Christmas Day

We had a great Christmas this year.  As usual we went over to my parents house on Christmas Eve to celebrate with the extended family.  It was a really nice evening with a bit of excitement as my Dad's prime rib roast went ablaze!  A small, sort of big, grease fire broke out but was swiftly put out by Andy's suggestion of pouring beer on it.  To all of our surprise it worked and the meat was saved :)  The meat was really good as usual and we also had the tamales we made and some ham, lots of food! 

Christmas Day we had my parents and Anthony and Laura over to exchange presents and have a nice dinner together.  We cooked a leg of lamb and it came out so good.  We were a bit worried but it was cooked just right and nice and juicy.  I also made a gravy to go with it that came out really good too :)

While Jamie and I cooked and after we opened presents the rest of the family watched the big Laker's game.  It kept them occupied while we cooked and we were able to pause and fast forward by recording it which worked out really well.  Of course, the Lakers didn't really show up for the game as everyone was hoping which was a bit disappointing.

Here we are at the table, just before we started eating.

Laura enjoyed the crackers and really embraced her harmonica prize!

It was really nice to spend the day together.  We all enjoyed the gifts and food but we truly enjoyed the holiday!

Gingerbread House

It's been a wet weekend and hasn't stopped raining since Friday.  We made tamales on Saturday and they came out amazing as usual.  I can't wait to have them on Christmas Eve.  We went to the movies and saw the new Narnia movie (it was good but not great) on Sunday and then made a gingerbread house in the afternoon. 

Complete with Marzipan doors and windows.



It was fun to make and took us a good hour to make but it wasn't long before our sweet tooth got the better of us :)

Christmas at Casa Griffin

We had a very productive and festive weekend!  Even though the weather was a bit warm (Okay some records were broken) we managed to have a very festive weekend.  We went to one of my co-workers Christmas party's on Friday and had a great time.  He has an amazing house, complete with a bar and wine cellar that everyone enjoyed!  Saturday we bought our tree and went to our neighborhood Snow Party in the park and Sunday we started and finished our Christmas Shopping :)

 Saturday we set up the tree and decorated.  It's so beautiful and the house smells so good.

 Our stockings are hung and ready for Santa!

All the presents are wrapped and under the tree, I think we are ready for Christmas.  Next weekend we will make Tamales, I can't wait!  Christmas just isn't complete without Tamales. 

 Hope everyone is enjoying the Holiday Season!

Christmas at Disneyland

I've always heard that Disney is pretty amazing during Christmas but we never had the time or money to go.  So we made it a point this year to see it.  We took Friday off of work, had a nice lazy morning, got a late breakfast at The Filling Station in Orange and then headed over to Disneyland.  We got there around 11am and stayed till 10:45pm.  I have to say it was pretty amazing!

To see the park all decorated and some of the rides converted to a holiday theme was so much fun.  Hearing all the Christmas music and seeing the holiday parade really got us in the season.  Of course, the best part was seeing everything lit up at night.  It was a cool night and it felt great to pull on our jackets and wonder around the park seeing everything so bright and festive.  We stayed for the holiday fireworks show and right after the show it started snowing!  Ok, it was more like foam then ice but it was pretty cool.  We also decorated the house this weekend so we are now in Holiday mode, we still need to pick out our tree but it's starting to feel like Christmas :)  At least half of our shopping is done, hopefully the other half won't be too difficult...

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving and so much to be thankful for this year.  We had my parents, Anthony and Laura, Grandpa, and my Uncle Lionel over this year.  Everything was just about ready at the same time and was delicious :)  It was such a pleasant meal and everyone seemed to have a really nice time.

 Jamie and I started cooking early and the Turkey took just over 4 hours to cook.  Of course we completely devoured everything in under 30minutes,  lol.  Here we are digesting before desert.

Of course my Mom made her famous Cherry Pie and we made a very deep dish pumpkin.  Anthony and Laura stayed after dinner and we played a game called Origins.  It was so much fun, I don't think any of us have laughed that much in a long time.

With the long weekend, we decided to go out for the day.  We went to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles to see the illuminated manuscripts exhibit.  It was such a beautiful autumn day, a bit chilly with the wind but the sun felt pretty good.

