybe a Jeopardy question tonight or something!

I may have spotted another dork taking a picture of himself! hahahahaAnd to finish off the tour 2 photos, here is another one of the indoor pool. This one gives you a great look at the diving platform. It's so awesome! I wanted to run right over and jump in! See what I mean about crazy tourists!!!

All 3 of us really enjoyed tour 2. Mostly I think because we had such an awesome tour guide. Our tour guide has been giving tours in the castle for 30+ years. He's been to every room in the castle (a lot of the rooms are closed off to the public) and has interviewed countless stars from Hollywood's past. All who have been guests at the castle during Hearst's time. The hour and a half we got to spend with him was really not enough. He was a walking encyclopedia of Hearst Castle knowledge and had such interesting stories. And he's jumped off the diving platform shown above, so he's a hero in my book!

Love,
Suzanne

Hearst Castle Tour 1

2010-02-17T06:00:00.000-08:00

Friday after Lance's birthday we had breakfast at this very cute breakfast place called The Coffee Pot in Morro Bay. It was pretty cold and dreary that morning so we were hoping when we got up to the castle we would have a good view. The view up from the top of the hill is absolutely spacacular. This was definitely one of those things I remembered from my previous trips up to the hilltop and I was silently sending good thoughts to mother nature pleading for the rain clouds to move through so Lance and Wendy would get to witness the beauty of it all.

You park down at the visitor center and they have an observation area there where you can look up and see the castle. It's a 5 mile bus ride from the visitor center to the castle. Look closely at the top of the picture and you might be able to make it out.

When we got up to the hilltop castle we had a decent view. Not as good as if the sun was shining, but at least we could see the water. And what we didn't know is that this was going to be our best view of all 3 tours. It was still a breath taking view though!

These next few pictures are of the Neptune pool. This has to be my most favorite part of the whole castle. I love this pool. I've decided if someone ever gives me tons and tons of money, I am going to splurge on a pool just like the one Mr. Hearst built. The only thing I would change would be adding a diving board (which he actually had but the State of California has removed it. Probably for fear that some crazy tourist would run on it and jump in the pool....I'm just sayin!). When we got to the top of the hill, I was holding the camera and I started taking a few pictures of different things. Then it dawned on me! I gave the Lance the camera and told him to take pictures of things he thought were super cool. It was really fun every night to view the pictures he took and talk about them. I love seeing things through the eyes of someone who has never been! It sure does make the experience that much more exciting. Here are a few snapshots of things Lance found particularly interesting.

Every tour you go on takes you to the Neptune pool and the indoor pool. The indoor pool is absolutely beautiful as well. I remember as a kid taking the tours with my twin sister Cat discussing if we would rather have the indoor pool or the outdoor pool (like either was ever really a possibility, but hey, kids can dream can't they! And darnit we were dreaming big!). Finally in 2002 when I made this trip with my girlfriends I decided on the outside pool. But, I'm still in love with the indoor pool too. And here is why

The gold pieces are actual gold! So if you could go swimming in there you would actually be swimming in a gold plated pool! Sweet!Lance tried to be sneaky and take a picture of us on the way back down to the visitor center. And here is what you get when we know you are coming with the camera.....dorks!

There are a bunch of other pictures that hopefully this weekend we will get up loaded to Flickr. When we do I will put the link on the page so if you so desire, you can click through and see the other pictures that I didn't post.

Love,
Suzanne

Lance's Birthday

2010-02-15T06:00:00.000-08:00

February is Lance's birthday month. As sometimes happens in my birthday month (December, birthday and Christmas) we celebrated his birthday, with the Valentine's Day holiday. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do for the February celebration and I decided to take him to a place I have been a million times as a kid. If I was prepared (which I'm not) I would have scanned some of those pictures from my childhood and posted those as well. Maybe someday that will happen....maybe. So, for Lance's birthday I told him I was taking him to see Hearst Castle and we would be staying in Morro Bay. I knew he would love Hearst Castle because he just loves all the history behind it. And for goodness sakes he watches the history channel all of the time he probably knows everything there is to know about that place anyway. But still, I thought he would enjoy seeing it for himself. He was very excited when I told him where we would be going. We decided to see if our friends Wendy and Suzy wanted to come along with us. We started planning this trip back in November. When we were planning, Wendy and Suzy didn't have this little guy.They got Nelson in January and if any of you have ever had a puppy, you probably know how much love and attention they need. Suzy ended up staying home and puppy sitting. Isn't she just the most adorable thing ever?!?!?!

We all took Lance's birthday off work and headed out of town. I told Lance and Wendy not to expect anything fancy in Morro Bay. It is really a small town sea village and if they were expecting the Ritz, they weren't going to get it here! But that being said, it's really a nice town. And the hotel we stayed in was clean and very close to where we wanted to be!

When we first arrive into town, we checked in and started off sight seeing. We ran into a photo spot that I actually have a bunch of pictures of Cat and I standing in front of. So of course, I posed for a picture again.....just a few years older!

This next picture of the big rock is Morro Bay Rock. Their claim to fame I would say. This is actually the view we had from our hotel room!

The city of Morro Bay also has this huge chess board. You can rent life size chess pieces. None of us play chess, so we opted out of renting the pieces and just acted like silly tourists standing on the chess board instead!

The emphasis on silly!

The sillyness continued when we ran into a pirate statue. Wendy and I were supposed to look like the Captain Morgan pirate, but instead, I look like I'm trying to keep myself from busting up laughing, and Wendy looks like she's not quite sure what the Captain Morgan pirate looks like!

That night we drove into San Luis Obispo for Lance's birthday dinner. We decided on a place that is kind of like Benihana if you are familiar with that. We weren't all that thrilled with some of their food, but their sushi was excellent! As you can see!

After our meal the waitress said can you stay for the birthday song. Being that we hadn't even received our bill yet, I would have figured that was a given. But, we said of course we'd love to hear the birthday song. Lance for some odd reason wasn't as enthused about the birthday song as we were. Well, let me tell you. It wasn't really a birthday song. It was more of a lights go out, strobe light goes on, screeching whistles scream from the speakers and techno style music starts playing as all the employees start screaming and yelling. Oh my goodness, if I could have gotten this on video I would have won some money somewhere. The best part I'm sure were our faces as we could not figure out what was going on. Now, this restaurant is not that big. So everyone gets to "enjoy" this minute of chaos every time it happens.

If you look up at the top of the picture right behind the exit sign, you can see the strobe light going off. It was completely and totally hilarious! One of the most obnoxious restaurant birthday moments I think I've ever been witness to. And I sure am glad it was Lance's birthday and not mine!

Happy birthday my love!

More to come from Morro Bay and Hearst Castle in the next few days!

Love,
Suzanne

Happy New Year....2 months later!

2010-02-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, happy 2010! And since Valentine's day is just a few days away, Happy Valentine's Day as well! =) I wanted to get the NYE post done so I could post this weekend about our awesome get away for Lance's birthday! I've also noticed that some of my pictures on previous posts have little red x's on them now. :( I'm not sure why, but hopefully this weekend I will have some time to investigate!

So, NYE was held at our house this year. Normally our friends Marlana and Adrian hold the festivities at their house, but they are remodeling this year so we offered up our place. It actually worked out well since Marlana had to work at 5am on Jan 1st so they were able to leave early and go to bed. AAHH, I remember the days where we stayed up all night on NYE and then we all went into our Disney shifts at 4 or 5 in the morning with no sleep. We were much younger then. Now, we value our sleep! I'm starting to get that whole "older and wiser" saying! :)

I love this group so much, and I love bringing in the new year with them. I think this is our 5th year of getting together. This year Marlana just told us she was pregnant so we are all excited that next year we will have the first peanut of the group join us. This get together is also great because every year we all show up in our PJ's! No glitz and glamour for us, it's all about comfort!

We played some games, watched Travis Pastrana jump his car over the Long Beach harbor and watched Dick Clark's Rockin Eve to see the ball drop. It was a really good time!

2009 was a very interesting year. It was a year most people want to forget. 2009 though for Lance and I is and always will be the year we got married. We chose to leave 2009 keeping only the happiest of memories in our mental scrapbook. Our wedding and the birth of our niece Ella. We won't forget 2009 for all the happiness it has brought us, but we also won't forget 2009 for all the stress and hurt it brought to so many others. We've learned a lot from this year. We are grateful for this year. And we hope that the years ahead will only get better and better!

Love,

Suzanne

29th Birthday Celebration!

2010-01-05T06:02:00.000-08:00

Shortly after arriving home from Arizona it was time to start celebrating my (ok, Cat's too) 29th birthday followed by New Years Eve!

The morning of my birthday (and I'm going to continue to call it my birthday because this is my blog!!!) Lance and I got up and headed over to The Original Pancake House for some breakfast. It was a beautifully rainy day and if it were any other day other than my birthday, I would have just stayed in bed! But out we went!

Being clever with my new camera! Sshh don't tell Lance I'm taking a picture of him!!!

That afternoon we made the trek to L.A. to see Mary Poppins. I make the trek to L.A. everyday for work, but boy oh boy was it bad due to the rain! And luckily for work I'm not heading straight into downtown like we were for the show.

The birthday girls!!! Looking good if I don't say so myself!
We went to this great restaurant at L.A. Live (across the Staples Center) called the Rock 'n' Fish. And it rocked! They had such good food and really good drinks!
How cool is it that the Lemon Drops that Cat and I had came with rock candy stirrers! Awesome! And they were so good! We only had 1 each.....or things may have turned embarrassing! =)

Thank goodness they didn't put 29 candles on here! We may have had to call the fire department!

Well, another year older and oh so much wiser. What a fabulous year I had. I had one of my best days ever on April 25th when I got to marry the man of my dreams in front of all my friends and family. Lance was able to get a job here at Northrop and I truly enjoy our drives to and from work together. And the lunches we get to spend together as well! I received a new position which at first was slightly overwhelming, but I really am enjoying what I do! I became an aunt for the first time and am loving every second of it! And most best of all, I have the best family and friends a girl could ever ask for!

Love,
Suzanne

Christmas 2009 Part II

2010-01-03T11:25:00.000-08:00

We are home from Arizona, but I haven't posted details of the end of our trip yet. I don't know how those bloggers who blog about activities while they are happening do it! They rock! I'm always behind!

My last post was Christmas day and pictures related to that. I had such a good time spending Christmas day with the Nowell's! I can't wait until Ella is old enough to be able to open her own presents and get excited about her new toys. Ryan got to open all of Ella's presents this year (and there were a ton!! hahahaha) since Ella slept through all the festivities.

Since we were all there for Christmas, Sherry wanted to take a family picture. I'm really glad she suggested it because it turned out great! Thanks Ryan for taking such a great photo!

Hopefully this picture isn't too small! I stole it from Ryan off of Facebook! =) I can't wait until more kiddos are added to the group!

Speaking of kiddos.....we need more Ella pictures!

I can't believe how much we love this little girl! Well really, how could you not! Look at that little face. I'm going to give her whatever she wants! hahahaha

One of the days we were in Arizona, Lance went golfing with Ryan, his dad and a family friend Dennis. They all had a great time, but everybody agreed it was a little bit chilly out there!

While we were there Emma (my sister-in-law who teaches at a culinary school) taught me how to make homemade pizza dough. I was so excited! She also bought us a pizza stone for Christmas so we tried it out when we were in AZ! Here are some pictures of me being way too excited that the pizza actually came out looking edible!

As a side note....I was worried I was going to forget how to make it if I waited too long to make it again. So last night I tried to make it again. Here are some more goofy pictures of me being super excited it turned out! I promise I will stop taking goofy pictures of myself being super excited my dinner turned out!

On our way home from Arizona we stopped at the dinosaurs on the 10. I haven't stopped at the dinosaurs since I think I was 7. They were so much cooler when I was 7! I'm glad we stopped though so we could check them out especially since Lance had never been there and I know our kids will want to stop there when we are on our way home from grandma and grandpas!

Ok, I have to finish this post! Blogspot is driving me crazy with their inability to post pictures! And this post has a ton of pictures! Check back soon I will be posting another post about my birthday, new years eve and my dads birthday! This has been an extremely busy week! But I have had such a great time!

Ronnie and Sherry, thanks for hosting us for Christmas! We had such a great time with everybody! Hopefully we will be seeing you guys soon in Vegas!!

Love,

Suzanne

Christmas 2009

2009-12-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays! How has this year gone by so fast? It seems like we were just getting married and now, we've been married 8 months already. Wow! Time sure does fly when you're having fun!

This holiday season was a little bit different for us because we both have shut down this year! Since Lance is now working with me at Northrop Grumman we both get to enjoy December 24th-January 4th off of work! How exciting! We ended up spending Christmas Eve with the Crist's in California and then headed East to spend Christmas Day with the Nowell's in Tucson.

This Christmas is extra special because the 2 Nowell boys and their beautiful wives (he he he) will all be in Tucson at the same time. It will also be little Ella's first Christmas and we are so very excited we will be able to spend it with her.

We had a wonderful time with my family on Christmas Eve opening presents and having a wonderful dinner. My parents got me a new camera for my birthday but they gave it to me early so that I could bring it to Tucson with me. That's why I only have a few pictures from our Christmas to show!

I'm not drinking two glasses of champagne! I'm holding Lance's I promise!! I am guilty of being dorky with a bow on my head! Everyone does it right?? hahahaha

Lance was playing with all the different settings turning Cat and Rachel black and white!

Early on Christmas day we loaded up the car, gave Murphy big kisses and told her we would see her soon and headed off to Arizona. We didn't hit any traffic but we did have to slow up in Phoenix because they have these horrible cameras that are on the freeway that clock your speed, take your picture and send you a ticket. Lovely. So, the speed limit we went! =)

When we made it to Tucson we had a lovely dinner that was made by Sherry and then opened presents!

These next few pictures are pictures Lance took while messing around with all the cool new settings our new camera has! *Thanks for the camera mom and dad we love it!!!*

I'm just absolutely in love with this little girl! She's perfect!

