Cali Vacation 2011: Day 1

Hello All,
So this is the first blog of this new and exciting year. Dad and Katie took Stacy and I on a graduation trip to California since both of us will graduate this year. After our first flight out of Madison was cancelled we got on another flight to Cleveland 5 hours after our original flight was to leave. With our slight delay we made it to LA only 7 hours after we were scheduled to arrive. We were all dog tired but walked down the street from our hotel to the Gardenwalk where we had dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen. We slept in the next day since we had basically been up for about 24 hours. We had breakfast at the hotel and went to a discount tickets and tours place to get tickets for the things we planned to do that week. This first day we spent at Knott's Berry Farm. Enjoy these pictures from Knott's.

Completely replenished after a good night's sleep we were ready to go to Knott's Berry Farm and ride some roller coasters.

The beautiful view of the mountains fromt he parking lot.

Yay for Knott's Berry Farm. The best thing about the day was that there were barely any lines since it was a weekday.

Dad had to try on the fish hat before we walked in the door.

Walking into Ghost Town.

The first ride of the day.

Had to get a picture with the statues in Adventureland.

The coolest ride, I think, because you ride a horse in that ride.

The horses roller coaster.

We got stuck in jail...LOL.

We walked to Camp Snoopy to see what was there even though we could only ride one ride. We did get to have our picture with Snoopy because he was right inside the entrance.

From Camp Snoopy we entered Fiesta Village where we rode Montezuma's Revenge and the Jaguar.

Then we went on the tallest ride there, Supreme Scream. I was shocked that Stacy went on it with me especially since she does not like heights.

This was my favorite ride of the day.

I liked this ride but Stacy did not since it went backwards.

The beautiful sky and the mountains as we were leaving Knott's.

That night we had dinner at Bubba Gumps. It was a great first day of vacation. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Continue to read my other blogs about this vacation. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses.

Turkey Day 2010

Hello All,
These are some pictures from Thanksgiving this year. We had a small Thanksgiving dinner this year with just Tami, Jon and I. Also almost our entire meal was made in the toaster oven. Who said you need a full-size oven to make a whole Thanksgiving dinner. Here are some pictures.

My preparations for Thanksgiving dinner started on Tuesday night when I made pumpkin cupcakes with caramel cream cheese frosting. Then I drizzled them with more caramel. They are amazingly wonderful.

Jon spent the night since on Wednesday night we went to see the new Harry Potter movie. This is him trying to sleep in which is very hard when I'm awake.

Tami and I "trying" not to make too much noise but we were excited for Thanksgiving.

Had to start off the morning with Just Dance 2. It is sooooo much fun.

My Thanksgiving decorations.

Jon went and got breakfast, cinnamon rolls. Yeah he went and bought them but I still had to bake them.

Tami breaking up the bread for the stuffing.

Our lunch/snacks minus the bread crumbs.

Watching Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The corn souffle is the first to be done.

Jon got nominated to help Tami make the stuffing. It was hilarious to watch especially since he wasn't really listening to her directions.

The turkey roasts are seasoned.

The stuffing baking away.

The turkey - rotisserie style. It smelled so good and tasted even better.

The finished product.

I'm cutting it up. You can see the steam...yummy.

The only thing that I got hurt doing was peeling the potatoes for the mashed potatoes. The peeler gave my a blister on my thumb. Oh yes, and with this we had flying potatoes because they were slippery so they would shoot out of my hand and across the room. It was quite funny. After watching the parade we watched all the Thanksgiving episodes of Friends then football.

Our dinner, just the 3 of us. It was perfect for us. Good times with good friends and good food.

Eating Tami's oreo ice cream dessert while decorating the tree.

This is what they did while I decorated. But this is usually what they do all the time while I'm doing other things. Hope you all had a wonderful turkey day. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses.

Steaks and Baked Potatoes

Hello All,
I know its been quite some time since I wrote a blog but as many of you know this semester has been keeping me quite busy. Well our Tuesday night ritual is to watch Glee and I make dinner for Jon, Tami and I. Tami and I went and had dinner at our friends, Corey and Kristin, and they made steaks in their toaster oven. Well they were so good and we didn't know that we could cook steaks in the toaster oven. So for this week's Glee viewing party I made steaks and baked potatoes and then cheesecake with strawberries for dessert. Here's some pictures from that night.

Jon and Tami topping their baked potatoes.

My plate........YUMMY!!!!!!!

Jon and Tami eating dinner. You can see in this picture and one further down that I made a paper chain as decorations for Halloween.

Homemade cheesecake with fresh strawberry topping.

They were studying hard for their marine biology exam but there's always time to take a break for dessert.

One last picture...I had to model my cheesecake. Although in this picture there's some weird shadow thing going on so it makes my head look bigger than it actually is. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Sending you warm wishes and aloha kisses.