I love flying!!!

My amazing experience started off by being randomly accosted by a TSA member at security. This just after I told Susan I would make a great drug mule because I never get pulled aside. On my flight home though I experienced a whole new level of annoying.

In front of me was a young girl traveling by herself that asked the flight attendant about every 5 seconds for her backpack out of the cabinet above her. Next to her was another little girl (accompanied by her dad) who apparently was not able to speak in an appropriate decibel. She pretty much yelled everything she said including,"Are we going to crash?" (multiple times). Later during the flight she started teaching the girl in front of me how to make extremely loud popping noises with her mouth. Yay!

On the other side of the aisle was a tween-aged girl who aspires to be a drummer. She wisely used her flight time to practice her beats by slapping her hands on the tray table.

Next to me was a philosophy grad student from the university of Utah who explained his whole life story to the lady sitting on the other side of him. After that came his analysis of Lady Gaga and Beyonce's 9 minute music video and pertinent commentary on Jersey Shore. Each story came with grand hand gestures.

The lady he was talking to decided that making smacking and kissing noises at her baby was more entertaining. Apparently the louder you are the more entertained the baby is.

My migraines tend to heighten my sense of smell and sound. I was ecstatic when all three men behind me ordered multiple cups of coffee. To keep myself from throwing up I leaned forward on my tray table and concentrated on the smell of my napkin.

One good thing on my flight was getting a second bag of cashews after the flight attendant thought it would be funny to chuck the first bag at me. I then searched frantically for the first bag because it was after all cashews.

I'm not sure I have ever had such a unique airport/flying experience.

unemployed snowboarding

I have to admit, one of the first things that popped into my head after Andrew told me he lost his job was snow. I saw 2 weeks of severance as two weeks dedicated to working on that double McTwist 1260. So after a bit of sulking I was able to get Andrew up the mountain. We had a blast, as always but Andrew definitely had a much better boarding day then me. He was hitting jumps left and right and scoring fresh tracks on quite a few runs. My experience was a bit different. First, some 15 year old came out of nowhere and rammed me from behind sending me rolling for quite a ways down the hill. He's lucky he picked himself up and jetted faster then me because I was pretty irritated. Then, as the snow started to melt (it was after all in the 60's) I wasn't paying attention and got stuck in someone else's tracks for a split second which sent me sliding quite a ways down the hill on my side. The accompanying mountain rash looked pretty sweet after it started bleeding but today it has disappeared. So there is no cool injury photo to post. Here's to unemployment!

Boring Updates

So I guess it has been awhile. Andrew and I suck at blogging!

Andrew: Newly unemployed after brief employment at cramster, Andrew is using his open schedule to program a new application. It's top secret although at least 7 people already know about it. If your curious, ask someone.

Heather: Still in school with the hopes of being done at the end of summer, Heather is leisurely enjoying bouts of lab work before the next quarter begins and she has no time.

Jefferies: Ah Jefferies. Still fat & furry. Still alive, still eluding actual people (except for a brief sighting by John and Janet). Keeping up his rigorous sleep schedule with intermittent wrestling matches with Ping and snuggles with Andrew.

Ping: Ping has recently taken up furniture and closet climbing as a sport. She easily jumps 6 feet high to gracefully land on top of Heather's oak dresser. She then likes to eat Heather's paper flowers. She will probably lose a limb soon if she doesn't stop. Ping also enjoys climbing into the hangers in the closet. She then uses her keen ninja skills to get to the top shelf. This is the current theory of how she gets onto the top shelf of the closet as no one has actually seen her do it.

Hope everyone is doing well and we will try to update you when we do something interesting.

Finally

Each rainy season Andrew and I witness the ever changing texture and appearance of the wall leading down into the garage and the south facing wall in the garage as water seeps through the cinder blocks and blisters the paint. In the summers we enjoy killing off the mold with bleach. Almost every time we walk down to the garage one of us reiterates that we should really do something about the situation. So, after 4 plus years....here are the before pictures and tomorrow I will post the after.

Vacation to Carmel by the Sea

Andrew and I scored an awesome deal at a bed and breakfast this year so we headed up north (5.5 hours) to the Monterey Bay area. Our first full day we walked the streets, got lunch and ate on the beach. We quickley found out that Carmel is an international place of interest; buses brought in tons of tourists.
Carmel beach was beautiful! The sand was extremely soft. As we sat down to eat on a tree this squirrel came out of the tree and sat right next to Andrew the whole time.





