Ferrell Family Fun

Christmas 2011

2012-01-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

With John's birthday just 2 days before Christmas and Aunt KK's birthday 2 days before that, we tend to have a bitrhday party for the 2 of them on John's birthday. This year they got trick candles. :)

Since Christmas was on Sunday and other family celebration scheduling, we had Christmas morning on Christmas Eve morning with John's family.

Zoe loved crawling around the Christmas tree looking for ribbon to play with so GG held her while she played with some.

Zoe hanging out with Uncle Johnny

Mackenzie wanted Pompa to get in on the action

I got awesome cupcake stuff

Jackson was very meticulous opening his presents. He would pull a piece off...

Then place it carefully in a neat pile. No matter how big or small the piece of paper.

Zoe and Aunt Cari

The look on Mackenzie's face is priceless. And it sums up the morning. Jackson gets a new present and Mackenzie moves in to take it away...

He loves Elmo!!!

John and I got Mackenzie her own digital camera. I would let her use mine occasionally and she loved it but didn't like that Aunt Cari wouldn't let her hold it by herself.

John was waiting awhile to open his present. All he got before was cards saying "this is part of the big thing"

And it's a surfboard!

So after dinner with John's family, we headed down to Fountain Valley to my aunt's house where we had our gift exchange that, as usual, involved my mom and my aunt fighting over one of the gifts (Aunt Paula got the final steal on that gift this year!) and also had that same aunt making not so subtle hints that she wants a great niece or nephew to spoil. Then we headed to Disneyland the rest of the night before we went back to Glendora with my family.

On the train

zero days to xmas!

getting ready for Star Tours (if you haven't been in a while, they re-did the ride and it's 3D and has different possible options so you never know what you're going to get!)

quick shot of the castle (copied the idea from Steve who did a much better job of it. in my defense he has better equipment!)

waiting in the main street plaza


All the characters were lined up outside the main street train station before the park closing to say goodnight. guess they do that special for Christmas Eve! and yes we were there almost to the park closing...

In the morning, we opened stockings and ate waffles then went to church at Doug and Nancy's ward where John and I were singing in a group. A good chunk of our ward (Glendora 2nd) was at that ward (like the whole Mckay family)! After church we went to Auntie E's house in Long Beach. Auntie E got John a flatware set for his birthday. Odd present for him you say? Well, it was a Disney flatware set. And she had already got us Christmas presents, but she HAD to get them for us. So she remembered she hadn't gotten anything for John's birthday. And John got Disney flatware for his birthday. She was jumping up and down from trying to contain her excitement waiting for John to open it!

So we tried to take a family picture. Yeah, in the future we shouldn't put John and Hana next to each other...

Family Pictures

2012-01-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

So John's family wanted to do a big family picture since everyone was going to be in town for Christmas. So I immediately postponed my dramatic hair-chopping plans. It was a hoot trying to get the toddlers in the family to even look at the camera. I brought my Disney toys since I knew Mackenzie at least would respond to that. In the end, it took candy for Mackenzie and clapping for Jackson. Meanwhile, Zoe was just confused!

New Years Day Surprise

2012-01-16T16:09:00.000-08:00

After staying out late at a friend's house (but still leaving before midnight to beat the drunks home and get a very tired, been up since 6am husband to bed) we didn't notice the mail we got on Saturday, New Years Eve. So as we are walking out the door to go to church on Sunday morning, John grabs the mail and finds a letter from the California Board of Professional Engineers and Surveyors and hands it to me. My response: great, I get to find out what I need to start studying for.

So I open the letter and start reading. "Congratulations on passing the December 2011 examination(s)..." Wait, does that mean I passed both? Continue reading. "This serves as temporary evidence that you hold a professional engineering license." I think this means I passed! Yes, somehow, by the good grace of God, I passed both of the California exams! I have no idea how I passed the seismic exam, but I don't care. I'm done. I got the official certificate last week. I still need to order a stamp, but I don't have to study anymore! What a liberating feeling! I was convinced I had to go through the seismic again and was a bit shocked that I passed.

I couldn't think of a better way to start the new year.

Regards,

Cari E. Ferrell, P.E.

Thanksgiving and Post Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-12-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

So we had a relatively quiet Thanksgiving this year. Cari's family was in Utah so we went to John's parent's house. The Knudsen's went to Kathy's house this year so it was Cari, John, Doug, Nancy, Kirsty, KK, Janie, GG (aka Gma Patton), Scott (Cari's bro), and a girl from the singles ward. Doug smoked a delicous turkey. Monica wasn't there so we went to store bought rolls (oh the heresy!). Nancy's pies were delicious as always too! To make it a better day, the Cowboys won their game!! With time management and running the ball, they ran down the clock from about 2 minutes to 3 seconds while being down 2 points. Then kicked the winning field goal with time running out so the Dolphins wouldn't have a chance to respond. Thank goodness that guy made it or all that careful time management would have been a waste!

So the next day we did a lot of cleaning, a little bit of shopping, a little bit of Christmas decorating and went to lunch and the Ducks game with Janie and KK. Was another loss but still an entertaining game! And we took some pictures with the George Parros cutout before the game.

John bracing for impact!

The next day we got our Christmas tree, decorated that, and went to help decorate at John's parent's house. I didn't decorate - I was on Mackenzie and Zoe duty with KK. We walked around the neighborhood and Mackenzie played on the electric toddler Harley the Jackson's have. I was too busy making sure she didn't drive into the curb or cars to get a picture though! After that Mackenzie did some "helping" in the house. She "helped" the same way she did last year.

So here's Mackenzie "helping Grandma decorate last year

And "helping" decorate this year

Isn't that the cutest face?

New Disneyland Passes!

2011-11-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

So we decided to get Disneyland passes again (thank you overtime and a raise!). Originally we were going to get them when we went with Monica and Lucas when they took Mackenzie and Zoe, but it was going to rain that day so it wouldn't be so good for the little girls. So John and I went that day anyways and got our passes! I'm still super excited to go with our nieces but I FINALLY got to go on the new Star Tours ride! I still miss the old one but the new one is cool! So here we are with our 3D glasses getting ready to hop onboard!

One of the things we love about going to Disneyland is the random people you meet. One this trip we met a boy and his mom who were on a mini vacation to go see an agent so the boy could try to start getting acting roles. The boy acted very adult-like and like a little kid all at the same time. We were in line for Space Mountain and he got super excited going "oh wow" and such when we went inside and he saw the ship above the loading zone.

So we went over to California Adventure so we could see what was happening over there since we had been there last year. The Radiator Springs area isn't open yet, but the rock work looks mostly done (as you can see in the picture).

We went on a swing ride we hadn't gone on before. It had a nice vantage point of the park.

They are re-doing the entrance to California Adventure (and I really really hope it opens before our passes expire!!) so they had a lot of boards up with cute vintage cartoon pictures. So John and I practiced posing like the characters. :)

Hooray for another year visiting Mickey's home!!

Haircut

2011-11-14T11:05:00.000-08:00

I'm debating getting my hair cut. So I'm thinking of going with long layers like I've done before something like this:

I'm also thinking of going with a short hair style like this:

Any thoughts?

Temple Pictures

2011-11-06T08:56:00.000-08:00

So Saturday was a beautiful day in So Cal. We had a good rain the day before and it was slightly windy so it was super clear. So I figured it would be a perfect day to take pictures at the temple. I'm not sure if I have ever seen the Hollywood sign from the 10 freeway in Santa Monica or not, but it was crystal clear yesterday!

Here's some pictures I took:

View of the downtown skyline

No post-processing done with the color. Though I do use a basic filter on my lens.

Christmas lights are up already! The front trees have cool icicle things

Babysitting

2011-11-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

John and I were babysitting Mackenzie and Zoe for a little while on Saturday so I decided to bust out my camera since I haven't taken niece pictures in a while. So I was helping Mackenzie learn to take pictures with my dslr also. She was so proud of herself taking pictures! So here's a bunch of pictures taken by me, John, or Mackenzie!

Didn't always get the camera pointing right!

Mackenzie is too cool for smiling in pictures ;)

we'll work on picture composition later...

those girls love their pompa!!

Zoe was little more interested i the TV at this point

Zoe has the sweetest smile!

hanging out with 'ohnny

Halloween 2011

2011-11-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

Not very much thought and effort went into Halloween this year. AKA, I didn't think about it until after my test was over! So we bought pumpkins on Saturday. I decided to do the old Mighty Ducks logo.

Go Mighty Ducks!!

Of course I had to pose with my jersey on!

I took it to work on Monday for the pumpkin contest, but didn't expect anything because Marketing goes way out. This year a girl from Marketing did a Cinderella carriage with squash "pulling" the carriage. I forgot to take a pic though!
John did a hockey player pumpkin. So he has a helmet and a mustache.

And here's the glowing ones (I haven't mastered taking dark pictures yet so they're a little blurry):

I decorated some cupcakes for our neighborhood party. I didn't get around to doing it ahead of time so I was rushing after work to do it and get them out to the party. But I'm happy with how they turned out!

Here's the spread

I made ghost cupcakes

spiderweb cupcakes

monster cupcake

I didn't take pictures of our costumes 'cause they were kind of lame a literally last minute. John was a fencer (how convenient he has all the gear!) and I was an aerobic instructor (throw on some leg warmers and wa-laa!). John played with his light up toys on the "lawn" (still dirt) while I handed out candy. We tried putting black lights in our column lights but they didn't do much. They were too weak to even make your white shirt glow.

Cari's PE Exam Experience

2011-10-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

So after months of studying, taking a review class, and feeling guilty whenever I took a break from studying, D-day finally arrived. It started on Thursday with the California special exams. Seismic in the morning and surveying in the afternoon. I was on the verge of breaking down in tears in the seismic test. For both of the special exams you get 2.5 hours to do 50 questions. The seismic was much harder than any practice exam. And I didn't do so well on those practice exams. It would take a miracle for that to be a passing effort. So John joined me during my lunch break so I could have company and de-stress a bit. Then I went in for more torture. Surveying wasn't as bad as the seismic, but I just had no time to make sure I was doing anything right. I'd say I have a 50-50 shot at passing that one. I felt like I had been hit by a train. Go home and try to relax while fighting off a headache. At that point, it was not looking good to be going back for day 2.

Well, the morning part of the national 8-hour exam was a good confidence builder. I didn't have to do any reinforced concrete so that made me happy. I only had 1 problem I couldn't figure out. I finished in about 2 hours then spent 1.5 hours checking and re-working some problems (and trying to figure out that one problem...). The confidence I had from the morning vanished in the afternoon. There were a number of problems I couldn't figure out. Like, why do I need to calculate Henry's constant when it's always on a table and all my references had no equations? And I hate stoichiometry... I was ready to do hardness stuff, but not what they gave us. Overall, the NCEES practice exam was right on for difficulty level for the morning, but easier than the actual exam for the afternoon. But my chances feel pretty good for the 8-hour.

So I carpooled with a coworker on Friday. As we are leaving the Pomona fairplex, some guy points out we have a flat tire. So I pull off. My left front is completely flat. Crap. I just wanted to go home!! So we pull out the spare and start trying to change the tire, but can't get the lug nuts off. So just as I'm about to call AAA, a guy stops to help us put the spare on. So we drive back to my house so I could take care of it in the morning. In the morning my spare was looking flat! Lame-sauce. Guess I need to fill it back up. But we took my car in and had to get new front tires. The real awesome part is that I just had my tires rotated so my good tires were in front and my crappy tires in front. If I hadn't gotten my tires rotated just days ago it would have been the crappy tires I would be replacing. So instead I have 2 new tires in front and 2 crappy tires in back! Love my luck! I'm just grateful it happened after all the tests were done!

So I'm alive and my car has new tires. And I'd really like to not go back! But all I can do now is wait... And I'm going to Disneyland!!!

Alive

2011-09-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

Yes we are. Well, depending on your definition of alive. I got swallowed by a stack of review books and textbooks and reference manuals and they won't let go for another 4 weeks. I would take a picture to prove it, but I wouldn't get around to uploading it to my computer for a while. So, until then....

A work in Progress

2011-08-28T15:24:00.000-07:00

I need to post pictures of some of the improvements we've made inside our house like curtains, but we still don't have all of them up yet... so here's where we are with our front yard!

A friend of the Ferrell's did a landscape design for our front yard. It's going to have a nicer porch, a walkway/extended driveway space, some nicer trees and plants, and some accent columns. It's gonna be awesome. Aside from tearing everything out and ignoring the front lawn, we haven't done anything much til now. This past weekend we had the horrendous tree in our front yard removed. It is shedding stuff all year round and it wasn't properly groomed when it was young so it has weird main branches that shoot off in annoying directions. The shade on our cars was nice, but hey, trade offs I guess!

Just starting removal

After removal

Looks like a different house already! Now we're watering the lawn so Jose can more effectively kill it by applying a couple rounds of Round Up and he'll be rototilling the yard in a couple weeks. After that we plan on getting the hardscaping done so Jose can finish up with a sprinkler system, new sod, and planting lots of new plants and trees!

Big Bear Lake

2011-08-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

John and I got to spend the weekend at Big Bear Lake last month. Our friend, Patti, who we go to hockey games with has a cabin (well, it's her parent's cabin) right on the lake. So we went up Saturday morning with Aunt Janie, Aunt KK, and Grandma Patton. We walked around downtown Big Bear and checked out Patti's son's gift shop and stopped in at the chili festival. John put on a show at night and we went wakeboarding early in the morning with Patti's son with my new board. Since the bindings tore on the board I was using, I was going to just buy new bindings, but it wasn't much cheaper than getting a new board and bindings used (thank you craigslist). It was an interesting experience to go behind a ski boat with ski rope and where the water is warmer than the air temperature. So here's some pics for you to enjoy.

view from the deck

getting relaxed

Pooki and Cricket

Juan the Jalepeño

Cari's new friend (the kettle corn not the fake indian!)

go Ducks!

the cabin (lake side)

afternoon sun on the flag

looking up a tree trunk

peeking out at the lake

bug on the flower

I was trying to play with the sun flare

John's light show

my new wakeboard

Mackenzie's 2nd Birthday

2011-07-24T19:02:00.000-07:00

Our niece just turned 2! So the family all got together for a birthday barbecue.

we gave Mackenzie her present (pictured) early so she could play with it at Lake Powell

she always asked for help down the top stairs

Zoe and the Grandmas

KK with Mackenzie looking ganster

Zoe loved the sparkles on Janie's shirt

Zoe and Great Grandma Patton checking each other out

Mackenzie and her cousin Riley

checking out her pile

she loved to push her new Mickey and Daisy dolls in her new stroller

Monica was happy to see Mackenzie trying out her new broom!

