More Cali

As they say, "all good things must come to an end"! Whit and Kate's California spring break was nearing its end, so we spent their last night in San Diego at our local favorite Coyote Grill. They have the best pork tacos! We also got to watch some interesting old people dancing. Can you say no rhythm? :-)

While they were eating "fro-yo", sun bathing, beaching it up, shopping and going to the zoo, I was sitting in front of a computer all day talking to crazy dealers! Doesn't quite seem fair, but I can't complain. I was staying 6 weeks and they were only here for 1. I think I win! :-)

Whit's diet went out the window a few days into the trip. No one can resist the "fro-yo" that they have on every street corner!


Something about the puff sleeves on this jacket make it look like I have my shoulders up near my ears!



Whit and Isaac went to the San Diego Zoo. We decided that Isaac's hair looks like the cockatoos. Were not sure who copied who!

Hmm......Phil kind of looks like he has matching black eyes in this picture. I thought he and Isaac were getting along all week! :-)

Yes Kate, you got a ton and yes those are sunglass lines on your nose! :-)

No mom, we will not use this picture as our Christmas card photo! You wait, she will suggest it! :-)

Whit has now taken on Kate's trademark "hand on the hip" Hollywood pose. It supposed makes your arm look smaller. Who knew?

Mom somehow thinks we want pictures where no one is looking at the camera. Like how it looks like I pushed my chest out as far as it would go in this picture? :-)

Pictures from Cali

So I've been in California for a week already. Feels like longer. When you work all week, doesn't feel much more like any other week. Just waiting for Friday to arrive. Whit and Kate flew in on Saturday with their boyfriends Phil and Isaac. I was a little late getting to the airport because mom insisted that I wash her car and then when they took over an hour to wash it, she was telling me to let them know I needed to go! That's a little difficult when 8 other cars are blocking yours in! I think I'll wait! They all got in safely and we headed down to the condo that afternoon after a short stint at the house to kill time.

Whit decided to go on a diet before she came out for spring break, which I'm in total support of. However, she has decided to stay on it while she's on spring break! I mean isn't that the point of vacation......to eat a lot of good food and gain back all the weight you lost before you came?! :-) She would say to us before she was eating something she wasn't supposed to, "I'm not supposed to be eating this" as if her our own conscience was getting to her! :-)

We were going to eat at Rubios for dinner, but after 3 circles around the Stater Bros.(grocery store) parking lot not being able to find it, we ended up at El Torito instead. I'm sporting my favorite coat. Whit and Kate think I look like Paddington Bear in it, but I think I look like the Morton salt girl!

It looks like Phil is sitting on Kate's lap, but they just like to sit close when they eat! Kate kept reminding me that she got her hair straightened and how straight it was. She had me check it out when it was dry, when it was wet, when she had just dried it and after she straightened it! I get it Kate, it's STRAIGHT! :-)

We learned that mild guacomole in California means hot to the rest of the world! Our mouths were on fire!

Aunt Cheryl came out to keep mom company all week.

FINALLY in Cali!

So I don't have any fun pictures YET, but I've only been here two days, so cut me some slack! I have to say though that I love it here! Sometimes I ask myself why I don't live here permanently? Well the answer is because of all of you! I love Illinois and that's home but I love coming "home" to California as well.

There's something about this house that takes all your troubles away! :-) We always joke and call it the house of restoration! Something about being at home, stressed out and just needing a break makes coming here all the more fun.

