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.

Hello Fall!!!

I blame Facebook for my lack of blog posts. Its just so easy to upload photos on there. Although none of these photos are on there so I guess that's not an excuse.

Anyways, yea, a new post so you don't have to get tired of looking at the Nordstrom photo anymore.

Late September a few of us headed up for breakfast at The Griddle which is famous for their pancakes. I took the road less travelled and got the Nutella filled french toast which was soooo good and actually voted the best dish at our table. No pics unfortunately.

Seriously their pancakes are larger than the plate. One guy that was there had a stack of 6!!!

First weekend in October my old bible study celebrated Rose's 30th birthday at BJ's Pizza. We had taken Rose to BJ's for the first time months ago for a bible study dinner and it became one of her favorites.

Rose's favorite part - the pizookie. And we got TWO!!!!

The following weekend, a bunch of us celebrated my friend, Brandon's birthday at Lucille's (whoo hoo new restaurant for me) and a little bit of bowling at Lucky Strike.

the birthday guy!!!

Tim & Nickki sharing some ribs.

Rouven convinced me to share this two person platter with a sampling of everything. Not shown were the salads and dessert!!! The ribs and tri tip were delicious.

One of the Outlet's Service projects is Laundry Love. Every 3rd Thursday of the month, members of the Outlet go to a laundrymat in Hawthorne and pay for loads of laundry for the people that are doing their laundry and hang out with the community to get to know them and their families. This is our 2nd year of hosting the Laundry Love Harvest Party.

Here's Carla (dressed in the cow costume), our new Outlet Social Lead with two of the kids that attended. The little girl on the left of the picture won the costume contest. She organized the event with Rich (not pictured), one of our Outlet Service Leads.

This year the party was complete with pizza and drinks, desserts, bounce house, face painting, cake walk and pinata.

Me in the midst of the cake walk chaos.

One of the cake walk winners.

Good bye Summer

Just a quick look at what kept me busy this summer besides living life with Sam and Sarah and all the bike rides (remember the first summer blog post).

In July I went to the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale. The past few years I have gone with my friend, Shannon, but she was out of town this year so Allison went with me. No pics of us though. Only this pic I thought to take while I was standing outside on a conference call. Benefits of working from home - not really I actually had a vacation day but called in for this call.

Normally I get my eyebrows waxed but have a bunch of friends who get them threaded at this place in the mall so I figured I'd take the opportunity to check it out because I heard it lasted longer and was less painful. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? It felt like I was getting a million paper cuts on my eyebrow area. I survived but did shed a few tears of pain (seriously).

Later that night we celebrated Jen's 30th birthday.

Travis and I were on grill duty.





We had a fun "anything you could possibly want on your burger" bar, but I didn't get any pictures.





Allison found a place in Atwater Village (North of downtown) that offers fun dance/workout classes so we headed up there for a Bollywood class. As rhythmically challenged as I am, I didn't do that bad. I'm definitely not staring in the next Bollywood movie though.

One of the moves we learned.

She's going to kill me for posting this...

Cool "new to me" restaurant in Silver Lake called Alcove after the class.

Biked to Taco Tuesday at Sharkeez in HB one evening with a few of the girls. Yum fish tacos and watermelon margaritas - my choice for the night.

Some of the girls grabbed some Lotus afterwards.

Little bit of hang out time at Starbucks before the return bike ride.

It was a "fun Jen" night with a bit of pole dancing.

Old cell broke so I splurged and got the new iPhone. I LOVE this thing.

For the past year and a half Angela and I would go to In and Out on her RDO Fridays. She lost the RDO Fridays a while back but we continued to find time to go especially February through August when her husband, Adam, was in Afghanistan. Fun lunches - who else sits at In and Out for 2 hours???

We welcomed Adam back at LAX in August.

Went to Shakespeare in the Park at Point Fermin in San Pedro. Such a fun evening - great location and what better way to spend an evening than watching a play outside on a summer evening.

The temp totally dropped as you can tell by the change in outfits.

Only got to one Concert in the Park at Polliwog this summer. The Mo's organized this since this is Lauren's favorite - Neil Diamond cover band.

Found out that the Pantages was having a student special on the play Legally Blonde. Basically students could come and purchase tickets for the play at $25/ticket with a valid student id at the theater. Lucky for me I had Sam, Sarah and Michaela and was able to "use" them and purchase a few tickets at amazing prices. I took Sam and Michaela up there one day and then took them to lunch at Pink's Hot Dogs and then a bit of thrift store shopping. Orchestra seats!!!!

On August 28th, a few of us headed up to Hollywood for dinner at Katsuya, asian fusion sushi bar restaurant that Nickki had been raving about for a while and was on my list to try. It was really cool and they gave us this sort of private area that was a bit separate from the main part of the restaurant.

The non-fish eaters. Their chicken dishes were really good though.

I loved the presentation of the food. This is a MUST have if you ever go to this restaurant - its the creamy rock shrimp appetizer.

and the fish eaters...

Fun picture of us before we headed inside for the play. There were people dressed up in lots of pink.

Got to try The Habit, El Segundo's newest restaurant, prior to the opening. Sam and I were headed to Chipotle and noticed that people were at The Habit on Saturday, August 29th so we decided to check it out. We entered, they were VERY friendly (which hasn't stopped in the subsequent times I've been there), said that all proceeds from that day's sales went to El Segundo's schools, ordered, went and sat outside to wait for the food. Moments later I saw the manager turning away customers. Apparently it was only open for two hours and the real opening was the following Monday.

Got a season pass to Disneyland.

Had a family and friend pasta night on the last Sunday before Sam and Sarah left.

Michaela and Sam posing for a picture. They are such good sports and good at the active shots.

Sarah and a couple of her friends

Shot of the beach on a bike ride on Labor Day.