Young and Carefree!

So last night we decided that we would be a young carefree couple instead of the old fogies that we often are. Instead of coming home from work, eating dinner, and going to bed, we decided to head out to our friend Matt's 21st birthday party at the ESPN zone in down town Disney- on a monday night! We threw caution and our preference for retiring early to the wind. We left as soon as Sarah got home and headed out to Disney Land. We managed to ride three rides in about two hours, watch my first Disney land parade, and enjoy a churro.

There were all these cute kids there in halloween costumes, including a 2-3 year old tigger who kept jumping up and down and banging his candy bucket on the ground and a tinkerbell who had her little wagon-drawn lantern to rest in. I know Sarah is sorta fundamentally opposed to the basis of halloween, but how can you beat getting to dress in costumes and have a sugar high?


We rode the new Nemo ride- it was pretty cool but kinda smelt like a dog after having played in a pool- then the Casey Jr train- to which Sarah was kinda surprise that I knew the words too since I don't know most of the stories and songs on the rides- then we went on Space Mountain- I think its my favorite ride in the park but I'm still leery of lifting my hands on the ride...

We then headed over and had "dinner" with Matt (whom Sarah works with) and a bunch of his friends (whom we didn't know). I use the quotation marks because we filled up on Hot Wings and Sliders. Oh well. They seemed like nice enough people and all in all Sarah and I had a pretty good time.

6 Months of Wedded Bliss

Yes, it's true, Adam and I have been married for 6 months now, so we decided to have a little celebration!

After church on Sunday we took off over the Ortega's and made our way to the Ramos House Cafe in San Juan Capistrano. The Ramos House has always been a special place for us, being "the place you take a girl if you want to impress her" (as said by Willy and Alison Bravenec) and Adam did take me there while we were dating - and he did impress me!

So, Ramos House for Sunday Brunch was fabulous! We both got the amazing Salmon plate of wonderfulness for our starter (SO GOOD!!!) and for our main dish Adam went for the breakfast side of Brunch while I went for the lunch side. Anyhow, it was fabulous!

After brunch we had some time to kill before being back that the church by 3:30 so we walked around down by the mission. We looked at a $2000 mirror with hand carved wooden frame and thought "Hmmm, why are we looking at this stuff?" So, we moved onto the giant antic story down the way and had so much fun looking at old tools, cameras, books, (one book called "The Fabulous Barbie and Her Boyfriend Ken" contained a chapter called "The Size 10 Dress" I didn't have time to read it all but I had a good laugh!) jewelry, aprons, tea cups, swords, crosses, armor and hats! Well, we did more than just look at old hats - we tried them on too!

After the antic store we did a little more walking around, found a cool kitchen store with tons of random stuff you would never really need in your kitchen; we also (again) morned the loss of Diedrich Coffee and did not purchase anything from the Starbucks that is now in it's place. As I said earlier, we had to be back at the church at 3:30 so by this time we were thinking we should head back - thus we did.

The reason we had to be at church at 3:30 was because we were helping Glen and Koni (known as "the Prior's" in the earlier blog) cook dinner for the young married group that started last night at the church. The turn out was less then we expected (Only Nicolle and Abe and Raul and Shayne showed up) but it was really, really great! We had dinner and just talked. It felt like community. The group will only meet on the 2nd and 4th Sunday of each month and the plan is to invite couples who have been married a long time and want to share wisdom with us young folks. But also, the group will always have a time set aside to pray for one another, which is about the only structure and planned activity to the whole group - yay! Last nights conversation was filled with stories of couples meeting and husbands coming to know the Lord, it was cool. Afterwords, Nicolle and Abe and Raul and Shayne came over for ice cream/soy dream (we sort of forgot about that in the "cooking dinner" part of the prep work) but Glen and Koni had to be home so they weren't able to come over. So, it was really fun, and we are glad that we went and hopefully we will be inviting some other people to come and join us the next time we meet.

Breakfast Club

This morning I had breakfast with my dear friends Katie and Jen! It was so nice to actually see them in person and not just talk to them on the phone. Jen invited us to her new apartment in Laguna Niguel and cooked us a fabulous breakfast (pictures to the right, with Jen blurred in the background) that we all enjoyed so much!

Thanks for a wonderful morning girls!

.the.new.ride.

So for 500 buckaroos Sarah and I picked up this sweet ride from a guy that her dad works with. We realized when we bought it, that it needed some TLC and a few parts. After washing and vacuming it started looking better and after changing the axle and the starter it started running better. So now we are a two car family. I miss the riding together to work a bit, but I think it will be nice to come home to my wife. On a wierd side note- our insurance actually went down 20$ every six months which leaves me to believe that insurance premiums are baised on nothing but vodo.