We are in Arizona for a few more days so I'm sure I will have more pictures to post!

Love,

Suzanne

Our Niece Has Arrived!

2009-11-12T07:18:00.000-08:00

I went into Yoga last night as Suzanne and came out of Yoga as Aunt Suzanne! Our first niece for the both of us was born last night in Oregon. Ella Saige is her name and we are tickeled......well.....PINK that she is here! And it's so good to finally know her name! We can't wait to meet her and introduce ourselves to her. We can't wait to spoil her rotten!

We don't have any pictures yet, but hopefully her grandparents will be visiting her today and will take a bunch for us.

Lance and I don't have much practice holding babies so he decided to practice last night when we found out Ella had come into the world.

He's going to be such a good uncle! Ella is very lucky to have him looking out for her! Even though he probably won't want to hold her until she is 1 and he probably won't be standing in line to change any diapers either!

Love,
Suzanne

Happy Halloween!!

2009-11-01T21:36:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween everyone! Halloween fell on our 3 day weekend this year but we didn't have anything exciting planned. We decided to rent a DVD, watch the World Series and relax while passing out candy. We actually had trick-or-treaters this year which was so exciting to us! In all the different places Lance and I have lived in there have never been any trick-or-treaters. This year we had about 30 little kids.

We didn't dress up this year, in fact we haven't dressed up since the first year we started dating. Below is a picture of Lance and I the year we did dress up. I think it was 2004. Maybe next year we will dress up..............maybe!

Murphy doesn't let us dress her up, so we decided to take a picture of her when she's looking ferocious! Can you see her little fangs coming out? She was our little bat kitty this year! =)

We don't torture her I swear! She is very loved and cared for!! =)

We hope everyone had a fun, safe and relaxing Halloween!
Love,
Suzanne

6 Month Anniversary!

2009-10-25T21:41:00.001-07:00

Well, 6 months ago today Lance and I said "I do"!! I can't believe it has already been 6 months! Where did the time go??
Here is one of the pictures we took from the hotel. It was taken in front of our beautiful flower arch. I LOVED our flowers! I can't say enough good things about them. I loved everything about our wedding. I wouldn't change anything!

On our 6 month anniversary we were really hoping for an Angel victory. That didn't happen. What an amazing few weeks of baseball though. The Angels swept the Boston Red Sox in 3 games and we were able to see 2 of those 3 wins in the ALDS. The American League Championship Series against the Yankees went 6 games and we were able to see all 3 home games for that series as well. I can't get over some of the games we saw! They were sooooo good! Here are some pictures of our last few games.

We sure did enjoy our baseball season this year. As always we are looking forward to Spring Training next year! Since the Angels didn't make it to the World Series we might actually be able to take a vacation now. We had tickets to all 4 World Series homes games which cost us a fortune. We used our vacation savings to pay for the tickets but now we can put that money into savings and watch the Phillies kill the Yankees!

Until next year Angel fans! And happy 6 month anniversary Lance!
Love,
Suzanne
P.S. Our digital camera died on us so we are left to taking pictures with our BlackBerrys. Not the best pictures ever but better than none right??? =)

Collision with the moon!

2009-10-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in FOREVER! I'm back though! I just needed sometime off to recover from 2 weddings, moving, and settling into our wonderful new place.

This is just going to be a quick post, but I promise I have a bunch of posts lined up! I just wanted everyone to know that NASA has a satellite colliding with the moon and my (Lance's too!) company built that satellite! CNN did a write up on it and if you are up early tomorrow morning turn on the NASA channel or go online and check it out!

We are having a huge viewing event here at work but unfortunately Lance and I won't be attending. We will be going to Game 1 of the Angel game tonight and Game 2 tomorrow! 4:30am is just a little too early to be at work when there is an Angel game the night before!

Go Angels and good luck LCROSS!

Love,
Suzanne

Murphy and Moving

2009-06-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

Since we don't have kids to blog about, I will be blogging today about our feline child. Now, whenever there is commotion going on in the house Murphy has a hard time dealing with it. For example, the Friday before our wedding, Tracy and I were running around the apartment packing two cars full of stuff we needed for the rehearsal that night and the wedding the next day. We wouldn't be coming back until Sunday afternoon so we wanted to make sure we got everything. With all the running back and forth and the hurry we still needed to get changed, and the 20 million reviews of the checklist, it was all too much for our little Murphy to handle. So, she puked. Twice. I'm standing there in heels, make-up, hair all done and in a beautiful rehearsal dress cleaning up cat puke. Lovely. So based on that experience I was not looking forward to the move that was about to be happening in a month. She actually handled the packing and the moving better than I expected. She didn't puke, but I mean really. Why would she? I wasn't all dressed up! While I was going through my drawers and purging things I didn't need anymore, Murphy decided she was going to go exploring.....into the hole where the drawer went.

I couldn't believe she jumped in there. It's not a very big hole and it was 4 drawers up! And Murphy is not exactly a spring chicken anymore! Crazy kitty for sure!

When we got to our new place we were very excited to see how she was going to like the stairs. Murphy has never climbed any stairs in her 11 years so this was going to be a new experience. We let her out of her cat carrier upstairs and she immediately took refuge in our closet. Which, as Cat learned when she kitty sat Murphy when we were on our honeymoon, is exactly the place she goes to hide. She spent all of Saturday rolled up like a ball in the closet deciding if she was going to come out or not. Finally Saturday night she did. As a proud mama, I took a picture of her first stair climb!

All these pictures were taken off my cell phone so sorry for the not so great quality! But these were her first stair steps and I was glad I got to take a picture of them. Now that we've been here almost a week, she loves running up and down them and playing on them. Who would have thunk it?!?!?!

So, maybe because this place is new or something she has really been exploring some pretty unusual spots. The other day I was putting some things away in the linen closet and she walked right up to it and went right in and sat down. Behind the towels.

She normally comes out once she realized you are closing the door on her!

She has also decided she is going to inspect any open box.

She used to sleep through the night. Not anymore. Too many places to explore and things to do. She really enjoys jumping on us early in the morning to see if we are awake. Is this what having children is going to be like??? We maybe reconsidering! =)

Love,

Suzanne

Moving

2009-06-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

No, we haven't fallen off the face of the earth.....we've just been moving! We moved into our new place this weekend and we are so excited to be there! We are slightly overwhelmed with where to begin unpacking, but slowly it's getting done!

We don't have any Internet yet, so when we do I will update with stories and pictures of our new place.

Oh, for any of you who like wedding shows, our friends Jared and Bindi got married in November and "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway" filmed their wedding! It is airing tonight (sorry for the late notice) on the Style Network. Their show episode is called Double Trouble. It's called that because they had two weddings in one day. One Hindu and one traditional. We went to both and they were both absolutely beautiful! I can't wait to watch it! They normally reply those shows a lot over the summer so I'm sure if you miss it tonight, you'll be able to catch again in the next week or so.

Have a great night!
Love,
Suzanne

Lightning and Thunder

2009-06-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Lightning and Thunder,

Was it really necessary to come rolling through at 2 o'clock in the morning? I was still up at 11pm. If you wanted to show us your fantastic light show you could have done it then. Or how about 5:30am when my alarm went off? I would have enjoyed the thunder then. But 2am, no, I really didn't enjoy it too much then!

Lightning and thunder, you don't come and visit us often here in So Cal, and the next time you do, can you please keep the visiting hours to when I'm awake. Your little middle of the night wake up call has left me extremely tired this morning!

I hear you are supposed to be visiting us again on Friday. Twice in one week. How did we get so lucky? Keep in mind, Friday's visiting hours are only between the hours of 9am and 5pm.

Love,
Suzanne

Heartbroken

2009-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

This is my 100th blog post and as I type this I am heartbroken. This is not the witty, funny, cute post I had anticipated writing, instead I am grieving. Grieving for my friend, and American hero, Blue Rowe. Army 1st Sgt. Blue Rowe was with the 426th Civil Affairs Battalion and a co-worker of mine here at Northrop. Blue was killed Tuesday while on his way home for a two week leave to see his family. An i.e.d. exploded near his vehicle killing him.

Blue had been in Afghanistan since July 2008 and was rebuilding schools and hospitals in Afghanistan. We would get emails from him periodically talking about all the good he was doing there. I know he would rather be home, but if he had to be there, helping the people of Afghanistan is what he wanted to be doing. Every email he sent to us detailed all the positive things going on there. He last emailed us on April 28th to tell us he was coming home! He wrote, "I am due to take Rest and Recuperation (R&R) leave in June. I will only be home 15 days until I have to come back to Afghanistan. The good news is I am the last one to go on leave and will be redeploying to the US in late July!"

I can't believe he is not coming home.

Our management team pulled us all together and told us the news last Wednesday. I've been trying to write this blog unsuccessfully since then. Trying to type while crying is pretty pointless. I've been keeping pretty busy with packing up the apartment getting ready for the move. I found a box on the kitchen table that was all ready to go to be sent out to Blue. I had planed on doing it on our upcoming off Friday. I had been sending him care packages since he left for the Middle East. The day of my wedding shower, I arrived back home and there was a package sitting on my door step. It was sent from Afghanistan from Blue. It was a thank you/wedding gift for me and Lance. He was grateful for the care packages and his note read "may all your hopes and dreams come true." He was such a great, caring amazing man. I am so angry his life was cut so short. He had already done so much good in the world, but I know he had so much good to give!

There have been a few articles posted about Blue that you can read here and here.

I've decided I'm still going to send my care packages to the area Blue was serving. I'll just address it to "soldier". I know that they will still appreciate the things that are coming their way. It's the least I can do to honor a true American hero, and a friend who will be greatly missed.

Love,
Suzanne

Happy Memorial Day!

2009-05-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

I just thought I would check in briefly to let everyone know we are still alive! I've decided though if I can't blog about Hawaii, then there is really nothing to blog about! LOL Just kidding!

My next post will be my 100th blog so I am coming up with something witty, and cute and funny, so this post is just filler. It's post 99 and it's just really not that exciting! I don't even have any pictures! So, here is the filler:

We had a very restful holiday weekend which was really nice! We didn't do much Saturday and Sunday (well, Lance worked, so that means I didn't do much!). On Monday we had a BBQ at my parents house then headed to a HORRIBLE Angel game after that. We lost 17-3. Pathetic. We left early which normally never happens. But how much salt in our wounds could we take? We waived our white flags and headed home.

Thank you to all of our men and women serving in our military. You guys rock!
Love,
Suzanne

Honeymoon Finale

2009-05-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

Update: We were just at the beach that was named top in the nation!!! AWESOME!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20090522/ap_tr_ge/travel_brief_best_beaches

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It seems like all the TV shows are having their finale's last week and this week (yeah Shaun Johnson!!!) so it only seems fitting that we have our own finale!

Saturday was the last full day on the island for us. We didn't do a whole lot on Saturday, we did do a lot more driving. It was so nice and relaxing!

We did end up driving to Waimea to go to Jo Jo's Shaved ice. It's supposedly the best on the island. We had some other shaved ice earlier in the week that was no where near Jo Jo's. So maybe they are the best!!

After Jo Jo's we decided to head over to the Kaua'i coffee farm. Lance was in heaven there.

Notice the little shot glass in his hand. He was doing coffee shots. They had this whole station set up outside so you could taste all the different coffees. He would have stayed all day if I would have let him!

I even did two shots of coffee myself! hahahaha

For dinner that night we were going back and forth on what we should do for dinner. We decided on sushi, started looking through magazines to see where the best sushi places were. We found a place we decided to take a chance on and headed over. This place was the coolest place ever. I'm so bummed we found it on our last night there because if we would have found it earlier, we would have gone back more than once that's for sure! This place has a conveyer belt that goes around all the tables with all different kinds of sushi flying by you. You just grab the plate of sushi you want and you eat it. It's so much fun.

At first we just watched all the sushi go by trying to decide what we wanted. It didn't' take us too long though. As you can see below, we were stuffed!

Now, before you think we are total piggies, most of these plates only had 1 piece of sushi on it. Sheish! hahahaha

Well, this concludes our honeymoon. We had a wonderful time. Aunt Kathy and Uncle Don we can't thank you enough for letting us stay in your condo! It was absolutely and totally awesome!! And we want to go back. Today. Right this second!

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering how Murphy is doing, she's doing great. She didn't even hide from us when we got home. We aren't calling her Murphy right now though, we are calling her Shadow. She will not leave us alone! If one of us is home, she is stuck to us. Our first night home she slept on my head. Yup, she missed us. And we missed her!

Love,
Suzanne

Honeymoon, almost done I swear....

2009-05-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

On Friday of our honeymoon week we finally made it to Scotty's. We ate at Scotty's for the first time when we visited Kaua'i in 2007. They have the best BBQ food on the island! And a killer view.

This was the view from our table. I heart Kaua'i!

After eating at Scotty's we headed over to see some waterfalls and the river that I kayaked when I was here in 1999.

When we were heading back to the condo we stopped at Spouting Horn. When we were there in 2007 Lance kept calling it spitting horn because it was pretty duddy! This time however it was spouting off a storm. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but I took some video of it, so I'll try and upload that later.

That night we went to Tidepools for dinner. Tidepools is very special to us because that's were we got engaged December 30, 2007. We had this great hut with nobody but the family around us and it was just perfect. Perfect for a proposal. When I called to make reservations I knew we couldn't ask for the hut since it was just the two of us this time, so I didn't bother saying anything. When they took us to our table, look where they sat us.

Our table for two was only a few feet away from our hut! And to make things even cooler, the same waiter we had back in 2007 was still there and he was our waiter this time too. How crazy! And he remembered us! He took a picture of us in front of our hut, and he gave us a free desert. This guy rocks!

Tidepools is awesome. It will always be such a special place to us. If you're ever in Kaua'i and you want to taste some of the best food ever, go to Tidepools!

I'll be finishing up our honeymoon tomorrow! See you then!

