Halloween

The party

On Saturday we had a few friends over for a Halloween party. Started with Pumpkin chili, then some Young Frankenstein, and last of all some killer bunnies. A good time was had by all. Guess all the costumes if you can!

First Day of School

Well it was our first day back at school after a very long summer. Kristin went back to UCR and I started at Cal Poly. Both of us enjoyed our days and look forward to making it one more quarter closer to our degrees!

A True Vacation

Labor day weekend came up on us bearing a gift more rare than a short line for Space Mountain (it was the first reference I could muster, yes I'm a major nerd): the elusive Three Day Weekend! After the rejoicing subsided the question was raised, "Vacation?" Isn't the reply obvious?

We'd been craving a real vacation for some time- whether it be camping, visiting family, or what-have-you, but had simply been lacking in time with Joseph's work at the bank. So without further ado, we hopped on the internet and booked a hotel for our favorite beach location in SoCal- Laguna. The week-day vacation slashed prices for us, any further worries were eased Joseph received a bonus from USBank (which he hasn't worked at for the last six months). It seemed that the universe was on our side!

We enjoyed a day hopping around tide pools playing with little hermit crabs, eating South African seafood (slightly disappointed to be seated by a very drunk, very loud party) and Italian gelato, and relaxing in the hotel spa and heated pool (the day was too cool and windy for the beach). It was amazing to finally enjoy a vacation as a (tiny) family, even if it was in minature.

                      

  {Dinner at Mozambique. Those parrots behind us say "Hello" and "Goodbye" as you pass- awesome!}

On a slightly different note, my sister, Krisale, had her daughter. My first blood-relation niece is named Brialle, and she is such a cutie.

Am I right or am I right?

Summer- The Second Installment

     During the middle of July, as this summer's heat wave descended on SoCal, our baby Honda, Harley, got a bit of a cold. Well, more like a 'hot'. