jongela.com » Holiday

Vegas!

jon — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:25:50 +0000

Las Vegas!!

We took a trip to Las Vegas for my cousin’s wedding. It was a really fun trip, but the heat and dust was ridiculous. We found ourselves planning out where we were going based on where there would be air conditioning and how hot it would be.

We decided to try some fancy hotels out since they are heavily subsidized by people who think they can beat statistics. Our first hotel was Palms Place and is now my favorite hotel ever! Just look at the pictures!

Relaxing on the couch

Proof that we're cool

Palms Place bathroom

At the Palms Place pool, they have seats _in_ the pool

'Do Not Disturb' signs? Pah! Here, it's all electronic!

On our last night there, we stayed at the Bellagio.

Our room at the Bellagio

Fancy bathroom at the Bellagio

Our window view of the fountain at the Bellagio

Night view from our room

Crazy plants

Raking in the free amenities!!

There’s a much larger Filipino population in Vegas than here, so I was excited to get some good fooood! We went to a Filipino buffet, but unfortunately we didn’t take a picture. But we did go to Jollibee (the equivalent of McDonald’s) twice!

In front of Jollibee

Posing next to the Jollibee bee

Our Jollibee food

Buko-pandan!!!

Lots of flavored tuna! Unfortunately they didn't have Spicy. =(

We visited the Atomic Testing Museum and the Mormon Fort Museum.

Atomic Testing Museum

Scared of the bomb

Mormon Fort Museum

We toured the Hoover Dam. The tours and everything were really well-organized, probably because so many people tour the place since they’ve seen it in the movies. The tour was grossly over-packed with “dam” jokes. All the engineering and thinking that went into it was pretty amazing. They said the upkeep of the dam was entirely self-sufficient from the energy generated there. They didn’t say whether tourism contributed, but I estimate that they give tours to about 500 people per hour…and they charged $10-30 per person.

It's huuuuge!

In front of the dam

Angela in front of an intake tower

Hoover Dam generators

Angela’s birthday down under~

angela — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:12:57 +0000

Well, I’m officially old. I turned 24 yesterday and as usual Jon planned a great birthday surprise for me. I was totally in the dark this time and my closest guess for what he planned wasn’t even remotely close. We drove up North about an hour where Jon had found a KANGAROO FARM!!!! It was the strangest place. They had all sorts of animals that you could feed and pet. The first animals that we got to see were a collection of chickens and other birds that were just wandering around the place. My favorite animals were this giant turkey and these chickens that had down feathers all the way to their feet that made them look like they were wearing fuzzy go go boots. I’d never seen a real live turkey that close and it was sort of scary, he definitely looked like he could handle himself. We also saw this cool looking duck that had a red bill and all black feathers, he looked like a little gangster. They had some gorgeous peacocks wandering around too that were really pretty.

We waited for a few minutes and then the tour began. The first animals that we got to see were a family of ring tailed lemurs. They were really cute and could jump from the ground to the tour guide’s shoulder so fluidly it was really amazing. We also saw some special breeds of pheasant that they had. Next it was the big item, kangaroos! They had the kangaroos in an enclosed area and gave us each a little bread so that we could feed them. They ate right out of our hands and were surprisingly friendly. I always thought kangaroos were sort of mean, but these ones were pretty docile. We even saw some mommys with little joeys in their pouch and we got to pet them and feed them too. They also had rabbits and tortoises thrown into the mix. The wallabies also shared the same enclosure as the kangaroos. I never really knew what a wallaby was until I saw them. They’re just like kangaroos, but more furry and chubbier looking. They also had these really strange animals in there, I never really got the full name something like Patagonian Capris or something, but I dubbed them guinea deers because they look like guinea pigs with little deer legs, so weird! After the kangaroos they took us to see and feed a ton of other animals. They had mules, donkeys, more chickens and goats in one area and we fed them these alfalfa pellets. Then we headed over and saw this miniature horse, which I guess is different from a pony. We also got to see an ostrich and two emus, but they didn’t let us feed them (probably because they’d peck our eyes out or something). The last animals we got to feed were some alpaca llamas. They were pretty gentle and the tour guide coaxed some of us to feed them from our mouths. I tried it…wasn’t the best experience of my life, but I escaped unscathed. When we went back to the starting point of the tour we all got to hold a baby joey and take pictures with it. It was really neat and he was soooo cute.

