Merry Christmas!

It's Christmastime and I can't wait to go home and celebrate the holidays. There has been a lot of stress and turmoil at work lately [even though it's a restaurant job, those people are crazy!] so Kevin and I are really looking forward to going home for a few days and getting away.

Over the summer I applied for the Master's program at CSU Dominguez Hills in English for Rhetoric and Composition. With this I will be able to teach junior college immediately after graduation - well, that is if there are any jobs to be had. But right now I'm chugging along in the program. I took two classes this fall and just finished the finals for those. Both classes were a lot more stressful and difficult than I had imagined but I feel really proud to have them finished and to already know that I got two B's. Apparently in this program you must maintain a 3.0 in order to remain in it and since it had been a few years since my last English class, it took a little bit to get back into the swing of things.

Another event over the past few months was Thanksgiving, of course, and we were lucky enough that my parents were able to drive to Redondo Beach and have Thanksgiving in So Cal instead of at home. Kevin and I both had to work Thanksgiving day and Lindy had to work 'Black Friday' the day after so it was easier for us to do Thanksgiving here. Here are some photos from Thanksgiving day and I am hoping to continue posting things more frequently while I am on Christmas break :)

Running . . .

So a few weeks ago, or maybe it's been a little over a month, I got a new Mac computer and got an iPod touch with it. There's a really cool program on the new iPod's where Nike+iPod tracks your runs and you can make goals on how far you want to run that day, or monthlong goals. Just to give you an idea of how much this has helped me, my first day I used this was July 25th and I ran for 1.83 miles. Today I ran 4.67 miles. Crazy! I also joined a challenge to try and run as much as you can in the month of August and so far I've run 21.89 miles since August 1st. It's been a lot of fun and I now really look forward to getting out the door and heading to the bike path and trying to run to the pier :o) Maybe someday I can run to work. Though I don't want to show up that sweaty ha ha.


I also am trying a new class called The Bar Method. Though no, it doesn't involve alcohol ha ha.



It's supposed to be a mix of pilates/ballet/yoga and really work on stretching your muscles. I've only gone one day so far but let me tell you, I definitely felt it!

Just wanted to give everyone an idea of what I'm up to and trying to get into shape - but in a fun way :) And of course I'm still playing volleyball and keeping up with those boys.

Have a great day everyone!
Jen

The Summer of Saying 'Yes'

So . . . this summer I decided would be the summer that we tried to do as much stuff as we possibly could, within reason. It's my summer of saying yes to everything that sounds like fun :) So far we are doing a pretty good job. This will show you a few of the things we have been up to this summer . . . with hopefully much more to come!

First up was Lindy's 21st Birthday:







Martin and Ash came into town for a little time away from the Valley and to the fun cool weather of Redondo :) We did Magic Mountain, hit up the beach and they introduced us to the Mexican Train!



















John, one of our old co-workers, is a sketch comedy actor and he wrote his own show so me, Kevin, Lev and Lev's friend Monica went into Hollywood and we watched his show at 2nd City. We had a great time hanging out somewhere new and seeing John.





It was probably one of the most spontaneous and crazy things that Kevin and I have done, but our friend Nick was trying to convince people to go to Vegas on Monday. He was talking about it on Sunday and someone suggested leaving Sunday night after getting off work . . . somehow we decided that this was something we were actually going to do so we got a group of 5 people together and went home to pack up and finally left around 2am. We got into Vegas at 5:30am. Kevin and I both had to work Tuesday so we left at 10am on Tuesday in time for us to get back to work. Ultimately we spent like 30 hours in Vegas, but it was so much fun and we had a great, short, fun trip to Vegas!