So even though I'm working the whole time I'm home, I love being here because it's WARM(it was 85 yesterday), the food is better AND different, the shopping is AMAZING and most importantly, my parents are here! I love spending time with them and catching up! My dad said this morning "I hate going to work when you're here"! Aww! That's so sweet! I said, well I'm working too so what's the difference? :-)

So anyway, that's my greetings from Cali! I will be here pretty much the entire month of March so if any of you get a wild hair and would like to come visit me, please do so! :-)

Mini House Church Reunion

So Lindsey set up dinner because it had been so long since we had all seen each other. We met at Denny's which was a regular hang out after house church back in the day. I had already eaten at Bob Evans that morning after church so I was frequenting all of the senior citizens establishments yesterday! It was great seeing everyone and I hope we do it more often than once every three years! :-) Josh facebooked me from the table asking me to blog this dinner, so I hope I did it up to your standards Josh! I explained that they only way I post is if I have pictures so if wanted this on my blog, we were going to have to take some photos!

The first thing Luke said to me was, "Tara, I don't know if you remember me or not, but I was in your house church!" I did remember him but he was a lot more talkative at dinner than he was in the two times he came to house church! :-)

In our email trail, we decided to do dinner yesterday because I was leaving for Cali for three weeks, Josh was going to Hawaii for 2, so Amanda and Chris said they were going to Australia for 7 weeks and Jerrod said he was visiting the international space station. Lindsey believed all of us. Only two of us were telling the truth! :-)

I'm always enlightened when I'm around Jerrod. He's a wealth of knowledge. However when I said that last night it came out "I'm always enlightened around Jerrod. He's a wealth of knowledge that you'll never use in a lifetime" or something like that! I didn't mean it the way it came out!

We discovered that Luke is one of those people that falls for all the gimmicks! Gets store credit cards for the 10% discount, buys F&I products at dealerships because the dealer told him he was getting a deal, getting a transmission flush at the oil change place because it was "needed" and buying a bowflex off the tv because it might really give you a six pack! We got a good laugh out of him. Not to mention his most outrageous thing he's ever done.......jumping out at cars when he was 8 with his friends asking if they loved Jesus! He was a real rebel child! :-)

Great seeing all of you! Hope you enjoy all your vacations and space station escapades! :-) Let's do it again soon!

Marissa's 30th Birthday

Marissa's 30th birthday is Tuesday so we celebrated Saturday night at Alexanders in Peoria and then went out for drinks at Martinis. Marissa loves butterflies, dragonflies, flowers and anything colorful, so I tried to make it special by incorporating all those things into the evening. Down the name cards had dragonfly stickers on them. It was a fun evening. We had some great food, yummy cake and great company!

Marissa and Denise checking out the picture placemats. I took pictures from young to present and made collages and then laminated them for each place setting.

Even our waiter kept saying like 4 times that we had brought our A game. That in his 7 years of working there, he'd never seen a table like it. It was funny!

The birthday girl

Andrew and Mallory. They just set the date for their wedding in July. Andy even got recognized at Steak-N-Shake recently. Some kid yelled "aren't you the guy from the Kansas City Chiefs?"

Daniel with cutie Caleb. I kept thinking there was something different about Daniel. Well he's lost 30 pounds and changed his hair. Yep, that's what it was! :-)

Jennessa didn't feel well after dinner so she didn't get to hang out with us.

They were going for the serious pose, however Daniel kind of ruined it by trying to get food out of his teeth instead!

Poor Adair. We harass this kid so bad, but he takes it well. I walked up and asked if he'd just been to Hawaii because of his puca shell bracelet his was wearing. That end of the table errupted in laughter. Apparently, Ben had been giving him a hard time about it all evening!

Mark and Becky, he cooked her steak a little long because he said she ALWAYS makes him put it back on the grill. He said, "I don't really like re-cooking your food after I've started eating mine, so I cooked it extra long so I wouldn't have to get back up"! It was definitely cooked all the way through! :-)

Becky asked for a class of hot water to warm up Caleb's bottle. They brought her a beer glass. We said it looked like one of those car bomb shots. We were calling it a breast milk car bomb!

Andy was having a little trouble lighting the candles and then got burnt. This response was a smidge dramatic though! :-)

All the guys broke out into a Michael Smith(from The Office) rendition version of happy birthday that had everyone around us laughing!