After we were finished at the farm Jon took me to Outback Steak House just to complete the Aussie theme of my birthday. We both had really good meals and I even got a free ice cream treat.

I’d say overall it was a grand adventure and a really fun birthday! Too bad birthdays only come once a year

Adventure of olympic proportions!

jon — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:37:16 +0000

Last week our friend Susan came up to see the Olympics with us! We woke up early, drove up to Vancouver, perused the scene, saw the women’s curling event, and drove home so we could go to work the next day. Here are the pictures.

In front of BC Place

The line to the The Bay was ridiculously long

We waited in a HUGE line for about an hour to get into the store to buy official Olympics stuff. As is the case with all touristy places, things were overpriced.

Angela in front of the Olympic torch

The Olympic logo lit up every time the Canadians got a medal

Not "Starbucks" but "Moonpennies"

Meticulously crafted hot chocolate

Posing in front of the ski jump thing

Angela was pretty nonchalant going down a pretty hard bobsled run

Angela’s always the one that remains calm while I freak out.

You see crazy stuff like this in Canada

Angela: "What would Shaun White do?"

All the onlookers were speechless at Angela’s snowboarding skills. When asked how she knew it she said, “I just thought, ‘What would Shaun White do?’ and I just did what was natural.”

Snowboarding

Bronze was so disappointing

Proof that we were at the 2010 curling event!

Curling competitors at the opening

This is when the US was doing well

Click here to see a video of our US curling team in action! Apparently WordPress doesn’t have out-of-the-box ability to embed video, so you’ll have to download it to watch it.

Boo! 10-3

Our team got schooled. Ended in the seventh in, even. But all in all, going to the Olympics was really fun. People were really friendly and there was a lot of energy in the air.

A series of unfortunate events

jon — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:28:24 +0000

This was the evil carrot

I’ve had three embarrassing and very painful experiences this past week. So I figured I’d share it in this blog so at least somebody will be entertained at my expense.

While we were in Idaho for the holidays, we went to a Thai restaurant with family. One of the things we ordered was a soup with spiciness rating of 4 (out of 4). I like spicy food so I had Angela scoop me some of it. She asked me if there was anything specific in the soup that I wanted. I saw a baby carrot so I thought “ooh, I really feel like having a carrot.” I ate most of the soup and then got to the carrot. I bit down on it and thought it had a weird texture–kind of hollow with a chewy skin. It had such a weird texture that I spit it out to find that it wasn’t a carrot but a Thai pepper! My mouth was already burning but kept getting increasingly painful. The burning just wouldn’t go away even after drinking 4 glasses of water and eating two plates of rice. I started hyperventilating and I couldn’t see anything around me. I thought I was going to pass out! Or die!
On the left is the mysterious cut I had when I woke up. On the right is the bite from ferret at Petco.
All night last night, my finger was hurting. This morning I woke up to find that I had a cut about 1/4 inch wide on my finger and it was bleeding. What!? Where did that come from? Angela?
Today we went to Petco and saw they had a ferret. This one was particularly interested in us. I always stick my finger in the cage because the ferrets like to sniff you. This time was different. The ferret bit down on my finger hard and wouldn’t release it. I tried to shake her off to no avail. So then I tried to pull my finger out of the cage, and she still didn’t let go (even though her face was smashed against the cage). So I took my other finger and started tapping on her nose, which worked. Fifteen seconds and a bloody finger later, I finally had my finger back. Oh yea, and this bite was on the same finger that had the mysterious cut.

Deals, deals, deals! Deals all over the floor!

jon — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:35:50 +0000

We had an uber-successful shopping season this year!

24 inches of pure High-def recipe enjoyment

About a week ago, we found a 24″ LCD full HD monitor for $170 with free shipping on the Dell Outlet website. Thanks to Twitter, I found a $20 coupon. So we got a humongous 24″ monitor for watching movies and viewing recipes while we’re cooking in the kitchen.

On Black Friday, we left for Old Navy at 2:20am. We bought 13 items including 50% off jeans. We got in the checkout line when there were four people in line and were out of the store in 20 minutes total. By the time we left the store, the checkout line had grown to about 30 people.

After Old Navy, I waited in line to get in to Target while Angela went to Kohl’s (which was already open) to buy a bunch of $3 board games and sweaters. Kohl’s gave us a $10 gift card for shopping there (woohoo!).

