What a Birthday!

If you're sat in one of the country's last great railway stations waiting for your train after a day of amazingly good food, fun shopping, and a lot of laughs, what do you do?

Well, we decided to have a drink at the Traxx Bar. A swanky art deco bar located in the station. It was a warm day and a cold, refreshing drink just seemed appropriate. I know I have wrote about the station in the past but every time we're there it still excites me.

We had the whole bar to ourselves. It was only 3:30 pm but we didn't have to drive home and we were going to make the most of it.

Good company made the day all the more special.

1930's grandeur meets country casual?

Ok, so they don't quite go together but I really liked the hat I just bought. I have now graced this world for 27 years! Which sounds crazy but feels pretty good. I have such an amazing life and an awesome family on both sides of the pond.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
ANGELA!!!!!

I hope you have a great day

Jamie

XOXOXOXOX

Birthday Surprise

So who has the best husband in the world??? I totally do. When I got home from work on Friday he insisted I open my birthday present early, by almost 2 weeks. I had absolutely no clue what he could have gotten me or why it needed to be open so early. So with intense curiosity and excitement I opened my present to find...

Two tickets to the Rascal Flatts concert on Saturday night!!!

The concert was at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, which is outside and partially built into a hill. It was an amazing show. Jessica Simpson opened and unfortunately didn't recruit any new fans with her performance. Not only did she screw up the lyrics twice, asking to start each song over because she messed it up but she lacked energy and looked lost on stage.

Apart from the rocky start, once Rascal Flatts took the stage they were unbelievable with pyrotechnics and confetti, in a high energy, invigorating performance that was balanced enough to never upstage the music.

So yes they are one of my favorite country music bands and I loved every minute of it. From people watching in the parking lot (so many boots, hats, and big buckles) to the obligatory "Dueling Banjos," which was given a country rock update with a fiddle and an electric guitar. Jamie enjoyed the performance as well and I think country music is growing on him. What can I say he likes depressing music and no one does it better that country.

Thank you so much Jamie. How I ever came to be so lucky to have found you is beyond me. I love you more than anything and this was definitely a birthday present to remember.

Garden Pictures

Well, the camera still hasn't come back to life but my mom has loaned us her's :)

The one on the left is the lime, the right is the clementine mandarin, and at the back a eureka lemon.

The hummingbird feeder
View from the back door.
My new herb garden, so far they are still alive :)

View from the other side.

Spring Forward

Yesterday we turned our clocks forward one hour, spring forward as it is called even though spring doesn't really "start" for another two weeks. But having it stay light out last night for an extra hour was fantastic. So for those of you across the pond, the time difference is now only 7 hours, at least for another 3 weeks that is.

To get a jump start on spring Jamie planted two dwarf citrus trees; a eureka lemon and a clementine mandarin (Jamie's favorite). He also hung a hummingbird feeder on the backyard patio (Karen this is for you too, it should be fun to watch them this summer). I started a new herb garden under our bedroom window with hopes that someday we will be able to use it to marinate and flavor our cooking. What started out as a simple weeding project so that I could plant my herbs, turned into an all out search and destroy mission as one of the plants that was previously planted there had roots far more hardy that we had imagined. It was starting to grow back and had roots that reached out across the width of the planter. All day long I dug and pulled roots while trying not to harm the roly-polies (*Note to Brits: A roly-poly is a woodlouse) or worms but coming head to head with a very big, black spider living under one of the larger rocks. It was huge and was defending a nest so I quickly reached for...my husband to spray it with poison and dispose of it for me. Hey, this playing in the dirt stuff is pretty new to me, so I'm taking baby steps. We both worked really hard outside yesterday and by the end of the day were struggling to stay up to 10pm, keep in mind the time changed so this should have not been a problem. Needless to say, we both had a great night's sleep and didn't have much trouble getting up this morning an "hour early". Now if my muscles didn't ache from squatting and pulling...where's the advil!

*Unfortunately, our camera is not wanting to turn on, even with fully charged batteries so I don't have any pictures to post. Hopefully, it will miraculously decide to turn on and work again...we will just have to wait and see.

California Citrus

Although it is just barely March, we had some beautiful weather this weekend. I was able to wear shorts and a tank top, which made my day. Have I mentioned that I love the sun! We decided to take advantage of the weather and drove out to Riverside (about an hours drive inland) to visit the California Citrus State Historic Park. They have preserved some of the orange groves that used to be all over Southern California and were having citrus tastings in the afternoon. It had some great information and a very nostalgic feel to it. The Citrus industry sure knew how to advertise, as the crate label to the left shows.

This was the main building and museum.

This is a newly built fountain that is based on an advertisement. The advertisement shows a very healthy, warm little girl giving an orange to a very cold and weak boy from Iowa.

Here I am enjoying the sun!

The citrus tasting was pretty impressive, Jamie loved tasting the different kinds at the same time. We tried 4 different types of grapefruit (Jamie even liked one type), 2 types of blood oranges (surprisingly very tasty although not the nicest to look at in my opinion), 3 types of mandarins (my favorite being the gold nugget mandarin), a very sour type of orange, 2 types of navel oranges (reminded me of half time during a soccer game, memories...), and a tangelo. They had so many different types of citrus from all over the world and all the volunteers were eager to share their knowledge with us.