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.

A Little More Halloween...

Yeah I know its a week away from Thanksgiving, but I started this post and then I've been a bit sidetracked with Facebook because you can post all your pictures so easily and aren't limited to 5 at a time so sorry folks who've been checking the blog only to be reminded of my seriousness on voting day. Anyways here we go...


Guess I didn't want Halloween to end...headed to Knott's Scary Farm on Saturday even though it was November 1st. Hadn't been since college, but it was still just as scary with crazy masked people jumping out of the dark and fog and sliding up to you and making strange noises in your ear.

motion sickness challenged so I skipped the rides

Went through all 13 mazes. This was one of the first where all the scary monsters picked on Nickki.

Scary Spider Ride which wasn't that bad.

Another scary guy bugging Nickki especially when I accidentally called her by her name and then he did too.

And as requested, costumes from the past 4 years where I've won for Most Original. Which was your fave?

Did you vote?

So I must admit that when I was legally allowed to vote at the age of 18, I didn't. Nor did I for quite a few elections after that. Honestly I didn't feel like I was knowledgeable enough about the presidential candidates to warrant voting.

Then I grew up...and realized that if I wanted to vote I needed to educate myself on the candidates, propositions, etc.

Now I can proudly say that for the past 3 election days (including today) I have gone to the polls and voted. I'm slightly more knowledgeable although I didn't realize there were 5 candidates for President (did you?) or know half of the candidates running for judical positions and what about the poor teacher/coach running for the water position against what looked like the head of the water department.

Anyways for the most part I'm pretty comfortable in conversations except discussing two areas - of course religion and politics. Let me explain that a bit further. I love talking about my faith, but I am pretty nervous when it comes to talking to a non-Christians about the facts because like politics I never feel knowledgeable enough to debate.

So why am I going on and on about voting and politics (and then bring religion into the mix) well because I was at the gym (after I voted) watching The View and these women defend their pick for President and have somewhat watched the debates, the critics after the debates, the commercials and the mudslinging, each of them on the cover of People and US Magazine and truly newsworthy mags as everyone tries to build up and pick apart each of the candidates and their running mates and me being the relational person that I am sat wondering how many have gotten caught up in their passion for a candidate and how many friendships have suffered for it. I know, I know but what else do I have to think about while I'm on a cardio machine.

Anyways then I went a bit deeper and came to the realization that as we so often forget, we are a lucky and blessed country. We have the privilege to choose our leaders and in today's election, we have two good candidates otherwise why would everyone be battling back and forth on their stance on issues and their character. We don't live in a country where there is a monarchy or a communist government or anything else that is so far from the freedom that we have always known.

So hopefully you had the opportunity to vote today.

Okay back to the photo blogging. This is all too serious!!! Geez not even a pic of the I Voted sticker.

My Claim To Fame - 4 time winner of the Outlet Halloween Most Creative Costume

Wasn't going to dress up this year for the Outlet Halloween Party. Wasn't even sure I was going because I was coming home from London the day before and if I didn't conquer jet lag would probably be sleeping. BUT didn't have any jet lag so it got to be 5p on Friday, October 31st (two hours from the start of the Halloween Party), and I decided I couldn't NOT dress up for the Halloween Party. It was at that point that I realized that I LOVE to dress up in costume for Halloween!!!

Mentally I was determined not to spend any money on this year's costume or run around the day of the party so I was left with whatever was in my apartment. I had looked around London a bit and did try and think of something over the week that I was there but was pretty stumped.

At 5p I was convinced that I was going to be a Colts Superfan and wear all my Colts stuff. Not much different than me watching a Colts game so I didn't really think it was truly a costume and definitely not up to the standards of my costumes in past years. There was an idea that I was tossing around a few weeks before and it just so happened that I had all of the necessary items for the costume. So no Colts Superfan but rather for this year's Outlet Halloween Costume Party I was...

A Basket of Dirty Laundry

-it was clothes from my goodwill pile, not my true dirty laundry from London-

The 6th Annual Outlet/Fuse Halloween Costume Party was held at Jasmine (aka Sarah Palin) and Cliff's (aka Joe the Plummer) house. They did a great job of hosting.

This group won from Best Teamwork as the cast of Clue.

As Jasmine promised during Outlet announcements, there was a cotton candy machine.

Here are some pics of the other costumes.

I'm already ready for next year, at least with the idea. Came up with it when I decided that I was going to be a dirty basket of laundry this year. Stay tuned for next year...