Funniest moment of the night was when Mackenzie was playing with her Sesame Street Russian stacking dolls and Monica was trying to get her attention for her last gift. "Come on Mackenzie. I know you'll like this one!" So Monica starts opening it to reveal a Minnie Mouse toy at which Mackenzie tosses the Sesame Street toy and beelines it for the Minnie Mouse toy. Disney would have been pleased. I proudly take credit for starting her obsession with Minnie Mouse.

Lake Powell Shred the Glass Tour 2011

2011-07-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

Day 1 - We drove a long way. Mackenzie hated her car seat by the end. Had Dam Bar and Grill for dinner and went on a grocery shopping rampage.

Mackenzie checking out her new pad for the trip

Day 2 - Up bright and early to launch the boats. Of course this means Mackenzie and Zoe had to wear their life jackets. The normally very happy Zoe was getting impatient. Especially since we got stuck waiting for a repair on the house boat.

I love the look on Zoe's face here

As soon as getting anchored, it was time to bust out the little pool for some playtime in the water.

And then the raft.

And some playing with Zoe:

Day 3 - The next morning, I woke up at 5am and nobody else was up. The water was beautiful and glassy, so I decided to take some pictures.

The Calabria

Some landscape

Looking back up the main channel

After after some wakeboarding in the morning and relaxing and watching Big Bang Theory (as was the line up for most days), Monica and Kirsty took Mackenzie out on the sea doo. She loved it. Every time they took her on the sea doo the rest of the trip she cried when it was time to get off.

Day 4 - Wakeboarding in the morning on this trip was great. The water was really nice and nobody was out until the time we were going back in.
So Lucas and a girl from the singles ward, Efi, arrived on Saturday morning. They drove all night on Friday to get there so they were pretty zonked all day!
Zoe would lay on the top deck in the shade on her play mat. Which worked since she wasn't quite rolling over yet. Though she started doing it more consistently the last couple days. By now, she rolls around the room, which is funny to watch.

Since Lucas was there, Monica and Lucas went out with Mackenzie on the sea doo.

And they are all smiling! It's a miracle!

And tried out the "wee" slide. Mackenzie hated it. "Did you have fun?" Sobbing, "noooo. No wee slide!"

Day 5 - The next group arrived on this day. Whitney and her brother Jamison came. So we had a good sized crew on the boat. In the afternoon, most of us went on a boat ride to Dangling Rope Marina to get soft serve ice cream. Ran into some of the stake president's family there (there's a lot of people from our church in Glendora that go to Lake Powell around the same time).

Another favorite activity for Mackenzie was tubing. I liked going with her because her speed was just right for me!

I think her absolute favorite was looking for "izards" in her raft. There were a bunch on this rock wall. Someone would push her over on her raft and look for lizards.

I try to go hike around the area a little bit every day. Gives a new perspective and opportunities to practice photography.

View of the house boats in the cove. Ours is the green one. The brown one is Doug and Nancy's neighbor.

Efi, John, and Jamison up on the "poopy perch"

Untouched sand

Epic silhouette of Efi

Looking up the main channel

Day 6 - Went to Rainbow bridge. I was amazed at how close the water was! It was a very short walk up to the observation area.

on the way

And of course we did some more sea-dooing.

Day 7 - This was the day everyone left. So it was down to Doug, Nancy, myself, Kirsty, and John for the rest of the trip. I found that the bindings on the wakeboard I ride had torn. But it was on my front foot and I was able to ride with no problem.

Zoe is wearing a onesie that says "My aunt is the best!"

A group picture (except Doug) before everyone left

This was also the day we started getting some stormy weather.

But always some beautiful sunsets.

Day 8 - We got some rain, but in the afternoon after getting in our morning wakeboarding session.

Day 9 - So it got really windy and stormy around noon the day before and it did not stop. It was the 2nd night in a row that John and I slept inside because it was too windy at night. Unfortunately, the wind was still going strong this morning when we woke up. So it was way too choppy to go wakeboarding. We were bummed because it was our last day to go wakeboarding. Luckily, it calmed down enough in the afternoon that we could go out and ride. A church friend that was with the Jackson's came with us that day (he also came another afternoon for wake surfing).

Doug was catching some good fish this year. Kirsty also caught a nice bass. Though I don't like fish, so it wasn't so nice to me.

I had John swim out to some rocks that were above water when we got there.

Here are our favorite wakeboarding pictures of the trip:

And hello folks!! It's John here giving you a little captioning on the pictures. I had a great time at Lake Powell this year mainly because I could actually wakeboard. Yea, having a cast on your hand kinda dampers your ability to wakeboard somewhat. So being able to wakeboard every day was a definite bonus. I mainly had a relaxing time. I spent most of my R&R time reading "The Original Arguement" by Glenn Beck. Basically it's quite a few of the Federalist Papers "modernized" into modern english with a lot of background parts about things that went on in those times. It was a good read and really taught me a lot about what the founders intended when they made the Constitution. Anywho, without further ado, here's the captions!!

I could tell my air wasn't that great, but I got a grab in here and there.

This was a "finishing move" I did at the final part of the run. I tried to go for a cannonball, but I didn't get the back hand down :P

So I then went onto wakeskating. Here I am doing a tale-blunt manual. Basically, you tweak the front of the board to the left so you're balancing on the bottom part of the board.

Wakeskates make great launch pads!!

This is living proof that Cari did, in fact, get air this year!! I'm so proud of my sweetie!!

Cari was able to better feel her edges this year so she was carving like a pro.

Then wakesurf is still one of my favorites. Here's me carving up the wake making a beautiful spray!

Cari also learned how to dig into the wake. This is one of her best Wakesurf shots to date!

Also, not shown here, was my show I put on for the Jacksons. Lisa Jackson came up to me and asked me to provide juggling entertainment to her boat for a night. I got my bag together and went over to put on a great demonstration of yoyos, juggling, astrojax, and even poi. It was a great night and I know that they enjoyed my demonstrations and also my history with each toy and it's own history.

Plumeria flower!

2011-07-08T17:17:00.000-07:00

So John finally got around to tearing down the play structure in our backyard last Saturday:

It's like our yard size grew! We're going to wait til fall to do anything else other than keep the stuff we want alive.

So while I was at it, I took a couple pics of our plumeria progress and our little flower garden:

After roasting all this week with a house at 92 degrees, the AC guy was able to come replace our unit (we have central AC but the compressor was bad) today. So I came home to a nice cool house. It was bliss. And our plumeria plant was so happy for us that it just bloomed!! So I shot some quick pictures to commemorate this special day. Enjoy!

AC

2011-07-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

How did people live without AC? When I get home from work, the temperature inside the house is 92 or 93 F. All our fans are on full blast all day. Granted, we close everything up so someone has to work to break in. I think after opening windows and strategically placing our stand up fans, the temperature was down to 90 when I went to bed. It gets down to 82 by the morning. I pray the AC guy can come tonight...

Progress with the house

2011-06-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

So I thought I'd post a little bit on the progress we've made with our house.

Here's a little of what it looked like when we moved all our stuff out of our storage unit:

Unfortunately, I did not get a "before" picture of the yard, but Doug and Nancy came over while I was working late one day and helped John cut back a lot of the stuff in the backyard. That took a few loads in Doug's truck to put in their dumpster!

After aggressive pruning

We wanted a little something done in the yard, so we put in a little flower bed in a spot that we aren't going to be messing with later (we want to terrace the upper part of the backyard). It's a little bright spot in a disaster of a backyard.

We added more flowers and plumerias and installed a drip system so it doesn't die when we go on vacation (though a couple seem to be dying anyways...). We also added a gnome. A homes not a home without a gnome! We're hoping it will scare off our annoying neighbor's cat.

Next to the flower bed is a grape vine that was there before. We put in a new trellis since the existing one was falling apart and we have bunches of grapes coming in.

So back inside the house, we put in a new kitchen facuet when we moved in. More recently we replaced the ceiling fans in the sun room and got a new range in the kitchen. So far I feel like we've done very worthwhile upgrades. Next one we need to do is the bathroom light fixture since only 1 socket works without exploding.

Here's a big reason we just wanted to replace them

the old range

our beautiful new range that I love to cook with

We've also gotten a lot more organized. We cleaned out the garage that still had stuff from the previous owner so we could put our stuff in there.

what's left of the boxes in the sun room

we've beefed up our food and appliance storage

The only furniture we bought was a reclining loveseat and a desk and bookcase. We got the loveseat used for $200. You can hardly tell it's used and we love it! The desk was a priority since I need a spot to study for the PE!

So in the front yard, we decided to tear the front beds out completely except for an area of rose bushes. We did each side of the house on a different day. And there was a lot of crap to pull out.

the pile

a couple of the rose bushes in the back came back nicely from getting pruned

We feel like we've made a lot of progress so far to make everything how we want it, but still have a looooong way to go. After we get back from Lake Powell we have to look into fixing the insulation on the west wall and/or getting the AC fixed. I don't know how many Home Depot receipt surveys! I sure hope we win a gift card from one of those!!

Neglect

2011-06-16T13:29:00.000-07:00

That's what I've done to our little blog. So since it's too gloomy for me to take a walk on my lunch break... here I am doing an update.

So the week we got back from Utah I had to call in for jury duty. I call in Sunday night - call back Monday night. I call back Monday - report in at 9am. Crap. So I go in, spend 15 minutes trying to find a parking spot only to find that 2/3 of the parking (that jurors don't have to pay for) is in another section, get in line to go through security, and start reading in the jury room. After a while, the lady in charge says she's going to do our orientation soon. So 1/2 an hour later she does her speil then tells us she's giving the list to the judge and will find out what he wants to do. After much sitting around, we get sent to lunch and told to report outside the courtroom at 1:30 (courts take 1.5 hr lunch breaks). Come back, sit around for a while, and we eventually get called in. Swears us all in then tells everybody to come back the next day. All 63 of us. So there's a lot of sitting around in the morning, calls us in shortly before lunch and he excuses a couple people for hardship or close friendship with involved officers. So we have to come back after lunch. We sit around for a while and we finally go in and start jury questioning. The jury selection took the next day as well. They had "legal issues" come up at every turn which is why we sat around so much!
In the end, I got selected on the jury. Boo. There were 3 defendants for an attempted murder with gang and firearm allegations. It was horribly prosecuted, the evidence was shaky at the least, and we would have to speculate all over the place to convict. Once we went into the jury room (with only 15 minutes left before we went home), we all agreed on not guilty pretty fast. In the morning we talked and had a conviction in about an hour or 2. The plus: I got a lot of reading done. I finished a series I had been reading, started a new book, and started re-reading another. I still got paid - that would suck to donate your time for that! And I got some entertainment! One of the defense attorneys was a crack-up. We could all see right through his attempts to act out to discredit the prosecuters case. I know it's his job, but, man, I could not stand that guy!!

One cool thing I got to do last month was Lockheed's Space Day. I'm in the Lockheed group at work (a group of people that primarily work on projects for Lockheed) so I was included in the group that got to go. They hold it at an elementary school in Riverside and just moved it to my elementary school this year. There's a bunch of stations set up on all sorts of science, math, engineering, and technology that the classes rotate through. I helped with some Tetra Tech employees from the Irvine office at the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) station.

Who wouldn't want to try on a tevlar suit, hard hat, safety glasses, vests, and gloves??

Some of the Tetra Tech employees there

The next day, with my slightly red face (I had never even gotten pink from being in the sun all day in Riverside before Space Day!! 4 years of band camp with no sunscreen! I must be getting old!), we had a swim party with almost the whole crew! Grandma Patton had been in town for the last month and was at Doug and Nancy's with Janie. KK came down and Jeff and Sarah were in town with Jackson. Greg and Chelsea drove up so we had a real party going on! It was a lot of fun to have all the kids playing in the pool!!

Mackenzie was having her own party on the swim step!

It was Zoe's first time in the pool and was happy as long as she had shade!

Jackson was a little sleepy but otherwise happy and smiling!

One thing I missed out on in May was my good friend, Leilani's wedding in Manti. At least she had an open house in Riverside (even if she didn't wear her awesome dress!).

It's hard to get a picture without bunny ears with my dad and Lani's dad around!

While Jeff and Sarah were in town, we babysat Jackson one night. So we made some use of the slide in our backyard:

In other news...
-We got called to be the Webolos leader so that will be a learning experience for me since I don't know anything about Scouts!
-I'm working my application to take the PE. I've also started studying and am planning on taking a review class. Which means I will have no life at all from mid-August through October. So if you're in town visiting and want to hang out... good luck!
-My dad finally got a job! Unfortunately, it's in Salt Lake City. So just when I thought I was done going to Utah every year... John is excited to have an excuse to take a snowboarding trip every year!
-We both got hiking shoes with the intent to do it more often. We went to a trail area within walking distance of our house on Memorial Day. They were good, nice and easy, ease back in to hiking trails.
-We got a beautiful new range!! We hated the crappy one that was in our house, so we decided to get a new one instead of a grill. We absolutely love it so far. Even though we tried to burn it down within half and hour of having it installed... yeah, look under the screwed down pieces of the oven for pieces of paper!!
-We had a little hockey night at our place. Yummy burgers, snacks, strawberry daquaris, and Stanley Cup finals hockey!!
-We go to Lake Powell next week!! I'm so excited!! John is just happy he actually gets to wakeboard this year (no cast)!! Can't wait!!

Utah Trip

2011-05-08T11:04:00.000-07:00

We recently took a trip up to Utah for Jeff and Kirsty's graduation. We drove up with John's parents on Thursday and we had a little birthday party for Jackson. He sure loves to rip open those presents!

Rip and tear!

He loved the ribbons too!

We stayed with my friend Emily and her husband Ray in Eagle Mountain so we got drive through the horrible construction they have going on up there every day. People, please learn how to read signs. You don't have to freak out and merge (usually into someone) just because you saw a sign that told you the lanes are going to be moving to the right or the left!

So Friday was the commencement ceremony and picture taking activities.

The graduates

Y Mountain

After the ceremony and a very boring speech (who uses a poem analogy when talking to a bunch of engineers??), we went to eat at the Texas Roadhouse. That place is way good. And the hot, fresh bread with cinnamon honey butter is to die for! After that, Jeff and Sarah took Doug and Nancy to the airport and we went off to do stuff with Emily.
On Saturday, while John played video games with Ray, I got to go to my friend Leilani's bridal shower. Her sister in Idaho came down and my sister Christine came down from Odgen. We had a good showing of the Riverside girls!

Riverside ladies: McKenna, Anna, Emily, Christine

Lani and I

After that, Christine and I went to El Azteca for lunch while we waited for John to come down to Provo. We got nachoes to share and we should have gotten the smaller one!!

ready to go!

