Halloween, winter, and the ocean

A lot is going on around this place lately. I am changing jobs, well not really but kind of. I will still be working for Bank of Idaho, and I will still be a commercial loan officer, but I will be leaving the Ashton Branch and working in Idaho Falls. This is really a big change for us but we are excited about it. It is a good thing, but I will miss my co-workers at Ashton.

Meieli and I are trying to decide what kind of house we want, but so far we can't agree. She wants a place with some acreage and no covenants so she can have chickens, and I want to buy a short sale in a neighborhood. The only problem is my wants don't allow for chickens. This whole thing could come down to chickens.

So we also went to Irvine, California with our best friends Alan and Heidi. They are super cool and we had a blast. We still like each other after being in the car together for a total of 30 hours in 4 days. We ate luncheables and drank Naked Juice the whole time.

We left Wednesday night and stayed and Kyle and Jamie's house. Then we got up early and headed to Cali. We got there late at night, so all we did was eat at In and Out Burger. That place is awesome and the guy "Steve" that helped was a cartoon I'm pretty sure. His face was animated like a cartoon. I know it sounds weird, but it was weird, so I'm glad it sounds weird.

Friday morning we headed out to the beach. We went to Huntington beach, walked around the stores, ate lunch on the pier, and played in the water. When we got to the beach, we played frisbee, Alan made a circles in the sand with a stick, and then Meieli, Alan, and I went swimming in the ocean.

It was very cold and all the locals thought we were stupid, but who cares about locals. Locals are dumb. They thought it was all wintery, when in reality it was 60 degrees and partly cloudy.

This is Meieli and Heidi at the VANS surf shop. Cool place.

Meieli and Heidi running along the beach. You little hotties.

Meieli and Heidi running and trying to fly with the seagulls. I'm sure they got pooped on and didn't tell us.

After playing on the beach all day we cleaned up and went to eat at Spaghetti factory. It was in a really old cool building and the food was excellent. After the factory, we went to Newport beach. What a beautiful place. We didn't swim, but we walked around and took in the beauty of the ocean.

This is the sunset we got at Newport Beach.

The next morning was the race.
There were thousands ( I think there were aout 6,000 racers) of runners and we had a great time. Heidi kicked butt with a 1:37, and I finished in 2 hours and 13 seconds. My goal was to be under 2 hours, but no ones going to care about a stupid 13 seconds right. Stupid 13 seconds.... That was my PR and Heidi's PR. Meieli also hit her PR. Her PR was that she hit every outhouse the race had to offer. Meieli, you rock. Actually she did run very good too, but her time didn't show it because of the numerous stops. I was so stiff and sore that I could barely walk. Fun race though.

That night (Saturday night), we went to another beach, (the name escapes me, but I will edit this when I remember) and it was beautiful. We played on the beach and walked on the rocks, and then ate dinner with Nick at a nice little restaurant on the coast. After we got back, we went to find a movie but couldn't find anything good. We decided to find "Dinner for Shmucks" and just watch in at the hotel. No one had the movie in stock. We tried many different places but no luck. Finally Alan decided to try to find using his fancy dancy Iphone (which he did while driving). We finally found a place: Video Natalie, the greatest movie store ever. They had it in stock. I love you Video Natalie.


So before this awesome trip, there was also halloween and Christmas. Halloween was about as fun as it can, which really is only mediocre, but the kids loved it. Brady and Gibson were dinosaurs, and Ryan and Caleb were a horse and a lizard I think.

Brady and Gibson with their loot.

Christmas was so great this year. The kids had such a fun time and I loved it too. Meieli is such a sweetie and we had a great time together. We got the boys their very own guitars. They come up with some pretty sweet songs, usually about toots, and food, and sometimes about their blankets.