On our walk back we saw some pretty impressive modern homes. This was our favorite.



The next day we headed to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It was really nice with a ton of things to see. Currently they have a Seahorse exhibit which is absolutely amazing. I always thought seahorses were these smallish creatures but they actually can get quite large.











We followed the aquarium up with lunch and a trip to the Toll House store. I'm still having dreams about this cookie sandwich.



On wednesday we drove home because I had bought tickets for Legally Blonde the musical in Orange County. Last year MTV did a reality show for the casting the the lead, Elle Woods. I liked it a lot so was pretty stoked to see the musical. I was mildly disappointed because it didn't seem like the actors/actresses were energized enough during most of their performances. The leads weren't very good but the supporting roles were very good.



Thursday was Andrew's birthday so I surprised him by reserving a table in Beverly Hills at Vibrato. It's a steakhouse with live jazz.



And what I am most excited about: My wormery!!!!! I went to the aboretum last saturday where I was able to purchase a wiggly farm (with a free 0.5lb of worms!) to start vermicomposting. I'm wicked excited about it all. Here's Ping cat making herself comfortable in the wormery.



Here's the finshed set up.

Worm Composting!

For those of you in LA county- LA county sponsors workshops to learn how to start a worm compost bin almost every Saturday (in different locations) They have worm compost bins available to purchase at the indicated workshops for only $65! That includes the worms! I've been wanting to start worm composting but the composter and worms are about $150 (including shipping and handling). The next workshop is 9/12 at the Arboretum. Check out this link for more info on worm composting and other workshop dates!


If your interested in regular composting, Alhambra City sells compost bins for $10 at city hall, 2nd floor.

I love finding things I can make my own. I found these shoes online and I liked the style of them but they had this annoying bead work.
Before:

Tools:

After: Now they are my favorite sandals.

Ping cat


Ping-class of 2009

What's Been Going on

So now I will post about a billion things in the order I found them on my camera.

First. Andrew and I have been eating a lot of veggies and found a great recipe for a "tortilla". It's suppose to be for vegetarians but it's much better with bacon.


We did a lot of snowboarding this past season. It's very apparent when it's the end of the season though.


I couldn't be happier that I married someone who is as willing as I am to get up at 5:00 AM to be the first one on the slopes.


Amy's babyshower. I usually don't go to babyshowers because frankly I don't need to hear another birthing story. But Amy's a great individual so I made an exception.

Kristen and Chuan are 2 other exceptions.

Ping dragged this balloon around all night after the party.


Andrew and I helped out with the ward easter celebration. Andrew was the sports announcer for the duck race. He made it quite exciting.

This is Lala. She was determined there were eggs to be found even after the hunt had ended.



I don't like surprises but Zach and Alicia came over the week of my birthday for FHE with a great one.



Smitty's for my birthday dinner with Andrew, Kristen, Mike, James and Roz.



Babyshower for Tawni. So Suzy and I were talking about how our friend, Stephanie who moved to Arizona 1.5 years ago is sorely missed and we can't wait till she comes back. And then she walked into the backyard. So weird, but awesome!


Aw youth conference. An experience. Here are some highlights-Andrew bringing me a bucket full of cold, salty sea water for my bee stung foot. Bee stings are more painful then previsously expected.

Katie, boisterous enough for the whole group. Here is her award-winning Jesus sculpture.

Recovery.


3rd of July hike with Sarah. Real forest!

And real wildlife. I'm not sure we resolved what this animal is. It looks beaver-ish.


Children's Parade in Centerville, Ut



Most exciting of all...our trip to see Conan O'Brien! Here we are travelling to see the Commander of Pale Force.


We took a bus to Union station and then the red line. One minute Andrew and I were the only ones there and the next a flood of people came running down.

There was cool architecture and art at the Universal City stop.


So this is a great story-Neither Andrew or I had had any real food besides breakfast that day. We got out of the taping at 6:30PM and were starving. The bus we were taking home just happens to stop right across the street from Chanos. The only problem was that we didn't have enough money to get off and then get back on the bus (after eating). As I was desperately digging through my wallet for spare change and while getting on the bus, the bus driver told us the ride was free! He didn't have a gadget to insert cash fares..only the "tap pass". Woohoo! So we went to Chanos.

The end!