We met up with John and went ice skating! My 2nd time ever skating at a rink! (I learned in a friend's backyard in northern Utah).

hey we can do this synchronized thing!

Christine showing her skills

Cari looking a little unsure about this...

John got thrown in the penalty box!

John skating

John about to kick that stupid kid for getting in there right as I took the picture!

After that (yes this was a very busy day!!), we loaded up our car with stuff from Kristy's apartment including John's giant Love Sac. It's a good thing we were driving the larger Denali rather than John's Acadia!! We went to Barnes and Noble to wait and meet up with Lindsay. We ended up going to dinner with Christine and her friend Jeremy, my sister Tracie, and Lindsay with her baby Lily in tow. After eating, Lindsay went with us to visit Sara, Caleb, and Mara! It fun to visit them before the head off to Ohio!

Jeremy, Christine, Tracie

Tracie with Lily

Cari and Lily

Mara was very intrigued by Lily so she's looking at Lins to let her look.

standing guard!!

Mara is so cute! And she knows it!!

What a busy trip! It was a lot of fun though! On the way home I got a picture of the Virgin River. There's a ton of water in there!!

Virgin River near the south side of the gorge

Yard Work

2011-05-08T10:32:00.000-07:00

We've been working every week on getting our backyard in good shape. We still have a long ways to go, but have made a lot of progress from the overgrown jungle of weeds it was to start!

I didn't take a picture of what it looked like when we moved in, but this is what I came home to one day after John went at it with a weedwacker and he and his parents cut the trees and vines back.

We've picked and juiced a lot of oranges, but you can't tell that we've even touched the trees!

Here's after clearing all the clippings and there's John working on the bushes against the house.

Just the other day we found a couple of tiny eggs that were hatched.

We planted some plumeria cuttings and here's a flower bed we just planted. We're still going to add a couple more smaller plumerias here. So even though the rest of the yard is a work in progress, we have one little bright spot!

So far I think we've pulled out roots for 4 different vines (and there's more on the other side of the yard)! Wholly cow are those things a pain! We also have a few tree stumps to dig out. Our lemon tree is already growing more lemons since we pruned it back and we're still working on using up the juice we have! I don't have any pictures of our progress inside the house yet, but they'll be coming!

Swim Party

2011-04-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

We had a little swim party of sorts on Saturday at Doug and Nancy's house. I was the first time Mackenzie went swimming since last summer. Considering she points at the pool and says "water" and goes to splash her hands in the water whenever I've taken her out in the backyard, she was ready to get in!

easing in before she gets rid of her hat

John blowing up the floating ring

Mackenzie warms up to playing in the pool by splashing on her favorite step

she finds a leaf, picks it up and says "keekee!"

so wasn't so sure about the floating ring at first

by this time, Mackenzie was all gun-ho and doing well with Lucas or Monica dunking her under

baby Zoe or "sissy" chilling with grandma

Mackenzie thinks if she walks stooped over that you can't see her so when she stands up it's a big surprise!!

Cari with Zoe

It's been a lot of fun lately to watch Mackenzie learn knew things. She picks things up really quickly and is learning how to say more and more things. She even says my name now, which is really cool! She says it "car-ee" like the babysitter in Incredibles.

Birthday Hockey

2011-04-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

Since I had been working a lot of overtime lately (we had a big report we were trying to finish the draft for and a big proposal due) so I took a half day off work for my birthday. Work wasn't too crazy that day because I just delivered the proposal in LA and worked on a few small things then went home and took a nap. That nap was wonderful (especially considering the lack of sleep I now get on the weekends thanks to our rude neighbors) and I wish I could do that more often! I guess that was my birthday present to myself! Then I went up to Doug and Nancy's house to see the nieces. Mackenzie was alseep until we had to leave, but I got to see Zoe for a little while. Then John and I headed to meet with Aunt Janie and her friend Patti (who we go to hockey games with) for dinner at TGI Fridays. Then it was off to watch the Ducks play the Sharks! We were all a little apprehensive about our chances to win since the Sharks had been playing really hot lately so we were very pleasantly surprised when the Ducks ended up creaming the Sharks!! So here's some pictures from the game!

Patti, Janie, John, and Cari before the game

John facing off against the big guy

watching the warm-up skate

warm-up skate

Parros leaving the ice after the warm-up skate

first goal of the game goes to Corey Perry

there were a lot of fights (especially right after the Ducks scored goals!)

Cam Fowler SHOOOTS! (the Ducks radio announcer is very excitable and says it like that every time)

and scores!!

and somehow they knew it was my birthday! too bad I didn't get to ride the Zamboni!

more guys going to the penalty box

Corey Perry got a hat trick for a season total of 50 goals!!

hats went on sale at the team store to celebrate (and very quickly sold out since everybody just tossed their hat on the ice)

high-fives all around for a 6-2 win!!

The Ducks went on the win their last 2 games of the season (both against the Kings 2 nights in a row) to go from needing to win 1 game to clinch a spot in the playoffs to being the 4th seed and having home ice advantage. We went to the first playoff game against the Predators but that game wasn't so fun... bad refereeing and bad play from the Ducks made a frustrating game. So much for home ice advantage! And yes, we are playing the team that Carrie Underwood's husband is on. And that first game was a very good game for him (grr). It's been a really fun season to go to a lot of Ducks games. A lot of the players are having record years. We have a 21 year old rookie playing like he has a lot more experience (most of the time anyway) and we have a 40 year old veteran playing like he has fresh, young legs. They're fought back against adversity and injuries all season long and I just hope the season doesn't end with the 1st round of the playoffs!!

Busy Busy Month!

2011-04-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

We've been super busy lately (as expected) so I'm way behind on our blog!! So I'll do a bunch of little posts to catch up!!

So we are all moved into our new house! First thing we did was paint a blue "accent" wall in the living room/dining room. We love it and we're glad with the color we picked. We're also glad we just did an accent wall or else we'd be drowning in too much blue!


John added some Astrojax artwork of his own

A few weeks ago, our 2nd niece was blessed. Zoe is a sweetheart, of course, and she looks more like Monica than Lucas. Mackenzie has warmed up quickly to her little sister. She calls Zoe "sissy" and likes to hold her (under close supervision of course!).

The Knudsen family with their newest addition

I took some "before" pictures while we were trying to unpack and clean our house, but I'll wait to share those until I can share after pictures. Those are still a work in progress!! Though we got a reclining loveseat last week for $200!! And we love it! It's just what we were looking for and goes great with our new rug!!

Last week we got to use some things that we got from our wedding for the first time, like our tablecloth, when my family came over for dinner.

Part of Cari's family

More to come soon...

Time just Flies

2011-03-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

I remember thinking that a month felt like it was going to take forever. The days seemed to drag, but now our closing day is upon us! We close escrow tomorrow! If we were in any county other than LA County, we would be able to close today. But LA County is completely backwards and didn't realize what century we're in.

We had our final walk-through on Tuesday. We checked some measurements for the fridge we still need to buy and the area for the living room rug we're going to buy. I'm armed and ready with cleaning supplies to get in there right away and make everything spic and span and line the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms before we move everything in!

While at home depot last weekend, we finally found a rug we want to get:

It looks better in person of course (and feels very nice), but we're going to leave some of the walls their current tan color and paint the long wall in the living room and dining room a blue. Then when we get around to it, I'll go to downtown LA to get fabric to make curtains to bring some color to those tan colored walls.

Let's just hope it doesn't rain on Saturday while we're moving everything out of the storage unit!!

Other than dealing with house stuff, looking for stuff we need (dining table, loveseat, fridge, table lamp, area rug, etc), and spending a week trying to adjust to the stupid time change and waking up before the sun again, it's been a busy month. We started off March by going to cheer for the BYU Men's volleyball team while they played #1 ranked USC with our friends Ann and Jeremy. BYU lost the match, but it was some dang good volleyball!!! There was a really good turnout for BYU fans and I must say that the facility (which looked fairly new) was super nice. They obviously do a lot more in there than BYU does in the Smith Fieldhouse though.

I finished making visits to the dentist for now. So I finally have a crown on the tooth I got a root canal on over 2 years ago... yeah, I didn't have dental insurance for a while...

Another highlight of the month was a visit from my good friend Emily and her husband Ray. The Cliffords are like family to me and I don't get to spend as much time with them as I'd like (or I used to) so it was great to spend a day with the Cliffords. Luckily, we get to see Ray and Emily again when we go up for Jeff and Kirsty's graduation in April!

This past weekend, we finally got a chance to bust out our dancing shoes!! Our stake had a dinner/dance with a live 40s music orchestra. We got to do some triple swing (and some modified), west cost swing, foxtrot, waltz, and cha-cha. Rumor started spreading that we were on the BYU ballroom dance team. Ha! If they only knew how good you have to be to be on that team! My feet were rather sore after that! We also got the chance to meet some people in the ward we're moving into, so that was pretty cool.

Last night was the stake youth talent show. That was a lot of fun to see what people did. Some of the highlights from our ward include Kelsey Willes singing Don't Rain on My Parade (she was amazing!), the priests putting together an Old Spice style video talking about what they look for in a woman, and a few girls did a dance number. John's favorite was a boy from the 2nd ward (which is the ward we're moving to) doing a yo-yo performance.

Whew! April is going to be even more busy than March, so I probably will be pretty slow at updating again! But I'll be sure to post pictures next time!!

Where we're at

2011-02-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

Just to give an update on the house buying, we had a home inspector come in on Tuesday. He gave a very detailed report (down to a pull chain missing from one of the ceiling fans in the sun room), but most importantly, he found that the heater and AC do not work properly. The AC will blow air, but it's not cold. The coolant lines (whatever they're called) are cool to the touch but not cold. But that one should be an easy fix and hopefully not too expensive.
The heater however, doesn't run at all. The inspector said that it will automatically click back off when he turned it on even if he set the temp to 90 degrees. He thinks it's a circuit board issue, but that brings up another issue. He couldn't access the heater in the attic because it doesn't have work space, which makes it seems like the heater installation is not permitted/up to code. We had a HVAC guy come out on Thursday, but he wouldn't touch it because of that. Luckily, our agent knows someone that will look at it. So hopefully that gets checked out soon. We may ask the seller to fix it before we move in. Either way, we're planning on putting in an access hatch from inside the house to help fix the access problems.
He provided a lot of detail like dyrwall missing under the kitchen sink and the east side gate missing and a dirty air filter. The dishwasher and stove weren't hooked up and the seller has already said he would hook them up and make sure they're working for us. Outlets in the bedrooms, bathrooms, and garage aren't grounded so we may look into doing that latter. I just might not be able to use my space heater in my room for now. But if we get the heater working, it shouldn't be an issue!
We now have all the finance stuff in order and the appraisal came in right at what we're paying for the house so no issues with getting financed there. We have a bunch more papers to sign on Monday. Otherwise, we're just planning out the stuff that we'll need when we move in like a dining table and a lawn mower and checking out Home Goods every now and then for deals on rugs or lamps. We won't buy anything big until we move in and have a better feel for the size and what will fit though. So ready for it to be the end of March already!!

Got the house!!

2011-02-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

So we just signed a stack of papers, which means... we accepted a counter-offer from the seller!! Assuming all goes well in escrow, we'll have our own house by the end of March!! So here's some pics I took when we saw the house:

living room

one of the bathrooms with retro looking blues tiles

one of the bedrooms

kitchen

other side of the kitchen

sun room on the back of the house

the backyard

covered patio

and the front

Enjoy!

More houses

2011-02-09T12:47:00.000-08:00

So we've gone to see a few more houses since our first offer was rejected.

We saw a couple in San Dimas last week:

House #4: This house was ok. It's a small "3 bedroom" and 1.5 bath . It says 3, but I wouldn't call that a bedroom. It has no closet and they knocked out a doorway and a serving window to the kitchen. I can't figure out how that would be useful as a bedroom (especially since another wall has another door and another wall has a sliding glass door to the backyard). And the neighbor had an annoying dog. It's not crossed off our list, but it's not getting an offer from us just yet.

House #5: Yes, this one would definitely need a paint job. It was in a nice little neighborhood and the house (even though it was dark, didn't have electric on so we couldn't see anything) screamed (and smelled) old lady. It's small, 3 bedroom and 1.5 bath. To be fair, we would have to go back with daylight to give it a fair assessment, but we're unsure about how much work would need to go into the house and we're not sure we can see us living there.

So, after seeing those houses, the other house's listing agent finally got back to our agent (with a text message...). So the basic low-down on the rejection was that he was concerned about FHA financing for a less than 90 day investor flip, seller doesn't want to pay closing costs, seller is concerned about having qualified buyers due to FHA financing (he wants a conventional 20% down offer), and he allegedly has other offers he's considering. First, the investor flip thing is not an issue. A quick google search will give the low-down on that. There's normally a restriction on FHA financing for a less than 90 day investor flip, but that restriction has been suspended and will last til the end of 2011. Second, if you don't want to pay closing costs, then make that part of the counter offer. Third, good luck finding someone to buy a "starter" home with 20% down nowadays. Fourth, house hasn't gone pending yet.

Another house in south Glendora popped up on the market so we went and looked at that yesterday.

House #6: Another house with number of bedroom identity issues and 1.75 baths. I would call it 3 bedrooms. One of the bedroom had a really awkward addition. The bathtub was full of standing water (gross!). The backyard was big. The oven was probably the original that was there when the house was built in the 50s. A lot of things about the house felt awkward and with all the updates and fixes the house needs, the house is probably out of our price range since it's listed at the top of our price range.

So where we are now: We haven't found any not short sales in the area we want to put an offer on. We're pretty sure we can get a house somewhere in Glendora, but we may have to start looking at short sales. We put our offer in at the other house again to see if they'll even think about considering our offer with a counter offer after Tommy was able to sort-of talk to the listing agent. I'm not getting my hopes up. Or trying not to. We like the house, but we don't want to overpay for a small, 1 car garage, 1.5 (that they advertise as 2) bath, no fireplace (which their listing says they have) house. I'm not sure what the seller was expecting to get, but while the house is great, it's still missing a lot of features that people (including us) look for.

Finland, Finland, Finland!

2011-02-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

John finally got to enjoy his Christmas present last Saturday when we went to see Spamalot. The tour had a stop in Riverside at the Fox Theater. It's the theater where Gone with the Wind was first previewed. I don't remember the theater ever being open while I was growing up. Wikipedia tells me they restored it starting in 2006 and was finished in 2009. It had some cool decorative features that fit right in with a medieval time musical!

Very rustic looking chandeliers

Decorative paintings on the rafters in the lobby

We had a great time and were happy to see it live. My mom dropped us off so we didn't have to pay for parking and while we were waiting for her after the show and an old couple walking by were discussing the show. One said to the other "well, that wasn't my kind of show but..." It was a matinee so there seemed to be an inordinate amount of older folks there. I wonder how many really knew what they were going to get!