Our Black Friday treasures

Target was the best store of the day! As evidence, the line was about 1000 people long by the time the store opened. Since we knew that perfect execution would be critical at Target, we shmoozed with an employee and got a map of the store. We also found out that we didn’t have to waste time grabbing a cart at the entrance because there would be carts spread throughout the store. We planned our route and were able to beat the 50-100 people in front of us in line to the good stuff. We got one of the four piano keyboards they had stocked, a bunch of DVDs, and tons of clothes. As we were leaving the electronics area, there were swarms of shoppers like ants swarming around their kicked anthill. I wanted to snap a picture but was afraid of being trampled, so we fled screaming and clutching our prizes. Finally at checkout, they gave us a $10 gift card!

At Staples, I grabbed four $10 webcams that were normally $50. When people kept taking them, I had to try hard to resist not taking more. My heart sunk when an employee told me that they only allowed one webcam per customer. I decided to try to check out anyways and we were particularly nice to the employee. We found out that she was sick the past week and consequently missed all the Black Friday orientation meetings. And she let us buy our webcams! We also bought some other good stuff like speakers, a GPS, and 8GB USB drives.

We headed over to Half Price Books in hopes of randomly winning a $100 gift card. Unfortunately we didn’t win. But they did give us $10 in gift cards.

Ikea loot

After we finished out our critical early bird steals we headed to the mall and Angela went to JCPenney while I waited in the car. She got a bunch of $9 sweaters and Christmas gifts for the Moomers. After that we headed to Joann’s to pick a rubber stamp set for the giving tree at Angela’s office. We got all the stamps for over half off!

Black Friday was a success! We got every item that we wanted to get that day. But wait! That’s not the end of the good deals! On Saturday, we stopped by Ikea and found a hidden clearance section! We bought 14 plates for 99 cents each (normally $4.99 each). And rubber gloves for 10 cents each.

What a great year for deals!

Victoria and Beyond!!!!!

angela — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:20:30 +0000

We took a little vacation the week before Thanksgiving this year. Our friend Susan visited us from Provo so we decided to have a little adventure. We headed North on Sunday with our luggage and a bag of goldfish crackers. Good thing we had them or we would have starved! First we caught the Edmonds-Kingston ferry and drove to the Hood Canal Bridge, which was closed for about 25 minutes due to weather (we think). Even with the delay we made it on the Black Ball Ferry that left from Port Angeles to go to Victoria, BC. The ferry ride was really rocky and I even got a little sea sick along the way. We arrived in Victoria just as the sun was setting. My Mom and Dad were nice enough to let us borrow their time share for the trip. The time share is located right down the street from the ferry terminal, so we didn’t have any trouble finding the place. Once we got all settled we cooked dinner and just relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Monday morning we went to breakfast at this “hippy” place near Chinatown. It was pretty good, they had these really good pesto potatoes. After that we just walked around Market Square and Chinatown. Supposedly, Victoria’s Chinatown is the first Chinatown to be built in Canada. It seems like winter is downtime in Victoria and there weren’t many people there or many stores open. After we finished up there we headed to Craigdorrach Castle, which is a mansion that a wealthy family built in the 1800’s. I wouldn’t call it a “castle”, but it was pretty fancy and it was interesting seeing how people lived back then. The furnishing are mostly from the original family that built the house, so that was pretty impressive. Next time we visit Victoria, I’d really like to visit Hatley Park, which is the house built by the oldest son of that family. The pictures make it look like somewhere Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice would live…After the Castle we headed home for a little break, but headed out again later in the afternoon. We set off on foot from the time share and saw the Parlament Building, Empress Hotel and walked to Victoria’s downtown which has a lot of little shops and resturants. We got fish and chips at this little place, they were pretty good. After exploring a little we headed back to the hotel since it was getting pretty late. We did a little FHE at the time share then we caught dinner at a Japanese place then went to watch “The Blind Side” (that football movie with Sandra Bullock). It was a pretty inspiring movie. Showed that some people still have good hearts and it’s always good to try to help others out when you can.

Tuesday morning we headed out to catch the morning ferry back to the US of A. We drove through Port Angeles a little, but then we headed to the center of Twilight-dom and drove to Forks, WA. Home of the Cullen vampires etc. Forks was as small and bleak as the books described…I think there were like 20 buildings in the whole town max. We ate lunch in a little diner, checked out the local high school and some Twilight stores…that was about all there was to do there. After Forks, we headed back home.

Overall, the trip was pretty nice and relaxing. Victoria was very quaint and peaceful and a perfect Christmas town. Maybe next time we’re up North we’ll visit the National Park and Victoria’s other sites.

