CHRISTMAS!!

One of my favorite times of year!! No school, good food, happy music, happy people! Having such a huge family and extensions of family, it's always a busy time of year for me! I think I ended up having 3-4 Christmas dinners! Haha

 I found these jammies in Walmart. My Uncle Ed would have been so proud if I wore them to Christmas. I decided to return then to save money...if I had a job, I totally would have kept them!!

 With Christmas, comes cookies! I made these a while ago for Dalton when I was experimenting with gluten-free, and I thought I would try them again! I liked them better the second time...no flour! Just powdered sugar, coco, and eggs whites!

My mom finally found a good gluten-free flour and re-designed her delicious Christmas sugar cookies 

And again with the ugly sweater...haha one of my favorite parts of Christmas. I get to wear ugly, but comfy clothes to Christmas dinner!

Christmas just isn't complete without the dancing Santa Claus. I demand a dance out of every one who wants to watch him go! Haha, I think I may tear up if it ever breaks... 

My friends, Lindsey and Courtney have a Grinch obsession. I found SO many cheap Grinch things this season, so I turned it into part of their Christmas gift. Haha Grinch galore!

Nicky's 19th Birthday

[Absolutely HORRIBLE quality pictures, but how can I leave my little brother's birthday out of the story? Haha, I guess he's stuck, awful quality and all!]

THE DAY before finals, I was forced to put down my books (which was definitely needed) and my brother, mom and Kevin went out to East Village Asian Cafe for dinner in downtown Encinitas. I love this place. It's so quirky with it's weird robot menu and playing strange Asian cartoon movies in the background (almost always Ponyo), PLUS the food is delicious!

In case it's not obvious, my brother was not fond of my picture taking and mocked me for my "obsession" with blogging and Instagram. Haha, as seen by my lack of posts, I most definitely am not addicted to blogging, but I try to keep some pictures coming through Instagram to keep family and friends in touch while I slave away at prison...I mean nursing school....

After dinner, since the restaurant was small and crowded, we went across the street to a picnic table at the beach and did cake and presents in the almost-darkness. Haha, but I wouldn't ask for anything more! I love night time beach! And cake and presents ;)

iPhone is not well adjusted to night time photography when it is moist outside -_-

After finals were over, we did a re-do for my brother's birthday with my Dad and Melissa. We went to Karina's to get some delicious hole-in-the-wall Mexican food (haha my brother couldn't be any happier about that choice) and then came home for him to open his present and have some cake. Since he was saving up money to buy a new bike for races with the cycling team at CSUSM, my parents found a clever way to give it to him. And I give Melissa major props for having the patience to cram $100 in change and cash into dozens of balloons! My brother had a good time popping all of those.

Haha I LOVE IT!

Ugly Sweater Christmas Party

[YES, I know this is a little late, but it has been sitting in my drafts box for 2 months now and I didn't even realize it! Haha]

After the semester was over, we decided to throw an ugly sweater Christmas party at the Kuhns' house in order to kick off the beginning of our PRECIOUS 5 week winter break from school! You wouldn't believe how much thrift stores sell some of their old ugly sweaters for...so, I decided to make my own! Haha how hard can it be to make a sweater ugly?

All the girls

Eric won first place in the ugly sweater contest. Haha, I told him it was the lights

And Thaddeus won second place...haha I later voted for him to win first because his sweater vest and old lady turtle neck WAS seriously ugly

Palomar Mountain Observatory

Dalton took an Astronomy class during the fall semester, and for extra credit, he had to go look at the stars, sky, or anything related. I've been to the observatory before during rock climbing trips or on my way out to Julian or somehing, but I've never really actually explored around. It was cool going up there with an actual purpose so I could learn a thing or two ;)

This thing is HUGE! And the telescope is really cool inside! I want to come back  on a day they do the tour so we can go inside deeper and take a better look!