John trying to look at the Fox Riverside sign

Cari outside the theater

Afterwards, my mom forgot to turn on a street so we took John on a tour to see Mt. Rubidoux, Fairmont park (which we were quick to point is where people get shot - if you heard about the cop Ryan Bonimino that got killed by a truck thief... yeah... you don't go to that park at night), and by the old cemetary. We can make Riverside sound so morbid. There is the shirt that says "Genocide, Homocide, Suicide, Riverside" for a reason, right?

While we were in Riverside, we picked up a couple things from my mom. She finished fixing my wedding dress so I'll have to take some pictures and post them (before and after). I can't wait to go on a cruise and wear it on the formal night!! John also got his completed birthday/Christmas present my mom was making for him. She made him a custom yo-yo bag. It has spots to store his diabolo and flower sticks. It has pouches for yo-yos and Astrojax and strings. John is so excited about it. So Christmas is officially finished for us now since John's presents were delayed!

the house hunt has begun

2011-02-03T12:47:00.000-08:00

Our lender has all our paperwork for our financing/pre-approval and we've started looking at houses. We checked out a few houses in south Glendora last Saturday.

House 1: Small house on Mauna Loa, 3 bed, 1.5 bath. It is a fixer-upper though it has nice cherry wood flooring. We would have to redo the kitchen, so we don't think we could get FHA financing for it.

House 2: Small house around the corner from house #1. 3 bed, 1.5 bath plus a sun room. We liked this house and put in an offer, but our offer got rejected. We're kind of confused about what the selling agent was doing and our agent is looking into it, but we'll look elsewhere. Like the previous house, the rooms were very small (though the big one should fit our cal king) and it only has a 1 car garage. Maybe the seller will feel differently when his house sits on the market a while longer.

House 3: This house is slightly bigger than the other 2 (1,200 sq ft rather than 1,000) and is located near the Glendora marketplace. 3 bed, 1.75 bath. The backyard is a little weird (long, narrow, and all sloping down to a wash with only a chain link fence on the back side) and needs all the carpeting pulled. We're not too sure about other damages it looks likely to have. Resale can be a concern with this one due to the wash in the backyard and the freeway behind that.

So we put in an offer on house #2 on Monday. Tuesday the selling agent emailed our agent, Tommy, to ask if that was our best and highest offer. Tommy told us this is a tactic used for bank-owned houses, so we're not sure why they did that for a standard sale. So he told the selling agent that we are waiting for a response. Then at the end of the day on Wednesday they come back with just a straight-out rejection. No counter-offer. Not sure if the seller won't go below the listing price or what. We're willing to negotiate! Well, that house was just listed the beginning of January. He might feel differently in a few months. We don't have a deadline to move into a house and have plenty of time. A lot of the houses in the area are short sales and we're trying to avoid those for now, but we may end up going that way.

Meanwhile, we're going to look at some more houses in the area to see what we can find!

New niece pictures!!

2011-01-31T19:09:00.000-08:00

We got a new niece on Monday January 24th, Zoe Jayne Knudsen.

Monica, Lucas, Mackenzie, and Zoe are here staying with Doug and Nancy as well while Monica needs extra help. So I tried taking some pictures of Zoe yesterday. Not knowing what I was doing, I didn't get much. I'll try doing some sleeping pictures another time. Here's a few of the pictures:

If you're not up-to-date on Seasame Street, there's a character (pictures) named Zoe and we got her that doll

A day in the park

2011-01-11T12:58:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday, John and I had a day with nothing to do! It was a great feeling! Well, I wanted to play with my new camera, so we went to a park in Arcadia with some cool trees so John could play with his toys and I could play with mine. Here's some of the results of that.

John with his diabolo

Here John is tossing the diabolo up and around the tree

Juggling cups

more juggling cups

a quick pose on a cool tree

John getting crazy

this tree made a nice bench

and a timer shot

I'm having fun so far learning how to adjust the settings for what I want, but I still have a long way to go...

Christmas celebrations

2010-12-30T18:49:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a great Christmas! It's times like these that make me miss school only because you have lots of vacation time! But then you don't have money, so you gotta pick which you'd rather have. We had a fun Christmas. Everyone was down in California (both my family and John's) for the holiday.

On Christmas Eve we went to my Aunt Karen's house in Fountain Valley. It was bittersweet because it's the last Christmas for my aunt and uncle in that house. We usually have Mexican food, but we had a mix this year: ham, potatoes, ahi-ahi, salmon, scallops, shrimp, taquitos, bbq chicken... would have had korean bbq ribs if the line at the korean meat mart wasn't so long. I reaffirmed that I do not like seafood by trying a bacon-wrapped scallop. For the gift exchange, I saw a quesadilla maker at Kohl's and had to get it. A couple years ago, 2 people brought the same one and the family that brought it got to take one home. So my mom saved the box to wrap a gift in the next year. Knowing this, and knowing that the family expected it, I got the real thing. So when my mom opened it and found a quesadilla maker box, she had to wonder if it really was one. Gotta love family jokes.

On Christmas Day, John and I did our stockings to each other in the morning. John got up early and hid clues all over the house. He took pictures of different locations where I would go to and find a new clue. It finally led me to the guest bathroom where I found my sister-in-law on the toliet ready to take my picture with my brand new camera! That's right, I got a SLR! I'm so excited to learn how to use it and take awesome pictures!

John left me clues all over the house leading me to the bathroom

where there was a Canon SLR waiting for me!!

So John had been trying to guess my gift for a while. I had told him to block out a certain day in January, so he assumed I got him tickets. And he was right though his guesses were way off the mark. I let him think he hit the mark when he speculated that they were tickets to go to Hell's Kitchen. But I actually got him tickets to Spamalot! It's touring right now and will be in Riverside the end of January.

John's reaction to getting the tickets

Later in the morning, Lucas, Monica, and Mackenzie came over. They came to the back door so everyone could see Mackenzie's new bike. She is still a little short for it, but she gets on it and walks it around. She was smiling under that binky!!

Mackenzie loved to show off her bike

After eating breakfast, we started opening presents. There were a lot for Jackson and Mackenzie of course! Mackenzie could not be convinced to open presents, but Jackson would oblige as long as he could munch on the paper!

"Oh, this is a good flavor, mom!"

"Hey, that looks fun!"

Jackson is such a happy, smiley baby!

Later on, after dinner and a card game with Grandma Patton (which I actually won!!), we drove down to Auntie E's house in Long Beach. We did a movie gift exchange with a story with where you had to pass the gift left or right when the story said left or right. I ended up with Pray, Eat, Love with Julia Roberts, but Jackie (Uncle Corey's mom) wasn't too excited about getting Diary of a Wimpy Kid so I traded with her. John got episodes of The Addams Family tv show. The rest of the night was made up of eating dessert, playing Beatles Rock Band, and picking out shoes and purses from the supply Auntie was giving to Goodwill.

My sister Christine showing off her rocking skills

My sister Hana getting a little crazy!

And I have to brag a little to my dear friends in Utah, the weather on Christmas Eve and Day was beautiful. Until about 8pm when the rain started dumping. I'm not sure that we had a low below 40F though. The rain storm we had here ended in time for a beautiful Christmas!!

Disneyland parking

2010-12-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

Saw this parked at Disneyland on Saturday. I put an antenna topper on my car so I can tell it apart from all the other Toyota Corollas. Never understood full-blown car decorations though. I didn't check, but they probably have the family stick figure stickers on the back too. Makes for a cute picture though. :)

Rudolf the Red-nosed Honda

T-Day week and beyond

2010-12-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

The week leading up to Thanksgiving was pretty busy for us! The Saturday before, we went to Disneyland with my family to celebrate my Uncle's birthday. Then we started on Monday with my friend Emily and her husband in town for her sister's wedding were going to Disneyland, so, naturally, we went to meet up with them after work. The next day was Anna's wedding so we went to Riverside for the reception after work. So it was great to see the all the Cliffords. That's why weddings are great!! It makes them all come back to Riverside!! I miss spending more time with the Cliffords, so I wish they would stop moving to Utah and Idaho!!

This year was a pretty laid-back Thanksgiving since grandma Patton, Aunt Janie, Aunt KK, Jeff, Sarah, and Jackson were all in their respective states. Plus, John and I went to my Auntie E's house for Thanksgiving dinner this year. My little sister had surgery on her knee the day before, but I hear she's off the crutches now (she's been on them since September)!!

Christmas decorations around starting going up on Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving (since Doug and Nancy were going on a cruise this week and wanted a head-start) so Mackenzie wanted to "help" with everything:

Hey grandpa, can I put up those lights??

There's no more ornaments in this box!!

I'll make sure you don't fall, grandma!

Is this way better?

What do you think, Aunt Cari?

Ok, I need a break now!!

Nancy, Kirsty, and Kirsty's friend Annalise went black Friday shopping at 6am then can home an decorated inside. John and I looked online and found the Wii game NHL slapshot on sale for $40 (normally $70) so we decided to drive by the Best Buy after we picked stuff up at the storage unit just to see if it was not too crazy. It looked ok so we went in and got the game. Was just normal holiday weekend busy. So we helped decorate and after lunch we were getting out the game and got a call from Aunt Janie saying, "you know the game starts at 1, right?" at about 1:20. We ended up missing the first period and first intermission of the Ducks game we thought started at 5... opps. My shins hurt for days from trying to run from the parking to the rink... never gonna do that again!

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, John and I went to see my friend Cym perform as Marian in The Music Man. It was the first musical we did in high school (and the only one Cym didn't do the lead), so it was fun to see as an audience member and see Cym in the role, which was perfect for her!

Us with Marian Paroo

Last week, Tetra Tech had it's holiday party, so John finally got to meet some of my co-workers. It's too bad we don't do anything other than once a year! Last night Lucas had his graduation ceremony and we had an after party. Congrats to Lucas!! I know Monica is just as happy he doesn't have to come home with homework!! And that he finished before Zoe came!!

Whew!! It's busy around here!! Better fast and busy than slow and boring!!

On a sad note, 2 weeks from today is the LAST day we can go to Disneyland with our passes. So you can bet what I'll be doing that night!! So depressing... :(

What a year it's been

2010-11-20T12:05:00.000-08:00

Looking back on pictures an calendars from this year and looking at what we have booked for the next couple of months, man, have we been busy! I don't think we have a weekend without plans until mid January. And it's only the 2 of us. I can only imagine how it's gonna be when we have pets or kids or anything extra added on! But I thrive on being busy because then you have the push to get stuff done rather than be a lazy bum. Today would be a perfect lazy bum day since it's pouring, but we're going to Disneyland with my family for my Uncle's birthday. Too bad I don't own galoshes!!

So I was thinking about all the fun stuff we've been able to do this year. It started off with me getting a full-time position at my company and John coming home from Utah after living there alone for 4 months. How can you have a bad year after having a crappy year and everything is looking up? So here's my reminiscing of our year (so far):

-Disneyland passes: this has been a big one. when we had anything to celebrate we went here. we went for john's birthday, new year's eve, my birthday, mother's day, our anniversary, and my uncle's birthday, and we got to be there for other special events like MacKenzie's first visit, seeing the new World of Color show with Greg and Chelsea, and eating lunch at the Blue Bayou. I'm already starting to have withdrawls for the time when our passes expire in a month. That will be a very sad day for me.

In front of the Toon Town Christmas tree - November 2010

The start of a fun day with Mackenzie - November 2010

-going to see shows: I got to see a ballet with my friend Cym, John and I went to a dinner theater to see Cym perform, and we're going to see her in The Music Man next week

-sports: early in the year we went to watch BYU men's volleyball play which was a lot of fun of course and we went to a few Dodgers games which were not as fun this year as last year (you could tell they didn't even care by the way they walked around the 2nd half of the season... but we'll always love and root for them anyways!!!). Now, we have gone in on season tickets for the Anaheim Ducks and it has been a blast so far. Hockey is so fun to watch especially when you're there. Although those little kids behind us last night were soooo annoying (but better than Braves fans at the Dodgers games...). Ducks tickets are something we want to keep on doing in the future since it's not too expensive.

Ducks goalie Jonas Hiller during a pre-game warm-up; John just got his jersey

-ward callings: I got called to be Young Women's secretary this year and I love it. the girls are so great! And I don't have to go to Relief Society which is normally fine, but the ward is mostly rich retired old people. so I don't mesh with that group very well. john got called as ward mission leader and he loves working with the missionaries!we also sing in the ward choir. John has enjoyed it more of late because the director moved the altos next to the tenors and so he gets to sit by a fun lady in the ward, Tina McKendrick, and they like to banter and tease each other.

the Young Women trying on their mom's wedding dresses at an activity; the girl on the far left (Shae) is wearing mine

-John walked for his master's degree: we got to take a short trip to Utah so John can make official that he's done with school. it also coincided with the recent birth of our nephew Jackson. So we got to see him and go to his baby blessing. We also got to visit with some of our friends that live in Utah. we are hoping to plan another trip in the near future to visit!

John and his proud parents - April 2010

Jeff holding Jackson with his parents before his baby blessing - April 2010

-weddings: my friends Camilla and Chrissi got married and I have 2 more friends, Anna and Kealy, getting married in the next couple of months (Anna is Tuesday!!). I just wish they would stop leaving after getting married! Well, some already were living out of state...

Me and Emily with the bride, Camilla - February 2010

-vacation: we had our yearly trip to Lake Powell which is always a highlight of the year. This was the first year I felt like I could say I know how to wakeboard. It was a blast!! We also were lucky enough to go to Hawaii. It was my first time since I went in high school in 2003 and it was my first time to the island of Kauai. We feel so lucky to have a family that make those great vacations possible!!

I'm on smooth water outside the wake!! - June 2010

After dinner at Duke's on Kauai - August 2010

There were a lot of bad things that happened, but there's a lot more good things and I would feel ungrateful if I complained about them. So only John will hear me complain :) And it's almost Thanksgiving so I should be especially thankful at this time of year!!

Di-di at D-land!!

2010-11-13T07:24:00.000-08:00

So, John is stingy with pictures on his camera and therefore I don't have all the pictures I would want to throw up here. So I'll talk about what I do have pictures of!! Which is pretty dang exciting. We got to go with my neice on her first trip to Disneyland!!!

Monica and Lucas got free tickets for service (Disney is doing a thing if you sign up for qualified service projects you get a free ticket: give a day, get a day") and Mackenzie was free of course so they could spend half a day and not feel bad about spending $70/person.


