Goodbye 2016

I know that the world collectively hates this year, and honestly I more or less do too, but overall it was pretty eventful, and erred on the good side. I will say this though: my car got was totalled (whilst parked, legally, in front of my boyfriend's family's house on a cul-de-sac!) on January 2, 2016. A neighbor even said "What a bad way to start the New Year" but I was determined to not let that be an omen for the rest of the year. But now I look back I'm kinda like damn, that was an omen for a blah year! (For the world at large especially). But let's see the highlights and lowlights of 2016...

My car was totalled, and then I got a new car

AJ and I celebrated our anniversary in Santa Barbara

We celebrated AJ's 30th with friends, camping

We celebrated my 30th with friends in Vegas (staying at the Bellagio!)

We saw Chvrches play at the Observatory, one of our favorite shows ever!

We watched my little sister Shannon marry my first brother-in-law Luke in England!

AJ and I had a 2-week trek through Europe, including a week in Iceland with friends, then England, France and Denmark (all of those being new countries to AJ, and Iceland and Denmark being new countries to me)

We visited Harry Potter World with my friends and got our interactive wands

I made it back to Raleigh, North Carolina to see my BFF Jayna get married

AJ and I went to Whistler, Canada for a wedding (my first time in Whistler)

AJ's stepfather and grandfather died

My cousin Brianna welcomed her first baby, a daughter, Aria

I finished working at UCR, took a new job at UCI, and moved to Costa Mesa together with AJ

Did some Central Coast wine tasting and glamping for Pam's 30th with a good group of friends

Celebrated Grandma's 99th birthday this year!

AJ and I hosted Thanksgiving for our immediate family at our place

Said goodbye to Uncle Carl, who passed away

And currently getting ready to celebrate New Year's Eve in Alaska, a new state for me!

Goodbye 2016, I've got good ju-ju for 2017!

Happy Alaska Day!

Despite all of the time I've had off with Christmas, and now vacation/New Year's, I've been really busy and all over the place, and today is finally somewhat relaxing. At least the morning, since we need to hit in the road in the afternoon. I'm just hanging out with my coffee, packing slowly, thinking about all of the winter clothes I used to own when I lived in New York City and wishing I still had it all!

Christmas was wonderful this year, the best one in a long time! My mermaid blanket and Petcube have been the hit of the year. Here's where I took a picture of me and AJ hanging out in the living room on the Petcube.

It gets better though. Last night I was finishing my winter project of purging my closet (task: done. results: so-so.) while AJ was in the living room playing video games. So I decided to spy on him with Petcube. First, I took this picture and sent it to him.

Then I watched him get the text and took a picture of him reading it, and sent that to him too.

Then after he got that too he gave me a kissy face, so I took a picture of that and sent it to him too.

He did text me back between all of these and it included phrases such as "creeper" and "super creeper" and "I immediately regret this gift". Ha!

And of course, what better way to end any post than with my judgmental little kitty bug!

Catch y'all later!

Christmas 2016

Christmas has come and gone - I think December 26 must be the worst, most depressing day of the year ever! I'm always so sad when it's over! But I can't really complain because AJ and I had 3 days of celebrations, and I had even more time off than that. But our week was pretty packed otherwise too. Take for instance AJ leaving all his Christmas shopping to the last minute and us having to battle South Coast Plaza during the week. He let us stop into Tiffany's though. Look at their beautiful tree!

On the evening of Thursday, December 22 (which I had off - yay!) I went out to my mom's place with Kathleen and had Anana in tow. We dressed up in Kathleen's T-Rex costume and had a photoshoot with Anana.

On Friday, December 23 I went out and met AJ at his family's house to do Christmas with them, and even though I told AJ that I wanted to save all of my presents for Christmas morning, he still insisted on bringing one to his family's house and man was I glad he did - it was my dream! A mermaid tail blanket!

We had a steak dinner (ermergerd - so good) and eggnog and wine and chocolate and I had basically had to be rolled home. AJ brought Anana's present, a stuffed toy pink monkey, trying to recreate one of her favorite puppy toys, which was a pink chicken, and she sure did take to it! She didn't want to let it out of her site!

