Merry Christmas!!

We came back from DL and slept over at my parents house & waited for Santa! ; )

Brody and I slept down stairs on the big comfy couches and fell asleep to the light of the tree and Christmas Story playing on the TV. It was such a fun Christmas day, but it was definitely weird not having Lauren home for the holidays. But we all did get to talk with her later in the day, and it is always so great to hear how well she is doing and how much she is loving her mission! : )

Santa was good this year! We all got a lot of fun things!!

We now have the smell of freshly baked bread around our home. So so good!!

We got my parents this awesome LEGO VW Camper van! And Brody had such fun putting it together for them. The detail on this van is amazing!

{ Click here to watch a time laps video of the LEGO van being put together }

Mmmm, can't you just smell the french toast? : )

Dad got this awesome MOON garage stool! (among other things of course) : )

This was my BIG gift for Brody that I somehow managed to keep a secret for weeks! I almost ruined it so many times. haha.

When the Angels signed Pujols, and since we had so much fun last season with our mini ticket package, I got us another for this coming season!! And when they announced the press conference I went up to it alone since Brody had to do a make up ride with his Scouts. I got there a bit late, but just in time to get some photos a new Pujols t-shirt AND got Mike Scioscia's autograph!! It was SO SO hard to come back from the conf. and not tell him what happened. But SO worth it on that morning!!

My parents got him new components for his bike, and and awesome US Navy kit!

Some of my favorites were a new point and shoot camera, new lens for our big camera AND Brody replaced my little diamond band he gave me our first Christmas when were dating, that was lost/stolen about 4 years ago. I LOVE it as much as I loved the first one. I remember I was SO in love with it I told him that I wouldn't mind that being my engagement ring, and I stared at it all the time! It's nice to have it back! : )

After church we went over to the Moneys house for our amazing annual Christmas brunch! It's always so much fun and Jill does such an amazing job with every detail. : )

It was such a wonderful Christmas and one of my favorites so far!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday with family and friends!! We love you!!

Christmas Eve

We took a couple drives right before Christmas Eve to check out some areas we heard had some nice displays. And we weren't disappointed! We found a few houses that were set to music, and had a sign out front of a radio station you could tune to in your car for the show. It was awesome!

The house above to the left, was all done with strings of lights. It's different each year and his kids help him draw out the plan. He told us that this year was his first year using orange. : )

Christmas eve we always hand out awards for Christmas lights around the neighborhood! It's been a fun little tradition for many years! Some people even proudly display their awards in their window. : )

That night we went up to the parks with my parents for dinner. We had the best meal at Orleans Cafe!

Saw Fantasmic...

ventured to other galaxies

...and got the cutest Christmas Eve goodnight from all the characters!

It was such a fun way to spend Christmas eve!

Seven wonderful years!

We had a wonderful anniversary! Brody surprised me with dinner at Blue Bayou, waterside and the crowds were actually pretty light. We had a wonderful night strolling around the park after with Hot Chocolates...

It was perfect, and I couldn't imagine my life any different! : )

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was awesome! My parents surprised us with wanting to do the Thanksgiving fest at the Disneyland hotel. Having done it last year, and LOVING it, we were so excited for them to experience it too!

But first, we got up nice and early for our wards Turkey Bowl!

The fest at Disneyland was JUST as great as we remembered it, if not better! And my parents loved it. It has everything you could want on Thanksgiving and more! : )

Next we went up to LA for the Car Show, and stopped off at some places along the way like Union Station, below. It was beautiful inside.
The Car show!

"Congratulations, you are caller 20!!"

Back in early November KOST 103.5 was giving away tickets to their private Christmas party at Disneyland. You could win by entering online, Twitter and Facebook...and of course, the age old being the right number caller into the radio station.

I tried when I could on the hour for days. Even though we go to the parks a lot, it sounded fun to check it out when it closes down for a private event. The night before the event, at around 8pm I called in and at around my 8th attempt that hour they picked up the phone and said, "Hello, who is this and where are you calling from?". I couldn't believe that I had actually won something from a radio station! I was SO excited!!

Camille and Jeff were supposed to come with us, but their little ones got sick the night before. We ended up giving their tickets to a nice couple leaving the park so they could stay longer. They were SO excited! We ran into them later on Main Street and they were so very appreciative. : )

Our event tickets

The main thing we LOVED about the event was how empty the park was. You almost never see it this empty, unless you stay around well after closing.

The holiday KOST logo in fog

See? Nobody around!!

Small World

It snowed every hour! It was pretty with little crowds around.

On Haunted Mansion

My favorite photo of us in front of the castle! A nice Cast Member stopped to take this for us. : )

The night was such a blast!! I am so glad I ended up being caller 20!