Love,

Suzanne

Coming Home

2009-05-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

We don't want to leave.......we really don't. We would stay longer if we could......but we just can't. We have to come home because it looks as though this one here is having a melt down without us.She has been in the capable hands of Wendy, Rachel and Cat while we were gone, but she just won't be content until Mom and Dad are home. She's done everything from throwing up, hiding for 45 minutes and biting her care taker. Oh the life of a parent of a kitty. I thought we taught her better than that! I hope our human kids don't act that way when we leave them with our 3 favorite baby sitters (yes, I'm talking about you, Wendy, Cat and Rachel!!!!)

This will be my last post until sometime on Monday. We are pretty much flying all day on Sunday. I still have a few more honeymoon posts saved for next week.

We are coming home our little Murphy. We can't wait to give you big kisses......if you come out of the closet. I'm sure you won't be mad at us for too long........maybe! hahaha

Love,
Suzanne

Beautiful Sights

2009-05-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

**I posted two posts back to back, so make sure you check out the post from yesterday!*

We are heading into the tail end of our honeymoon so I'm going to do today's blog about Wednesday and Thursday of our trip. We didn't go to the pool on Wednesday (shocking I know!!!) we decided to relax around the condo in the morning and then head over to the Marriott to eat at Dukes for lunch. Dukes has a GREAT view! I could just sit here all day and soak up sun.

After eating at Dukes we headed back over to Poipu to the Hyatt to get massages. Oh.My.Goodness! The Hyatt has one of the best spas I have ever been to! If anyone ever comes to Kaua'i, going to the Hyatt spa is a must! I can't believe I've been here 2 other times and haven't been to this spa. I really wanted to spend all day there! This next picture is when you enter the Hyatt! Beautiful!

We made dinner at the condo Wednesday night but we did go to Keoki's for some Hula Pie! We love Hula Pie!!!

On Thursday we decided to go rent some snorkel gear at Snorkel Bob's and go snorkeling. Dorks!

Look Mon (aka Mom *inside joke*) we took your camera into the water and it worked great! Even better is that it still works after taking it into the water!! ;-)

So, remember that fried skin I was talking about the other day? Well, here it is. Now, let me just state that I put A LOT of sun tan lotion on before getting into the water. And this was not my first day in the sun.

I only spent 30 minutes in the ocean snorkeling. 30 stinking minutes did this. The back of my legs are burned too. So, the lesson I learned was, next time I go snorkeling, I need to wear a shirt! hahaha It's actually not that bad of a burn, unfortunately, I've had worse! It probably would have been worse if I would have spent longer in the water!

After snorkeling we went over to the Poipu Beach Broiler for some happy hour! Luckily no pictures from happy hour. They have $2.50 beers though! That's the place to be!! After happy hour we headed back to the condo to look for some sea turtles!

We saw a bunch of sea turtles!

Well that concludes Wednesday and Thursday! Hope you all our enjoying the honeymoon blogging!

Love,
Suzanne

Oh trade winds where are you???

2009-05-15T23:45:00.000-07:00

Has anybody felt our trade winds? Because I'd really like them back! It seems like every other day or so we lose the trade winds and things get HOT here. The sun just burns your skin in like 30 seconds. It really doesn't matter how much sun screen you put on. Don't worry, there will be pictures coming in a few blogs or so of fried skin! I know you all can't wait! hahahaha

Ok, lets see where we are on our vacation. I think I just blogged about Monday, so now we are onto Tuesday. We had breakfast on our patio again then headed off to the pool. I finally have a picture of the pool to show! This is the view from our patio.

After spending a few hours at the pool we decided to head up to Waimea Canyon. It was 86 degrees and hot at sea level and cloudy and 65 degrees on our way up the canyon. Since I've seen it before I know that it has some of the most beautiful breath taking views. Unfortunately, the pictures we took, were of clouds and fog.

We didn't stop at all on the way up because I really just wanted to make it to the top. When Lance and I did the drive in 2007 we weren't able to go all the way to the top because of gas issues aka not having enough gas to continue on! When we got to the top, this is what we saw.

On our way down the mountain we were hoping to get some better pictures when the fog cleared. But, they really weren't as good as we know they could have been if we didn't have the clouds.

We went to Keoki's for dinner that night. But I don't have any pictures from dinner. Take my word for it, it was super yummy!!!!!!

Love,
Suzanne

Another Day in Paradise

2009-05-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

The great thing about this vacation so far is that we have nothing planned! If any of you have ever gone on vacation with my family you know that every second of your vacation is planned. EVERY SECOND! Sure, you get to do a lot and see a lot, but you literally go home thinking, I need a vacation from my vacation. I'm not saying I'm not guilty of that too. When I traveled to Europe with my friends, everything was planned. Same with when Lance and I went to New Zealand. But this honeymoon was going to be different. For the last year and a half I have been working my full time job, and then serving every Saturday and Sunday. And during that year and a half happened to do a few other things like plan our wedding and help plan Tracy's. You know, those minor details. So you better believe I was going to make this vacation all about relaxing. And relaxing we have done.

Monday after we got up and had breakfast on our patio looking out at our view we decided to hit the pool. I thought I had a picture of the pool, but I guess I don't. I'll have to take one tomorrow and post it.

After soaking up the sun at the pool, we put the top down on the jeep and headed out for some driving.

I learned very quickly in that jeep that I must pin my bangs back if we were going to have the top down. I didn't have them back when we headed from the airport to the hotel and I was about to scream. Good thing it was a short trip! This time however we were going to be gone for a few hours so I made myself look like Cat and off we went.

To get to different parts of the island, we have to drive through the tunnel of trees, which is so cool! I guess a hurricane in the 90's destroyed this tunnel. But it has grown back and it is really fun to drive through!

Once we were on the main highway, we decided to head over to Princeville. When we were almost there we decided to stop at the lighthouse. This is my third trip to Kaua'i and I have never been.

Now, where we are standing above was the free part of viewing the lighthouse. To get closer, you had to pay $5 a person. Rip off. It's definitely one of those things that we will only do once. You can't even go up or down in the lighthouse. You can only walk into the base of it. They do have some really nice views from out there, but I don't think it was $10 worth!

After leaving the lighthouse we continued onto Princeville then onto Hanalei. We saw some awesome caves. Check out the kid on the bottom left hand side. It will give you some perspective as to how big this cave was!

We also saw one of my favorite churches! I love the look of this church. This is actually where I wanted to get married, but I knew all 160 of our guests would not be able to make it. So we opted for local. But in 25 years, when we renew our vows, we are doing it here! =)

After Hanalei we went to check out some waterfalls on the way back to our condo. This is another stop I've never made in previous visits. And hey, they didn't charge us to check them out!

Well that's all we did on Monday. I think we did enough don't you! =)

Love,

Suzanne

Blooper Video

2009-05-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

Yeah I finally got a video to upload!!!!! I tried last night to upload our speeches, but it wasn't working. This video is just a funny party foul from the wedding reception. Leave it to Bindi! This video is so funny to me; but maybe not to everyone else. This may be one of those videos where you just had to be there?!?! Or, maybe you'll laugh out loud too!!

Love,
Suzanne

Honeymoon in Kaua'i

2009-05-13T01:23:00.000-07:00

After leaving Oahu on Sunday we headed over to Kaua'i to start our honeymoon! Lance and I were engaged in Kaua'i so to be back for our honeymoon just ties it all together. My Aunt Kathy and Uncle Don gave us their condo in Kaua'i as a present for our wedding and we are so thankful for it! It's so beautiful here.

When we were here December 2007 the island was packed. It was Lance's first time here and my second time. It was so annoying how everywhere we went there was always a wait, or everything was booked, or the traffic was horrible. And, it rained practically the entire week! We had a mustang convertible that time and we got caught in a bunch of horrible down pours. Not this time. Early May is the time to visit Kaua'i that's for sure! We have been able to walk into any restaurant and not wait at all. Traffic has also been great. Oh, and the sun. The sun has been shining everyday! And it's been hot, but the good tropical hot!

This is the view from our condo.

Is this not the coolest view ever! I happen to think it is! After dropping off our things at the condo we headed to Costco to buy some stuff for the week. It's great to have a condo here because then we can make some meals instead of having to eat out everyday. After Costco we headed over to Big Save to pick up some stuff that we didn't need in Costco size! We keep calling Big Save 'Big Spend', because you sure aren't saving anything by shopping there. But it's near the condo so what are you going to do?!?!?!

That's really all we did on Sunday. Set up the condo, sit on our patio and just relax. Nothing too exciting. Oh, and as I'm blogging, the picture above is my view. That's what I look out and see. So if my blogs haven't been making sense, and there are misspelled words and bad grammar, it's because I'm not paying attention! I mean really, look at my view! Who can pay attention to anything else!! hahahaha

Talk to you all tomorrow!
Love,
Suzanne

The Reception

2009-05-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

After Tracy and Jesse's beautiful wedding ceremony, all the guests headed over to another tower at the Hilton Hawaiian Village for the reception. The reception was going to be on the 25th floor and check out this view! The picture just doesn't do it justice! It was absolutely breath taking! It's almost a shame the reception was at 5pm because the guests only had an hour or so to enjoy it before it got dark. Nobody needed to look out at the view all night though, there was too much other stuff to do!

Next the wedding party entered, and then Tracy and Jesse had their first dance.

The speeches came next. Now, I public speak for a living so getting up in front of people is normally not an issue. But oh my goodness I was so nervous! My friend Wendy said she had never seen me so nervous to get up and speak in front of people! hahaha I only messed up once and I was in the home stretch, I'm so mad I messed up! I just got confused when I got to my final page and I thought it was the wrong page. Wendy video taped our speeches for us, so I will see if I can upload them to my blog.

After our speeches Tracy's dad came up and wanted to say a few words. I think Tracy was holding her breath the entire time! hahaha He was on his best behavior though and said some really nice things to Tracy and Jesse and all the guests!

Tracy hired a cake lady here on the island to make individual cakes for all the guests. She also had a small cake made for her and Jesse to cut as well. And he didn't shove cake in her face! Yeah Jesse!!! He gave the motion like he was going to and I kept thinking, she's going to kill him! hahaha

Tracy and Jesse were also able to have first dances with his mom and her dad. I guess though, neither Tracy or Jesse told their mom and dad that they would be dancing! hahaha They all did great though on last minute notice! Tracy's dad was trying to get her to do a waltz type move. She looked horrified since she didn't know what to do.....hhhmmm sounds awfully familiar to my dance with my father!

Now here are some random pictures from the night.

Well, that's all I'm going to post from the wedding. Of course we have a ton more pictures, so I'll have to have Lance put them on Flickr for everyone to check out! Tomorrow I will update with some Kaua'i pictures and stories. I've been blogging the last couple of days so make sure you read the posts below this one!

Love,
Suzanne

Tracy and Jesse's Wedding

2009-05-11T01:18:00.000-07:00

After the rehearsal dinner on Friday night, Jared, Bindi, Tracy, Jesse, Lance and myself went back to Jared and Bindi's hotel room to devise a plan of how we wanted Saturday to go. Tracy didn't have a wedding planner, and she didn't need one, Bindi and I are going to go into the wedding planning business together! hahaha

We created a timeline and then hit the sack. We had a busy day ahead of us.

The next day, Tracy, Desiree and myself headed to the salon to get our hair and makeup done.

Here is the final product of the hair and makeup.

I loved the way our hair and makeup turned out. I seriously wish I could get my hair to look like this everyday! And when I win the lottery, I'm going to make that happen!! hahaha

After leaving the hair salon we headed over to Jared and Bindi's room to get ready. Jared and Bindi had the biggest room (even bigger than the bride and groom go figure! hahaha) with the most spectacular view! They were on floor 29 of 31. We were high!

Look at this calm bride, with her dorky bestman behind her!! Lance brought us pizza because I HAD to make sure she ate something! At 2 when I asked her when was the last time she had food and she said, "oh, well I had some breakfast this morning" I sent out the S.O.S. and Lance was there to save the day!

After getting Tracy in her dress we were off to the chapel since she was about to get married! Here we all are walking down the isle.

That's it for now. We had a long day lounging by the pool and then driving around Kaua'i in our topless jeep!!! AAAHHH the life! All that sun has made us nice and tan, but tired too! Tomorrow I will conclude with the reception!

Love,

Suzanne

Aloha

2009-05-10T22:32:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone! We are in Kaua'i tonight after a very fun filled few days in Oahu for Tracy and Jesse's wedding. Sorry I haven't been able to update lately. When we finished our wedding, Tracy and I dove right into completing all the details for her wedding. I wanted to blog when we arrived in Oahu last Thursday, but Tracy and I were doing wedding stuff Thursday, Friday, then the wedding on Saturday. It was such a beautiful wedding! Tracy did a great job! Here are some pics from the wedding and reception.
Here we are on Friday for the rehearsal. It was so crazy to be standing there getting ready for the rehearsal and thinking, wow, ours was only 2 weeks ago!! This rehearsal was much less stressful though! At least for me. I don't know if I could say the same for Tracy! hahaha
Jared and I walking down the isle. We were both pros! He just got married on November 28th and I got married April 25th. The funny thing is Tracy and Jesse got engaged before both Jared and Bindi and myself and Lance. We all got things rolling unlike Tracy and Jesse who seemed were engaged for an eternity! ;-)

Lino and Desiree were the flower girl and ring bearer. They did awesome! During the rehearsal they were walking slightly fast down the isle, but during the ceremony they did great! It could be because every adult there kept telling them to slow down! Those poor kids probably wanted to crawl down the isle just so they wouldn't get in trouble for going too fast!

And here is the bride and her adorable father. He took pictures all the way down the isle. Don't worry we made sure he didn't have his camera on him for the actual ceremony!

And here is the bride and groom. The lighting in this chapel was horrible for taking pictures. As you can see there are windows everywhere which made it extremely difficult to get a good picture! Bindi was using Jared's million dollar camera and lens to shoot photos with and she had a difficult time. So Lance didn't stand a chance getting very good pics using our little digital camera. But you still get the idea!

Here is the ever so beautiful and handsome wedding party.