Birthday Bash!~

angela — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:04:12 +0000

Last week was my birthday and Jon took me to do a ton of fun things! We started the day with some yummy yummy dim sum! We went to this really good place called Jade Garden in the International district. It got really good reviews on Yelp! and they were all right on the dot. The egg tarts were some of the best I’ve ever had! We ended up sharing the table with a couple of ladies and it was a real blast.

After brunch we headed to the Seattle Cherry Blossom festival. They had some boothes set up at the Seattle Center talking about Japanese culture etc and they even had a judo demo going on while I was there. We saw this really cook fountain that they have at the Seattle Center and the weather was warm enough to have kids playing in the water etc. It was a lot of fun. No doubt that fountain is a hot spot in the summer.

In the afternoon we hit the star attraction to our day. Jon found out that there is a chocolate factory in Seattle. It’s called Theo’s Chocolate and they make organic, fair trade chocolate and are one of 3 major chocolate maker’s in the US. I didn’t know it, but lots of those other companies that we think of when we think of are only chocolate melters, meaning they buy chocolate from a maker, melt it down and stick some marshmellow goodness in the middle then slap their name on it. Chocolate makers are the ones who get the cocoa beans, roast them, grind them and make the chocolate that everyone else uses. It was a pretty good tour and it was cool seeing all the machines, but the best part of the tour was the FREE SAMPLES! They let you sample as much as you’d like at the factory and store! Theo’s is known for their original flavors and our favorite was the thai curry chocolate! They also have things like bread crumb chocolate (they butter bagettes and toast them then shred them into crumbs and put them in the chocolate), fig and fennel chocolate and chipotle chocolates. They also make these origin bars that have chocolate from different countries, meaning the cocoa beans are from only one place whereas most chocolate is mixed together by other manufacturers. It was sort of neat seeing the difference between the different chocolates. You can get Theo’s chocolate in most Whole Foods stores and other health stores. It was really really fun! I had a really fun day!

We headed over to Red Robin for dinner where there were all these cops waiting outside. Like 3 cop cars and we thought something bad was going down, but they were actually there for a charity event. Very funny.

Thanks, Jon-oh for a really good birthday! I loved it!

Easter fun

angela — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 04:35:56 +0000

Well, once again we’ve let our blogging slip. For Easter we made these cute cookies! Jon did most of the work, rolling out the dough and actually cutting out the shapes. Then I sprinkled the colored sugar on. In one of our recipe books we found out you can make your own colored suger by dropping a few drops of food coloring in normal sugar and then stirring it up! Came out pretty good, with a little clumping. I think it’d work better if we had started with a courser grain sugar. Jon made a giant dinosaur egg patterned cookie and it was by far our best tasting cookie!

Here’s the recipe we used (I give it 5 stars!): http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/The-Best-Rolled-Sugar-Cookies/Detail.aspx

~Holiday Madness~

angela — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 22:26:54 +0000

Whoa! It’s been a while since we’ve blogged and boy do we have a blog entry for you! Last week we got back from a very fun Christmas vacation! We went to 7 states, slept on a haunted ship, were saved by a car full of Polish people and had a B2 bomber fly right over us. Intrigued? Read more:

Thursday, December 18
A week before Christmas Seattle had a huge snow storm. It was supposedly the biggest storm the area has had for over 20 years and man, they weren’t ready for it. They hardly had any plows out on the road and at the time they weren’t allowed to salt things down for enviornmental reasons. The result was chaos. The airport was shut down and there were some families that were trapped there for up to three days! It was nearly impossible to drive (even down the street to go to work!). The snow kept coming and coming and I think we had about 3 storms pass through before Jon and I headed out. It was a crazy sight.

Tuesday, December 23
We were lucky enough to fly out on a day that was snow free. Even though our flight was slightly delayed we arrived in Boise without any problems. By the time we got to the Chin’s it was pretty late. Jon got some good home cooking and we called it a night.

Wednesday, December 24 (Christmas Eve!)

: Jon made this toy for church humanitarian services! Cute!

We woke up and headed to a chapel to play dodgeball with Jon’s family. Well…we came to play, but didn’t end up playing too much. Jon was reading Freakonomics and I was busy knitting a scarf. It was still fun seeing everyone though. Maybe next year we’ll be better sports and I’ll bring a helmet to protect myself or something. After we got back, we headed out again to see if we could get any good before Christmas deals. Shopping on Christmas Eve is always crazy. Lots of people, but not much left on the shelves, haha. During our stay in ID, I think we spent most of our time working on these cubes for church humanitarian services. You stitch a pattern on these panels, then connect the panels to make a cube, then you put a bell inside the cube so it becomes a toy. It was a lot of fun, Jon made this one that looks like a die!

