Ashley's Birthday

This weekend was Ashley's Birthday. I decided to take her to San Diego. We usually like to stay at the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Blvd., but because we're on one income we opted for the Good Nite Inn, San Diego.

There's a photo booth we really love at the Balboa Park Museum of Photographic Arts. We visited the booth last year and we're trying to make it a tradition.

Halloween Memories

Nate:
When I was a kid the towns in our area would each host trick-or-treating on a different night of halloween week. Each night my parents would drive us around to whichever town was having it's trick-or-treat night and we would fill a pillow case with candy. By the end of halloween week we had enough candy to last us until Easter, the next big candy holiday. By the time Easter came around I would be down to the dregs - butterscotch and tootsie rolls, but at least it was candy.


Ashley:
We didn't celebrate Halloween and not once growing up did I go trick-or-treating. To this day I have not been trick-or-treating. The day after Halloween we would walk through the neighborhood and pick up the candy that had fallen out of the other kids bags. Usually this consisted of Laffy Taffys, Now and Laters, and if we were lucky a miniature candy bar - a snickers maybe that had fallen in the shade and had not been melted by the sun yet. I would walk around with the front of my shirt turned up to make a little pocket and would use that to hold the candy. We tried to get out there pretty early the next morning before the candy on the sidewalks got stepped on.

Quite the adventure

Today we had quite an adventure! It is our last day in hawaii so we tried to make it a good one. There is a great snorkeling spot right near captain cooks monument (Its where he died if you are wondering). Its such a great spot that the locals want to restrict access to it so that it does not becone overrun with "causual tourists".
Now that ash and i have spent some time on the island, we think this is a good idea. For instance, there is a very popular snorkeling spot on alii drive in kona (referred to as "snorkel beach"). This reef is easily accessable to anyone and it seems like pretty much every tourist and sight seer come to snorkel at this reef. The problem with this is that  its very shallow so everyone steps on the coral, sun screen gets on (and kills) the coral and if a wave comes a long you'll land on the coral and break it etc. Because its so popular the reef is dying and there's not that much beauty left. There's still some, but its nothing compared to our two other favorite snorkeling spots. Needless to say, no one wants any of the snorkeling spots to end up like this one.

In an attempt to keep the massive crowds away from captain cook no maintained roads lead there. So a popular way to get there is by a mile kayak ride and that is how ash and i intended to get there.

We rented a double kayak at "kona boys" and strapped it to the top of our jeep. After arriving at the boat ramp we loaded up our gear and put in the seats to the kayak. A gentleman kindly informed us that we put the seats facong the wrong way and we were about to kayak "backwards" (whoops).

The kayak trip was a hoot. The bay is often used as a place of rest and nursery for a pod of spinner dolphins. I hoped we would see some but we did not. When we arrived at the monument i promptly stepped on a bee which stung my foot. We put on our snorkel gear, trief to avoid stepping on the purple sea urchins, and jumped into the ocean.

I have to say, that ashley was being very courageous during this time. After our first snorkel trip the last thing i thought we would be doing was kayaking our into the ocean to jump in with the fish. Earlier in the trip she was nearly in tears for being within a yard of a puffer fish and now she was dragging me along into schools of them. I thinks shes finally over her fear of fish.

The ocean was warm, the coral beautiful, and the fish fishy. We swam and took pictures and admired God's beautiful creation of the coral reef.

As we kayaked back i announced that we were not leaving until i spotted a dolphin (or we reached the other side). We reached the other side first, so i guess ill just have something to look forward to for the next trip to paradise.

wisdom teeth, drugs and jott

Yesterday I had my last wisdom tooth taken out. I had the oral surgeon put me totally under because I didn't want to remember anything. (For those of you who don't know this was my second time having my wisdom teeth out. Last time they took out three and this was the last one.) It took a while for the sedation drugs to wear off and by the end of yesterday I was feeling better but still quite numb.

This morning I woke up and I had 5 Jott's in my inbox. 4 to myself and 1 to Mat. I have no memory of sending these voice messages.

Apparently after the procedure was done Ash drove us to Whole Foods to get some arnica cream. While I was waiting for her in the car I took out my cell phone and started Jott'ing myself and also Mat and told him that I had just had my wisdom tooth out (Listen here).

For your listening pleasure, here are more examples of me coming out of sedation:

"I just got my wisdom tooth taken out". Listen.
Mumbling. Listen.
Something about Amazon and movies. I'm not really sure. Listen.
Talking about the drugs wearing off (yeah, right). Listen.

ashley's longhandles

in this video, watch as ash talks about how it is so cold she has to wear longhandles.



