December Part 1

December was a crazy but fun filled month so I'm splitting it into two posts.

I love giving gifts (yes, its my top giving and receiving love language - although to me gifts come in many forms). One of my favorite "gifts" at Christmas is spending time with a friend doing something. Every year (I think we've been doing it the last 3 or 4) my friend, Shannon, and I pick something to do as our Christmas gift to each other. This year we were able to find $20 tickets on Goldstar (http://www.goldstar.com/home) to How the Grinch Stole Christmas Musical at the Pantages. So we checked out a new Italian restaurant near the theater and then headed to the show.

If you've never checked out Goldstar, you definitely should. As I mentioned, we got $20 tickets in the second level but were upgraded to Orchestra and were seated fifteen rows from the FRONT!!!! The musical was so whimsical and cute. It's my mom's favorite Christmas cartoon so it brought back alot of fun memories of when I was a kid and my mom and I would watch it.

The next morning I headed to Portland for a few days to visit Gail (best friend from high school) and have a girls weekend with Ellie and celebrate Allison's birthday. I unfortunately didn't get any pics of Gail and I but we had a great day just having some girl time and hanging out which she doesn't get to do much of with 3 kids. Did a little catching up, exploring, shopping and lunch. Then connected up with Ellie for some dinner and then picked up Nickki and Allison from the airport later that night.

The next 3 days were a whirlwind of activity. First we went to the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Let me just say right now - in case you didn't know - I LOVE CHEESE - creamy cheeses like St Andre, drunken goat cheese, swiss, cheddar, jalapeno jack, parmesian, mixtures of cheese (mexican cheese blend, italian cheese blend), smoked, feta, and especially nacho cheese so needless to say I was really excited to visit a cheese factory.

Random displays like this. Do you remember the one that we had at Ellie's going away party with the Princess and the Armoured guy.



The production process...

The best part - tasting the cheese. I tried the Squeaky Cheese but it really didn't squeak. I was a bit disappointed.

We took the coastal route back. The weather over the weekend (except Sunday) was beautiful. Cold and sunny - my favorite.

Saturday (Allison's birthday) we went to Mother's for breakfast. Super cute place (kind of decorated like Anthropologie) and an amazing menu. A definite place to go if you're ever visiting.

For years Ellie has been talking about Dragon Tree - holistic spa that specializes in foot baths and massages. So that was the next stop for the day.

This lady was the best neck/shoulder and foot massager in the world. She did this funny thing where she was slapping my feet which was kind of odd but oh well. So sad I live so far away from Dragon Tree.

Nickki and Allison relaxing.

Dinner at Portland City Grill. Beautiful night time view of all of Portland. We were planning to watch a boat parade but realized that the boats weren't going to be floating by. What did these four girls do with that info and an iphone. Decide to go to the boats of course!!! Did I mention that we had to go to Washington state.

A little goofing around...

while Allison became the photographer for a family reunion. It actually was really cool because the whole family hadn't gotten together in many years so they got a fun family photo in front of the Christmas tree in the lobby of the building. She's looking pretty professional.

After the photo taking, we continued on our adventure to find the boat parade. So we headed over some river and into Washington state. 30 minutes later and a trek down the dock we found the boats (just as they were pulling back into their docking area). No we're not really far away, they were just really little boats. Luckily this was my first boat parade so I didn't have anything to compare it to and it was of course a fun adventure.

Ellie and I being silly at Powell's books. This is the largest and best new and used bookstore I've ever been too. I was a bit overwhelmed and got lost a few times. I did buy a few books, just a few...

Sunday morning before we flew out we decided to go on a hike at Multnomah Falls. It doesn't look like it from the picture but its about 25 degrees and looks like its ready to rain.

It was super slippery...

Such a fun girls weekend and it was so good to spend time with Ellie. I think we all fell in love with Portland.

Nickki's birthday

We're still in October...