The museum is located on the hills overlooking the ocean which makes a great view.  The manuscripts were pretty spectacular.  They had books from Belgium, The Netherlands, France and a few English ones as well.

It was a really nice day out, we had a good time at the museum and enjoyed being outside.  It was so nice to not be at work on a Friday.

Saturday we went to Pasadena to see the Gamble House.  It's now part of the USC Architectural School and is located very close to the Rose Bowl.  The home was owned by the Gamble's as in "Proctor and Gamble" and they donated the property to the City of Pasadena and USC to maintain.   

We've seen a lot of houses and stately homes over the years and this one definitely is one of the top houses we have seen.  It's a classic Craftsman house and every detail of the house was thought out.  The wood throughout the house was just beautiful, it's really amazing how the other half lives.  Afterwards, we went to Colorado Blvd for lunch.  The weather has been pretty cold the last couple of days.  It's definitely starting to feel like the Holiday Season :) 

Milissa's Wedding

Last night was a big night for my Aunt Milissa!  She married my cousin's dad, Mike G.  It was a great night and we all had so much fun.  The newly wed couple looked so happy together and it was nice to talk to family and meet friends we had heard about so many times but had never met before.

Milissa has always loved decorating and putting on parties, so we new her wedding wouldn't be any different.  This time she was able to team up with Anthony's girlfriend, Laura, who helped her coordinate the wedding and put together all the decorations.  Laura did an amazing job!  The ceremony and reception was in Milissa's backyard and the place was stunning.

We arrived a bit early to help out :)

The lighting made it difficult to get decent pictures and for some reason the flash was not cooperating with us, but I kind of link this picture of the ceremony.  It has a dream like effect to it, its pretty cool.

Mom and Anthony

Milissa chose a black and white themed wedding and so asked all the guests to wear black and white.

Here are the Saldana's getting their grove on, someone had to get the dancing started! 

It was a really great night!  Milissa and Mike looked so happy together and we are happy they finally realized they were meant to be together. 

Halloween

Halloween has come and gone.  It was a really nice weekend, a bit of rain on Friday night but the rest of weekend was nice and clear.  I am now part of the LEET (Local Employee Engagement Team) Team at work and so I had to dress up on Friday and help host the pumpkin and costume contest.  It was a pretty hectic day but everyone had fun.

Here I am as the Sheriff :)

With the new front patio we had to find another place for our gravestones.

It came out pretty good and our new front door still looks amazing!

Of course we carved pumpkins.  I went with a vampire pumpkin (right) and Jamie went with traditional (left).  Instead of candles we used glow sticks and it worked much better.  The trick-or-treaters started a bit later than usual which had us worried we bought too much candy.  They eventually started coming in huge groups and we ran out of candy around 8:15pm.  Luckily, I stashed away some candy corn to have later :)

Termites

Now that Jamie is back from his business trip to the U.K. and to visit the family, I can finally post some pictures!  The week before Jamie left for England he was in Salt Lake City, Utah for a conference.  While he was gone we decided it was a good time to termite the house.  Something we have needed to do for a while now.  So I spent a few days at my parents house but made a trip to the house to get some pics :)

I know its silly but I was so disappointed that the tent wasn't the same color/pattern.

Everything went as planned and our house is now bug free.  Although the cleanup of small bugs was not fun and somehow a black widow managed to make it through three days of deadly gas!  But he didn't make it past the spider killer.  I'm glad Jamie is back and we are looking forward to the weekend and a fun Halloween :)

Oak Glen

Autumn is finally here, hot days, cool nights and even an early storm.  It's sort of become a tradition for Jamie and I to make it up to Oak Glen in the fall.  It feels just a little bit more like Autumn there plus it's a fun and delicious day out.

Last year we went up in November, just after a storm, and had the fun of trekking around in snow and not having to deal with too many people.  This year, we decided to go up this weekend.  Partly so it would feel more like fall than winter and partly because November is starting to get pretty busy and it's still a few weeks away.

It was a warm day and it was pretty busy but we still had fun wondering around the apple orchards and pumpkin patches :)

This is one of the farm houses that has been turned into a Colonial style pub overlooking a strawberry field.

