December

December has flown by and tomorrow is Christmas. Lots of fun times this past month.

My Auntie Lindy, Uncle Dave, cousins Scott and Sara were in LA the first weekend in December. Did a self shot (pretty good huh with 5 people?) and then took them to Journey to Bethlehem. It was so fun and the first time I've gotten to take anyone to J2B that didn't go to my church.

My Wednesday night bible study girls got together at Kristin's parents house for chili and baked potatoes and to see the Torrance Christmas Lights.

Niki's pre-MB fireworks party. Her and her husband have a great apartment on Marine and Highland with a great view of the fireworks. Me with the Wednesday girls.

Fun shot after the most amazing MB fireworks show EVER!!! Every year it gets better and they always have fireworks I've NEVER seen before.

Delicious...Tuesday small group (some of us) got together at La Creperie for dinner and gift exchange.

Got a great scarf from Rhonda. I'm trying to do more fun shots to make it more interesting.

Loved this arch and insisted we take a pic under it.

Outlet Women's Christmas Social

Krista and Becky our Women's Bible Study Leaders

Great representation by our bible study.

Rose with her Santa Claus cookie dessert. Isn't it cute?

The spread...

El Segundo's Candy Cane Lane

Shannon really loved this Santa bush that one of the houses created.

Blankenship's Wear Your Worst Christmas Sweater and Congrats to Adam on completing his Masters program Party.

Going for the Olan Mills shot.

I didn't win...

but Travis and Adam did for best sweater (aka costume in Travis' case)

Hope you're all having a wonderful December!!!

You Can Never Have Too Much Cheesecake

Be prepared...I'm behind again on posting so there are a few coming. Few weeks ago we celebrated Allison's birthday at the Marina del Rey Cheesecake Factory. It was a cool evening but warm enough to sit on the patio surrounded by heating lamps. Gotta love December in Southern California.

Making a Wish

Tim's first fun outing (since doctors visits don't count as fun) since his motorcycle accident. Can't even tell that he's bolted together, wheelchair bound and on a pain medication diet. Fun little group shot.

Tim has some VIP card that got us a bunch of free slices of cheesecake. My fave was the one on the right.

Diane loving cheesecake #1. Remember the guac shot...So I made her take one with the cheesecake container.

Cheating with Facebook and Neglecting My Blog

It's just so easy to upload photos to Facebook. Anyways this is pretty old but figured I'd add it.

Back to Black Friday...for the past 4 years (I'd say its now a tradition), I've gotten up at the crack of dawn (actually its still pretty dark for a few hours so not really dawn) to get an early start on my Christmas shopping. Honestly I really just like the experience of it all and seeing all the really crazy people camped out hoping to get one of 10 tvs or computers for an unbeatable price.

This year was the earliest of the four past years as my Auntie Jann, my dad and I headed out to brave the crowds. We always have late holidays so I should have just pulled an all-nighter since I didn't get to bed until almost 2 a.m.

I'm telling you these people are crazy. This is the front of Best Buy. People left their chairs and clothes to get into the store as fast as they could. If anyone wants a camping chair this is the place to "shop".

So glad I dragged myself out of bed at 4 a.m. to help my Aunt battle the crowds for the Guitar Hero Wii bundle. As you can tell, we got the last one...

Stop #2 - pretty cool - first 100 customers got $10 extra dollars off.

My first (and actually only as I write this on Dec 11th) Gingerbread Latte (or GingerSnap as they are now called) of the season.

Happy Birthday Rhonda

A bit out of chronological order but on Tuesday night we celebrated Rhonda's birthday with dinner, flowers, chocolate cake and vanilla bean ice cream and a little gift certificate for a mani/pedi.

Her actual birthday is today (Thursday). Happy Birthday, Rhonda!!! We love you and are all truly blessed to have you in our lives.

Fun little wrap up

My Wednesday night small group study wrapped up Gifts - The Joy of Serving God this evening discussing abiding in Christ and how God prunes us. We concluded the evening with a little creative exercise of decorating hand towels with our spiritual gifts and passions.

The towels represent the servanthood of Jesus as he washed the feet of his disciples at the last supper. Some of us are very artistic and some of us (me) draw people as if they were linebackers on a football team.

It's been a great 10 weeks getting to know these women and I'm excited to continue with our new bible study when it resumes in January. Only missing Carla below.

Nickki's EPIC Long Birthday Lunch

This past Sunday headed up to Malibu to Paradise Cove for a late lunch in a belated birthday celebration for Nickki. One of my favorite things to do is try new restaurants and this is one of Nickki's faves.

Self proclaimed Tim & Nickki's relationship photographer. There are a few cute pics of them.

One of their signature appetizers is the guac which comes in this monster margarita glass. We also got the calamari which was in a monster martini glass. Diane loved the salad at the bottom of the guac so had to get a fun shot of her with the glass.

little birthday peck on the cheek

We left the Gundo around 1p and as you can tell it getting dark. In this pic its after 5p. What can we say, we're having a good time.

some chocolate cake

They were starting to seat and serve for dinner so we headed down to the beach.

Such a fun and relaxing Sunday to end the weekend.