For my friend, Nickki, we celebrated her birthday at this cool restaurant called Rush Street in Culver City. It was a bit of a decoy dinner as there were "surprise" plans in the works for the upcoming weekend.

This lady who apparently was also celebrating her birthday was giving out her cupcakes. Jen willingly took one but when others declined, she got a bit aggressive and forceful sprinkled with some profanity about us taking more cupcakes.

Friday morning, Allison pretended to head to work (aka come to my house to wait until Nickki left for breakfast with Tim). Tim and Nickki headed out to breakfast and we headed back to her house to pack her up for her surprise weekend. Somewhat of a stressful next hour of packing ensued (where I first learned to do roll everything packing). They returned, we yelled out surprise and gave her a basket that Tim and Allison had put together of hints of where she was going. See the bags packed in the background. Yeah we were only going for 3 days but its hard to pack for someone else. Luckily Nickki is so spontaneous and was pretty much ready to go.

Into the car we piled and headed out for Vegas. At this point everything was still not known...where we were staying, more people coming, what we were doing.

Destination - Paris Hotel & Casino

What then ensues basically is a whole lot of lying to Nickki (I'm really horrible lying) as she's trying to make a plan for the evening and the next day. Little does she know that there is already a few plans in place including seeing Le Reve. So Diane and I are out shopping and she's back at the room trying to plan with Allison and Tim. She's calling the concierge to get tickets to Le Reve while Tim's saying he really doesn't want to see a show (very uncharacteristc since he's pretty go with the flow) and I'm saying that I've already seen it which doesn't mesh well since I had announced on the car ride that I hadn't been to Vegas in 8 years and the shows only been there for 2. But with a little quick thinking on my part, I say that I saw it in Chicago. Nickki's response, "Shannon, there is only one 100 million gallon water tank. They can't move that thing around."

Poor thing here it was her birthday weekend and unspoken rule would say that the birthday person would get to do whatever they wanted. She's highly irritated but is able to snap out of it (honestly I don't know how cuz I would have been super irritated by us) to go to dinner. After dinner we head back to the rooms to get ready to go out dancing. By this point the other group has arrived and have the chance to surprise her a bit more. Oh yeah and we then get to tell her we're going to Le Reve the next night. Whew no more surprises, mess ups and lying.

Sorry no pics from Friday night although we had a great time dancing at XS at the Encore.

Saturday was a little bit of spa time and relaxing by the pool. A few of us went out to explore the other hotels. One of my favorites is the Bellagio.

They had these random talking trees.

And the largest chocolate fountain I've ever seen.

A trip to Vegas isn't complete without seeing the Bellagio water fountain show.

Headed out to dinner and to Le Reve.

For dinner we went to Serendipity (there is also one in New York). Its famous for its $3000 dessert - it has a gold leaf in it and the frozen hot chocolate.

the real frozen hot chocolate

the desserts were huge and amazing

Off to Le Reve

the 100 million gallon water tank.....

The show was amazing!!!! Some of the acrobatics were jaw dropping. Highly recommend seeing it if you're in Vegas.

Tim picked the lucky slot machine which provided a few hours of fun and some interesting personality traits surfaced from all of us as we cheered him on. I actually won $50 off that machine.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention probably that it was Halloween weekend. There were some interesting (think XXX) and crazy costumes like the one below.

Dad's visit (a long long time ago)

Way back in October my dad came down for a few days to visit and one of the fun things we did was go on the Warner Bros Studio Tour. When I first moved to LA after college, I really wanted to work in the film industry so it was so great to see all of the behind the scenes stuff and learn about how they do everything.

Show me that smile again, don't waste a minute on your crying. We're nowhere near the end. Yes the theme song from my favorite show growing up. Why??? Because this is the Growing Pains house!!!!

So fun to see the Nerd Herd car from Chuck one of my current favorite shows.

And a shot of the Chuck set. Shhh though we weren't supposed to have cameras in there but the tour guide forgot to tell us.

Its definitely the best studio tour to take in LA if you're in to that stuff.