Lucas, Mackenzie, and Monica

She didn't know what was going on the whole time, but she was very well behaved. It wasn't too crowded since we got there right when the park opened. And the waiting in line was made easy thanks to Astrojax keeping John and Mackenzie both amused. She would play with them on the "boring" rides too (you know like the train and the jungle cruise)

Waiting for everybody to get tickets

Sleepily playing with the Astrojax waiting for her last ride of the day (Jungle Cruise)

So all in all, we went on Peter Pan, Mr Toad's, Pinocchio, the Carousel, Dumbo, Teacups, Casey Jr train, and Jungle Cruise. She couldn't see much on Peter Pan since everything is down below. She kept trying to have dad take her off the horse on the Carousel. She liked looking down at the water on Dumbo. She like to locate where mom and dad were standing while on the teacups. She did point to the Matterhorn after going on the teacups, but I had to tell her to wait til she's older. ;)

Action shot on Dumbo

on the teacups

We also went to Toon Town and went to the Tiki room. There's a play area in Toon Town with a slide and that was probably her favorite ride!!! that and chasing the birds in the play area. She seemed to enjoy the birds and such in the Tiki room as well (the soft serve pineapple ice cream probably helped).

going down her favorite "ride" with her precious button in hand


and ready for another go!!!

It will be a lot of fun to go when she's older and knows Disney better so she'll know what the heck is going on!! I'm sure I have the cutest niece though!! Well, until her sister comes along!

the ladies

Juanito gets a turn!

2010-10-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! John here actually getting a post in on OUR blog :P I know I've been lazy, but meh. I'm here now and ready to post!

I'm personally doing well. Just learned about a month ago that my hand is completely healed and all that's left to do for "final recovery" is to get strength and mobility back. It is still a little stiff, but I have most mobility back and the strength thing is coming. This really was a long recovery, but I'm chalking this incident up as a "Stupidity of Youth" thing and moving on. Therefore, no more snowboarding in California!

Work is also going well. Sad that I never... EVER leave the house anymore since I live, work and sleep here. Oh well, that's what happens when you can't yet afford a house and have great awesome parents who are willing to put you up in exchange of 24/7 on-call status for checking your email for new work items :) We are working on all sorts of stuff right now. The notable project we are working on now is a Beauty and the Beast themed resteraunt over at Disney World. They are re-vamping the Magic Kingdom's Fantasy Land and this is one of the things they are putting in. It's cool to see this one since I haven't tackled a big steel structure design yet. Thank goodness for shiny structural analysis programs... the thought of having to dig the steel book out and do everything by hand just makes me go bulllllgulgulblublbula. Haha. I will always love technology.... always and forever.

So now for my real reason for posting... minus saying hello to the blogosphere... I have some cool pictures to share with you from Disneyland. We made it our goal to go to Disneyland enough times with our special shiny no-blackout dates passes that each visit costs only $10 or less (admissions-wise). So without further adieu, here's the newest pictures!!

The Ferrell, Home Edition. Comes with yoyo, astrojax, and a ball!!

Great night picture of The Mattlehorn. Taken by yours truly.

I wanted to buy this hat, but it was damaged by a mouse, so I had to put it back.

Happy Halloween!!

Auntie E, Uncle Cory and I rockin the Carousel.

Who said you couldn't get free food at Disneyland. Here's some perfectly good bananas right outside of Buzz Lightyear ripe for the pickin.

Picture-perfect Little Nemo also taken by yours truly. This is going up on the Patrell.com website.

So yea, that's it for Disneyland pictures. Here are a few I have been meaning to post up for the heck of it. The next few are from a small day trip Cari, Monica, Mackenzie and I took up to Big Bear. My Aunt's friend's parents have a cabin up there and it made for a beautiful day on the lake. Sad I couldn't wakeboard... but I'll live ^.^

Mackenzie's first encounter with something living that's living that's not human. She loved the dogs.

Aunt KK's picture with Mackenzie.

The View from the cabin deck.

Also, in other news.... Ducks are back in season. Cari and I got in with my Aunt to buy 10 games for this season. This is gonna be awesome. I always have loved hockey. I followed the Kings religiously back when I was in grade school, mainly thanks to my good friend Rob Berry who was a hockey honk. We always talked about the games and played street hockey every friday. I fell out of love with Hockey after Gretzky, Hrudy, and other King's front-liners were traded/retired. I just didn't have anyone to enjoy hockey with. But thankfully to my Aunt and awesome Wife, I can get back into it again!! That's cause for celebration.

Ducks Games

And in a completely unrelated topic, I entered in a contest for Astrojax to win an I-pad. The contest ended yesterday, and I'm really excited to see the results. I'll make a post when it's ended. For those who care to watch, check out my youtube profile where the entry is the video labeled, "Contest Entry". And for your curiosity's sake, here's my entire collection of Astrojax.

That's it for me. I'm out.

Hawaii Trip

2010-09-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

What a busy month August was! Taking a vacation means working extra hard and sometimes extra hours to get what you need need before going on vacation. Plus, had a wedding of a good friend the Saturday before we left. So the relaxing week on Kauai was sooo needed. Most days I got up and watched Kirsty and Ryan surf then watched John surf followed by reading, maybe some swimming or boogie boarding, an occasional visit to another location on the island (the blow hole, well holes, and Waimea canyon), more reading and relaxing, a couple attempts by John to teach me to surf (I'll stick to Huntington whitewater), snorkeling, going out to dinner, watching the sun set, chilling on a hammock, reading, watching Glen Beck for John, and going to bed only to wake up at 3:30 because of the roosters and repeat the process. Pictures tell so much more so here's some pics from our trip:

Is there anything better than looking at this from your room?

Some of the local wildlife

Some of the activities of the week

One of the lovely sunsets we enjoyed

ABT performance

2010-08-12T12:14:00.000-07:00

I recently got to go see American Ballet Theatre (ABT) perform The Sleeping Beauty at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It was awesome of course. However, I liked the soloists dancing the Bluebird and Princess parts much more than the principals. I had only seen a ballet in Riverside and a couple in Salt Lake City (Ballet West) so it was really a treat to see such great dancers. Another great part was that John did not have to go with me because I went with my good friend Cymbaline. It was great to spend some time with her since we haven't done much since high school even though we live closer to each other here in Glendora than we did in Riverside!!

The theater has really cool chandeliers:

Cari and Cymbaline (and yes, we were asked again if we are sisters):

In other news, we're going to Hawaii on Sunday!!!!!! woohoo!!!!!!!

I really did win!!!

2010-08-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

So we went to Disneyland on Saturday night with my parents (and little sister but she did her own thing all night). We went on the Buzz Lightyear ride, and if you're not familiar with it, you get "blasters" to shoot targets to defeat the evil emperor Zurg. They take your picture and can email it to yourself with your score on it. So I got my BEST score ever and totally creamed John. The only other time I beat John was the first time he went on it so my experience worked to my benefit. I was even more excited about it because John had been turning the buggy to try to mess me up and I still beat him!! However.... there was some technical difficulties and when I went to email myself the picture.... this is what we got:

You may notice that the picture indicates I did horrible. This is probably what our scores would typically be. However, if you look at my parent's picture, you may notice something odd:

The odd thing is how fabulous a score my mom got!!! Yeah, that's my score there. It really is!!!

The Wonderful World of Disney

2010-08-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

I love Disneyland. It makes you feel like a kid again and Disney is always trying to come out with something badder and better. We use any excuse as a reason to have a day or evening there.

My family got season passes this year as well so we went with them for Mother's Day. Then John and I went for a day trip just to do a bunch of things that we have been wanting to do like ride in the front car of the monorail and ride on Splash Mountain (though I'm getting a fastpass next time I do that!) and play on Tom Sawyers Island (now changed to a pirate them though). We usually are there at night so have to plan day trips every once and a while to do stuff like that.

We had our 2-yea anniversary a few weeks ago so we went to Disneyland to celebrate! We tried to go to Ariel's grotto in DCA but they had just stopped taking walk-ins, so we just got hot dogs at a walk up stand. Then we went on a couple rides at DL and got an ice cream sundae on Main Street. That's the place you walk by and start drooling instantly because the fresh waffle cones smell so delicious! To finish off the night we watched World of Color from the back side by the Ferris Wheel. Way cool show.

The show was a lot cooler from the front when we got picnic reservations with Greg and Chelsea so we had great seats! If you're going to DCA, get the reservations! The food isn't worth it, but the view is!! And go for the wet zone. We were near the front and got a lot of spray mist, but I wouldn't have cared if I got wetter!!

I'm not sure what our visit counts are up to now... but we've more than paid for our passes!! We're gonna live it up since we had only planned on getting passes for one year. I'll be one sad panda when they expire!!!

Lake Powell trip

2010-07-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Lake Powell great as always, but a bit different than usual since John only had 1 arm. We drove up with Kirty's boyfriend Ryan on the Friday after everybody else went up. We originally had planned to stay in Vegas and get up super early on Saturday, but decided to go all the way to Page and stay with Jeff at the motel room he got. We were all very tired when we got there and just crashed in whatever we were wearing. Got up at 6 to be at the dock at 6:30. Unfortunately, everyone except Jeff and his Blackberry (which doesn't automatically change time zones) was on California time so we were at the dock at 5:30. But we were all so happy to be there no matter what time it was!

So every year there are things that go wrong. Sometimes it's the same thing that goes wrong every year like Doug losing his glasses (this makes the 3rd year in a row). This year Doug's boat, the Donzi, had issues because the guy that did the maintenance on it didn't connect something back, so the boat wouldn't get out of 1st gear so could only go like 10 mph. So we only had that boat for the last few days of the trip.

I made a lot of progress this year in wakeboarding. Last year was when I first was able to get up and carve out of the wake and back in. So I was super excited to do that right off the bat this year. I've improved from being pulled at 15-16 mph to 19 mph, which apparently also helps with my carving control. I can carve in and out the wake pretty easily now. Well to the right anyways; still working on the left which is a little harder for me. Next year I'll work on getting some air!! woot!!

I was so worn out everyday that I didn't feel like wakesurfing and the days I felt up to it, we had stormy weather and didn't go out. So I only got to go wakesurfing the last day, but I did a lot better than I had previously due to my improvements in wakeboarding. The last day was also the highlight of John's trip. He decided to try wakesurfing with 1 hand and riding switch. It worked out well for him and he fell gently and kept his cast out of the water, which was rather amusing to watch.

One of the great things about the trip this year was the new additions: Mackenzie and Jackson. It was the first trip both of them. Jackson is still too young to care, but we always love to see him since he lives so far away! Mackenzie was a lot of fun. Watched a lot of Sesame Street with her. She got to go swimming in the lake a little bit and she absolutely loved it! It was so cute!! She was apprehensive about her first ride on the wakeboarding boat, but I got her to crack a smile eventually! She started babbling and laughing so you know she enjoyed it! Mackenzie and Jackson will be even more fun next year!!

By the end of the trip, Doug decided Mackenzie, or Di Di as we like to call her, was ready to drive the house boat:

Can't wait to go back next year!!!

Way behind

2010-07-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

We've had a lot going on lately, so we have some fun stuff to talk about and put pictures of up. But that also means that the fun stuff takes a long time to be posted! So here's a sneak peak of what's to come on the blog:

~A day trip to Disneyland where we did some things we have been wanting to but hadn't done yet for various reasons (like ride the monorail, go on Splash Mountain, etc.)

~A fabulous trip to Lake Powell with a wake surfing session with the "juan"-armed bandit

~We celebrate our 2-year anniversary!!! woot!! Of course we celebrated at Disneyland, got the badges to prove it, and saw World of Color (although we watched from the backside)!!

~And lastly, I get to go to see a ballet (Sleeping Beauty with ABT) and John doesn't have to go since I'm going with a friend!! I'm so excited for that (tomorrow night) and I know John is so glad he doesn't have to go!!

Attempts at exercising

2010-06-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

John timed me again swimming and after a week, I already dropped 2 seconds off my 25-yd time! So now I'm at a 24. Woot! I'm still not convinced that my skinny stick arms are really capable of pulling much water! Since it's warmed up, I've been trying to be more physically active overall since I sit on my butt all day most days. So I decided to go for a run on Saturday morning. Something I haven't done in probably a year. My hip are still a bit sore. I'm usually really off and on with working out. When I have a dance class, I'm forced to work out regularly. So let's hope I can keep this up at least while it's warm! Then I'll see about signing up for an adult ballet class!

Memorial Day weekend

2010-06-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

This Memorial Day weekend, everyone came into town! Well, Jeff and Sarah were coming down with their baby Jackson, so everyone wanted to come see the baby! KK and Gma Patton came from Vegas and everybody around SoCal came over to Doug and Nancy's house. Even Kirsty's boyfriend came up to have dinner and play games even though Kirsty had to stay in Utah since her swim lessons started on Monday.

Jackson and Mackenzie both had their first "swim". Jackson seemed to like it, but he's only a couple months old so he's not too aware of what's going on. Mackenzie fussed at first and didn't like it, but once Lucas put her on a step where she could stand and splash on the side of the pool she LOVED it! She was grinning and laughing and clapping.

Mackenzie also learned about Astrojax. John has some soft ones with short strings that we used to play with kids in nusery when we had that calling, so he gave some to Mackenzie to play with.

And like any kid and balls, she loved to play with them. She liked to hold one ball and swing it up and down and throw them. Sometimes she would take a ball, put it in her mouth and start crawling somewhere.

Here's a little video John took of Mack:

In other goings-on, John now has a waterproof cast. It's slow to dry though, so he still tries to keep it dry. It has what he calls the "destructo-ray". It has a hole in it so he can use a bone stimulator. It basically is an ultrasound machine to stimulate the bone growth in his hand. The hole has a red cap, hence the destructo-ray. He gets that cast off in a month when he goes in for x-rays. Then he'll have a cast for another month. So he'll have a cast when we go to Lake Powell (2 weeks!!!!), but he'll have it off when we go to Hawaii.

Now that it has warmed up, we have started using the Stemile's pool. I know it's pretty sad, but John timed me doing a 25 so we have a starting point for where I am at and it took me 26 seconds. Lol... that wouldn't even make JV in high school! So I'm going to try an "make JV" by the end of the summer and cut that to 20 seconds.

A weekend recovery

2010-05-22T10:33:00.000-07:00

Just finished a week of getting up at 5am and getting home around 7pm. Yay for field work and overtime pay!

So John just had surgey on his scaphoid bone that he broke a couple months ago. Good news is that the surgeon was able to put a screw in so he'll be able to get a water proof cast! So when we go to Lake Powell in a month, he can get wet!