AJ's sister and I tried to get Anana and her sister together for a photo shoot, and what a circus that was! I saved some outtakes for proof.

We drove hom in the pouring rain, where AJ and I came home to find the power out on our block - wahhhh. But we had flashlights and just went to bed - right as the lights came back on. Ha.

On Saturday, December 24, AJ snuck out to buy more of my presents (mwa ha ha!) and we watched movies and made breakfast and took and a nap and then went to our traditional Christmas Eve dinner with my family - my aunt and uncle and cousins. So much fun! #bpgg

When we got home I made hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps, we put on Christmas movies and made a gingerbread house! I also proceeded to eat all the leftover icing and felt sick. Oops.

Christmas morning was amazing. AJ woke me up, and I made coffee and we had cinnamon rolls and opened up our presents, the best one being a PETCUBE!!!! It's a two-way, interactive video so we can check in on the pets while we're away! You can talk to them and there's a laser pointer you can use to interact with the cats with! Frickin' love. Here was a nightvision picture I took, and you can see Khaleesi asleep on the couch. That's about all she does all day, so you can open that picture whenever you want and feel like it's a livestream.

And I saved the present Jayna shipped me to open until Christmas - the Humans of New York book! #LOVELOVELOVE.

Then of course was Christmas at Mychele's, which was such a fun time - LRC, beer pong, food, family (including Uncle Bob and Aunt Carol), Uncle Carl's, the works! AJ said to me "This is way better than Leisure World" and I had to tell him "No one said Leisure World was better! We just don't want to make anyone have to host!" but it was really a fun time.

I'm trying not to be too sad about Christmas and just look forward to Alaska this week! I can hardly believe I'm going, I haven't had a free moment to spare to plan or get excited for it yet!

Christmas Party

This year, AJ and I were lucky enough to be in town to be able to celebrate Christmas with our friends! Last year we were in Denver, and for the record, how on earth has it been a year since my trip to Denver??

Talk about pulling out all the stops. On top of a seeded and bracketed beer pong tournament (that I declined to take part in because I'm kinda over having to down cheap beer - or at least I was that night) our hosts also bought gingerbread house kits, and had a whole craft station set up to make ornaments out of wine corks, and a Polaroid camera and film at everyone's disposal.

Shirlz had time inbetween her beer pong
games to build gingerbread houses
together!

A badly positioned selfie doesn't look so
bad when it's on a Polaroid!

There was also the White Elephant gift exchange which was, as always, quite the treat. I ended up with Starbucks swag and gift cards and AJ had a virtual reality headset. (He also won the beer pong tournament and came home with a 6 pack of craft beer). All in all it was a fun time, and I wasn't even too hung over the next day that I was able to go up to LA and hang out in Santa Monica with Anja before she headed back to Europe for the holidays. I was also in the middle of making pumpkin pancakes for breakfast when I saw this spectacle

Today is my last day at work before Christmas and I'm so looking forward to all the funtivities, especially drinking the eggnog I picked up on a quick run to BevMo last night!

And of course, today is also the birthday of my sweet sweet friend Chrishon, currently celebrating in Aruba! (oh, the jealousy!) Happy birthday you!

Disco Fever

I feel like I've gone through a lot of phases when it comes to music. I remember hearing MoTown as a kid, I went through Silver Screen fascinations with 40s-era Andrews Sisters-type music, I went through classic rock and oldies and an intense phase of 80s New Wave and grew up with grunge rock and kept up with the emo and indie rock of my own generation. But the one thing I never got into was Disco.

That time is now.

In middle school, the dance team of a had tape of Donna Summers that we would obsessively warm up to and use for like... everything. So I knew it. But this week, out of nowhere, I became obsessed with her again and getting into a very selective disco mix.

HEAVEN KNOWS from this album is my latest gem!

Like, this is actually all I want to listen to. Anything this purely disco.

This might complete my love of music through the 1900s.