During the evening Jon’s extended family came over and we had a little party. It was a lot of fun. We played games and had some great food (a lot of great food).

Thursday, December 25 (Christmas!!!!!)
We opened presents in the morning and we played games for a lot of the rest of the day. Jon’s brother got a Wii and Wii Fit so we spent a lot of time with that. In the afternoon, Jon’s aunt and her family came over. We had a great dinner and just enjoyed each other’s company

Friday, December 26

We spent most of this day traveling. We went to the airport in the afternoon and flew from Boise to Salt Lake. Our layover was only supposed to be an hour or so but we were delayed and we ended up waiting over 2 hours. When we got to Denver, Angela’s parents picked us up in their little white Metro! Man that car is funny. We got in pretty late so we didn’t have much time. We went over to Angela’s cousin’s house to chat and see everyone then we headed home. Bo and Buffie were having a little party so we played some Rockband and had a good time. For Christmas we got Angela’s dad a blog, check it out at www.jtchau.com!

Saturday, December 27

We headed out for our great adventure! Whooooo~ We took I-70 which is always beautiful during the winter. Around 5pm we arrived in Moab, UT and we ate at the Moab Dinner, which supposedly has the best green chili in the state (or maybe it’s the only place in the state with green chili at all). We went grocery shopping for some food supplies then headed to bed.

Sunday, December 26

We drove a little way to Arches National Park. It was really pretty with the snow cover and the sunshine. It’s completely different in the winter! Angela’s dad got us all these Yak Tracks which are basically these chain-like straps that you can strap to your shoes to help you walk in the snow. They are great for anyone planning to hike or walk anywhere in the snow and ice! It was like walking on normal ground almost. We drove around the entire park and then set out to hike and see some of the individual arches. The big hike that we took was to the double arch and some of the windows there. It was a great view and the nice thing about winter is that the park isn’t packed with people so you can have some time on your own to enjoy things. When we walked out to the windows we decided it might be fun to take this “primitive” trail. Man…primitive was an understatement. With the snow and ice it was nearly impossible to see where the trail was. Part of the trail was even up the side of this rock face and we literally had to climb up the rock to continue the trail. Even though it was hard it was pretty fun. After we finished at the park, we headed back to Moab to attend a Sacrament meeting then headed out again. We drove to Capital Reef and had a little mini adventure there. The roads there were covered in snow and there was only enough room for about 1 1/2 lanes of traffic so we were leaning right in case someone was driving on the road coming from the other direction. Well…we eventually drove into the mountain…and a big draft of snow. We tried to push the car out without much luck. There was another couple down the road that was also stuck (but not in the snow, they were stuck because their car was dead) and they came down to help us. The eventually had to leave because they hitched a ride back to the ranger station. We pushed and pushed and got no where. Then a car of Polish tourists stopped to help us. One of them jumped into the driver seat and just drove out. He moved the wheel back and forth to get the best traction I guess. It was pretty amazing. We called it quits on Capital Reed after that and drove off to Bryce Canyon. Once we got to Bryce Canyon we checked into Ruby Inn, which was the first hotel in the area ever to open. That hotel was great, it had a real lodge feel to it, a resturant, general store, some shops and a gift shop. It was great.

Monday, December 27

We headed out nice and early to see Bryce Canyon. Man, it was spectacular in the snow! The hiking wasn’t too strenuous even though there was a lot of snow (thank you Yak Tracks!). I loved seeing all the hoodoos and all the scenery in the snow it was like a litlte silent city. We drove through the whole park and hiked to some of the points, like the point that lets you see the Grottos and a great 360 view. We also hiked from Sunset Point to Sunrise Point, which was nice. It was great! What an experience! We loaded up again and headed to Zion National Park. The drive through the park was really nice, they’ve got this nice tunnel with little holes that you can see down the canyon. It was beautiful. The only hike we did there was to the lower Emerald Pool. It was a great sight when we got to the end of the trail, but the real treat was watching a group of deer cross the river as we walked backed to the car. They were leaping across the water and it was just really pretty. After that we headed to Las Vegas! We got to the strip and stood in line with Angela’s Mom at the Paris hotel for their French buffet while the rest of the troops headed to the time share to put our stuff away. Ah, there’s nothing like Vegas. It was really busy, with lots of people on vacation there. The buffet was alright, but it wasn’t worth the 1 1/2 hour wait! After dinner we walked around the strip for a while. We checked out the Bellagio fountain show (of course) and walked down to the new Wynn hotel to see this really weird laser show there. The Wynn is one of the newest hotels and it’s set up for high rollers. It’s pretty nice! After the show was over we headed to the time share pretty much exhausted. The time share was pretty nice. Not too far from the strip and there were seperate rooms and nice furniture set up!