Here's what John will be doing all weekend (note that the pic was taken on my computer so it's reversed. He broke his left hand not right):

Quick visit to Utah

2010-05-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

So we went to Utah a couple weeks ago for John's graduation (which we'll have to upload pictures later). It was great because we got to see our new nephew Jackson! John got to meet him the week before because of an impromptu trip to Utah. At 3 weeks old, he was still just sleeping, eating, and pooping as newborns do. And getting the hiccups. And even if we look like parents in these pics (as my aunt says) we are not having kids yet! There is only 1 person that gives us grief about not having kids yet. But just to clear things up... :p

Since most of Cari's friends have relocated to Utah, we got together with some friends for dinner at La Carretta, one of our favorite restaurants in Utah. We John and I got to my friend Leilani's apartment, her sister Emily comes running up to me (right past John) with sounds of jubilation. So Ray (Emily's husband) made happy sounds to John so he wouldn't feel so neglected. :) So total attendees included: Emily and Ray Maynes, Leilani Clifford, Lindsay Hope, and a friend of Ray's. For the after-party, we went to Cold Stone's with Emily and Ray. It was good to see friends that I wish I could spend more time with. Life forces us to move on to new things and we all seem to be in some form of transition to a new stage of life. That makes it really hard to go to Disneyland 3 nights in a row, or go to Balboa and sit on lifeguard tower M, or stay up playing PS2 and falling asleep on the floor, or whatever random things we used to do together.

On another day we got to meet Sara and Caleb's new addition, Mara. I forgot to take a picture, but Mara is the cutest dog ever! We had so much fun playing with her while visiting with Sara and Caleb! I'm sure she enjoyed the attention!

Also while we were there, Jeff blessed his baby boy. It was great that we could be there and John could be part of the circle. Jeff is in a Single's ward bishopric so it was unique to have a baby blessing there! Jeff and Sarah's ward didn't start til 1pm, so we got back to CA a little late, but it was worth it!

Cari's birthday

2010-05-06T13:03:00.000-07:00

My birthday is already a month gone (April 6), but I'm just getting around to update the blog to that point! So I told John that for my birthday I didn't want anything and I just wanted to go to Disneyland. So after work we went down to Disneyland and I went and got my birthday badge. The girl that wrote it did it really cute, but she still spelled it wrong. She's not a good listener apparently. I told her C-A-R-I, but she did Carie. So I say the e is for my middle name, Eileen. But I digress. One thing we decided to do was go see the show from back when MJ was black, Captain Eo. I didn't remember seeing it before since I was so young when they last had it at Disneyland (but my mom says we saw it). So it was like going for the first time!

Just before my birthday, John's brother and his wife had a baby boy, Jackson Clark Ferrell on April 2. I was hoping he would hold out to be my birthday twin! Lake Powell is going to be interesting this year with 2 babies on board! More to come...

John's surprise

2010-05-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

I made John's day when a package from Amazon came that I told him he couldn't open. He only suspected that I was buying him an anime he really wanted. But I got him 2 along with the plush toy!! Could he ask for a better wife?? ;)

He was very excited!!

Highlights of the month

2010-03-23T20:25:00.000-07:00

Cari, Camilla, and Emily at Camilla and Michael's wedding reception

John showing off his dance skills at Camilla and Michael's wedding reception

Our first Ducks game

John got his very own snowboard

And even got Cari to go snowboarding with him and Lucas

Although Cari's knees hated her for it afterwards. And Cari found out why Utah has the best snow on earth. So if you ever go in CA, get pads!!! It's a must!! You can do more when it doesn't hurt as much to fall!!

And Cari finally got her beach cruiser!!! Even though the bike dude says she's too big for a women's bike...

Of course we other awesome goings-ons, but we just don't have photographic evidence!!

Where has February gone??

2010-03-09T11:32:00.000-08:00

February just seemed to disappear this year! We started off this month having health insurance again! I hadn't had it since I graduated in April, which made me extra paranoid about getting sick or hurt. And I've starting accruing TOWP (aka vacation time). I know it's a silly thing to get excited about, but I'm sooo excited that I will be able to take a week off work for Lake Powell and a week off for Hawaii AND get paid for it!! I started doing field work this month as well. I'm now outfitted with steel toe boots, a hard hat, protective eyewear, a respirator, and an orange vest. So I'm going to work, as John puts it, "in combat gear" while he goes to work in flip-flops. It's a nice change from sitting in the office all day every day. Sorry no pics yet--they haven't been uploaded to the server yet. :)

At the end of the month, my Dad officially became a senior citizen. On the same day, my good friends Camilla and Michael got married in the Redlands temple. They got enough sun to get some pictures luckily! And the weather was a million times better than anything Michael's family would have in Michigan!

At church, I got released from primary to be the Young Women secretary. I miss teaching the 8-year olds! I know they are quite a handful but that just makes me worry about how the new teacher can handle it! Meanwhile, we'll have to see how I can handle being in Young Women's!

Otherwise, we've just been enjoying being in California. John will go surfing occasionally on a Saturday morning. He also just bought his snowboard setup and is going this Saturday. We go to Disneyland as often as I can convince John. John gets to spend times with our niece everyday at work, but I don't get many opportunities. She is now fully crawling, which is fun to watch her go straight for the papers under Nancy's desk. I don't think it will be too much longer til she figures out the walking thing!

Getting ready for Muppets in 3D at California Adventure

We went to see the BYU men's volleyball team play UCSD, so we spent the day in Old Town and La Jolla Cove. It was a very different experience to go to an away game. We went to many of the home games in Provo, so it felt like a library where you can't speak above a whisper. Some of the UCSD fans tried to make some noise and mess up some of the volleyball players on their serves, but they just don't know what kind of noise they're used to!! It was a lot of fun and the team enjoyed having someone there making noise! We got up and sang the BYU fight song at the end of the match. Hopefully we can make it to some more of their games down here!

Beautiful La Jolla cove!

Tonight we get to go to a Ducks game with Aunt Janie. And we're looking forward to baseball season to start! There's a reason why we love being Californians aside from not having to live in the snow!!

Goings Ons

2010-01-31T16:19:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated this and I wanted to post some pictures too!

So last month John came home with Jeff's truck packed full:

Mackenzie enjoyed watching her first BYU bowl game, so here's looking at one cute cougar!!:

We bought Disneyland passes this year. We went on John's birthday since he got the day free (so we saved $72 on his pass!). Cari has already got 8 times and John 6 times since we got them! Cari's family (dad, mom, Hana, and grandma-aunt and uncle always have passes) also got passes this year so we'll have fun meeting up with them as well! They just got their passes last night, so met them there. My grandma has to use a wheelchair and go on the gentle rides like It's a Small World. So we got a party of 8 all got on that ride and the Tiki Room.
Here's John eating his birthday funnel cake:

Cari's sister Hana got her pass the day after Christmas so we went also. It was crazy busy. The football teams from Oregon and Ohio State were there. Every time we saw a group of them there was someone asking to take their picture. Cari's aunt and uncle took us out to dinner at the Napa Rose, a super nice restaurant at the Grand California hotel.

We also when to Disneyland for New Year's Eve since we'll probably never do anything for New Year's Eve ever again and we figured we should check out the Disneyland party since we could this year. It was super crowded around the castle, but there was hardly anyone around Adventureland and Frontierland. We walked right on to the Haunted Mansion. They had a fireworks show at midnight then had a Fantasmic showing that we watched. They handed out Happy New Year hats and noise makers (which were really annoying). We had a lot of fun though. Here's John riding the caboose:

Since then we've been settling down at our apartment and John is enjoying being able to come home and not have homework. My big news is that I have a full-time job now. Before I was hourly with no benefits, so now I have a salary, I'm guaranteed 40 hours a week, I get vacation time and insurance. I had training the previous 2 weekends so that I can do field work. We have to have what is called Hazwoper (hazardous waste operation and emergency response). You can't even go on some of the sites we work at until you get certified. We also get yearly physicals, so I have my baseline physical done, my training done, and my steel toe boots purchased, so I'm ready to go!

Together Again

2009-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

John has now finished his Master's program!! He's going to pass all his classes, so he'll be getting a nice piece of paper in the mail soon. It's great to have John back and resume our life together. It's like we're starting all over again. We're currently in the process of moving into our apartment, which is just next door to John's parents (and John's workplace). I'll be so happy once we have all our stuff gathered into 1 location as opposed to 5!!! We also bought a new Samsung 32" LCD HDTV for our new place.

Tomorrow is John's birthday and we have another splurge coming up. We're going to buy premium annual passes. California residents can do a monthly payment plan rather than paying all at once so it's very manageable. It's been a while since I've had a pass (last one expired 4 years ago...) and we haven't gone to Disneyland since August 1, 2007. So we're going to take advantage of the fact that we don't have a mortgage and we don't have kids at this time to get our fill of Disneyland for the next year!

Another piece of very happy news is something that happened on Saturday (other than John coming home). The Cowboys (who haven't won a road game in December for about 2 years) beat the previously undefeated Saints in their Superdome!!! Woohoo!!! I am still very excited about that!!!! No one believed they had a shot (and they didn't show they had a shot the previous 2 weeks). They have a lot of talent that underchieves on a regular basis, but everyone showed up to play on Saturday!!! Well, everyone except their kicker. Who missed another field goal. A field goal that could have cost the game. A field goal that left Cari pacing with 12 seconds left in the game with the Saints trying to tie it up. But we won!!! Go Dallas D!!!!!

Hope everyone has a very happy Christmas this year!!!

It's the final countdown!

2009-12-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

Now, I hope you're hearing really cheezzzzzy '80's synths.... but yes we are on the final stretch!! John has 17 more days until he is back in CA for good!
Meanwhile, we had a great time when he came to visit for the week. It was fun to go watch Jeff and Kirsty swim at Belmont Plaza for their final time and John got to reminisce about all the meets he swam there. On Sunday we got to celebrate Emily's birthday with all her family. For the first few days of the week I was working a lot, so John and I didn't get to do much, but working late meant I could take off Friday. We had some great food and good times with the family all here for Thanksgiving. On black Friday, I went to LA with Nancy and Sarah to get fabric for valences and baby stuff (for Sarah and Jeff--not me!). We were all going to go see The Blindside, but it was all sold out for the weekend. So we're planning to see it for Christmas. On Saturday, John and I went to Victoria Gardens with Jeff and Sarah. One of my favorite stores, NY and Company (they sell tall clothes), had a sale for 50% off everything. I got a sweater, which is something I use a lot at work! John found snowboarding boots for $40! woo-hoo!

Here's some pics from the week:

John at Belmont

Emily and Cari at Emily's b-day party

Grandma Patton and a sleeping Mack-joy

I love the holidays and I loved have John back, but I need more sleep! My Sunday nap didn't catch me back up. I might be recovered by Christmas. At which John and I are thinking about getting Disneyland passports. Do the monthly plan thing (which is only for so cal residents, fyi) so we can get the premium and go a lot.

Half-Way - John's Perspective

2009-11-04T08:13:00.000-08:00

Well, as Cari mentioned, we're at the half-way mark through this semester.... and the end couldn't come sooner.

So, what's going on in John's life..... let's take a looksey, huh??

I'm doing good up here. Just doing my last three required classes and taking two dance classes. I'm curently practicing up for the Utah Dancesport Championsh

ips that are coming up in about two weeks. I'm going to dance the American waltz, International waltz and Tango. If you want to go, they are going to be at the Wilkinson Center on BYU campus, and tickets are like 8-10 bucks. I compete the American waltz on Friday and the other two on Saturday. I recommend going on Saturday since the two International dances are my stronger ones, and there's gonna be some cool professional dancers that night or something. Worth the ten bucks to get in.

So, dancing is one of my new skills I have developed ove

r the past year. I always wanted to get into dancing ever since I was a little kid mainly because I always followed my own groove with regards to music. I like the international styles of ballroom because there's a lot of grace and flow to them. My strongest dances in my opinion are Tango and Foxtrot. Waltz is good... but I can't dance well to a slow song to save my life!! Good thing that there's a good amount of dance places in California and competitions so I can keep it up after I leave here.

Now, onto the academic portion of this. My classes aren't too bad this time around. Although I didn't score too high on some tests I've had so far, I understand the concepts. Honestly, I have never really cared about getting straight A's in my classes in college. In High School, this was a different story. Straight A's were what I looked for mainly bec

ause I didn't take that hard of a class load, relatively speaking. But in college, balancing swimming and a hard major took it's toll on my GPA, but hey. I graduated with a 3.0 and got into the masters program of Civil Engineering. I can say that I did my job well. ^.^

Also, my Masters Project is near completion. All there is left to do is talk to one of the members of my committee about my report, then print and sign. That's it!! My project was around computer modeling of driven piles subjected to lateral forces. Basically, they wanted me to analyze big steel beams that were driven in the ground and see what happened force-wise down the length of the beams. My advisor used some of the graphs I generated in a published report! So I'm a published engineer now!! YAY!!! All and all, the project was not too tough and I had fun working on it the past year. All I have to say is that I'm glad

my report was only 26 pages long (including blank pages and all the formatting) and that's shorter than the novel my older sister wrote for her thesis. I'm a happy camper!!

So many people ask me how I am faring being away from Cari... and I simply reply, "I'm slipping slowly into utter madness. Ya know, talking to myself in my apartment, seeing her there.... when she's really not there... Just the general form of madness." That usually gets a good laugh. But seriously, it's hard but bearable... just bearable. I came to a realization the other day, an epiphany if you will. I just kinda thought it would be like it was when I was single my Freshman year living in a room all to myself: Just do your homework, go to class, and play your video-games and you'll be fine. I am very wrong in this assumption mainly due to the fact that I know there's someone out there who really cares me enough to

wanna be with me for eternity..... and she's not here with me. You see, when you're single, you dream of that "special someone" and wonder if they exist. You seek and seek and hopefully find that special person who you wanna spend the rest of eternity with. But, in my case, I have found that person.... and she's not with me. I tend to look at this situation like the picture portrayed below. Yes, it's from an Japanese Animated cartoon called "Tsubasa Chronicles" (excellend anime series and worth the watch, if you're into that stuff) and it portrays our situtation to the T.

In the picture, the two protagonists are trapped in a glass bottle, separated by a glass pane. The two of them can see each-other, but cannot get past the glass wall. That's kinda how I see this time. I know there's the special someone there, I can see her through pictures, hear her voice through phone conversations and video-chat online, but we're separated by distance.... and it pains both of us to not be able to "be" with each-other. BUT, as I have mentioned, we're almost done, and we're gonna be better people and treasure the moments we have due to this time of separation.

So now, getting off the depressing topic which is the huge elephant in the room... I'm seriously doing fine. I'm eating well, exercising regularly, and learning new tricks with my skill toys!! I need to do a few videos displaying the new tricks I have learned... but I'm not sure when that will happen. Keep posted to my youtube profile, Theferrell1 , to see what I cook up in the next few months. The weather is beautiful and that is going to make for some great video footage!!