After the rehearsal everyone headed down the street to Cheeseburger Waikiki. Tracy and Jesse ended up getting us gifts for being their bestman and maid of honor. It was very nice of them and they got us great gifts! Tracy and Jesse got me a beautiful flower necklace that went so well with my dress for the wedding. It was the most perfect gift ever because I forgot to bring a necklace with me.

They got Jared a portfolio for all his pictures since I guess right now he has them in a binder. Thanks guys, I love my necklace and I know Jared loves his photo stuff!!!

Well that concludes Friday on Oahu. I'll post the wedding pictures tomorrow. I could post them tonight, but I want to drive my sister Cat crazy for just awhile longer since I know she really wants to see them! hahahaha Check back often I'll be a blogging fool for the next week since all I'm required to do this week is sit on the beach and drink some Malibu and pineapple!!!

Love,
Suzanne

We tied the knot!

2009-05-01T20:41:00.001-07:00

A few days ago I started posting a recap of the few days before the wedding on the wedding blog. You can view that blog by clicking here. I will blog there during our honeymoon so check it out often! Just to keep you all on your feet, I might also post some blogs and pictures here too! hahahaha My life will be so much easier when I just have one blog! ;-)

Hopefully this weekend I will be able to post some wedding pics on the other blog. My new husband got the flu (hopefully not the swine flu! ;-) ) 2 days after we said I do. He's been sick ever since and I know we are both ready for him to start feeling better. I think he's just testing me to make sure I'll be a good wife. Hope I passed! hahahaha Thank goodness Lance wasn't sick during the wedding. This flu bug knocked him out for 3 solid days. He would have barely been able to stand up there to say "I do." And he never would have made it through the reception. Wouldn't that have just sucked!

So, even though our first week of marriage has been filled with that sickness part we spoke about in our vows, I figure it's better to be sick now. After the wedding, but yet before our honeymoon! And you better believe I am SO ready for our honeymoon. Hawaii can't come soon enough!! We leave Thursday!!! YIPPEE!!!!!!!!

Love,

Suzanne

7 days to go......

2009-04-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

One day at work Wendy was telling me how she wanted to go to Vegas so Suzy could do the Richard Petty Driving Experience. When she was telling me all about it I knew that was totally something Lance would want to do. So Wendy and I found a game show template on line that was just like the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire show. We added a bunch of questions that would lead them to the grand prize of going to Vegas to do the driving experience. It was so much fun to create the game show with Wendy, and even cooler to see their expressions when they realized what they would be doing. We do a lot with Wendy and Suzy and we love them dearly, and this trip to Vegas with them was so much fun!

That's Lance in his uniform and this is Lance car and he's actually driving it! This was a great Vegas weekend!
Love,
Suzanne

9 days to go......

2009-04-16T21:06:00.001-07:00

Wow! We are in the single digits. I really did try to make all the decisions over the last year and a half, but my oh my, so many things have to be done just a few days before. I've also been really sick the last few days as Lance mentioned in his post. He did such a good job. I was completely surprised! I took a half day that Monday because I was feeling so horrible and when I got home he said read the blog. I got all teary eyed and then he said, "are you crying??!!?? Why are you crying??!!!" hahahaha

Alright, I already feel like I'm rambling which means the nyquil is starting to kick in, so lets get on with the post.

I am so excited to officially have a husband in 9 days. I really am. Some people never get married because they say they don't need the piece of paper. Well I do. I want it to be official. I know we are going to have the cutest most adorable family ever! I mean really, look how cute and adorable our first child is.

I love these two. They both make laugh all the time. And they have both taken such great care of me while I've been sick!

I've been praying like mad that Lance doesn't get sick. I know I have time to recover before the wedding, but he might run out of time to get better before then. And that would just make me really really sad. So we aren't even going to think about that!

Now, I'm going to bed, and I'm going to make Lance drink some more airborne!

Love,

Suzanne

12 days to go.....

2009-04-13T12:20:00.001-07:00

Hey there everyone, it's Lance! So you may have noticed that we skipped a few days in posting. Suzanne has been really tired and not feeling well. She just didn't have the energy to do some posts over the weekend. Well that's why I decided to take over today's post and let you all know how much I love HER. Since she has done the last 34 or so posts about how much she loves me, I should probably write one about her right?

Well anyways to start off she cared enough to write a little blurb everyday for 50 days about some of our past fun experiences. I hope everyone has had fun reading them because I know that I have. I have learned a bit too hahahh!

She is always there to encourage me when times are tough. Especially this past year when I was laid off. I'm still searching for a decent job and she tells me everyday good luck. She works her butt off each week and it would be easy for her to just say 'hurry up and find a job' but she always has a word of encouragement.

As I look back on our relationship I always remember the times that we shared new experiences with each other and how fun they are. It's great when neither of us has done a certain thing and we are both able to say 'wow that was so much fun!' ...and to see her smile is great too. Here is one of those times. We have been to countless Angel games together and last year our friends Wendy and Suzy were able to let us help out with the unveiling of the flag on the 4th of July at the game! This picture is of us on the field right before the unveiling.

We had to kind of take this picture really quickly because I don't think we were supposed to be taking pictures. We had such a great time and I had such a fun time with Suzanne.

I couldn't have asked for a better person to spend my life with and I am thankful that we will be getting married in 12 days! I love you Suzanne!

Lance

16 days to go......

2009-04-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

It's with a heavy heart that I blog today about the death of the Angel's pitcher Nick Adenhart. Nick was only 22 years old and had such a promising career ahead of him.

I got to see Nick pitch when we were in Arizona for Spring Training. He did awesome and I was really looking forward to him becoming one of our starting pitchers. When we were there on Opening Day and they announced his name, he ran out onto the field to give everyone their high fives. I remember thinking, man, Nick must be so excited right now to finally have made it to the big leagues where he's going to become a star. Then just a few short hours after pitching a wonderful game where he pitched 6 innings giving up 0 runs, a drunk driver takes his life. How senseless.

Lance and I talked last night about going to tonight's game, but the Angels just cancelled it. I don't blame them. How are his teammates going to play tonight? It would be just too hard.

Wendy and Suzy are friends with Nick's cousin Carla. I hope and pray that Carla and her family are doing as well as can be expected during this really difficult time.

Sports Illustrated has an article about Nick here if you would like to read it.

Love,
Suzanne

17 days to go....

2009-04-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry I'm going to miss tonight. It's been a long day and I'm tired. 17 days though....I'm getting excited!

Love, Suzanne

18 days to go.....

2009-04-07T14:44:00.000-07:00

**Angels won their Opening Day game yesterday!! Yippee!!**

Only 18 more days to go. Is everyone ready? I know I am! In today's post, we will be visiting New Zealand....yes, again! I'm pretty sure I am almost done with NZ posts though!

When in NZ we stopped by the Auckland Zoo. One of the first exhibits we saw was the kiwi exhibit. I was excited to see exactly what the heck a kiwi was. Kiwi's are so popular in NZ, they even call themselves Kiwi's. They have pictures of them everywhere. All over the island. On money, in stores on buildings. Everywhere. Well now, we were going to have our first encounter with a real life kiwi. We headed into this room that lead us into a cave where all of a sudden about 2 steps in I realized I couldn't see anything. It was like instantly going blind. I stopped dead in my tracks and then I hear Lance say, "I can't see anything." It was so dark you couldn't see shadows, or even your hand in front of your face. I was so freaked out I didn't even want to move. I was so afraid I was going to fall! I kept asking Lance where the heck were the kiwi's and why was it so darn dark in there! I started giggling uncontrollably because I was so nervous ( I really don't like not being able to see what's going on. Hopefully I'll never know what it's like to be blind because I'm going to make a very bad blind person!). We were finally in front of this glass wall that had the faintest red light behind it. Somewhere in the rocks and grass was a stinking kiwi. Apparently kiwi's are nocturnal. Hence the can't see anything in front of you cave that we had just walked into.

We never saw a real live kiwi in the dark cave. I could have avoided the whole thing and just looked at it's picture! But, then I wouldn't have the wonderful memory of Lance and I both laughing so hard at how dark it was in there. Luckily we made it out before anyone else came in or we may have accidentally run into them. This cave would be SO against the law here in the U.S. I don't see how they were getting away with it in NZ.

Here is a picture from that day at the zoo. We both really liked that zoo and had a great time seeing all the cool animals!

Love,
Suzanne

19 days to go.....

2009-04-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

The teens are upon us. I'm getting excited. I still can't believe we are so close. A year and 4 months of planning. It seemed like forever away and now, it's here. Crazy!

Today, even though I'm obviously in love with Lance, I'm going to write about my love for baseball. I heart baseball! And today friends, is Opening Day. I'm going to make it a goal of mine for next year to take Opening Day off. To sleep in, wake up with the sun shinning through my blinds. Sit up in bed, take a deep breath and think, it's Opening Day. I've always loved April. Maybe that's why I was hell bent on getting married during the month. So I can celebrate our anniverary with a baseball game. Ok, who am I kidding, we go to baseball games when we have nothing to celebrate!

My parents started taking us to baseball games when we were very young, and we've been hooked ever since. We grew up supporting both the Angels and the Dodgers and I even wanted to marry Mike Piazza when I was in Jr. High. Ah, those were the days when the players were older than me. Now, I watch the games and these guys are 21 and 22 years old. Um, how did that happen??? =)

I'm leaving work early today, so I can get dressed up in my red Angels gear, grab a beer and a hot dog, get to my seat and watch the Opening Day festivities. There's just something refreshing about Opening Day. Maybe it's the thought of summer right around the corner. The hot days, and cool nights at the ball park.

I heart you baseball. I'm glad you're back!

Love,
Suzanne

20 days to go......

2009-04-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

I love Lance because when I woke up one Friday morning and said, "I've been doing research online and I have found an orchard to go to where we can pick apples," his next sentence wasn't, "Have you lost your mind!". Yikes, if that wasn't the longest run on sentence ever!

We had so much fun going to this farm and picking apples! Since it's spring, I'm going to be checking out their website to see what we can go pick next. After the wedding of course! Right now I'm too busy picking food and linen colors and DJ songs etc.!

I can't believe tomorrow we are in the teens.......I may just throw up! =) j/k

Love,

Suzanne

21 days to go........

2009-04-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

The 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays! I love the BBQ's, the baseball, the fireworks and the long days of summer! 4th of July 2004 was the first time Lance met my family. Well, he already knew Cat, but on that day, he got to meet the rest of them. I was nervous to take him to meet my parents because I didn't bring too many boys on by to meet them. Of course everything went well and we had a great night. July 4th became our official dating anniversary. This July 4th will be 5 years together for us. Time flys when you're having fun that's for sure. I can't believe it's already been 5 years and we are finally getting married!

I'm so excited to enter year 5 as Lance's wife. It's going to be awesome!

July 4th, 2006

Love,
Suzanne

22 days to go.....

2009-04-03T14:20:00.000-07:00

New Zealand was totally our Amazing Race adventure. We had actually seen on Amazing Race the contestants do a challenge where they got to Zorb. Zorbing was created in New Zealand and since that's where we were, zorbing is what we did.

I had been emailing the owner of a Zorbing place before we left and when we got there, he gave us a smokin deal! Zorbing is one of the coolest things ever! It was such an adrenalin rush, but it was also safe.....sort of!

The first time I went down in the Zorb I was by myself in the ball.

Going by yourself is safe. The next time we went up, they talked us into going down in the ball together. It was so much fun, just slightly more dangerous! hahaha You have no control in that ball as it travels down this course. We went slamming into each other the whole way down. It was hilarious! I thought at one point I had broken my little toe because things got so rough in there, but we really did have such a great time.

This picture was taken after all the Zorbing fun! We had asked the guy when or if they were ever going to open a Zorb place in the U.S. He said probably not since Americans sue everyone. He said trying to get insurance in the U.S. for Zorbing was going to cost more than they would ever make. Bummer! I still hear every once in awhile that they may put one in Tennessee. If that ever happens, we are so going to Tennessee to do some Zorbing!

So, pack your bags and get your little bottoms to New Zealand! It's an awesome place!

Love,
Suzanne

23 days to go.......

2009-04-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

I missed another blog post, goodness, how do you people put up with me! =) Oh well, I'm going to work on day 22 right now, so I will be posting a real post shortly!

Love,

Suzanne

I just had to post this. He's so darn cute!

24 days to go........

2009-04-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

I love Hawaii! In fact, I really wish I was there right now!

Ryan and Emma were married in Maui in January 2007, and you sure didn't have to ask me twice to come along! I loved Ryan and Emma's wedding. It was beautiful. About half way through planning this big wedding, I started thinking, why the hell didn't I do a destination wedding! =) hahahaha That was just the stress talking. This week I'm thinking the court house looks wonderful! If you get a text from us in the next couple of weeks that says "702" that's code for meet us in Vegas, we are getting hitched! LOL I'm just kidding. I've enjoyed it all. The planning, the meetings, the decision making. I'm sure I'll miss it when it's done. At least that's what people are telling me. I think they are just trying to talk me back from the ledge! ;-)

I thought I should let you all know that I am enjoying the experience and I am still glad I'm having a big wedding. Because let me tell you, if it all comes together it is going to be freaking fabulous....if I don't say so myself! I know these last two blog posts have been short and stress filled; and you can probably tell I have way too much to do, but it will all be over in 24 days. Lance and I will have to figure out what the heck we are going to talk about when it's all over. We've been talking wedding stuff for a year and four months. Yikes! hahahaha

This picture was taken on the beach that Ryan and Emma got married on. It was such a gorgeous day. Look how cute they look!

I didn't ask them permission to post a picture of them on my blog. I hope they don't mind. They wouldn't sue me right??? I'm family. Shoot...I'm not family for 24 more days. Can you please hold off on the law suit? It's a really good picture! And I didn't draw bunny ears or a tail or anything! And I really loved your wedding! ;-) Plus, my millions and millions of readers need to know who Ryan and Emma are! Now you'll be famous! The end. Please don't sue.