"I hope I got that bicycle Ben was supposed to be getting me for my birthday"!

Everytime I see these earrings in pictures, they look like coasters. They might be a little large!

D went and did the Ultrabronz that day before dinner. It gives you the equivalent of three tans! On a "white" day, Denise is darker than 90% of America. Just what she needs to do is get 3x as dark! :-)

Mallory was great at rounding up bar stools from all over the place. Everytime you saw her she was collecting another one! Don't know where she kept finding them! :-)

Denise thought she needed to squat down in front of Daniel for fear that we might not be able to see his face. When he's a foot taller than you are, I think you're good! :-)

Ben and his harem. Marissa always calls me Ben's girlfriend because he and I get along so well, which helps Marissa when I think Ben is out of line because she "sicks" me on Ben as she puts in, so I can get him to straighten up! :-)

We look like a color wheel, winter, spring, summer and I don't mean our clothes!

"4 Doors Down" Concert

So Ash hooked us up with tickets to the 3 Doors Down concert. They were in a suite and everything. As Tim put it best, "you know we would be the type of people that would go and watch a concert in a suite when none of us really are that big of fans of any of the bands"! I couldn't have even told you in advance a song that 3 Doors Down plays. I mean I knew I would recognize their songs but couldn't name any off the top of my head. The concert was fun, just a lot of opening bands. 3 opening bands for a group that you're not THAT excited about is a little much! :-)

They started out at Maguires for food and drink before the concert. Ash and Holly ran into Susan from 101.5 in the bathroom and Holly said she made a joke about the old paper towel dispenser like "What's with the 1984 paper towel dispenser?" Holly was like she stole my joke! I always say stuff like 1912 called and wants that back! I said, you make comments about the victorian era a lot?! :-)


Poor Jen, she didn't feel well that night and had to leave a couple songs into 3 Doors Down playing.

Ash and Jen were telling everyone that they were going to the 4 Doors Down concert. People were asking them when the 4th door was added!

Ash thought it was a little cold in the suite so she broke out the gloves. She thought it was because of the ice rink, but I think it was because of the ice cold drink in her hands! :-)

Luke thought that Hoobastank was called Oopastake. We pretty much butchered EVERY band name!

Yes, Jen really is trying to climb on top of Ash! :-)

Tim and I caught up on some Jessica Simpson celebrity gossip. I was so impressed he knew so much! It must be his new wife's influence! :-)

Holly and Ash really getting into "Sleether" as Denise called them, or their real name Seether!

3 Doors Down

This was shortly before the main singer jumped into the crowd and crowd surfed.

We had a great time even though we couldn't get any of the band names right. We had SafetySuit that Ash thought was the Red Cross, Hoobstank aka Oopastake, Oobastick, Hoobastink, Seether aka Sleether, and 3 Doors Down aka 4 Doors Down!

Hols and I liked the first pictre better. Ash and Denise liked the second one better, so I posted both. You decide! :-)

So you had to have a "suite" stamp on your hand AND on your ticket. We were told that EITHER one would get you in and out, but NOOOOOOOO.......the 80 year old nazi woman at the door required that you have not only the stamp on your hand and your stamped ticket if you wanted to get in and out. She ran a tight ship! I'm pretty sure we could have taken her but we decided to just be nice! :-)

Water Street

We(well it was my first time, the rest of them had been there before) tried out a new fondue place in Peoria. It's called Water Street. They don't have meat fondue yet, but apparently that is soon to come. It was great catching up with these girls. There was a lot of PCS talk that brought back a lot of memories because I remember spending countless hours at Marissa's house with Marissa and these girls at times hearing about all these classmates. Felt like old times!

The window seat they were sitting on looked cute but wasn't quite as comfy as it was cute!

If ever a lull in conversation, Courtney and I always have plenty of reality tv to talk about! :-)

The fondue was very good, but we all agreed there could have been just a bit more cheese!