Heres a pic of me and my 89 Toyota Celica with 190,000 miles on it.

(Yay for hoopty cars!)

Nene's Baby Shower!

This last Saturday, the 20th, I was so happy to be able to make it down to the San Diego area to celebrate the coming to my good friend Rene's (affectionately known to me and a few others as "Nene") second child!!!!
It was kind of weird to not know anyone (besides Rene and two other girls I hadn't seen is so long - which was so nice to see them!!!) But I'm still glad to have been able to help bless Rene with some new cute stuff and play a few weird games. However, I did win one of those games thus the day was a success!

Rene and her husband Joel know that they are having a girl but they have not narrowed down a name. Rene said that they want to wait and see their daughter before they name her (which I think is really cool) because that's what they did with their son Asher.

Speaking of Asher, can I just say that I am so impressed with Rene as a mother! I was watching some home movies of Asher last week and I was seriously shocked at what I saw! Asher and his dad (Joel) were playing with a truck and Asher pushed the truck really hard and fast and it his his dad foot. Joel nicely says something like "Ouch" and Asher's face instantly changed to deep concern and he says "Daddy did I hurt you? I'm sorry, will you forgive me?" I couldn't believe it when I saw that - a two year old boy was actually concerned for his father's health and asked for forgiveness for hurting him!

Now to any of my other "mommy" friends who are reading this, I in no way want you to think that this blog is some passive aggressive way to tell you I think your children are awful, it's just to say that I was inspired! The movie gave me hope for my future children and parenting them in a way that is honoring to the Lord. Although my children will be a product of me and Adam, thus they may be really "mouthy" and build weapons in our garage while I'm not watching, but that's a whole other story! :) Anyways, GOOD JOB JOEL AND RENE! And here's some other pictures from the day:

SO so so so so many gifts! Its was kind of crazy - but very fun!

This was the warmest, softest thing I've ever seen! (this was the gift I went in on and got her with a couple other girls that couldn't make it, I love it and if it wasn't a dipper bag I would want to get myself one too!)

Happy 23rd Hillary and 24th Aaron!

Adam and I went down to Moonlight Beach last night with my family to celebrate Aaron and Hillary! It was a really good time of just hanging out and enjoying the beauty the is the beach!

Adam and Candice perfected the S'more with both warming the cracker and chocolate while toasting the marshmallow - they were very proud! We also learned a new treat (as featured below by Casey and his smoking stick) called a Banana Boat! You cut a banana in half and put chocolate and peanut butter in it, wrap it up in foil and toast it - very yummy!

Below is my mom, Stefanie, Aaron and my dad sitting around the fire talking while Adam and I took a picture of ourselves with no flash - tricky.

And of course, the "Zanin" girls, in true Zanin fashion lovingly and gently tossed their baby sister into the Pacific!

All in all, it was a good time.

We Love The Prior's

Okay, you may notice a theme, we love our friends, but well... this blog is for what "our family" is up to, thus these are the things that make us happy!

The Prior's invited us over for dinner on Tuesday and as usual it was wonderful. Sarah is usually immediately commandeered when she walks in the door by Evangeline and Analiese, but this time she did actually get some "adult" time. We had a very encouraging conversation with Glen and Koni. We also had a lovely dinner of John Hanson Chicken and the most fabulous hot chocolate made from almond milk and dark chocolate!

Thanks for another lovely evening guys!

Rich and Nic-e

On sunday, after returning from the conference, we spent the day (seriously - from church till about 10pm) with our friends Rich and Nic-e. We had a lovely afternoon of tostada's and Balderdash and watching some of season two of The Office. Then we ended up at there house to watch "Reign Over Me". We had both never heard of it, but actually it was good. It's Adam Sandler playing a guy who lost his family in the September 11th plane crashes and how hes dealing with it 5 or 6 years later - if you get the chance it's worth your time. Anyways, just wanted to give a big "We Love You" to Rich and Nic-e, we both enjoyed so much spending the day with you! (The picture is not from Sunday, I just stole it off of Nic-e's myspace cause they both looked cute)

We went to this marriage conference this weekend called "Weekend to Remember" put on by Family Life (aka Campus Crusade for Christ). We have been looking forward to it for months (quite literally, it was a wedding present from some friends).