Love,
Suzanne

P.S. I just realized this blog has nothing to do with why I love Lance...hhmm....I love Lance because he has an awesome family. I truly can not wait to officially become a Nowell!

25 days to go.......

2009-03-31T22:04:00.001-07:00

I love Lance because it's 10pm and he's picking dinner up for me because I haven't eaten since noon. I think I'm pretty much ready for this week to be over!

Love,

Suzanne

26 days to go.........

2009-03-31T07:59:00.000-07:00

I completely forgot to post yesterday. I missed a day. My streak ends. It hit me yesterday when I laid my head down on my pillow, and I was just too tired to get up and write something. I apologize to my peeps, my blogging faithful, my groupies, I will get back on track today, I promise!

Love,
Suzanne

27 days to go.....

2009-03-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Lance LOVES the Long Beach Grand Prix. I love Lance because he never makes me go. I'm glad we like to do different things. I would never make him come to a scrapbooking party, and he would never make me go to the LBGP. And that's just something we can agree on!

I had to use video because I didn't have any pictures of him attending after all of these years! In a few weeks he'll be going again, I told him he needed to take a self portrait!

Love,

Suzanne

28 days to go..........

2009-03-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

I love this man......
Opps....I love both of these men! hehehehehe My dad never had any sons, but he's getting one April 25th. They are perfect for each other. Two peas in a pod. Dork 1 and dork 2. And I love them both dearly!

29 days to go....

2009-03-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

Hello 20's I've been waiting on you and you're finally here! Countdowns are fun aren't they?!

Where are we off to today? Let's take a trip over to Maui. We went to Maui together in January 2007. We were there for Ryan and Emma's wedding (Lance's brother and sister-in-law for those of you who are reading and not commenting! ;-) ). This trip was a lot of fun for me because I got to spend time with Lance's family. Being that his parents and brother live in other states, we don't get to see them all that often, so when we do, it's party time!

Exploring Maui together was so much fun and we got to see some pretty awesome things! This tree was one of them. I'm sure if you've ever been to Maui, you all know exactly where this tree is!

I'll tell Ronnie and Sherry (Lance's Dad and Mom) stories this blog since they are in the picture! hehehehe We shared a condo with Ronnie and Sherry while in Maui and when we had any downtime I would pull out my book* and read. At one point, Ronnie turned to me and said, "why do you read so much?" And I turned back at him and said, "why do you watch golf so much?" He just looked at me and smiled. Ronnie is quite the little jokester! I love dishing it right back at him though!

HHMM my Sherry story..... let's see, I remember sitting at Emma's mom's house in Maui, the guys were out golfing and us ladies were preparing for the wedding when Emma asked, "so when are you and Lance going to get married?" Then Sherry quickly followed with, "ya, when are you guys getting married?" hahahahaha That whole conversation totally cracked me up and all I could think about is that if Lance was there he would be giving someone the death stare! Sherry was giving me that look of, what do you know, have you guys talked about, is it going to happen soon??? hahahaha My response was a simple one, "your guess is as good as mine!" I seriously had no idea when he was going to ask me! Who knew we were going to have to wait 2 more years for him to ask, but he finally did, and that's all that matters! =)

Well, that's all I have for today. I'll have to gp back and dig up the picture where Lance gets a little teary eyed at Ryan and Emma's wedding! It was so cute! hahahaha

Love,
Suzanne

*At the time I was reading the DaVinci Code and I just couldn't put it down! That was such a great book!

30 days to go.........

2009-03-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

I had only been at Northrop for about 6 months when they sent me on my first business trip. I only had to go down to San Diego, but I was going to be there all week. I had dinner with Lance that night and then got on the road to head down there. I was meeting two of my co-workers in San Diego and when I got to the hotel they were already in the bar. I headed up stairs to drop off my luggage and to my surprise when I got into my room, I had flowers waiting for me.

I was so confused. I was like holy cow what kind of hotel is this that has these beautiful flowers in each room. It took me a second to realize, oh, each room doesn't have flowers. hahahaha They were from Lance!! I told you I was confused! I was so surprised! They were beautiful yellow irises. My favorite! Well, really any yellow flower is my favorite but these were absolutely beautiful. I used to have a picture of them, but I think they were on my old phone so I don't have them anymore.

The best part was the card they wrote out for Lance. The card on the flower read, "Have a geat week! I miss you very much! Love, Lauce." I laughed so hard. First of all, who doesn't know how to spell great? And Lauce huh??!!?? I better tell Lance that that some guy named Lauce sent me flowers!

I sure do love my Lauce or Lance or whatever the heck his name is!
Love,
Suzanne

31 days to go.......

2009-03-25T08:49:00.000-07:00

We are exactly one month away. ONE MONTH! Holy moly! I have so much left to do. Oh my oh my.

This blog seems appropriate because the World Baseball Classic just ended a few days ago. We didn't attend any WBC games this year but a few years ago the guys stopped by Anaheim Stadium so we took in a game!

I think this picture was taken in March of 2006. Now I know why we don't play baseball in March! It was so bloody cold that night, we had on sweaters, jackets and thank goodness for dads because my dad brought the blankets. That was the only baseball game I have ever needed a blanket for! I love baseball. And I'm SSSSOOOOO glad Lance does too. Because if he didn't he wouldn't be seeing much of me April through October! =) Well.....maybe only April through September since the Angels can't seem to make it to October!!

Baseball and our wedding only a month away. Yippee!!!

Love,

Suzanne

32 days to go.......

2009-03-24T23:45:00.000-07:00

Bet you thought I was going to miss a day! Well, I almost did! =) This one is going to be quick, because I'm tired. I love Lance because he leaves awesome loving notes for me to find when I have a bad day. Normally they are on post it notes so I will throw it in my wallet or stick it on the bathroom mirror so I can look at it and smile when I need some inspiration!

He's awesome! Good night!

Love,

Suzanne

33 days to go.........

2009-03-23T12:42:00.001-07:00

Our girls weekend has come to an end and we have all made it home alive....tired, but alive. Now, I need a vacation from my vacation! I'm exhausted! But we were all back at work bright and early this morning!

Todays post was when Lance and I made our first trip to Magic Mountain as a couple. I came to the revelation on that trip that I'm not as young as I once was. I used to be able to go to Magic Mountain and do all the rollercoasters all day long. Well, not anymore. I only did a few on this trip and I was done! Luckily, I wasn't there to ride the rides all day long. Lance and I went with our friends Chris and Ryan (shoutout! Miss you guys!) and we were there to see some country singers perform that night. Lance is not a country fan, so while we were at the concert, he continued to ride all the rides I could no longer handle!

The Goliath rollercoaster has goliath sized letters in front of it so of course we had to take a picture in front of the L for Lance. I'm so greatful Lance has a stomach that can handle these rides, because I'm surely not going to go with the kids on these rides! They will have to take their father! =)

Love,
Suzanne

34 days to go........

2009-03-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

This picture was our first Halloween together. We had only been dating for 4 months at this point and he must have really loved me. I've never been able to get him in anything like this again.

Look carefully, I think he really likes it. He probably won't admit it though! It doesn't matter if he's in his costume or not, he is still my knight in shining armor for sure! We definitely got our use out of these costumes that night, we ended up going to 3 different Halloween parties! Funny, I don't think we've been to a Halloween party since that year! I should see if I can talk him into dressing up next Halloween! I won't hold my breath! hahahaha

Love,
Suzanne

35 days to go.....

2009-03-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

Some of you that know I am out of town right now, might be wondering how I am posting a blog! Well, because I am a planner! Right now I am soaking up the Tempe sun, probably waiting for the Angel game to start. My wedding party has whisked me off to Tempe Arizona to catch an Angels spring training game. It's just the girls and I anticipate loads of rest, relaxation and fun! Head over to our wedding blog to read about our adventurous weekend! I have left Lance with the rod of power. No, not the remote, but the permission to push PUBLISH POST! Don't forget to publish Lance, I'm on a roll! =) Ok, now go ahead and publish today's post please.

**************************************************************************

In August of 2006 Lance got a great deal on a Carnival Cruise that would take us through the Caribbean. As some of you may know from a previous post, that's why we stopped in Miami first. This was the first time I had even been on a cruise ship before and I'm hooked. I love it! I can't say enough about Carnival and great time I had. I completely understand why some people only do cruises!

We signed up for the 8pm time slot for our evening dinner and we were there every night. I can't believe people didn't take advantage of this! These were some of the best meals ever! They sat us at a table for 4, which I was bummed about since I wanted a table for 2! I'm in love what can I say, I didn't want to be sociable! =) We got lucky though, they only showed up for 1 1/2 of our dinners. They were weird! First of all the guy looked like a clone of Flavor Flav.

Seriously, I wouldn't lie. I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to! He looked just like him! It was a little creepy. But he wasn't the nutzo one. The nutzo one was his girlfriend/wife chick. She was so sea sick they only made it to 1 1/2 dinners. Which is A-OK with me! That means we got to enjoy the rest of our dinners alone, without having to talk to Flavor Flav and his lady!

I just love this picture! We look so nice and tan and happy. Because we were so tan and happy! Do we look alike in this picture? I thought that was supposed to happen after 50 years of marriage, not after 5 years of dating. HHMM At least we aren't starting to look like Murphy!

Enough rambling. I love cruises, I love good food on the cruises, I love this picture, I love Lance. The End. Peace out homies. Go Angels!

Love,

Suzanne

36 days to go......

2009-03-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

I love this man because............

I can already tell he's going to be a great father!

Love,

Suzanne

P.S. If I don't post tomorrow it's because Lance killed me* for posting this picture! hehehehehe How could I not post this picture they are so darn cute laying there!

*Lance has never physically, mentally, or emotionally harmed me in anyway. It's a joke people! He wouldn't really kill me, I promise! No animals or humans were hurt in the making of this blog!

37 days to go........

2009-03-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

We are back in New Zealand for this post. I'll be honest, I wish we were back in New Zealand now! I heart New Zealand. When we went to NZ it was August 2005 which made it their winter time. Which is why most of our pictures we are in jackets and long pants. We only visited the North island which has winters pretty comparable to Southern California. Have I already said all this stuff? I should go back and read my other NZ posts to see if I'm repeating things here. Please hold...........nope, I'm not repeating myself.

So, since it was slightly cold and rainy in NZ we always had our jackets and umbrellas handy. We were walking along trying to find Karangahape Road when it started to rain. Rain it did, a little harder than we wanted to be walking through. Luckily, we just happened to be in front of the cutest little cafe ever. A Starbucks it was not! They had some covered seating on the side walk so we grabbed a seat and Lance went in and ordered us some coffee. Now, I am not the biggest coffee drinker ever. When I used to start my Disney job at 4am I used to drink it a lot! But that's because Wendy is a bad influence! =) Now that I start my Northrop job at 7am, I very rarely drink it. Wait, I'm off track, back to NZ! So we've established, I don't drink coffee. But this latte was the best latte EVER.

Look how cool! Are these people artists or what!?!?! Looking at it right now, I want to dive right in and drink it up. Except for the fact it's 80 degrees outside right now! If it weren't so darn warm outside I'd want to jump right in and drink it all up!

This was the perfect moment! I was sitting on the sidewalk in NZ watching the rain, drinking a fabulous looking and tasting latte, sitting with my boyfriend, (who obviously is now my fiance' yippee!!!) hanging out in NZ. How awesome. We just sat there, talked and took in the sights and sounds of the town. I don't know if that moment can ever be recreated. I hope so. I hope so, because it was just too fabulous to only happen once in a lifetime!

Love,
Suzanne

38 days to go........

2009-03-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

I love Vegas. The end.

Just kidding there's more! But I do love Vegas! This trip to Vegas was especially memorable to me because we were able to meet up with Lance's family. I believe it was Emma's first time to Vegas as well. It's fun to go to Vegas with people who have never been there, or people who haven't been there in years because they are so awe struck!

I know this picture doesn't scream Vegas, oh well, just trust me. I promise it's in Vegas. And clearly we are super self absorbed because I cannot find any pictures from that trip that have us with the family. I remember taking them, I just can't seem to find them!

Vegas is also a special place because that's where Lance told me for the first time he loved me. At the Aladdin (now Planet Hollywood) standing in line to buy chapstick. AAHHH how cute! Vegas is also the place he left me stranded at the MGM after a Cher concert all alone when he promised he would be back to pick me up. Yup, I'm still bitter! =) But the happy memories out way that time I wanted to slug him!!

Hopefully after every extra dime we have stops going to the wedding fund, we can go back to Vegas and have some fun! I know we are both itching to go! And it doesn't take us very long to talk Ronnie and Sherry into meeting us there either! ;-)

Love,
Suzanne

39 days to go......

2009-03-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Oh.My.Goodness. We are in the 30's! And can you believe I have posted 10 blogs in a row?? I know some of you were skeptics out there in blogger land! I don't blame you! Most of the time we don't have all that much going on! Lately, things have been picking up speed! I'm about to marry my best friend, so of course I'm going to be blogging a lot to let you all know how much I love him!

I think in a previous post, I mentioned something about my hatred toward heat and humidity. Now, heat by itself is ok. I'm a "dry heat" kind of girl! I heard a million times growing up about people talking about the East Coast and the humidity and the story about taking a shower, walking outside and feeling like you needed to take another shower. I had heard it all. But it's hard to comprehend, when you've never lived it.

In August 2006 we decided to go on a cruise to the Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maarten. The boat would be departing out of Miami. I had only been to the East Coast two times up until that point. Both times to Florida, one time in January and one time in September. Both visits were very lovely, and I didn't have to deal with any suffocating humidity. Well, this trip to Florida was different. It was in August, and we were going to be spending a few days in Miami sightseeing before boarding our cruise ship.

Miami sucks. Let me rephrase that. Miami in August sucks. I was miserable. How do people live there? Lance and I went walking to the beach after checking into our hotel. I couldn't wait to jump in the water and get cooled off. Did I mention I was miserable? I set my stuff down, took off my flips flops and went to the waters edge to get some relief. When my foot touched that water I wanted to cry. It was freaking bath water. Warm, warm bath water. It never dawned on me that the water wouldn't be cold like our ocean back home. When you are at our beach, laying out getting a tan and you get hot, you go cool off in the ocean. How do people live here?