Well, I've spent enough time on this. I gotta get back to my homework!! Take care everyone, and next post will be after a wonderful week home during the Thanksgiving break.

- John

At the halfway mark

2009-10-29T19:27:00.000-07:00

We've reached the over halfway point!! John and I have now survived 2 months living in 2 separate states. John will be coming down for a whole week 3 weeks from now. Then he'll be finishing up finals and moving back to CA in another 4 weeks after that!!

A couple weekends ago I got to fly up to visit John. John got me an edible arrangement. I LOVE chocolate covered strawberries!!!

Doesn't that look just delicious?!

We went out to lunch with my older sister, Tracie, and a good friend, Leilani. We splurged a little and got one of those oil burners at the Body Shop. There was one that we had seen before that we really liked so we saw they still had it so we decided to get it. We enjoyed wonderful smells in the apartment for the rest of the weekend... We rented New in Town since John had already seen it twice and loved and wanted me to see it too.

On Sunday we went to temple square before the airport because we have had really really bad luck with traffic in Utah whenever I fly in or out. It was nice though. The weather was perfect for a fall day.

I hate Utah for the snow, but I do love the fall. The colors are beautiful. I love driving up Provo canyon in the fall and seeing all the changing colors.

Since John and I didn't want to wait 5 weeks to see each other again, we met up in Vegas and visited with his aunt and grandma last weekend. Grandma Patton gave us a tour of her house since I had never been there before. Other than that we just relaxed, watched some football, and played cards (I got whooped bad). Traffic kind of sucked on the way home as could be expected, but it was made better because I found the Cowboys game on the radio and they were actually playing well and dominating the game!! New favorite player = miles austin. Thank you to the o-line for protecting romo!!

Saying goodbye to Mackenzie before going to Vegas.

In Vegas.

A blowout weekend

2009-09-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

Visiting John was great this weekend. It made up for all the disappointments (BYU getting blown out at home, Cowboys losing-no surprise there).
Saturday morning we went to play volleyball with John's stake (they play every week, plus his ward every Wednesday). I've never gotten more beat up playing volleyball than I did that day! Usually I'll bruise my knees or something from landing to hard on them. This time, I didn't land too hard on my knees so I didn't get knee bruises. However, my arms and wrists were messed up! I got big bruises and my wrists were tweaked (have better movement now). And I messed my left quad from getting more low balls than usual. It was fun though and there was a guy coaching and giving tips. Stuff I didn't learn on my 6th grade volleyball team. :)
We got free pedicures (you get 1 free salon service each month at the Branbury), looked at beach cruisers (though cheaper in UT, the selection is much better in CA), and ate lunch at a Peruvian restaurant. Good stuff. Watched the BYU game with Sara and Caleb. Resorted to eating ice cream while being depressed and playing wii instead of watching the rest of the massacre. On Sunday, we finally got to meet my friend Lindsay's husband Matt.
So the other blowout of the weekend was on Sunday night after Doug picked me up from LAX. We were driving down the 105 in the carpool lane and hit something. Blew the tire. The hole in the side of the tire was about 1" in diameter. It was so big! (Tried to take a pic but camera was dead) And the rim got dented up. The CHP stopped by and told us the other car that pulled off the road behind us got the 2 right tires taken out. They set up a traffic break to try and find it, but had no luck. So we didn't get home til about midnight. And I felt pretty hammered the next day. The good news is that, even though the tire company is going out of business, they had 2 more of those same tires.
Overall a good weekend although with a couple blowouts.

Going to visit John!!!

2009-09-18T14:32:00.000-07:00

Today is a special day because I get to visit John for the first time this semester! We've both been pretty busy so it hasn't been too horrible. And we're basically a fourth of the way through! I get to visit again in October, John comes down for Nike Cup and Thanksgiving, and finally he comes back for good in December. Yay!! We thought about getting tickets to the Florida St game this weekend, but it's $50 for the end zone nose-bleeds. So we opted for watching it on TV. Let's go Cougars!!!

So I've gotten through my first 2 months at Tetra Tech. I've pretty much had full-time work to do with the exception of this past week where I had barely anything. I'm sort of in-between projects, so I spent the whole week asking people for stuff to do. I'm really really hoping that the project we're waiting on starts next week! Once it starts, it will be solid full-time work for at least a month. *crosses fingers*

Summer in Review

2009-08-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

So life has turned full circle since the last update. John just went back up to school this past Tuesday. I started my new job in July and time seems to have flown since then. I just hope it keeps flying til December when John is done with school!!!

So I took an official "first day of work" picture. I had new shoes that gave me horrible blisters that day. I had to walk around a lot to met people and what not and then my supervisor took me to visit the site of a project I've been working on. I still have marks on my heels from those blisters and it's been almost 2 months! Work has been going alright. Sometimes it's been rather slow, but for the most part I've been able to get 40 hours a week. I get paid hourly rather than a salary and I don't get any benefits, so I am always hoping we get more projects and that there's more work for me to do.

One thing that's been nice about being back in California is the Dodger's games. I think I've been to about 7 games so far this season. It's fun to go and relax, hang out with family or friends, and make fun of the drunk people all while cheering on the soon-to-be World Champs (*crosses fingers... knock on wood...) That is if they stop losing to the stinking last place Reds. And of course we made some visits to La Tolteca before a number of the games.

Another great thing about being back is the beach. John finally got to take me to Huntington to teach me how to surf. The water was pretty warm when we went so it was nice. I got up on my knees quite a bit, but only made a solid transistion to my feet once. I was just riding on the whitewater, so I didn't have a whole lot of time to get up. I sure got a lot of bruises though!! I am very thankful for the extra padding provided by the wetsuit over the knees and elbows!!! The 2nd time I tried to surf didn't go so well. The waves were too close together and too choppy for me to fight it out much. Although, I have gotten better at handling the 9' board. And it's a lot of fun even just trying. And boogie boarding is great if you're too tired to surf. I got pretty mangled just catching waves on a boogie board in those choppy waves.

John and I got the chance to go to The Redlands Bowl a couple of times this summer. For those of you who don't know, the Redlands Bowl is an outdoor amphitheater (like the Hollywood Bowl but smaller). A local association does fundraising so that all the events are free. They put on a musical every year. This year it was 1776. A friend of mine from choir and theater in high school happened to be in it.

On the way to Redlands, we got stuck in traffic on the 91 (what a surprise) because Mr. Trucker thought he could go higher than the curve rating for the ramp between the 60 and the 91 and did this:
Whoops. Don't see that everyday. We also went to see Opera a la Carte perform Pirates of Penzance at the Redlands Bowl. My very good friend sings with that group.

And here's the first attempt at commemorating a visit to the bowl:
And the final: Last Friday, John met me at work and we took the Gold line (first station is by my office) to Union station to go to little Mexico. Forget the name of the place, but it has little stands and shops with Mexican crap (made in China of course). We got some good food and got a few knick-knacks and did some different.

So with me driving to Pasadena everyday and John going back to school, we needed to find a mode of transportation for myself (would be nice if the metro came to glendora...). So we found a little 2007 Corrolla with only 20k miles on it. Nothing fancy about it, everything manual, but a great little car to get me to work everyday and paying practically nothing for gas.
And of course, I became an Aunt July 15th. Lucas and Monica had Mackenzie Joy. And she is most adorable. She's a little chunker (born 9 lb 1 oz) and was early (c-section). Here's one of Monica's recent pics of her giving a little smile:

So if you're not in CA right now, you may or may not know about all the fires. On Tuesday night, a fire started at the Morris dam, which is just on the other side of the foothills from Azusa/Glendora. So we were breathing smoke and ash for a couple of days. And just when it's getting better, 2 more fires have started. One started Thursday in Rancho Palos Verdes on the coast near Santa Monica. The other started Wednesday in La Cañada just over the mountain from my office in Pasadena, but it didn't really start picking up until late Thursday so here's what it looked like Friday afternoon from my office: So that's just about everything I remember doing this summer. I spend most of the day working and trying to earn monies, so usually there's not much time in the day to do much. And now that John is gone, I feel a bit like a bum when I come home from work. At least I have the Dodgers to keep me company and college football starts next weekend with pro football to follow. Come on Cowboys! Let's win a playoff game this year!!

Update

2009-07-12T07:41:00.000-07:00

With spring term being over, John and I are back in So Cal and done with the crappy studio apartment full of mold!! Yay!! This also means that we have stuff scattered across Riverside, Glendora, and Provo. Can't wait until we're back in our own apartment!! Unfortunately, that won't be until January. I'm not the most organized person in the world, but this is already getting confusing! If you can't find something, well, it might be in Kirsty's apartment, it might be in the extra room at my grandma's house, it might be in the storage unit in Riverside, it might be in the storage unit in Glendora, or it might be right under your nose. Oh so fun.

On a happy note, I have a job now that I start tomorrow! I didn't get a full-time position though. I'll be working in tech services getting paid hourly and get no benefits other than 6 paid holidays. It's supossed to be temporary, so hopefully I'll be able to move into an actual engineering position soon. It depends a lot on stimulus funding and getting those projects. So you know that's gonna be slow, as it already has been since the government is involved. But I do get to work in the Pasadena office which is not a bad drive from Glendora.

And since it's taken this long to get the job and start working I got to spend the whole time at Lake Powell. It was an awesome trip. I got a lot better at wakeboarding this year. I was standing up straighter and was able to plane the board/not lean back too far by the end. And I was able to go out the wake and back in. John almost landed a flip a couple times.

Here's the cove we were in. The far boat is Lee's, the middle is David's, and the close one is ours:

Here's John mid-flip:

We got a few storms which was fun. Here's a pre-storm picture (Cari, John, Kirsty, Caleb, Greg, and Annelise):
The trip had it's problems of course, like the engine on the Calabria over-heating and having to go back in to get fixed, the Danzi starting to sink because of a small crack in the hull, Doug losing his eye glasses again (also lost them last year) because he jumped in the lake to save his boat, the son of one of the Ferrell's clients and his friends mooning us because we told them not to jet-ski right behind our boarder, having to kill a rattlesnake on a hike. Routine stuff, right?? It'll be fun to go back and watch Greg's video of the trip!

On the Fourth of July, we went to the ward activity for my parent's ward. Ben and Nicki and Emily and Ray are in the ward, so we basically just went to hang out with some of my best friends and my family. We played some softball and John impressed some ladies with his hitting skills.
Here's some of John's fielding skills:
And also, today is our 1-year anniversary! Yay! We're too poor to do anything though. And any money I earn is going to John's tuition and hopefully a car down-payment. So cheers to us!

Thoughts on Cari leaving:

2009-05-19T12:40:00.001-07:00

Well folks, looks like the first part of our temporary separation is upon us... and I truly don't understand why everyone thinks it's gonna be the end of the world for us.

I mean, yea, it'll be hard being away from my sweetie and vice-versa... but it's something we need to do. If Cari doesn't work, I can't finish my masters program (not to mention she will go literally insane from boredom :) ). So we know that this will be necessary. At least it's not like the military where you have to leave for at least 6-or-so months at a time. I'm here in boring Provo with nothing but my research, anime, and video games to keep me company. I'm still going to be working at Subway till the end of the semester and living in my walk-in-closet. At least we are getting a new roof as I write this... but I fear that by the end of it, I'm gonna have a sky-light due to the roofers punching a hole in my roof.

While I'm stuck in "happy valley" she'll be back in Sunny California, lounging by the pool and making good money. I seriously think she'll be getting the better deal out of this haha.

But yea, my research is going well. I'm basically figuring out why some guy's thesis isn't making sense.... literally. I have to dive into his analysis and do hand-calcs to check out his numbers. That's about all I'm doing for this. It's also interesting how computer programs work every time execpt when you need them to work. I have an interesting problem to solve in Mathcad involving solving for a number within a sumnation. (if you don't know what that is, don't worry :) ) So I tried a simplified way to program that into the... er... program and it worked!! So, I simply copied that and pasted in the real numbers I need... and it doesn't work. Funny how that goes...

But other than that, I'm doing great up here. I am teaching surveying and having fun with that too. Whelp, gotta run off to my class. I'll post if there's anyhting interesting going on in my life :)

A new hobby

2009-05-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

Since I don't have a job yet, don't have classes to go to, don't have homework, don't have anything to do right now, I decided to pick up a new hobby: cake decorating. It's kinda like a more sophisticated play dough. So far I've just been practicing on the practice board and did 2- 8" rounds. The hardest thing is getting the frosting to be the right consistency for different things. So here's some pics of my handi work.
So here's my first attempt:

And some little figures:
2nd attempt, now with flowers:
And my first try at the Wilton rose (with frosting that was too stiff, man it's hard to get the right consistency!!):
Other than that, I've been just watching season 3 of 24 and reading, so it's a nice change of pace and gives me something better to do with my excess of time. Maybe someday I'll appreciate that I had time for some period of my life.

Playing the waiting game...

2009-04-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

So I had my interview with Tetra Tech on Monday. It went well. We talked for 1.5 hours! Long, but no biggie. We basically talked about the classes I took in grad school and about my master's project. Then Dr. Liu was talking to me about how the "real world" is different from school and what to expect and what I need to do to become successful. It didn't feel a whole lot like an interview since it seemed more like he was trying to prepare me for a job rather than trying to determine if he wants to hire me or not. He said that he is going to talk to people at the Pasadena and the Long Beach offices about positions and what not. I talked to Rick on the phone later and he said that Dr. Liu is wanting to make some changes so I might end up with a position other than the Clean Truck Act job. I hope to work at the Pasadena office though. It's just past Rosemead Blvd. and only takes like 10 minutes (w/o traffic) to get there from Glendora. So I am now waiting to hear back. Rick said from his experience it would be at least 2 weeks (he and Dr. Liu didn't talk about timeline), so I'm back up in Utah with John. Doing nothing. Just waiting. At least I know a job offer will be coming!

Done with Classes!!

2009-04-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

So I am officially done with classes!! Yay!! Got all my reports and projects turned in and presentations given. Now I only have 2 finals left. My wastewater final was take home and I already finished that. I'm going to take my groundwater test today when the room becomes available. My last final, for hazardous waste, is scheduled on Tuesday. The family is driving up on Saturday, so while John signed up for a bunch of extra hours at the CougarEat, I can go do stuff with them.
So we got a huge storm the other day and we got quite a bit of snow. It was somewhat unusual for Utah to have that much in that short of time. And in April. More water in Lake Powell!! Woo-hoo! But I am so glad it is supposed to warm back up to upper 60s this weekend!! Yay for sunshine!!
So here's some trees on our street bending to the ground under all that snow:

and here's John checking out the depth on our doorstep:

And the mountains:

The job prospect is looking up now. I'll be able to go in for an interview with Tetra Tech while I'm going down to CA. And we all know they're going to love me! :) Don't know when that would start though. We'll just have to wait and see. And then I am still waiting to hear about the part-time grading position. Between those 2 jobs I want to save 2-3000 dollars a month for a house down-payment. Want to get a jump on the market!! Fun times...

