Scotty, Meg, and the kids come to visit!

Last weekend, Ryan's brother, his wife and their three kids came down from Utah for a little trip to the OC. They stayed in Newport which is only about 10 minutes away, so we were able to hang out with them a bunch.

We took them to our favorite beach in Laguna. Here's a spikey-haired Ella after getting her sun screen on.

Hailey and Alex playing in the sand.

Me and my little buddy

A sneaky seagull took off with the bag of chips that Ella was playing with!

Here's Ryan and Scott bodysurfing.

They had a lot of fun...even though the water was a bit on the chilly side!!!

I love Laguna!

A couple days later, we met up with them at Disneyland. This is a shot of Ryan, Scott and his kids after getting soaked on the rapids at California Adventure!

Here is a picture of a sunset one night with all of the smoke in the air from the fires.

A little Sugar...

My sister just called and asked if I could do a post on my blog with my sugar cookie recipe. It's nothing too fancy. I think I got the recipe off the Internet a couple years ago. I like it cuz the frosting drys hard so you can stack them without the frosting getting all nasty. Anyway...here it is:

1 cup sugar
1 cup butter
3 oz cream cheese
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
2 1/4 cups flour

Mix first seven ingredients. Add flour. Chill. (I usually chill overnight but I think a couple hours is fine.) Bake at 375 degrees for 7-10 minutes (depends on how big your cookie cutter is) on ungreased cookie sheet. (I use a sheet of parchment paper.)

Frosting:
2 cups powdered sugar
2 Tblsp milk
1 Tblsp light corn syrup
1 tsp almond extract
food coloring

Happy Birthday Mike!

Last Friday night, my sister threw a surprise party for her husband's 30th birthday. That's right...just a couple weeks after the big Princess party, she put on a great sports themed party for Mike. Lindsay is usually pretty good at planning things out in her life...so you would think she would try to plan the birthdays in her little family to be a bit more spread out! All four of the birthdays in her family fall within like 7 weeks! Anyway, back to the party...it was so much fun! Everyone came dressed in their best sports attire. Mike was totally surprised which is a good thing. He's not big on having all the attention on him so I think this is the only way to get him to show up for his own party!

Mike and Linds with their good friends, Ryan and Aly.

This is what happens when Kaitlyn gets her hands on a cupcake!

So, as I said before, the theme of this party was anything sports and as my sister doesn't do anything halfway, this party had everything that you would see at a baseball/basketball/football game...including a popcorn machine, hot dogs, peanuts, a cotton candy machine...which is what I was in charge of. I have to say, I'm a darn good cotton candy maker! Don't judge my skills by this picture...this was just a mess up. It still tasted great!

This is my cousin, Jessica, and her husband, Eddie (of Family Feud fame!)

Here's my Uncle Bob and Aunt Nancy with their gift for Mike. Since moving to San Clemente, Mike has said that he wants to get back into surfing. Now thanks to them (and my cousins) he can!

The Padres number 1 fan!

p.s. I just wanted to take a minute to thank all of you who have been concerned for my family with all the wildfires here in So. California. My mom's home is in Rancho Bernardo (the hardest hit place in San Diego.) It's where I grew up and it's been incredibly hard to watch the news and see all the neighborhoods that I'm so familiar with now burnt to the ground. My mom did evacuate for the past couple days but luckily, her home was spared and she should be able to go back home tonight. My dad and my brother also left their homes but as of right now, they are still untouched by the fires. Where Ryan and I are in Orange County hasn't been in any danger so we're grateful for that. We feel very blessed and tahnkful to all those rescue workers who have done everything in their power to try to contain these fires. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

Weekend o' Fun! (Part II)

Yep...that's right. We just had so much fun last month when we went up to surprise Ryan's parents for their birthdays that we decided to go for round 2. We used the excuse that last month was closer to his dad's birthday and this month was on his mom's birthday. Anyway, it was another fun filled weekend!

For some reason, Ryan and I have the WORST luck when it comes to delays on our flights. Both legs of this trip were delayed like 30-45 minutes! Oh well. Here's Ella thinking she's a big girl just chillin' on a seat as we waited at LAX.


What a difference 4 weeks makes! When we were up in Utah last month, Ella was still a little nervous about Petey. This trip though, she couldn't get enough of the little guy!



While Ryan was golfing with his brothers and his dad, Ella and I went to meet up with one of my greatest friends in the world, Krissy. We had lunch at Paradise Cafe. Yummy!


After lunch with Krissy, Ella and I went to another one of my bestest friends house, Meghan, to see her and her darling kids. Unfortunately, baby Claire was sleeping the whole time but Porter was there and he was so cute with Ella!


Ella loved following Porter around because he was so nice to share all of his toys with her. I think Ella has a little crush...


That night we went out with all of Ryan's siblings and the spouses to Stuart Anderson's/Black Angus (the only kids there were just the two babies.) Lots of good food and even better company!