Now, I'm sure some of you are wondering, what does this have to do with loving Lance!?!?! I would be lying if I said I was a perfect angel who never got snippy or annoyed or just down right aggravated that even at 11 o'clock at night it was still 95 degrees with 100% humidity. I may have snipped or snapped a time or two before boarding that boat, but Lance still tried to make things better. And hey, he snipped and snapped a time or two himself! I'm just being real here!

I actually do like Miami. We had a great time there exploring the city. I just didn't know what I was in for. Now I do. And you won't see me visiting the other coast during the summer again if I can at all avoid it!

This picture was right before the realization that the Atlantic ocean was a hot tub. Just look at us, we look so naive!

Love,
Suzanne

40 days to go.......

2009-03-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

Lance and I ended up meeting thanks in part to the fact that we both worked at Disneyland. When I met him, he had already quit, but I was still there. I think he put in 12 years and I put in 8 years. And though there were some good times and some bad times, overall we both really liked it. We were just talking last night with Cat on the fact that we all miss it there, but yet, we still don't want to go back! hahaha We all agreed we miss seeing the people that we worked with everyday, but we don't really miss the politics, the hours, and the working every weekend and holiday!

Since I was still at Disney while Lance and I were dating we were able to enjoy the annual Holiday Party. This was definitely one of the perks for working there! I love Disneyland at Christmas time. It's my favorite time of year there!

The year this picture was taken it rained, so our pictures didn't turn out all that great; but I love this spot! New Orleans Square is the prettiest spot in the park and the coolest part of the park to work in.

I quit Disney in October 2006 and we haven't been back since. It's kind of sad now that I think of it, but I really needed the break! Looking at this picture reminds me of all the good times I had at Disneyland with Lance. I can't wait until we can start bringing our kids there. Oddly enough, Disneyland turned out to be a special place for the both of us!

Love,
Suzanne

41 days to go.....

2009-03-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

I don't have any pictures for this post, but it stands out as a favorite moment in our relationship. When Lance and I first met, it was on a blind date with my sister and her then boyfriend. I could tell on that date that he was a nice guy and that if he asked me out again I would say yes.

The story of him finally getting around to asking me out is another blog for another time, but we did end up finally going out on our first official date. After that date we went back to his apartment to hang out and talk some more. It was the first time I was able to meet Murphy and Bean who pretty much hid the entire time I was there. I think a few hours after hanging out and talking they made an appearance to start forming their opinions about me! =)

When we first started dating I was working at Disney and my start time was 4am. Well, after talking with Lance for a few hours I was getting really tired and I kept asking him what time it was. Every time he would say, it's only 10pm. I caught onto his game after asking him for the second time and it was still amazingly only 10pm. He really made me laugh and we were having such a good time getting to know each other.

That night getting to know each other has stayed with us. And it's become an inside joke to always tell each other that it's only 10pm. That night, I pretty much went home, showered and went to work. I was tired, but he was worth it!

Love,

Suzanne

42 days to go....

2009-03-14T11:01:00.001-07:00

I haven't done laundry in a year and a half.....................

I love this man. I appreciate his helpfulness. I am sooooooo lucky to have him. Have I mentioned I haven't done laundry in a year and a half??? Thanks Sherry and Ronnie for raising such a caring, awesome man! He knows if he does the laundry it's one less thing I have to worry about getting done and for that, I am truly grateful!

Love,

Suzanne

43 days to go.......

2009-03-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

Well we are back in New Zealand for this post; oh how I love New Zealand! Our travels first took us to Auckland where we were able to explore that city up and down, left and right. We did so much walking on that trip we came home skinnier than when we left! I love those kinds of vacations! =)

This picture is in front of Auckland Museum, and it always makes me laugh!

This picture was taken as proof that we made it.....and as proof that I didn't physically harm Lance on the way to the museum! Here's the back story....we had a New Zealand book that we dog eared and high lighted and made notes on before we left of all the places and things we wanted to see while we were there. One of those sites was the Auckland Museum. Before we left our hotel room that morning we planned out our day. We would hit a few places before the museum, then end up at the museum, then end up back at our hotel that evening. It was a perfect circle of activities for the day. Until we got lost.

I remember distinctively at one point begging to hop on a bus because according to my map, we had a very long distance to go. But no. According to Lance all we needed to do was "cut through here" and the museum would be just on the other side. Now ladies, if your boyfriend, fiance', husband, brother, father, homeless man on the street ever tells you that you just need to "cut through here", ignore them. They are lying, and they have no idea where they are going. And they surely do not want to ask for directions.

I considered just getting on a bus by myself but then the thoughts of my father flying to New Zealand to yell at me for "not staying with Lance" prevented me from doing that. I'm pretty sure before we left my dad said "take care of her". That must mean don't get on a bus by yourself. So cutting through Lance's short cut is what I did. 5 miles and a dead end later we turned around and headed back to the road we were originally on. Oh. my. goodness. our relationship was so tested that day! We ended up finding it, it was actually just around the corner from where we turned off to take our detour. We finally made it and nobody died! And we had a great time.

This blog post may sound like I'm contradicting my "we travel well together" blog, but I'm not. I swear! We do travel great together! I learned a lot on our little detour. I learned that I could still love him after wanting to hurt him because he wouldn't just listen to me. And hopefully, he learned to just listen to me. Hello.....hello.....(tap, tap, tap) is this thing on????

Love,
Suzanne

44 days to go......

2009-03-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who know me well, know that I love scrapbooking. Of course I never have enough time to do it, but I love it anyway! One day I'll be all caught up.... one day. ( A girl can dream can't she???!!!) Well, every once in awhile I will think of something to do because it will be a great scrapbooking page. This day was one of those days!

I decided one Saturday morning in October, that we needed to go to the pumpkin patch. Lance gave me that blank stare and said, "why?" Then I told him it would be a great scrapbooking layout. I just love this guy. He plays along with my craziness. Before he new it, we were in a pumpkin patch picking our pumpkins! Say that 10 times fast.

We actually had a great time. Though it was awkward at times being that we were the only people there without kids! Apparently people without kids don't randomly go to the pumpkin patch. Who knew! This place was so cool though! There were so many pumpkins to pick from and they even had donkey rides. Which we didn't do! We'll wait for the kids to do that one! hahaha

We went home that night and carved our pumpkins, and Murphy helped too. We got some great pictures. I would love to show you how great the layout turned out for these pictures. But, unfortunately, I'm about 3 years behind. Yikes! hahahahaha

Love,
Suzanne

45 days to go.....

2009-03-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

Oh, boy, our bitter football rivalry. See, I've been a Buffalo Bills fan since Georgia Frontiere took my Rams and upped and moved them out of Anaheim. I was bitter, and angry, and absolutely, positively would not become and St. Louis Rams fan. And I surely wasn't going to become a Raiders fan. Negative. Nope. No way Jose! So, I picked Buffalo and they have been my team ever since.

In June of 2003, I started dating Lance. It was baseball season which was great because we were both Angel fans. Football was not even spoken about until right before the football season was about to start. Lance pulls out this Troy Aikman plaque that his brother Ryan got him when they were younger. I said to him, you're just a Troy Aikman fan right. Please tell me you're not a Dallas fan. Please please please! No such luck. He's a huge Dallas fan. And I think he became an even bigger Dallas fan once he found out I was a Buffalo fan.

Pretty much every football season since, he has tormented me. He bought me a Buffalo Bills Drew Bledsoe jersey which I love. Then the very next season Buffalo traded him. To what team you may ask??? Dallas. Then Dallas sighed Terrell Owens. The lone cancer cell to every other team he has played on. I knew I would get redemption when T.O. infected Dallas like he did his other teams. He didn't really do the damage I expected him to do. Then before T.O. could go into his full blown attack on his team, Dallas released him. And who signed him for next season you may ask... my stinking Buffalo Bills. You know when Nancy Kerrigan got hit on the knee by the guy with the pipe during the Olympic trials? And she laid there moaning and crying WHY WHY WHY........ya, that's what I'm doing right now. WHY WHY WHY Buffalo must you bring this cancerous cell to our team??? And, you know what Lance is doing? Smiling from ear to ear. He is so excited to watch this guy ruin my struggling team.

I love the fact Lance and I don't have the same favorite football team, (even though I wished he liked anybody else other than Dallas!) it gives us some friendly competition around the house. Of course some smack talking too. None more than this last week, thanks to T.O. Maybe, T.O. will be good for us..... maybe, just maybe.

My jersey is way cooler than the lame star on his jersey! =)

Love,
Suzanne

46 days to go.......

2009-03-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

Aahh, our DC trip. I loved this trip for so many different reasons. Work sent me to DC in February of 2008. See those big coats we are wearing? Ya, we had to buy them before we left for our trip. We are Southern California people, we don't own heavy coats! =) I was so excited to take this trip because Lance was going to be able to come with me. I had never been to DC and he had only been there when he was in middle school (when he threw up, but that's a different story for a different time!). It was awesome being there in 2008 because it was the beginning of the election year. And oh boy, is hind sight 20/20! On every corner, in every store you could buy McCain and Clinton stuff. Not much Obama stuff at the time. Funny how in February he didn't stand a chance, and by November Clinton had lost her steam and Obama was chugging along to become our next President!

I was sent to DC for a 4 day conference and we planned on staying the whole week so we could do some sight seeing. I'm so glad we did! Even though I was the coldest I had ever been in my life, I was still glad to be there exploring a new city with Lance. At one point in our trip we were walking from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capital. Which probably can be done a lot easier when it's not 30 degrees outside! We were continuing on with our trek and I looked at Lance and said, "thank you for asking me to marry you in Hawaii and not here." He busted up laughing and asked why it mattered if it was in DC or Hawaii. Here's the thing, I really really really thought he was going to ask me when we went to DC. It never in a million years crossed my mind that he was going to ask me in Hawaii. I was completely and totally shocked. If he would have asked me in DC where I was suspecting he might the whole time, I would have been walking around without my gloves on (so I could easily slip my new ring on of course!!! ;-) ) I probably would have had frost bite on my fingers. I would have been trying to make sure I was photo ready and I wouldn't have been able to enjoy our trip; waiting and waiting for him to pop the question. And Lord help the poor man if I would have gone home from DC without an engagement! hahahahaha I mean really, how long does a girl have to wait. Just kidding Lance!!! I would have waited forever...........maybe! hehehehe

Lance was also able to introduce me to Scott and Stephanie and their two kids, Nate and Hannah. I just have so many great memories of DC. I'm glad we got to go in February. I learned that I can handle the cold much better than I can handle 100 degree heat with 100% humidity aka Miami in August. That blog will be coming up at a later date!

I love love LOVE traveling with Lance. We make such great travel buddies and we love exploring new things. I also loved when he pointed out the planter that he threw up in, and the bench he had to lay at. He is one funny guy!

Love,
Suzanne

47 days to go........

2009-03-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

We are on day 47 and I've already given you 3 reasons why I love my future husband. By the time this is over I will have listed 50 different things/or memories that have happened with him that I have loved dearly. The great thing about Lance is that daily he does things that make me want to hug him a little tighter. This post is an impromptu post. It wasn't in my original 50. But that Lance, he keeps me on my toes!

On Friday, I did a trial run with a hair dresser to see how we were going to do my hair. She was slightly overwhelmed because my hair is so thick and there is just so darn much of it! See picture below and you'll know what I'm talking about!

I had made an appointment with my normal hair dresser to get my hair cut before the wedding, so I told this hair dresser, don't worry, my hair will be a little* shorter for the wedding. I'm getting it cut tomorrow, so there won't be as much to work with!

Well, I did end up getting it cut. But the few inches I thought were coming off turned into half my hair. As seen below.

I was so upset when I got home that I walked into our bedroom and just started crying. Poor Lance thought something was wrong. When he finally realized I was crying over my weed whacked hair he started laughing at me. Oh, yes, I do love this man. =) My hair is growing on me (though it's not growing fast enough!). My main concern is that it's not going to be long enough to do the up-do that I wanted for the wedding. My hair dresser swears it will be and I hope she's right. I wouldn't have really cared that much if I didn't have a wedding in a month an a half!

Maybe after the wedding I'll start growing it out again and then donate it to Locks of Love! Or, maybe I'll like the short do so much I'll keep it. Only time will tell!

Thanks for being there to laugh at me Lance! You always know how to put things into perspective! =)

Love,
Suzanne
*Apparently a few inches to a non hair dresser (me) means something totally different to a real hair dresser! =)

48 days to go!

2009-03-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Time is flying by! Only 48 days to go. My next stop down memory lane is my last day (from Disney) party. My last days at Disney were a little bitter sweet. I was happy to be leaving, but after 8 years there, some of my best friends were still there. And I loved being able to see them every day!

It was time to go though, I had advanced as far as I had wanted to there, and frankly, I was tired of working every stinking holiday!

Lance of course was awesome on this day. He was working at the STA at USC and I was already at Northrop. I was so sick on this day. Lance had taken the train from LB to LA then he was going to take the train from his work to my work. We were then going to drive to Orange County and have my last day party.* My boss at Northrop let me go early that day because I was so sick, but I couldn't go home because Lance would be left without a car. So I drove to the train station and slept. When he got there he drove me to the OC and to the party and then took care of me when I had a bit too much to drink!

My sister Cat did everything in her power to embarrass me..... hence the pink tiara! I had a great time that night. After a few drinks I didn't feel sick at all! =)

*One would think that most people would have their "last day" party their actual last day. Nope, not me. I had mine about a week or two after I had already quit! =) I was busy what can I say! hahahaha

Love, Suzanne

49 days to go!

2009-03-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

49 days to go, and after only doing 1 blog, I almost forgot about doing this one! Oops! At least I remembered before we had to head off to work.