(and stop laughing mat, it really was cold)

pictures of a regular day

Below are some pictures from various regular days.

Haircut and Garlic Ice Cream

So for Christmas my boss gave me a gift certificate for the Amadeus Spa and Salon. I went there today with Leah, and we got haircuts. Here are pictures of my new hair. I love going there, I got a haircut there last year when I had a gift certificate, and I wish that I could get my hair cut there all the time. Its like $100 for a haircut though, so I'll just have to be satisfied with Fantastic Sams. After that, Leah and I went shopping and then picked Nate up from work and we went to The Stinking Rose, a garlic themed restaraunt in Beverly Hills. We had garlic bread with garlic spread, garlic chicken, whole cooked garlic cloves, garlic mashed potatos, even garlic ice cream. The ice cream was suprisingly good. All in all, it was a great afternoon and evening and I was so happy for a break in my week. And I can say with certainty that there will be no vampires at our house tonight.

Visit to Pennsylvania

Here are some pictures from my recent visit to Pennsylvania. It was so great to see Erin and Rod and the kids and experience an actual winter again. You can see the ice floating in the river in some of the pictures. The kids are hilarious - whenever I turned on the video camera they wanted to sing "Holy, Holy, Holy". No other songs, just "Holy, Holy, Holy". Adelaide is learning how to read and working on basic math. While I was there she did a lesson on counting change and did a great job. She really knows how to count those dimes. Henry is two and learning how to pee-pee in the potty. Actually, he's learning how to stay dry between trips to the bathroom, a task that became much easier last Friday when Erin decided that she was tired of washing three pairs of little boys jeans a day, and sprung for some snazzy vinyl underwear for him. Henry wasn't too happy about that, and it took a great deal of coaxing to get him excited about wearing an elasticized poncho. Adelaide took the rubber undies out of the package and smelled them and said, "They smell like my swimming pool." While I was there we went to this iron works place called John Wright Company. They had tons of great things, especially in the bargain room upstairs, but unfortunately, I had to think about how I would get items made of iron into my suitcase and home. I did get some great baking dishes, but had to leave the five foot coat rack behind.

Henry and Adelaide

Here is a video Ash took of Henry and Adelaide during her trip to PA. This seemed to be the only song they wanted to sing.

Ashley's Back From PA

Ashley's back from The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She was there for a few days to visit her sister and family. We'll have some pictures from the trip up here soon!

saturday's pictures

Here are more pictures of us:

checking in

Ash and I got a new camera for my birthday. Here is a picture of us:

poor little silver

I was in an accident tonight. I was leaving to get Nate from the train, and I stopped at this stop sign and looked and I saw a car but it was a long way away, so I proceeded into the intersection. Somehow the car was instantly upon me and crashed into the front left corner of our car. Poor little Silver. I was shaken up but totally fine and thankfully the people that crashed into me were nice. We exchanged info while Nate’s dad picked him up from the train and drove him to ‘the scene’ where our car was still crashed in the road. After we cleared the cars out of the road a cop showed up (a half hour after Nate called 911 and was put on hold) and took down our info and stated to me, “Well, it was clearly your fault. Failure to yield.” Just the words you want to hear from a cop at the scene of an auto accident. So now we’re facing the task of insurance, towing, the fun of getting to work with no car etc… I’m still a bit shaken but trying to not stress out know that God has absolute control over all situations and so thankful to Him that there were no injuries to people, just cars. Like Nate's dad kept reminding me, it could have been a lot worse and the worst thing we’re having to deal with right now is paperwork, some money and logistics of getting from here to there. Not that bad.

would ashley eat a cockroach?

Magic mountain has a new promotion (cnn) this year at Fright-Fest: Anyone who eats a live 4-inch cockroach gets a pass for 4 to cut in line for the rest of the day. My wife apparently thinks this is a good idea and tells me that she would eat the cockroach and "it would be totally worth it."

"i've eaten bugs before on a dare," she told me. Uh-huh. I'm sure that's true, but a 4-inch roach? I told her I didn't think she would do it and she says: "let the record show - that I, who know myself the best, know that I would totally do it."

So I've decided to ask the crowd. I'm asking those of you who know Ash to vote and/or post a comment below on if you think Ashley would eat a live cockroach to cut in line for a day at Magic Mountain. (Maybe if we can get enough people to vote we could get her to eat one anyway.) My vote is that she wouldn't do it. What do you think?