Happy Thanksgiving!

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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

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!