Of course, the trip isn't complete without some apple pie and ice cream!  Thankfully Jamie and I shared this and still couldn't finish it together.  It was pretty amazing :)

Jamie's Drinking Implements

Over the years, Jamie has acquired a few drinking implements from various family members on different occasions. 





The most recent one came from Germany, a gift from his brother David and his girlfriend Deborah.

He has one from Hull, also from David.

I got him a taster set as part of his 30th Birthday present.

So if you ever have wondered if he ever uses them, he does and he likes em :)

Happy Monday!

What Did You Do This Summer?

The summer is now officially over and Autumn has arrived.  Although with the heatwave this week it doesn't really feel like it.  We've been pretty busy this summer and have done a lot of work on the house.  

We finally got a new front door.  Our old door gave us a lot of problems.  The lock had been changed so many times it didn't fit very well, so you had to push the door in to lock and unlock it.  If it was unlocked it wouldn't stay shut and would blow open with the slightest wind and no one could figure out how to unlock it to get out.  The lock would occasionally fall off and we had to use pliers to unlock and lock the door until Jamie could super glue it back on.  I also broke two keys trying to unlock the door.  It was pretty bad.   

But now we have a beautiful front door, that stays closed, locks easily, and to our surprise keeps the house so much cooler.  We spent a few weekends painting it but it looks amazing!

We also needed to replace the wood on the back/side gate.  We would have loved to have completely replaced the gate but  it's a big gate and it would have cost a lot of money.  So we did the next best thing, replaced the wood and spray painted the metal.  It looks a hundred times better and I'm sure our neighbors are happy they don't have to look at the old, weather beaten wood.

The garden has looked great all summer.  The avocado is looking really healthy and has a lot of new leaves and branches on it.  We also got a raspberry bush (to the left of it) that we have been enjoying all summer.

The citrus plants have been growing like crazy and are now loaded with fruit.  They should be ready to pick around Christmas time.  It's been another amazing summer and we are so happy with all that we got done.  There is always something to do on the house but I think we have earned a few lazy weekends :)

The Full Monty

We had our annual concert in the park last month featuring the band, The Answer. As usual it was a lot of fun and a great evening. Along with the concert, there was also raffle prizes that they gave out throughout the night. As it turns out, my Dad won one of the raffle prizes, tickets to a theater in San Diego for The Full Monty (My Dad wasn't completely thrilled as the Home Depot gift card would have made his day). Unfortunately, (although my Dad may say luckily) he had his yearly conference to go to the same weekend the tickets were for. As my Mom always goes with my Dad for this conference (which happens to be in San Antonio, TX and where they are at right now) Jamie and I took the tickets.

The theater was about 30 miles south of Temecula so we made the day out of it and stopped in Temecula for lunch and did some Olive Oil tasting as well. Wine would have been nice but we did want to stay awake for the show and drive home safely...so maybe next time. The show was really good, it was a small theater but it meant we had great seats. It was somewhat "Americanized" taking place in Buffalo, NY but the core themes were still there. And yes they did go the full monty accompanied by a blast of bright lights and complete darkness. It was a really nice day out and it was great to spend the afternoon at the theater :)

Rancho Palos Verdes

This weekend was Labor Day weekend :) A full 3 day weekend but the unofficial end of summer :( We spent two days working on the house, we put in a new motion security light at the front and started painting our new front door. As we didn't want to spend the whole weekend at the house, Sunday we did a day trip to Rancho Palos Verdes.

Rancho Palos Verdes is north of Long Beach, on a Peninsula. It has some beautiful coastline and lots of hikes along the water. It was overcast for most of the morning, which was really nice. There were a lot of people whale watching as well. I guess with the unseasonably cool water this summer many whales were coming much further south than usual.

There is a beautiful working lighthouse on the bluffs. It's only open once a month and unfortunately it wasn't open for our visit.

There were some amazing views .

And also some pretty cool tide pools.

We also stopped to look at the Wayfarers Chapel which is perched on a hill overlooking the ocean. It was designed by Lloyd Wright and is referred to as the glass chapel. On either side are California Redwoods which gives it a nice nestled feel to it. It was a nice, relaxing day with a bit of hiking and plenty of beautiful scenery.