This post is about our trip to New Zealand. There will definitely be more New Zealand posts since we had so many special memories there! Lance and I are Amazing Race fanatics. We have watched the show together since we started dating and we love to check out all the cool places they travel too. Watching it with Lance always cracks me up because he watches it and tells you before hand which flights will get you there the fastest and which one has long layovers etc. His travel agent skills come in handy watching this show!

In one of the seasons, the players went to an ice bar in Russia. It was the coolest thing ever! Everything was frozen, from the bar, to the chairs, to even the cup they were drinking their drinks out of. When we got to New Zealand we started checking out different things to do. We found a brochure for an ice bar just walking distance from our hotel. We just had to try it out. It was so awesome. It was everything I expected, and more. They would only let you stay in there for about 25 minutes. My guess is that getting drunk in a freezing bar is probably not good for your body, so everybody had a 25 minute time limit to enjoy the bar. Of course they ushered you out into a non ice bar because they still want you to drink! hahahaha

We had such a great time at the ice bar and it was such a great experience. We actually felt like we were on the Amazing Race!

Love, Suzanne

Countdown....50 days to go!

2009-03-06T21:43:00.000-08:00

Well, we only have 50 more days until Lance and I say "I do"! I wanted to do something special as we countdown to wedding day and I have decided to do 50 blogs in 50 days. I can't believe I'm about to commit to this during the final stages of wedding planning, but I really think Lance and I will be able to look back at this and enjoy it a lot. Plus, I think it will be so much fun traveling down memory lane as we approach our wedding date!

The stories I'm about to share with you over the next 50 days are stories from the last 4 1/2 years Lance and I have been dating. They are stories and pictures of some of my favorite moments over those years. I hope you all enjoy the next month and a half of stories!

50 days to go......... This picture was taken about 2 weeks after Lance and I started dating. This trip to the Long Beach Aquarium was our first big outing; and the first picture we ever took together. This picture has such sentimental value to me because it is our first picture. I remember printing it off a few days after our trip to the aquarium and putting it up in my cubical at Disney.

One thing I remembered about that trip was me talking to him about the fact that I was about to go back to school soon. We had started dating at the end of June/beginning of July and my college classes started soon in August. Come September I would be going to school full time and working two jobs. I wanted to make sure he was going to be ok with the fact that my time with him was going to be very much limited once that happened. He was so sweet and supportive. We had only been dating a few weeks and he said to me that it didn't matter, he would still be there for me. Yup, I pretty much new at that point, the day we took this picture, he was a keeper!

Lance had that thing growing out from under his lip when we first started dating. I hated that thing........and as the pictures progress you will notice that it disappears......hhhmmm wonder how that happened??? hahahahaha

Love, Suzanne

Wedding Shower

2009-02-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

About a month ago now, my dear friend Sandy from Violette (the elementary school I used to work at) hosted a beautiful wedding shower for me. I worked at Violette for 5 years and loved every minute of it. I loved my job, my students and most of all the staff! Some of the Violette staff has known me since I was just a little girl, since my mom has been at Violette for the last twenty something years!

These are the smartest, most caring, thoughtful, talented group of people I know. And they are damn good teachers too! If I can weasel my way into having my kids go there, I'm so going to do it! Maybe I'll get the hook ups! =)

Here are some pictures from the fun day!

Cat and Rachel drinking it up!

Paula and myself! I was so excited to see Paula! I hadn't seen her in way too long!

Some of the teachers helped out and make some absolutely delicious food for the party! That's one thing I left off of my list of things they are good at! They are all great cooks and for some odd reason they expect me to become a good cook too. HHHMMM we'll see about that! =)

Here I am getting ready to eat some of the great food!

Thanks for the flowers Jackie they were beautiful! And, they just happen to be my favorite type of flower! Don't worry, you all will be seeing a lot of them at the wedding!

These were the awesome cakes Sandy had out for dessert. They were very yummy! Talk about a sugar rush!!

Here are some pictures of the party guests!

This picture is where they try and make me a better cook! I hope it works!

Thank you Sandy for a wonderful shower! I had a wonderful time and it meant so much to me and Lance. We love you and your family so much! I hope that Cathy's wedding goes just as you have planned it! hahahaha

Love,
Suzanne

I'm taking over the world....DisneyWorld that is!

2009-02-18T06:34:00.000-08:00

How cool would this be if it we actually true! It would be slight pay back for the 8 years I had to work holidays, birthdays, special events, gradnights and the list goes on and on! =)

At the end you can send it to whomever you would like if you want to!

Love,
Suzanne

Lance's Birthday

2009-02-16T15:30:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday I took a half day to go get my wedding dress fitted and also to celebrate Lance's birthday! I've decided I'm in the wrong business and I need to get into the alterations business! My alterations cost me half the total cost of my dress. Completely ridiculous! But, I wasn't about to fall flat on my face walking down the isle so pay the absurd amount of money I did!

Now on to Lance's birthday. When I got home we went down to K-1 Speed. K-1 is a go cart speedway where the go carts go about 45 mph. I bought us both 3 races each, but I only went twice. My daredevil days are past me I guess. I was driving along and this pre-teen girl who was in our heat had spun out around a blind corner. I never saw her, hence the blind corner part. Luckily I was going some what slower because it was a corner, but that crash knocked me around good! The crash didn't faze that little girl. Me, I was done. I had a big bruise along my inner leg that was the same shape as the steering column, a bruise on my neck from the seat belt, and bruises along my side from being josseled around in the go cart. This is why we have to wear these big helmets. I should have turned around at that point! =) For those of you who know Dr. Wilson, he would not have been pleased!

Sitting out the last round I was able to take pictures of Lance as he went around the track. Our little digital camera could not keep up with how fast he was going. I was trying to time it perfectly and it would take so darn long for the thing to take he was already gone when it finally did! Oh, and the lighting was horrible in there! Sorry they are so dark. If you can spot him, he's in the gray shirt and jeans.

The last picture is our dinner at Dukes down in Huntington Beach. It's one of our favorite restaurants and it sits right on the water. Since it was Lance's birthday they gave him a piece of Hula Pie. The best dessert EVER! You can tell he's excited! hahahaha

Hope you had a fun birthday Lance! I love you lots!

Love to everyone!

Suzanne

Funny Story

2009-01-14T09:09:00.001-08:00

Last night I needed to go pick up my allergy medication from the Kaiser down the street, so what better way to reduce your carbon footprint than to ride your bike?!?!?! And that's exactly what we did! I had this idea while I was at work, so I called Lance and asked him to get our bikes ready to go and hopefully find our helmets! We hadn't been bike riding in a long time and what better night to do it than last night! It was 70 degrees last night with a high of 88! IN JANUARY! Oh, how I love California! Sorry to all of you in colder climates!! =)

I got home from work, Lance made me dinner (he's the best!) and we headed off on our bike ride. We were jamming along when we got to an intersection where we had to stop and wait for our turn to go. As we were waiting this guy walks over to us and he totally smells of alcohol. He was pretty young too, I would say in his mid-twenties. He comes over and he says, I have an iPod for sale. I look at him and say, um, ok. Then he's like, this isn't just any iPod, it's Scarlett Johansson's iPod. At this point I just start to laugh. Then he starts going into this whole spiel about how he is selling it for a great price. Well of course, I have to ask him what this great price is. Then he tells us he will sell it to us for $200,000! I almost fell off my bike. $200,000 for an iPod, from a celebrity are you kidding me. And he's trying to sell it in the middle of Santa Ana for that price. Ya, good luck! Lance and I just laughed and luckily our light turned green and we could continue on our journey.

So, I'm putting it out there, if any of you want a $200,000 Scarlett Johansson iPod, please let me know! hahahaha Maybe I can go find the guy for you! hahahaha
Love,
Suzanne

Happy New Year!!!!

2009-01-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! Well, we surely did slack off there at the end of last year, but we are back in action for 2009! Of course we are, we have a wedding in 103 days!!!!

I just posted the hotel information on our wedding blog. So please stop by http://suzanneandlancewedding.blogspot.com/ and check it out! Also, let me know if you book a room so I can make sure we have enough! More updates either here or on the wedding blog soon!
Love,Suzanne

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T21:20:00.000-08:00

Lance and I wanted to wish all of our friends and family a very happy Thanksgiving! We had a very busy day working at Marie Callendar's getting all the customers pies and feast orders ready. Overall the day was a success and even though the rain tried to make it difficult, everyone seemed very happy with how things went.

After our long shift we headed over to my Mom and Dad's for a delicious home made meal! My Mom out did herself again and we are stuffed. I meant to take a picture of the table before we all dug in, but my stomach was talking too loudly and I forgot. So, enjoy the pictures of the leftovers! I love Thanksgiving Day leftovers!! =)

Love to you all,
Suzanne and Lance

P.S. Disregard the cheerios. They were not part of the Thanksgiving Day feast! hahahaha

Camping

2008-11-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

Well last weekend Lance's old busser friends got together for a camping trip. Cat and Lance left on Friday to head down to meet everyone at the campsite. They were camping at a site not too far away from Camp Pendleton near the beach. While the winds and wild fires were raging in inland Orange County, the OC beaches were beautiful. Clear blue skies, no wind or fire. Thankfully!

I joined the group Saturday night after work. This was the first time Lance and I in our 4 1/2 years of dating have ever been camping together. Everytime he has gone before I have had work or other obligations and I haven't been able to go. This time though, they were close enough for me to drive down and meet them for the evening.

Seeing everybody was great and we had a lot of fun. Apparently no one takes pictures while camping though, unless something really funny happens. Like so.......

Rod left his $80 sunglasses on top of his lantern and then proceeded to light it. He left to go to the bathroom and while he was gone his fuel burned out and the lamp went off. Tom jumped up and then turned on his lantern. When Rod returned he said, did my lamp burn out? We told him yes and then all of the sudden he says, holy S*^t! All of us thought geez Rod we have another lantern it's no big deal. Then that's when he showed us his sunglasses. We all about died laughing. Why he didn't take them off when he lit the lantern we'll never know! That will definitely be a camping story we will be talking about for years to come!

The only other picture that Cat took was of me and Lance finally getting to go camping together. It was lots of fun and I can't wait until we get to do it again!

California Burning

2008-11-19T08:34:00.000-08:00

I'm sure most of you have heard by now that we had some pretty devestating wild fires last weekend. This coming weekend is supposed to be the same kind of dry/windy weather conditions and I pray we don't see a repeat of last weekend!

The fire nearest to us is called the Freeway Complex Fire. This fire was so scary because it was moving so fast and it was so unpredictable. We were actually camping last weekend when the fire started to head into Orange County heading down the freeway towards Cat's house. We decided we should pack up her pictures and her computer just to be on the safe side. On our way over there Lance snapped some pictures from her car. It was horrible. The smoke was so think and nasty and blowing right at us. As I was driving into the smoke and ash I felt so sorry for the people a few miles ahead who were watching their houses burn. It was really sad!

When we pulled up to Cat's house to get some of her things it looked it was nighttime when it was actually only early afternoon. Such an errie feeling!

After grabbing some of her things, which I might note that she only grabbed two days worth of work clothes, but she did grab all of her Angels baseball jersey and jackets. Priorities I tell you priorities! =) Anyway, we headed down to the campsite (which will be tomorrows blog) and enjoyed our evening. When Cat headed back home on Sunday, the wind had shifted and the skies were blue again.

Unfortunately with the wind shift, the fire and smoke was causing havoc in Diamond Bar; causing many evacuations and close calls. Luckily though no homes lost there. Other parts of Orange County didn't do so well and over all I think a couple hundred homes were lost. It seems like these days "fire season" is all year round which is a bummer. I guess it's just part of living in So Cal.

Lance Wins!

2008-11-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

Well, it came down to a stressful Monday Night Football game, but Lance won! Credits of course! As discussed in a previous blog, gambling is illegal here in Cali.......but who cares, he won! $110 big ones! And oh boy was he waiting for this. It pained him ever so slightly that I had won the pool and he hadn't. hahahaha

Of course last night was a little bitter sweet because he needed Cleveland to win and they were playing MY Buffalo Bills. I bit the bullet and rooted for Cleveland anyways because let's be real people, we are saving for a wedding, and Buffalo is going no where fast this year anyways!

Good job Lance! And GO BUFFALO!

Happy Birthday Mom!

2008-11-10T19:30:00.000-08:00

I know I'm a few days late posting this to the web but I wanted to wish my Mom a very happy birthday! Her birthday was November 8th and we had a jam packed day. We spent 4 hours dress shopping and I found the most beautiful dress ever! Thanks for helping me decide on such a beautiful dress Mom!

Mom,
I know this sounds cliche, but thanks for always being there. It took growing up and becoming an adult to fully appreciate all you have done for me (and Cat and Rachel too of course!! hahaha). You were at every parent/teacher conference (some of which we didn't want you to be at!), you were at every music performance, volleyball game, swimming meet and all the other million things we did growing up. You bussed us around, let our friends spend the night, and were the mom all our friends loved and wanted to hang out with.

As an adult I know I can call whenever I need to vent or cry or share great news. You don't judge, you just listen and offer support. Your support is one of the greatest gifts in my life. I love you more than I'll ever be able to express. There aren't enough thank you's out there to be given.

Thank you a million times over. I love you!
Love, Suzanne
P.S. You better leave a comment! =)

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T21:22:00.000-07:00

Today for Halloween Lance and I decided we would go apple picking! We completely stole the idea from Ryan and Emma's blog so stop by their blog if you're looking for cool things to do! =) When I first read their blog about going apple picking I thought to myself how cool would that be! But I never really thought us Orange County kids would have a place close enough for us to visit. Well, pretty much I had never thought about apple picking ever before until I read their blog. Thanks to the power of googling we found Riley's farm.

We both had the day off today so we got up, had some breakfast and headed out of the city. It took us about an hour and a half to get there but it was a part of California neither Lance or myself have explored before. The whole picking process was actually really quick so we decided when we go back, we are going to go on a day that they have more things to pick. Today they only had pumpkins and apples. Other times of the year they have blackberries, raspberries, pears etc. That way we can head up there and pick a whole bunch of stuff!