Tuesday, December 28

For brunch we headed over to Chinatown to catch some dim sum. There was also a Filipino resturant there so Jon got to get some good Filipino food there. After we that some of headed back to the strip to check out some things. We first went to the M&M Factory then we walked to see the lions at the MGM. At the Bellagio we stopped to see the world’s largest chocolate fountain and got some of the best little pasteries! We loaded up and headed to the Las Vegas temple. After that we hit the road again, heading to CA. It was a strange sight, seeing all the cars streaming into Vegas from California as we were leaving. Most of them were heading there for New Years. Once we got to California we met up with Angela’s cousin at this Mongolian hot pot resturant. It’s supposedly the first Chinese food chain to open up in the US. They had this spicy soup where you could pick from 1-10 to pick the level of spice. We picked a 1, but I swear they gave us at least a 4 or something. After dinner we headed to our hotel for the night! The spooky haunted Queen Mary! It’s this old ship that’s been converted to a hotel and it’s supposed to be one of the most haunted places in the world. OOOOO~ I have to admit I was pretty scared on the way there, but by the time we got there I was too tired to be scared, haha. The rooms were still in an old style, which was cool. The boat was surrounded in this fog, which just added to its scary vibe.

Wednesday, December 29 (New Years Eve)

In the morning we toured the ship! That’s a huge ship! The Queen Mary was a British cruiseline ship that was converted to a military transit ship during WW2. After the war finished it was converted back to a civilian ship and was eventually bought by Long Beach for a tourist attraction. The boat was pretty impressive and it was great seeing the engine room and all parts of the boat. After we checked out we headed to the Getty museum, it was packed. It’s really worth seeing if you’re ever in the LA area. It’s a free museum (all you pay is for parking) and they’ve always got great exhibits and it’s worth going just to see the architecture. They’ve got several gardens and outdoor sculptures and it’s just great to see. We had an In-and-Out lunch and headed to the Getty Villa. The Villa was absolutely amazing! It’s a Villa that’s been made based on a Villa that existed in Pompei and it’s the location for all of the Getty’s ancient artwork. If you never get a chance to go to Rome this is as good a replacement as you’ll ever get in the US. It was fabulous! We ate dinner at this Taiwanese noodle shop, it was pretty good. They had these spicy noodles that Jon loved. After that we headed out to the parade route to see the people waiting and things. It was pretty rowdy and our car got pegged with marshmellows and shaving cream. It wasn’t that fun, but I guess it was a learning experience. The hotel served hot dogs and burgers because it was New Years Eve (I thought that was cool).

Thursday, January 1

We headed out really early to get a good spot at the parade! We didn’t have to wait there all night to get a really good spot. In fact the spot we had was sort of better than some of the people who waited all night in the cold. The floats were great. The great thing about the Rose parade is the flowers obviously! They had the B2 bomber do a fly over like they do every year and this year they had jets writing words in the sky. The parade was a lot of fun! After the parade we packed up all our luggage and headed to take a look at Pepperdine University. Angela’s family dropped us off at the airport and we checked in and met up with one of Jon’s friends from PBL. We went to eat at this open-air resturant near the beach. We flew back on Virgin air. They had these weird blue and purple lights on the whole flight. Everything was so white and rounded I felt like I was inside a Mac, haha.

Well that was our vacation We’ve got millions more photos! Ask us to show them to you next time we see you!~

BOOOOO!!!!!!

angela — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:53:50 +0000

Happy Halloween, everyone! We got into the Halloween mood during FHE this week and we carved our first ever family pumpkin! We hope you enjoy our choice of carving pattern! Everyone loves pumpkin pi!

How does that pi shine so bright, you ask? We’re using an LED camping light to light our pumpkin this year. In case you were wondering, those are supposed to be spider webs, no soccer ball markings…