Putting up Christmas

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we only have 3 weeks in our apartment to celebrate Christmas before we go to Boston!

Eating our Decorations: Ornamental Indian Corn

Since Thanksgiving's over, we're taking down all remnants of Fall decor in our apartment. Brian came across some mini Indian corn and decided to eat it!

Indio Trip

A few weeks ago we went to a resort in Indio, CA. Our friends Blake and Erica have timeshare access there. So we decided to have a mini vacation for the weekend. It was perfect weather! It was at least 80 or 85 degrees all weekend.

Thanksgiving 2009

Because of the tight school schedule (and the fact that flying anywhere to visit family would cost Brian and me our first-born son), we decided to stay local for Thanksgiving. Instead, we invited my sister Shanna and her kids down from Sacramento for the weekend. We also invited my other sisters but no body could make the trip.

And then as a fabulous Thanksgiving surprise: Angel drove from Utah via a midnight bus ride to complete the holiday splendor. She called when she was only an hour away from LA! It was a complete surprise. The best I've had all year!

New Moon Midnight Showing

Thursday night we saw the Twilight/New Moon double feature at our local AMC theatre. It was AWESOME!

Here's me outside walking to the theatre and seeing people line up for HOURS beforehand. It was nuts. There were a lot of Twi-hards out there!

Concessions were nuts, but we got popcorn anyway (we're popcorn junkies)!

I hadn't been this excited to see a movie in a really long time. Only a few more hours!

Here was our theatre, everyone was getting ready to see Twilight first.

Here are some of the people we went with: Pehrson and Kate, Kim, Alyssa, Chris and Jenny, Chris and Paige and Blake and Erica. We had a ton of fun!

Brian was such a good sport about seeing it with me! I'm such a nerd.

The movie was amazing! It was made way better than Twilight, and Taylor Lautner totally stole the show. He was so good, I think I have a crush on him! Those abs...whew!

But note to self: NEVER do another midnight showing again. Mariah doesn't care that I stayed up till 3:30, she still woke me up at 6:30! I'm still catching up on sleep. And Brian was sick all weekend from it. Midnight shows aren't as fun when you have a baby. :)

(Photos courtesy of Paige Evans)

New Moon Tickets!

Today I got my tickets to see the Twilight/New Moon double feature Thursday at midnight! I'm so excited! I wish I could have gone to the premiere here in LA. Oh well, maybe next movie.

Trunk-or-Treating 2009

Here are a few pictures from Trunk-or-Treating 2009 at our church parking lot. It's an annual event held for kids young and old, for anyone who wants to participate. Basically you give out candy from the trunk of your car in a big parking lot. And the best costume and best trunk win a prize. For Halloween, Mariah was a monkey, Brian was an evil doctor, and I was Harry Potter's twin sister.

I took Mariah around to all the cars to trick or treat.

Here are our friends Chris and Jenny, who came as umpa lumpas.

Here are Blake, Erica and baby Brooklyn as the Flintstone family.

Mariah loved going around to see all the other children that were there.

Here was our trunk. Brian designed it to be an evil operating/autopsy room, complete with eyeballs and severed hands. We won best trunk!

It was a fun event! Next year we hope to win best trunk AND best costume :)

Hiking the Hollywood Sign

This past Sunday, we spontaneously hiked up to the Hollywood sign. It was really fun! The trail head is in up in the hills in this really nice suburb. I'm sure some famous people live up there! We mostly walked along horse trails (and saw a few horses too). Mariah kept pointing at the gorgeous view of LA. We went with Pehrson and Kate. Photos were taken by Kate.

Mommy and Mariah Photo Shoot

Our very talented friend Kate took these pictures at the library. This one tree had these amazing roots everywhere, it was perfect for pictures. Tell me what you think.

Old Town Haunt in Pasadena

Last night we went to Old Town Haunt in Pasadena. It was scary! It takes you in the "catacombs" underneath this bank that was said to be haunted (and for some parts you have to climb through a tiny pitch-black tunnel on your knees!). Apparently it was built on an old mission site where people used to torture and kill enemies to the Church. And in its construction, lots of people died in freak accidents, including the Bank owner's daughter, who they found to be locked inside the bank vault for 9 days (or so they say).

My impressions were that the haunted house was very well made. The actors were very committed to their roles and the props were very life-like. I was only scared by one of them though: this creepy Samara-type character (from The Ring) who bent over backwards and started walking on her hands and feet really fast! SO creepy! That one gets me every time!

But ultimately, I still prefer the Haunted Forest in American Fork, UT. By far the best haunted ANYTHING! It takes a lot longer to get through (Old Town Haunt was only about 15 minutes) and there is a little more variety of scares (i.e. themed rooms from different scary movies).

But I still loved it. Great fun, it got me in the Halloween mood.