Sorry!

Last night, something overcame AJ and I, and all we wanted to do was drink and play games, so we set off on a marathon of board games, card games and (one of AJ's all-time favorites, oddly) dominoes.

I have to say, that the frickin best (and my favorite!) was Sorry. It's always been one of my favorites, and AJ and I decided to take two colors each, and the odds were oddly against me. At some point, AJ had 2/3 of his pieces IN HOME and I had like one or two pieces circulating the board, and somehow like a third of them still stuck in start... AND I ENDED UP WINNING. It was AMAZING. AJ said it was "just luck at that point" but that's what I call a sore loser.

I tried to take a winning picture before he flipped the board lolololol jk sort of. Sorry bruh!

Uncle Carl

I sure appreciated Uncle Carl's services last Saturday, especially with the Lutheran pastor from San Diego who officiated Cherisse's wedding. It was a touching tribute to our fun uncle (funcle?) we will all miss very much!

Never forget you! Will always think of you whenever I have a cranberry vodka!

The Long Weekend

I had a long weekend, that at times felt very long, and other times just felt like a normal 2-day weekend that was going too fast. Between Thanksgiving preparations, Thanksgiving, decorating for Christmas, baking cinnamon ornaments, seeing friends, and working on some grad school stuff, it was a more or less productive weekend. (Don't get me started on the soul-sucking experience of the Gilmore Girls Revival).

On Friday we learned of the passing of Uncle Carl, the jolly soul who brought Uncle Carl drinks into our lives and holidays every year. And 2016 has been a year. AJ lost his stepfather in June, then his grandfather a few weeks ago, and we just lost Uncle Carl on Friday. We decided to take some peaceful time away and we went walking around a nearby lake with Anana and fed the ducks and geese.

When we were going through photos later, AJ showed me this gem he had taken weeks ago. Sometimes, when I'm ready to sleep, the light is on and I'm too tired to get up to turn it off, so I just keep an eyemask on in my nightstand that I'll put on instead. And how much do you love Khaleesi's foot in my face?

Usually Sundays are spent with AJ's friends watching football, but the crazy weather and rain made it all weird and no one wanted to leave their houses. AJ is generally up and at 'em before 9am, ready to get to where he needs to go for the 10am kickoffs. I woke up and it was past 10 and he was still sleeping, so I woke him up to let him know. I went to the bathroom and when I came out again, he had pulled football up on his phone but fell asleep again with it on! (Don't tell him I posted this).

Sunday was spent around the house, although I did take Anana for an adventure, and we walked to Trader Joe's where I picked up vegetables to make bone broth soup. However, I was then craving soup (which needs to slow cook for 10 hours) so I also bought stuff to make tortilla soup. AJ and I cut vegetables together and made the soup while he download The Mighty Ducks at my request, and then we ate soup inside on a rainy day and watched that good ol' 90s classic. I didn't end up falling asleep until almost 1am, so I am operating on low fumes today...

Thanksgiving 2016

Thanksgiving, which normally passes quietly for me, was exhausting this year. AJ and I hosted it at our place, and in anticipation for this, I even took off Wednesday from work to make sure that I could clean and prepare for everyone. I ended up having to run a ton of shopping errands in-between, and because Anana waited so patiently and well in the car while I did that, I also took her to the dog park, only to find out they are closed on Wednesdays, so I took her for a long walk around the nearby park.

On Thursday, I was tired and my arms and fingertips hurt from all the deep cleaning! But, Thanksgiving was nice, and I was very happy for the warm weather since we were eating outside.

It was a very nice evening with wine overflowing and football on the whole time, and we somehow ended up with tons of food and wine, like probably more than we started with. (How does that happen??) After absolutely everything else was clean, our butchered bird was left out on the counter since we were exhausted and still wanted a chance to dig out the wishbone, but by Friday morning, we learned that Anana had other plans and somehow got that thing down and annihilated it on the kitchen floor. Oops!

No pictures from anyone that I'm aware of, but it was nice to have everyone who came! I think I'm done hosting for another few years...