7
Jan
2010
Christmas Shenanigans
As I sit here on my couch wrapped in my new snuggie, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I am no longer on vacation. You know what I have to say about that? Lame.
I love my office because they are smart enough to shut down between Christmas and New Years, which allowed me to take a whirlwind tour down the West Coast: Kelowna, Seattle, Ladera Ranch, San Diego, LA and Big Bear.
To start off I headed up to Kelowna for a couple days to celebrate the holidays with the familia. We did a lot of eating… basically mum asked us to send our grocery lists before we came up and then when we got there we had to do all the cooking… but it was great, because it was free. highlights included: smoked turkey, prime rib, bacon fried brussel sprouts, gourmet eggs benny, scallop tartar, mashed parsnips…. oh and did I mention the 4lbs of butter that was consumed? Brother loves cooking with butter, and butter makes everything so freaking delicious.
Santa also paid a visit to Kelowna and I’m happy to report that he screwed up and forgot to put coal in my stocking… SCORE!
After Kelowna I headed down south to enjoy an extended vacation in California (also known as the place where I was first introduced to my bright red snuggie).
Greg and I started our week of couch hopping in Seattle with a 3:58am wake-up call to get to the airport… seriously, no human being should be awake at this hour. But in the end it paid off because we got to Orange County just in time for lunch at Wahoos and a visit to Laguna Beach… where Greg proceeded to have a run-in with Adam Sandler… I’m pretty sure they shared a moment.
The next day we were off to San Diego to take in the sights and visit the Nicholsons (my extended Jewish family). To get down there we hopped on the handy Amtrak – which was a lovely little ride down the coast, where we watched surfers out the window and listened to the 10 y/o with a mullet sitting behind us explain to his friend what a Hook-e-r is….
You know what though, in the 8 times I have been to Southern California in the past 3.5 years I have never been on the train… or to the top of Laguna Hills or to the nice little restaurant on the cliff of Laguna Beach… pretty much I hibernate with Kirst in her house, and on occasion get out to Javiers to eat some food. We did more in this trip than all my other trips combined.
So San Diego was great, and once I find my greencard husband I’m moving into Nancy’s house so I can BBQ and sit out in her new backyard every night.
Rather than sightseeing in LA… we opted to be lazy and spend the day watching trashy TV shows (Kandy you’d be proud) like Jersey Shore and 16 & Pregnant (who knows how many braincells died that day).
To cap off the weekend we headed up to Big Bear for New Years. We spent two days snowboarding on Snow Summit – and I’m not going to lie, the fake snow was a lot better than I had anticipated… Barring a few minor incidents (Greg being pummeled by a skiing tourist and Ginger somehow breaking her ass) it was a great two days of boarding. We rang in the new year with some patron and beer at a mullet bar called Chad’s Place… it was lovely :)
On that note, I’m going to attempt to return to reality and go to sleep.
Happy new year!
