Where Does the Time Go???

It must be time to play catch up. I feel bad because I have not updated for over a month. So, I'm going to try to do a quick all-in-one update and not get too detailed.

We had a great Christmas with the family this year. And we got some pretty awesome gifts too! We are so blessed to have such amazing family and friends!

New Years we spent down at Brad's apartment (weird to say, I know, husband and wife having separate living quarters a hundred miles apart...). We were going to do the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year's day, but there was a health warning about the bacteria levels in the water, so we decided not to do that this year. We did go out to dinner with friends and then to a movie. We saw the latest Chronicles of Narnia, then retired to our friend's home to play Dance Party 2 and Mario Party until 1:00 a.m. Overall it was a perfect way to spend a New Year's with people we love and doing things we love to do!

January has been a pretty hectic month. Brad has been submitting applications to find a job up here. He had an interview with the first company he applied with and they hired him. Yay! He starts this coming Monday. So, needless to say, I am thrilled that he is moving in with me this weekend. Although, I'm a little bummed to have to be sharing the bathroom full time again. It's so small! But we will make it work, I will probably try to "persuade" him to take showers at night and then he won't be in my way when I get ready in the morning. And I'm sure he won't have to be at work by 7, so I should be able to finish before he even wakes up.

We had a really fun game night with some friends of mine from work. We played Cranium and Gestures. It was a lot of fun to be interacting with people again. It feels like it's been forever since we had a game night! We also decided to go exploring around Monterey. I wanted to go hiking a few weekends ago and so I picked out a place really close by. As we were hiking our hike rapidly turned into another activity...hunting for and harvesting mushrooms! We found another couple doing it and they educated Brad with all the basics we needed to make sure we didn't pick the poisonous ones. It was fun. We gained knowledge, got our exercise for the day, and came home with a large bag of Porcini mushrooms.

The following weekend we had our first visitors since we moved to this new apartment. Brad's parent's came to stay with us for a few days for Brad's birthday. Brad took them to our mushroom spot for one day while I was working. On Friday we went to the Aquarium. Saturday we woke up early and drove to San Francisco where we took the boat to Alcatraz. The tour was pretty awesome, mainly because there was a former prisoner there sharing his story. Then when we got back to the mainland we encountered a large gathering of people crowding the streets (of course that's a pretty normal sight in San Francisco) this weekend's topic was abortion. We walked around and ate lunch at Boudin, and walked around some more. For Brad's birthday dinner we stopped at a little Italian restaurant in Burlingame. I think our raviolis were pretty awesome. Brad was less than thrilled with the drink selection. The waiter didn't know what Mountain Dew was and said he would ask...clearly they didn't have any soda. And then the chocolate cake after was pretty yummy too! Sunday we went to church and then back home to hang out. My parents came up to visit for the afternoon and we all played some card games and ate dinner.

This week has just been a week of working. Brad comes home tomorrow night. I'm glad this is the last week we have to spend apart for a while.

That's all for now. I will try to post pictures soon. Hope everyone has a great last weekend of January! I can't believe it's already February!