Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Welcome Cal!

Since Miles is leaving soon, each month we celebrate an anniversary by doing something really fun. This month we celebrated our 15 monthiversary by spending the day at Disneyland. It was our last time there for about 2 years since Miles' pass expired and he's leaving on his mission NEXT WEEK.

My favorite parts of our Disneyland day were:
1. sporting our matching sweaters (made by Miles' uncle)
2. seeing Miles in a poncho(since it was raining on and off the whole day)
3. getting whipped in the face by rain on California Screamin'
4. and once again... beating Miles on Toy Story Mania.

After we were done at Disneyland, we decided to Build-A-Bear in Downtown Disney!

This is our pre-stuffed teddy bear.


...And this is our bear after he's been stuffed, loved, fluffed, dressed, and named.

Say hello to Cal.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

All You Need is Love

Many people believe that Valentine's Day is a useless commercial holiday made by the flower industry to sucker men into buying $30.00 bouquets for their loved ones. Now, this may be true...but I believe that the people who feel negatively toward Valentine's Day are unromantics who either have no one to love, or are stuck in a crappy relationship. I love Valentine's Day. I think it's brilliant that we are given a whole day to celebrate love with the person we love. This Valentine's Day could not have been more perfect. Here's how it went...

I woke Miles up to a light breakfast of fruit salad and blueberry muffins surrounded by cute love decorations. Then I gave him his present: a mini scrapbook of our love story.











After breakfast we headed over to Balboa Island to walk around and hang out. On the drive over there, I opened my first present...the new Britney Spears CD. So, lucky him, we listened to it the entire drive there. It was such a gorgeous day. After walking around for a while, he gave me my second present. It was a beautiful silver necklace with a bunch of little hearts put together to make a little flower. I just love it!


After our walk around Balboa, we headed over to the LB Town Center for an early "beat-the-crowds" dinner at Lucelle's BBQ and a movie (Shopaholic).
[f.y.i.: I got the bread pudding for dessert...sooo good. So good.]
Finally we made it home and ended the day with a relaxing dip in the jacuzzi.

It was such a fun, romantic day! I hope that anyone who doesn't like Valentine's Day can find someone to love who will make them excited for a day of romance..even if it is just a commercial holiday.

Monterey Bay Aquarium


On our drive back to So Cal from Santa Cruz, Miles and I decided to stop at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Of course we got in free with guest passes because Miles gets connections with everyone for anything....but that's besides the point. Anyway, It was my first time at this aquarium and I had heard great things about it so I was stoked to be there, but once we got in and started exploring, I was a little disappointed because there wasn't very much cool stuff at all...

..there were only boring, unoriginal things there.
Like a school of thousands, maybe millions of fish...

or your typical, everyday Hammerhead Shark.

Honestly, I think these fish have been way overrated since Finding Nemo came out.


Really, does a day ever go by when you DON'T see a diver in a huge tank feeding squid to fish and sharks?

And let me tell you... this wasn't the first time that I've had an eye-to-eye, paw-to-hand against the separating glass moment with a cute, furry sea otter.

I could probably capture a picture of Miles appearing to eat a merrily swimming fish anytime I wanted to.

And I'm pretty sure this telescope was broken because basically you could only see every blemish or freckle on the faces of kayakers along the ocean, the people walking around on the complete opposite side of the bay, and every whisker on the seals or sea otters laying around on the rocks nearby.

All-in-all, it wasn't very cool.
I mean, I basically have the most beautiful fish I have ever seen, octopus, every type of jellyfish, and penguins at home as pets.




...not!

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

I Left my Heart in San Francisco

I flew up to Santa Cruz to visit Miles when he got home from Hawaii. He picked me up from the airport and we started our drive back to his house...or so I thought.
I knew we were going a different way than usual, but I thought nothing of it.
I saw various signs, none that said anything about being near Santa Cruz, but I still made no assumptions.
We were driving for much longer than it usually took to get to his house from the airport.
Finally I asked him, "Where are we going?" and he simply replied, "home."
And I believed him.
When things started looking very "city" and familiar, I caught on.
We were not going back to his home in Santa Cruz...no, we were not.
He was taking me to my favorite place in all of California....
San Francisco.He told me we were going to be spending the entire day in San Francisco and that I could pick everything we were to do throughout the day.
So first, we went to Golden Gate Park.
After walking around the gigantic, beautiful park for a couple hours, we decided to go back to the car and do the next activity on my "Day in San Francisco Agenda."
I turned around to walk toward the car, but Miles insisted that it was the opposite way.
After walking for a really long time, I started doubting if Miles really knew where the car was.
When I would question him, he would reply with something like,
"oh yeah, I know exactly where the car is."
Yeah, right.
Next thing I knew, we were at the beach.
Any one who has ever been to Golden Gate Park or knows anything about it, knows that when I say we walked all the way across the park to the beach, we walked a looooong way.
But it was a beautiful day with my favorite person in a beautiful park and a beautiful beach.
Our feet were blistered and sore, so we caught the bus back to our car. However, my feet were not too sore for the next thing on the agenda: shopping!
Let's just say... 3 story Forever 21, 2 story H&M, 3 story Urban Outfitters,
and an infinity story mall.
After shopping a lot, we walked around Fisherman's Wharf and up to Ghirardelli Square for a free sample.
After so much walking and more walking, we decided it was time for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory on the top of an 8 story Macys. It was an amazing view and a delicious dinner.
After dinner we were worn out and stuffed, and although I didn't want to admit it, I knew it was time to go home.
That was my last time in San Francisco for a couple years and I couldn't think of a better way to spend my last day there. Thank you Miles!