Dance Lab Video

2009-04-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

Here's my dance lab performance last week (if blogspot accepts embedded vids...). Had a lot of fun learning, practicing, and performing this routine! Just look for the tall couple.

284 Medals Exams

2009-04-01T17:31:00.000-07:00

So here are the videos from our medals exams for our 284 silver standard dance class. The judge was a retard though. He made comments about the footwork on a couple steps, but if you know where to look in the video you will see that I was not messing it up like he implies. He also gave me a really crappy score. There was only 1 girl that got a good score from him. So I'm kinda pissed about that because I know I'm better than most in the class (for waltz and foxtrot) ESPECIALLY in footwork. I am extremely careful about footwork (cause it's easier than standing up straight) and I KNOW when I mess it up. I could keep going, but I'll spare you.
Enjoy the vids:

Here's Cari:

Here's John:

Dance Videos

2009-03-31T14:06:00.001-07:00

I have a couple videos from our Silver Standard dance class with our teacher making comments and what not. I forgot to save the tango video so here's the waltz and foxtrot (sorry if it's super small!!):

Where's Spring???

2009-03-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

So we had some nice weather... John got to go to the park, wear shorts, and play with his toys. Then we get hit with winter storms. Then the weather starts looking up again. We did Habitat for Humanity with SWE on Saturday and John got a bit of a sunburn. I was happy just wearing a sweater (even with the sleeves pushed up!!). Then comes Sunday. Get some snow. But Sunday night was worse. Wake up on Monday morning to this:

and this:

when I want to be busting out the flip flops and putting my wool socks in storage!!
The forecast makes me no happier. We're supposed to get rain/snow the rest of the week. Including a high of 41 degrees for the party on Saturday!! Guess we'll be staying inside and sending John out with an umbrella to make the burgers!!! In the 10 day forecast on weather.com, only 2 of the 10 days don't include some amount of rain or snow!!! I just have to remind myself it means more water in Lake Powell. So there is some good of it.

Winding Up or Down?

2009-03-26T16:23:00.002-07:00

As the semester gets closer to being over, I'm getting more anxious to be done with school and to find a job. But I seem to get busier everyday! I got cleared for graduation last week, so I just need to pass my classes now. I have everything done except for the final exam in 2 classes and a few homeworks plus a modeling project and report for the other. It's exciting to know I'm so close to being done!!!
The job situation makes me worry of course. I haven't heard back from anybody (aside from Tetra Tech with Doug talking to them). However, I made a contact today with a guy that works for a small company in Riverside. I gave him my resume and they are going to look at it and get back to me. My mom thinks my high school Environmental Science teacher's wife works for them. I googled it and it looks like it's true. That'd be funny (if she still works there). So hopefully one of those opportunities will work out for us.
So since my sister's birthday is March 23, mine is April 6, my other sister's is april 18, and my friend's is April 19, we are planning a little party. I'm excited because it might be the last time for a long time I get to spend much time with some of my friends and sisters before I go back to California to work. Just hope the weather gets better by then. I very much enjoyed the spurt of spring weather (even wore shorts one day!!). I was very sad when I looked and the window this morning. I sure didn't see popcorn popping on the apricot tree!!!
So I'm taking Dace 380, gold social dance, this semester. And our class is performing at the social dance lab (April 2, perform at 7:45). My teacher is Betsy, which anyone can tell you she is a really good teacher, a very thorough teacher, and a very good choreographer. So I am doing a formation dance choreographed by Betsy, so you know it's intense. So far, I killed my thighs so I was limping around for a few days and couldn't go down stairs without dying for longer and tweeked out my hip. I've probably self-adjusted my back in ways that aren't right (falling back onto your partner's knee repetitively might do that). But it's been fun so far. I just hope I keep it all straight and don't forget what I'm doing during the performance!

Thoughts about life...

2009-03-24T16:05:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm a little bored... so I'm gonna put a post in. I guess I can't let my wife hog all the fun now can I?? haha.

I'm still plugging away with grad work. The end is in sight. I just got my schedule re-arranged for Fall Term so I am taking all grad classes. I was going to take a Senior-level class in water-modeling computer programming... but I decided against it since I was never EVER going to use it and I really disapprove of the programs the college uses for the classes. Instead of this reject of a class, I'm going to take Bridge design. My buddies say it's the easiest A they have ever had. So, that in and of itself made me wanna do the class :)

I also started working at Subway on campus two weeks ago. I had to start a job there because of my TA job only being half a semester long. It is not that bad of a job. I mainly do cashiering and also put veggies on sandwiches. But most of my time is spent grabbing replacement veggies for the line people. The line never stops for most of the shift. I go from 4:30 - 9:30 on MW, and 6:00 - 9:30 on Thursday. Closing isn't bad either. It is a lot of running around wiping stuff. It's fun!! My only gripe is getting 5 dollars less an hour than I got while TA'ing.

But yea. I guess I'm totally bored of Utah. It was actually sunny last week, and I really wanted to go out and surf or wakeboard.... but couldn't since I'm in Utah and it made me sad. I was able to wear shorts for most of last week and that made me a happy camper!! I was also able to play with my juggling toys outside for a few days. That makes me happy too!!

Oh yea, I was able to perform with the juggling club again last Thursday. The local outreach program asked us to perform as the middle-schoolers went into the concert hall for a presentation. I took my diabolo and had some fun with it. I must say, I never could underestimate the screaming capacity of 12 year olds when Cosmo comes on a stage. I thought I was at a Hanna Montana concert the kids were soo loud. It was hilarious.

Ok, so I think I'm done for now.

Off-season with the Cowboys

2009-03-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

So there has been some interesting news for Cari today. The Cowboys officially released Terrell Owens and safety Roy Williams today. This means they will have 9 million + 11 million going against them in the salary cap and the Cowboys will get nothing for the money spent. So I believe the Cowboys have about 25 million dollar in dead money going against the salary cap. Boy would I love to get a piece of that pie!!
What I'm confused about is why they didn't try to trade them. We lost 3 draft picks when we traded for the wide receiver Roy Williams (not to be confused with the safety). Even though T.O. has a bad attitude and is just an overall bundle of fun (oh, how the media must love the show he puts on) he stills puts up big numbers. Double digit touchdowns. 1000+ yard seasons. Even if we don't want him in Dallas, somebody will take the chance with him! Speaking of the numbers he puts up, this poses the question: will the other receivers step up and fill T.O.'s shoes in touchdowns and yardage? And Roy Williams was the top receiver with the Lions (much good it did them...), but will he be a top receiver in Dallas (and match what T.O. did) and will that make a difference? Emmitt Smith was still playing for the Cowboys when he was putting up record numbers, but that wasn't reflected in the numbers of wins we got.
Then we have the case of the safety Roy Williams. So he hasn't had the best years lately and he only played like 3 games last season because of injuries, but man I love watching him play. He is a dynamic, hard-hitting player. Maybe his pass defense isn't so great, but who are you going to have step up to do that? The defense is looking to suffer next year... why get rid of a valuable player without trying to trade?
We've lost Chris Canty as a free agent and who knows what is happening with Burnett... I've heard about him and the Raiders... why would anyone want to go to the Raiders??? I've also heard about him talking to the Packers. At least we'll have Demarcus Ware for years to come. Contract is up next year and they're working to make sure he'll be here after that!!
So what's going on with the Cowboys, I'm not sure anyone knows... Last year everyone expected a stellar season, but it was below par. It could have been a lot worse, but such high expectations led to great disappointment. So maybe they're trying to make so nobody knows what to expect so when they win the superbowl it will be as big a shock as the cardinals making it to the superbowl.

Y Juggle

2009-02-23T09:34:00.001-08:00

So John goes to the Juggling club here at BYU even though he can't juggle. Well, he can now juggle rings, but that's it. Anyways, the juggling club performed at the volleyball game on Friday night (in which BYU soundly beat UCSD). So here are a couple pics from his performance.
First, some juggling:

And some diabolo:

Ferrellito's status

2009-02-12T11:17:00.001-08:00

Hello everyone. I guess this is my first post on our blog, so I guess I better just say how my life is going in my own words. The words I would say would be this: Finite Element Analysis is anything and everything I hate about classes.

Those who know me already have been warned about my undying loathing for the Math Department here at BYU. I loved math in High School mainly because it was in terms I could understand. Well, I guess it boiled down to my teachers not thinking they ruled all things mathematical, so they were not able to discuss in words that might as well have been ancient islamic. However, since I've been in college, I've come to the realization that all PHD's in math are snobbish eleitests who are bringers of doom to all those who have to enter their realm of darkness and despair. I came out of my four classes with the following grades: B, B-, D+, C- and I kissed that sorry place goodbye.

**huff puff**

Having said that I thought that my days of "evil math" (a.k.a. math I could never hope to understand) was over. I was wrong. Horribly wrong. Up comes Graduate School. The place where "you want to learn" and that "the classes are tailored to your emphasis and prior studyings back in undergraduate work". Boy was I mistaken!!

Up comes the first two graduate structural analysis courses called 504 and 506. 504 was an advanced analysis and optmization course dealing with computer structural analysis. I thought to myself, "horay!! I get to learn some cool computer programs in this class." WRONG. The first third of the class was about complex matrix algebra, the second third was about programming (that which civil engineers only have ONE crash course in during undergraduate work) and we didn't even really write anything!!! It was "programming theory"!!! We finally got to use a program to design something for the final project in the class and that was it for actual computer work. I understand that my professor's theory was that he wanted us to learn what goes on behind the program... but come on. Let us USE the programs!!!

Now I'm in 506 which is Finite Element Analysis. This is revenge of the math nerds!!! I am very hopelessly lost in the math in this class. The first day of class my professor gets up and states, "Ok, so for the entire semester, we are going to use a notation that Einstien developed to do our work." AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! My brain then exploded into tiny bits and left me crying in my seat. I mean, EINSTIEN!! I can barely spell the guy's name right let alone do stuff he did. But so far I've come to this realization. I understand the theory in english, but mathmatically, I'm messed. If nobody sees me at the end of the semester, it is probably because I have managed to open a worm-hole because of a messed-up integral and am in a parallel dimension. Don't bother to find me :)

But other than that, I'm doing great with regards to academia. My other two classes are about bricks, wood and concrete, and I understand what's going on and everything is great. During the times I am not locked up somewhere in the Clyde Building grinding out proofs, I have developed a few interesting skills. I have been attending the juggling club for the past semester now, and I can now say I can juggle three rings for an extended period of time!! I've also landed a sponsorship with Astrojax and have achieved the title of, "Sponsored Astrojax Trainer" (as it will say on my personalized buisness cards) for the company. It's pretty sweet when people email you about your youtube videos and say that you were the reason they picked up Astrojax. I'm honored!!

I also must admit that my wife is the coolest because of her stance on Valentines day!! I mean, who else would let their husband go off snowboarding and not care if he got her a big boquet of flowers or something ridiculous on a captitalist holiday. Nobody!!! That's why I love her <3 With regards to snowboarding, I am now able to tackle any blue-rated run with ease!! I'm goin pro ma!!! haha.

Well, until next time, adios from Ferrellito!!

Valentine's Day Rant and Goings Ons

2009-02-10T08:12:00.000-08:00

I believe that Valentine's Day is the most retarded, commercial, over-hyped holiday in todo el mundo! With or without a significant other. Sure it's nice to do something special or get flowers or candy, but when those flowers and candy and extremely over-priced because the guy is going to be in the doghouse if he doesn't get something for the lady and give it to her THAT DAY. And everyone is going out to do something special for Valentine's Day. What's so special about having to wait an hour and a half to get a table for 2? Go any other night and it's a 5 minute wait! Go buy candy and flowers the day after and it's all half-off. So what are my plans for Valentine's Day? Other than John going snowboarding at Sundance... nothing. Whatever I usually do on a Saturday. Go study or grade on campus if needed. Watch a movie and eat some popcorn. Do laundry and clean the apartment. Maybe bust out some Singstar.

So other than boycotting Valentine's Day like I usually do (I tell John not to get me anything until after V-Day), things are going pretty normal for us. John had 3 tests in the week (or 2) and I barely had one yesterday. I did file our taxes though. We'll be happy to get that extra money! I still haven't gotten any word on any job. Well, I did get rejected for one I applied to online. I'm hoping to get in with TetraTech or Parson's since I have connections with them. I'm also hoping for CH2MHill.

Last Friday we went to the BYU-Utah swim meet. It was a tight meet, fun to watch. BYU came out on top though! It helps when the divers go 1-2-3 and BYU gets 1st in all the relays. Before the meet we drove up to Odgen to pick up my sister Christine (Tracie was working so she couldn't drive her down). So we had a lot of driving on Friday night. Luckily the weather was good so the roads were clear.

I must mention something that happened in nursery a couple weeks ago though. So there's a new kid, Myles. He's still a small guy, so he doesn't look as old as the other new kids. Well there's this other kid (not new), Tyrus aka Bubba who was calling Myles "baby." He would go to him and say, "hi baby." and the like. Well, later on, Myles fell or something and Bubba wanted to help him, so he says, "it's ok baby" and starts kissing him on the lips. Like make-out style. It was sooo funny. Poor Myles was so confused.

One month down

2009-01-29T13:02:00.001-08:00

So January is just about over, which leaves only 3 months left until I graduate!!! Yay!! No job lined up yet, but I just turned in a bunch of resumes recently (many thanks to my connection with Tetra Tech). So hopefully I will get interviews soon with job offers to follow.
John and I are enjoying the new season of 24. So who do you think is the bad guy in the administration? We enjoyed Chloe's response to the question, "Are you with the FBI" of "No, I'm a stay-at-home mom." Nice. We also picked up the new show Lie To Me. That is a good show too. Very interesting. We've been watching the 1st season of Alias on DVD, which is very good. I think that is up there with my all-time favorites.
John had his first finite element test. He will be very glad when that class is over with! He officially has a graduate project now. He'll be working with Dr. Richards to analyze some data from Dr. Rollins dealing with pile caps. John will be very busy when he starts working on that (as if he isn't already!!).
So I stopped taking ballet classes this semester because of time commitments, so I decided to take up running, even though I hate it. We have been going 2 times a week, except last week we only went once. But we timed our miles last week. John ran a 6 minute mile while I ran a sad 11 minute mile. But I never ever run. And the best I ever did in middle school was 10 minutes.
So one month down... hope the last 3 (especially the cold ones!) go as fast as this one has!!