Afterwards, we came home and ate my mom's leftover chicken pot pie....MMMM :D

'Tis the Season...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And I'm loving it! I've been so overwhelmed with school, that I haven't really gotten a chance to take a look around, but it's definitely the holiday season now!

McKenzie bought me this hat at some house party sale...

And I later discovered that it is originally from Sprout's...haha, makes me love it even more!

 My favorite part...the Christmas lights!! :D

 There is this crazy old man in San Marcos (and by crazy, I mostly mean awesome) who, for 14 years now, has been having this crazy display of lights in his front yard. He starts October 1st and has everything ready by December where he keeps the lights on nightly until 9pm for families to come swarm his yard and admire his madness. He really is a sweet old man, but he must be crazy to do this much work EVERY year! And he never lets anyone down...

Right down the street (the competition), this family turns their giant maple? tree into a giant Christmas tree! It must be at least 60-70 feet tall. I have no idea how they do it. But I love it! I love driving through neighborhoods and looking at Christmas lights, even though not everywhere has as awesome of decorations as these two house.

I miss when my dad would drive all of us kids around the neighborhood to look at lights while we eat popcorn in our Christmas jammies, listening to Christmas music. Maybe I can convince him this year ;)

It's also time to start indulging in my new waffle maker. We've make waffles one time since I got it at Black Friday (and tried to make brownie waffles a second time...that wasn't as pretty).

Ignore the weird looking things I call sausage...the photoshop did something really weird with them in this picture and they look disgusting. Haha, I promise they weren't as bad as they look! 

I was babysitting my cousins last week and came across this awesome picture of my step-mom and aunts. We're having an ugly sweater Christmas party this week...think she'll let me borrow her sweater ;)

My next favorite thing is this new thing Dalton let me try for this semester. I called it going Christmas tree therapy-ing. During finals week, I was even more completely overwhelmed and wanting to give up. We have no money for a Christmas tree, and nowhere to put it anyway, we still bundled up and he still took me Christmas tree shopping (2 times!) so I could look around and let the Christmas energy flow! We bought colorful twinkling lights to put in the room. Still nowhere to really put it, so I just hung it on my fallen painting and lamp

See? Still pretty in my disaster of a neglected room ;) I think they call this nursing student problems...

Mini Desert Trip

So, my friends had been reminding me of "the desert trip" at the end of November. I would always half blow it off and just tell them okay I'll be there. Haha and because of me ignoring them, it popped up on me really fast! I never put 2 and 2 together that it was the same weekend Cindy was gunna be here. So, instead of spending the whole long weekend out in the desert like I planned, I just made a night trip to visit everyone.

My friend, Lindsey, was sweet enough to make a short trip out there with me too so I could get back to be with Cindy on her last day here. I can't wait for more desert trips now that I'm done with school for 5 weeks! A REAL trip this time ;)

 Haha, I just had to post this picture of Johnathan. His hair is usually about my color and it was SO DUSTY that day, everyone's hair was turning white and grey! 

Cindy's in Town!! :D

My favorite time of year....when my best friend comes to town!! I don't think she realizes how much I miss her all the time! I can't believe we've spent over 3 years living 750 miles apart in two different time zones. I can't wait until she moves back to California so we can visit each other more often!

She usually comes for a week or so during Christmas, when I am on break too, but this year she can't because her family will be gone in Brazil (lucky!) So I had to squeeze in some time from studying to spend most of the week with her.

She took me on my first Black Friday adventure. Haha it was really weird experiencing culture shock in my own home town. And it was also surprising how not-that-discounted everything was on Black Friday. I'd say the only place with worthy sales was Walmart, haha not like I had any money to spend there. (I did get an $8 waffle maker though)

On the last day they were here, Cindy's parents took us all to Knott's Berry Farm. I hadn't been there since I was in middle school! AND it was already decorated for Christmas! I loved it! :)

Her family got some beautiful Christmas pictures while we were there. I thought that was a really good idea..haha the best Christmas picture our family has ever made is on the stairs in our house. Knott's had such pretty Christmas decorations!