Here's Ella's cousin Claire showing her Uncle Ryan how to enjoy a delicious piece of brocolli!




After dinner, we all went over to Ryan's parent's house to play a harmless game of Catch Phrase.


I say "harmless" because it started out that way. This next picture is a bit screwy because I was laughing to hard to hold the camera straight. I won't get into any details...let's just say Ryan was having a bit of a hard time describing "Bad Hair Day"!


Later that night, we decided to pull out some old pictures and scrapbooks. Ryan's mom was so good to save so many fun things from when the kids were growing up. I was reading through some of Ryan's old report cards. One of the reoccurring comments from Ryan's grade school teachers was about Ryan's problem with "too much socializing"! I like to think about tiny Ryan being the little social butterfly of his class! Anyway, this is a picture of a note that he wrote to the toothfairy when he was young. It's kinda hard to see...it says: "I would like to keep my tooth please. Love, Ryan" I think he was thinking that he would keep it for some future research. :)


Here's Ella the next morning with her new BFF, Petey. She and Petey made a deal that if she would be so kind as to share her food with him, he would do the same for her...


This is a picture of Ella's favorite snack while staying at Grandma's house. More than once we would catch Ella sneak into the laundry room (where Petey's food is) and help herself to a little snack. The last time we caught her, she had both fists and both cheecks FULL of dogfood! Is it bad that when I first saw her I wanted to grab my camera? I decided against it and took this picture instead...


Later that day we all went over to Ryan's brother, Scott's house to watch the Utah football game. It was a good game. Even Ella couldn't take her eye's off the TV...


Here's Ella enjoying a chocolate chip cookie. We usually don't like her to have so much sugar (and when I say "we", I mean Ryan) but we thought, what the heck...we're on vacation!


That night we all went to the very first KFC in the world...who knew it was right there in Salt Lake City. I think I would have put my money on somewhere in Kentucky...but that's just me.


Ella and Claire


Cute cousins/BFFs Alex and Jared


This was Ella's first time drinking from a straw. She was a natural! She loved the Diet Coke! Just kidding...it was just water.


This is the picture we took last month. It was ready just in time to get it framed and ready to give to them this weekend!

Here's Ryan's little brother with his two idols...the Colonel and Mr. Harmon. Mr. Harmon is the guy who funded the first KFC. Just think what this world would be without the two of them!

When we got home that night, Ella was ready for her favorite time at Grandma's house...bathtime in the sink!

Finally...this is just a picture of Ella and Claire after church in their pretty little dresses!

Team Edward!

I have to admit...when I first started hearing about this book, I was slightly interested cuz I heard the author was Morman but as soon as I heard that it was about VAMPIRES...I was over it. But then it was all over the place. This last weekend, we were up in Utah and I saw that my sister-in-law had it there in her bookcase and that she LOVED it. (Sidenote...I think she convinced my brother-in-law to dress up like a vampire this year for Halloween!) Anyway, the generous girl that she is, she let me borrow it and said that she would bring down the New Moon (the sequeal) when they came down to visit next (which we are so excited for!) Anyway, as the state of my messy house can atest to, I have not been able to do anything else but read about charming Edward and his love for Bella. Let me just tell you how much Ryan has loved that! Now for those of you out there who haven't yet come to know the hottest Vampire out there, seriously, you should give it a shot! It's good stuff.

Here's to you, Christopher Columbus!

Probably the best part about Ryan working for a VA hospital is that he gets all government holidays off...even the random ones like Columbus day. So this past Monday we decided to celebrate the day in a way that would make Columbus proud.

Ryan started out the day by going to the driving range. The poor thing hasn't golfed in like 3 months (I know...it's tragic!) Anyway, there's no picture cuz Ella and I stayed home so Ella could get her morning nap in.

Next, we went just over to our little apartment pool. First we had to put some sunscreen on Ella. Let's just say she was not too happy about it.

After we got that overwith, our little fishy loved going for a swim.

When we were done swimming, we were all pretty tuckered out so we went home to take a Columbus day nap. Lately, Ella's been falling asleep like this...like folded in half. It's like she's siting up in her crib but she doesn't know how to lay back down so she just falls forward and goes to sleep. It's the funniest thing.

a view from the above...

After we were all well rested, we met up with the Banners at the Irvine Spectrum. The original plan was to spend the evening at Disneyland, but somehow the boys convinced us that we needed to spend our family home evening at Chammps Sports Grill so we could learn something from the Cowboys game. As far as what the lesson was exactly...I'm still not sure. Something about Keep the faith, Never give up, blah blah blah...

Lindsay and I took the kids and walked around the mall while the guys finished watching what was supposedly "one of the best Monday Night Football games ever!" Then we met back up with them at around 9:30 and what better place to take your kids than to Dave and Busters for some more fun and games!

All in all, we had a pretty fun Columbus Day. I am so grateful for any extra days we get to spend with Ryan and now that we live close to family, I'm grateful for all the time we can be with them!