Happy New Year!!

Here we are in the last day of 2011, and I haven't even blogged about events before Thanksgiving. haha. I guess that's a good thing, just means we've been busy with lot's of holiday fun!

I promise i'll get all caught up next week at some point! Thank you for checking in with us and we hope you have a wonderful and safe New Years!!

Wishing you all the best for 2012!! Love you all! : )

For those of you who use your blog as a journal/scrapbook as I do, there is a website that will compose your blog into a book (with text and photos just as they are laid out on the blog)---or you can download it as a file on your computer. So you know you at least have a hard copy of it saved.

{ Found here }

Printed

Our industry has a magazine called Home Lighting & Accessories, that is highly circulated throughout showrooms and manufactures alike. To our surprise and total excitement Brody appeared in the October edition!! He was in the section for 'The Young Executives Reception' at the ALA Conference! Not only is the conference great for making connections and networking, but this was the cherry on top it all off as such great exposure for him and our agency!

He had so many people from showrooms to manufactures saying they saw him in the magazine. It's almost like the society pages of the lighting world, haha.

I'm SO proud of all his handwork!!

*** Stay tuned for a blog marathon coming soon. I'm SO behind on a lot of fun posts!! I guess this is what happens around the holidays : ) ***

Tour de Foothills: Triumph in rain & Man Vs Mountain

So excited about this post! There were SO many fun photos to go through and it was hard to pick, so I just put all our favorites up! : )

Last year Brody rode the Tour de Foothills when he was starting to seriously pick back up the riding habit---he loved this ride so much he couldn't wait to do it again this year and even got the rest of his family in on the fun as well! His parents and sister came from AZ and his brother and family came down from Ventura. We are SO happy everyone could make it, it was great to have everyone together.

Here's everyone in the 6am hour getting to the race site and getting ready to ride!

(and it was freezing and raining a bit here and there)

Love this photo! What can I say, me and my camera love him!!

The whole family ready to go!!

(From left to right: Brody, Kaye, Adrianne, Greg and Brooks)

All smiles and ready to ride!

Quick video of the start of the ride

(Brody bottom left, Greg and Brooks right)

I followed them through out the ride. Here was the first rest stop around mile 20 (out of 62), it rained on and off here, and the guys said that they rode through some good rain before they got here! Such troopers!!

This video always cracks me up!! I was panning the rest stop and got Greg coming in waving and then this random guy right behind him came in waving at my camera too. haha...I'm sure he thought I was from the race. : )

Coming back with some fuel for the next leg!

I even got a PB&J out of this stop, for all my hard driving. ; )

Their bikes

....and they are off!!

Next stop, Mt.Baldy!

The turn to Mt.Baldy Road

Looking from the very start of the climb up!

Brody told me that when he saw the steep climb ahead, he went "Whoohoo, let's do this!!" Haha, so very typical of Brody and his positive can-do spirit!

He said it was pretty tough, but he's so glad they did it! : )

At the top of Mt.Baldy Road....I had my bell all ready from last year!

The top right photo is the view from up there...if you click on it, it might get a bit larger, but the cities looked very small from up there!

The water station at the top of the climb. Luckily the worst was over at this point, and the guys didn't seem as beat as I though they might (when I was driving up it, everyone looked like they were about to drop dead), they all did SO great!! I was pretty proud and relived when they all got up there in good spirits! : )

Whoo hoo!!! The finish line!!

SO very proud of these guys, that was not a ride in the park with the rain and that mountain!

The girls did such a great job too, I thought for sure I would see them along the route as well, but unfortunately the two rides didn't meet up as much as they did last year. By the time I got back to the finish, they were already done.

The main organizer of the ride was nice enough to take this awesome photo for us! And asked us to put it up on their Facebook page, which we did. I love it! : )

With his well earned medal and the Tour jersey that I surprised him with! So proud of him!! I was SO excited to see him at the finish! : )

I'm going to frame this one too...it came out perfect!!

Little after race high five!

After a nice lunch provided by the race.

Lasagna, garlic bread, salad and even Double Tree Hotel chocolate chip cookies! It was so good!

....and another video that cracks me up! I love how they both stop because they are so tired from riding...but just had to get a little happy dance in! : )

Everyone with their medals!!

They all make riding a 30-60 mile race in the freezing rain look good, huh? : )

And here are the things that got me through the day! My phone for directions, the race "map" and our trusty Murano----and my awesome camera!!

It was such a great day!! We are SO happy everyone came out for it and had a great time!

We hope to do it again soon!! Love you all very much! : )