To be totally honest, it wasn't what we were expecting and there were some kind of awkward moments during the whole thing, for example and hour long presentation of the 4 spiritual laws and a story about men and women being Jesus and the Father... we don't know what happened to the Holy Spirit in the whole thing or how a single person could even go on with life after that little story - but anyways, I will move on. We did however have some very fruitful conversations between the two of us that I'm sure we will continue to explore for months to come. Thus, the weekend was in no way a waste - it just didn't meet our expectations because it wasn't what we were expecting.

On another note, we kind of forgot to take pictures but here's a few.

We stayed at the Marriott in Del Mar:



On saturday we went and got sushi in PB here we are as we were driving there (Sarah holding the manual she had all weekend to fill in the blanks, Adam didn't use his, he hates fill in the blanks, He constantly struggling with listening for the word that goes in the blank rather than actually listening to what the person is saying; He used to get an already filled in sheet from Monty for our SV staff meetings)



And here is where we has 6:30 reservations on Saturday for dinner but either the above mentioned sushi or the not previously mentioned room service breakfast got to Sarah's stomach and we did not end up going to dinner.

We instead enjoyed a nice dinner of soup and crackers from Vons (for Sarah) and a Subway sandwich with extra pickles (for Adam). We were both really tired (tired being the key word here) and started arguing over the homework we had from the conference and you know how it is when you are tired - we should have just shut our mouths and gone to sleep. Anyways, like I said earlier, we did have many conversations that will lead to many future conversations, so all is well.

Dinner for two on the Mediterranean

Okay so not the inland sea south of Europe, but it is the name of our china pattern.
I made dinner for the wife last night. Got out the good dishes and a table cloth. Lit some candles and enjoyed just being together. I read somewhere that some people used their china at least once a week weather it was for a group of people or just them. I thought it was a good idea and Sarah seemed to enjoy it. Sometimes a little extra effort goes a long way towards making people feel loved...

This was really stinking cute! Good job baby!

Halloween Disney

So after Church on Sunday, Sarah and I met up with her cousin (my cousin?) Brittany and her boy friend Javier (unfortunately this is the only picture of them from the day) but we did have a really good time hanging out with "family"Sarah doesn't really care for Halloween very much, but the Disneyland decorations where not too much to handle. She's not some uber-conservative who has a problem with the holiday itself, rather she doesn't care for the decorations: cobwebs and spiders and general dirtiness, nor does she care for the color pallet: black and orange. However, this doesn't keep her from liking the ride that looks like a giant Orange. It's probably because she feels like shes flying (note the outstretched arms). If you listen real close you can hear the lady singing "if you're happy and you know it..."

Okay, I see Adam decided to update our little site here - so, I figured I would give my thoughts as well. First off - I am not so shallow as to judge a whole holiday due to it's color pallet! While I do think that Fall in general has some colors associated with it that I choose not to wear, I won't judge people for their choice of colors (point and case: Katie Ward). And about the dirtiness of the holiday, well, that's a little more true, why would you purposefully put up spider webs when in every other part of the year having spider webs in your house shows that you don't dust enough and you have bugs?! Last but not least - let me make a confession: I HATE HALLOWEEN! Sorry guys - it's true! I hate to be scared and I never watch scary movies! I couldn't sleep for months after seeing Back to the Future 3 when I was in like 4th grade (I went with Brittany and her dad, My Uncle Tom, actually), but seriously, my ability to handle fear is low! I refuse to open to door to any trick-or-treaters because most of the time they are cute little bunnies and pirates but then there is always that one jerk face teenage boy who is an ax murderer and.... well, YUCK! The whole thing just gives me the creeps - I kind of wish the whole month of October could be washed clean of this awful holiday! Oops, So maybe I am one of those "uber-conservative" people - I'm not sure yet, but I will have to have a long hard conversation with Adam when it comes to our kids celebrating this holiday. Sorry for the freak out! But I did have a really good time with Brittany and Javier - it was so nice to see them. It's weird to think how many times I've been to Disneyland with Brittany as a little girl and now we are are still going to the same place but with our husbands/boyfriends - it's kind of cool actually.

Here's a picture of us "a few years ago" waiting to get on It's a Small World!

Together

Sarah and I once dreamed of writing a book together. We wrote back and forth while she was living in Russia in the dead of winter (can you say 40 below zero). She and I had all these great (okay some times dorky ideas) for chapter subjects, like color coded iChats to express emotion and vocal coloring (remember- baby blue is for light mirth). Maybe we will continue that here. Or post some of our old letters. Or just put pictures and stories for our kids. Or something. Its here. Its avalible. We'll see what happens.