Lance's Birthday

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!

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!

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

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

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!

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!!

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