We had a lot of fun picking our own apples and we just had one a little bit ago and it was very yummy! Hopefully Emma will post some apple recipes on her food blog to help me use all these apples!! ;-)

Here are some pick-tures (get it?? hahaha)
This is the first apple I picked and can you tell I was excited??

It sure is a good thing I brought the tall guy with me! Apple picking is not a thing for short people to do. I pretty much pointed out apples I thought would be good and Lance grabbed them for me!

Here is our half full bag.....

And our very full bag!!!

Here is Lance at the pumpkin patch. We didn't buy any pumpkins this year, but they sure had some cool looking ones!

This was the general store of the farm. They said the barn was built in 1880. Lance captured the beautiful hills behind the barn too!
We saw this goat on the way out and it made us laugh. He's just so funny looking. I've never seen a goat like that before. He did have the same colors as our Murphy but Murphy isn't so spotty. Maybe the goat thought he was a cow???

We also saw this beautiful house on the way back home. Lance and I decided that if we ever win the lottery we want a house built like this one. We don't want to buy this one because it's in the middle of nowhere. And frankly, we are city folk. We did have a great time on the farm though! The weather was fabulous at 75 degrees and we were able to pick a bunch of really delicious granny smith apples!

Financial Crisis aka Suzanne's Rant

2008-10-12T08:22:00.000-07:00

I can't believe what has been happening with the stock market this last week. I've lost 45% of my 401k in a week. In one stinking week. I've been working the last 10 years to have my 401k cut practically in half in one week. And there are people out there who have it a lot worse than me. At least I'm not planning on retiring soon. How can those people retire soon? They must have no money left. It's so sad.

I've been watching all the shows on TV that have been trying to explain what is going on. And how come we have found ourselves in this predicament. On one of the Oprah's they called us (the middle class population) Annie. What I realized after watching that show is that I'm pissed at Annie. I'm pissed at the banks and the financial institutions. I'm pissed that our government is bailing out these companies and the CEO's are spending $400,000+ for spas and vacations. I'm pissed that the banks went out and offered loans to Annie's who could not afford them. I'm pissed at Annie for taking those loans and now Annie can't make the loan payments.

Lance and I didn't go out and get a home loan, because we knew we couldn't afford it. We didn't go out and buy $50,000 cars and run up our credit card bills because we knew we couldn't afford it. It makes me irate that certain politicians want to buy out home loans for the people that are foreclosing on their property. Why? So they can stay in their homes and my taxes can go up? No thank you. So that the bank can still make their profit off of the loan? Maybe the bank should not have loaned so much money out to high risk Annie's!

Ok, I think I'm done ranting. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. Now, I'm going to stuff my money under my mattress. I kid I kid things aren't that bad..............yet! And I promise to not use this blog as a place where I rant....too often! And I promise not to spew my political views........too often! Hopefully everyone will be voting in a few weeks!

The Fat Lady Sang....Loudly

2008-10-07T08:21:00.000-07:00

Wow. Sad. Pathetic. Enough said.

Hunt for a RED October

2008-10-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Angels post season started last Wednesday and oh my goodness has it been a dismal post season so far. The Angels finished the season with the best record in baseball. They clinched the American League West Championship in early September, way before all the other teams clinched. On paper they are the best team in baseball. On the field, they sure didn't look like the best team in baseball! We lost our first two games against Boston on Wednesday and Friday which just blew my mind! This is only a best of 5 series how could we have lost the first two games. Which were played here at home too! During the first game of the series Lance and I got to hold the flag again. My dad did it with us this time and we all had a great timeLance, my dad and I are all on the left hand side of the flag. Lance is the first person down there, I'm the 3rd tiny speck above him and my dad is the 5th tiny speck above me! I just love this picture though, it just shows how huge this flag is and how many people it takes to pull it off!

The Angels FINALLY pulled off a victory last night. It took them 12 horrible innings, but they finally did it. We play Boston again tonight in Boston and it's do or die. I would love for the Angels to come home on Wednesday with the series all tied up!

Tonight is also Monday Night Football and Lance and I will be wildly rooting for Minnesota. Not because we are Minnesota fans, oh no! We are Buffalo Bills fans! I use "we" loosely here. Lance is a dumb Dallas fan! =) Baseball season is not even over yet though so I can't begin the Dallas bashing until November. Wait for it, it will come! So, back to rooting for the Vikings. Lance and I are in a weekly football pool and it looks as though this week, I am in the running for er.....um..... some credits! We don't live in Nevada, and betting is illegal here, so credits it is! I'm tied with 5 other people going into tonights game and those 5 all picked New Orleans to win. So, if the Vikings do win, I look like a genius. If they lose, well..........

When I do my picks, I do them in about 30 seconds. I go down the list and check off my teams I think are going to win. Lance, well, he takes the whole week to get his picks in. He studies the teams records, and their roster and their injuries. Blah blah blah looks like my way worked this week! hahahaha GO VIKINGS!!!!!!!!

Ryan, Lance and I were wishing your Cubs would continue on to the World Series so you could come out here and watch an Angels/Cubs world series. Looks like the Dodgers kept that from happening! We are excited for the Dodgers though even though Cubs fans have been waiting 100 years for a trip to the world series. I wonder how many it will actually be until they make it there and win it? When they finally get the goat off their back!! =) Maybe next year you can join us for a Angels/Cubs world series!!! The Angels will win of course!! hahahahaha

Alright everyone cross your fingers, toes, legs, arms and anything else you can cross and send good mo-jo that the Angels and Vikings win! For those of you who just don't give a darn, I'll keep you posted, because I know deep down you do! =P

Rally Monday

2008-10-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

Well friends, the baseball post season is upon us. And I am SOOOOOO excited! Last Monday the Angels held their annual Angels Rally. It's now officially an "annual" rally since they had one last year. I guess if one year they don't make the playoffs, well then, no need for a rally..........but I don't see that happening in the near future....hopefully! =)

Monday's rally produced tons of Angel fans and oddly enough a few Boston fans. How much confidence do you have to show up to a Angels rally with 20,000 Angel fans wearing a Boston hat and jersey??!!??!!

The best part of the rally was when Bobby Gritch (former Angel circa mid 80's) got on the stage grabbed the microphone and yells, "give me a A". Crowd "AAAAAAA". Bobby, "give me a N". Crowd "NNNNNNN" So on and so forth. The problem with his cheer was that he spelled Angels A.N.G.L.S. hhhmmm When he followed the G with the L the crowd kind of looked at each other with the funniest look on all of our faces! At the end he yells "What's that spell?" And then I yelled, "Not Angels!!!"

This years rally was super cool because they actually had active players. Last year they only had former players. Here are some pictures of the players that showed up.

Mike Napoli

Howie Kendric Jeff MathisTorii Hunter

Smashmouth performed and they were pretty darn horrible! They only have a few hits and those hits are much better heard on the radio or CD! Live, well, they pretty much sucked!

You can't really see them so well from this shot. That's why I took all the players pictures off of the jumbo tron. We were sitting on the side of the stage so it was hard to get any really good pictures.

Here are the players revealing the new 2008 American League West Champions banner!

Rachel and I were the only ones that went to the rally. Lance really wanted to, but he had work. Cat, well, she must not be a real Angel fan since boys seem to be more important than supporting your Angels. Hehehehehe It's my blog and I get to say whatever I want to say!!! hehehehehe
We had fun together anyway, even though Cat was too busy for us!

Tonight the Angels begin game 1 against Boston. Lance, Rachel, Dad, Cat and I will be there. All dressed in red with 44,000 of our closest friends! Let's hope for another halo victory!!!

Jared's Birthday Bash

2008-09-29T10:15:00.001-07:00

Well, we are alive and kicking even though it's been awhile since updates. We both have been super busy, but unfortunately, it hasn't been with anything exciting! hahahaha Lance and I are both working two jobs right now so there really hasn't been any free time to do exciting things.

On September 20, Jared celebrated his 30th birthday and Lance was actually able to attend! The month of September is just absolutely crazy in our circle of friends because a whole bunch of them all have birthdays in September. So, Tracy, Jared, Nicole, Marlana, Minh, Liz, Michelle, Tamara, Rhonda and Tara (I really hope I didn't forget anybody!!) we just wanted to wish you a happy birthday! Sorry we couldn't attend all the events for every persons birthday!

Here are some pictures from Jared's b-day.

Here is Jared showing off his ice tea. He doesn't drink, we've all tried to be bad influences on him, but he just won't budge! =0)

Here is Jared and his awesome fiance' Bindi. They are getting hitched in November of this year. It should be a really fun wedding. Wait............didn't they get engaged after Tracy and Jesse??? But yet, they are getting married before them...........hhhmmm

Jared's mom had the cake place re-create Jared's 1st birthday cake.

Where do you find room to put 30 candles??? =o) And for the record, it took him 2 tries to blow the whole thing out. hahahaha

Here we are being dorks. Enough said!

Well, I just got back into town last night after being in Colorado for a few days. I have a bunch of pictures and stories to blog about on that trip. Hopefully I will be getting to that soon. Don't be too shocked but I think I have about 5 new blog posts to get done! hahahaha Hope everyone is doing well! Love, Suzanne

Our Wedding Blog

2008-08-29T07:57:00.001-07:00

Lance and I have tried a few different sites to host our main wedding website. We really couldn't find one that was just perfect for us, so we decided to start another blog! You can visit our new wedding blog here. Not all of our family and friends will be in California as the planning continues so this will help keep everybody updated on the events and stresses of our upcoming big day. I want to be able to journal this wedding planning journey so when we have children, I can print it out and tell them to elope! I kid I kid!!! I'm having a great time planning and everything is coming along great so far.

We would like to thank everybody again for their support and help as we plan this wedding. We definitely could not do it without all of you! Love, Suzanne

More Baseball

2008-08-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Is there really anything else to do during the summer but go to baseball games? I think not! The Angels were out of town a few weeks ago so Cat invited me to a Dodger game. I normally go to at least one or two Dodger games a year since they are fun, but not nearly as fun as Angel games!

Cat was given some awesome tickets right behind home plate and I was not about to turn those down! We met at my Mom and Dads house and practically bathed in sun screen since it was a Sunday afternoon game. When we got to the stadium the temperature on my car said it was 95 degrees.

Here are a few pictures from the game!

This picture below is of myself and Cat sitting in our "fake" seats. See, when we got to the game we had tickets for the seats directly behind the row we are sitting in. You can see, them over our shoulders. Yep, that's them, in the shade! I was so excited, but my 'I want to sit in the sun and get burned sister of mine' wasn't so excited. So after some whining and begging and some more whining, I moved up a row with her. So to put into perspective how hot it was that day check out the very first picture on this page. Look at the guy in the pinkish/reddish shirt behind me (I'm in the green). He looks a little hot! The seat behind us is also important because at one point we had a foul ball come our way. We had seen a few balls heading our direction over the course of the game, but this one was coming right at us. Where did it land? In the seat Cat made me move from. I couldn't believe it! It could have been my first foul ball at a baseball game. I've been to a million games over my life time and have never caught a foul ball or a home run ball. This was my chance, but it bounced in my empty seat and into the next row. Cat swears I would have never caught it even if I was sitting there which is not true at all! I know I would have caught that ball! hahahahaha

We had a great time at the game and the Dodgers even won!!!

Ok, this next picture trips me out. Can you guess who is who? On our way back to my car I wanted to take a picture of us in front of the Think Blue sign. After we took it I started laughing because we look so much alike even I did a double take! I know I know, we are twins so of course we look alike, but most of the time we look different, at least I think we do!

Well the game was a blast and we retired our Dodger hats until next year.....unless we get some more great tickets, then we'll pull them out of retirement!

The Accident

2008-08-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

So, a few weeks ago (on Rachel's birthday actually) my Dad was driving to work as he has for the last 38 years. Dad has worked at the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant since long before I was born! And for as long as I can remember he's been leaving the house before the sun comes up.

July 30, 2008 was no different. He made his coffee, ate some breakfast and was on the road to start his 39 mile one way journey. He was traveling down the 5 South in the fast lane (going the speed limit I'm sure!! hahaha) when he noticed a 2 gallon gas can sitting in the middle of the lane. It fell off of a truck/car driving in front of him and he had no time to try to swerve and avoid it. One would hope that when he hit it, it would just bounce off and leave a dent. Sure, he would have been upset. He loves his car, he takes great care of it and who would want a big gas can size dent in their car??? But, I think he would have traded the dent for what he got. This.....

When Dad's car hit the gas can unfortunately it got wedged underneath his car and wouldn't come off. At one point he said he looked in his rearview mirror and saw a line of flames following him down the fast lane because the fuel was leaking out. He pulled over to the emergency lane and tried for a minute or so to dislodge the gas can. Driving back and forth just trying to get it to come off so he could try to keep his car from completely burning up. No such luck that gas can was not coming off no matter how hard he tried. When the flames reached his side mirrors he decided it was time to get out of the car. Now, one might be asking, why the heck was he in the car long enough to watch the flames come up to the side mirrors! I said the same thing. I would have been out of that car the second I saw the flames in my rearview mirror. He's a stubborn man what can I say!?!?!?!

The fire department came and put the fire out. They had to use a 2x4 to pry the gas can off of the car. You can see the gas can in the 3rd picture on the upper right hand side. It's pretty unrecognizable!

Somehow, my Dad remained calm enough to get all of his personal things out of the car which is something that probably would not have crossed my mind! I still can't believe he was still driving the car while it was on fire!

We all got a present on Rachel's birthday this year and that present was that my Dad was OK. A little frazzeled after the whole ordeal but OK nontheless. He gave us a good scare that's for sure. Oh, and he made the news! My Mom was watching the news that morning when they reported a car fire on the 5 South. It's not the claim to fame he really wanted though!

He won't tell us how much longer he's going to make his drive to San Onofre, but if he keeps pulling Hollywood stunts like this I may go sign his retirement papers for him!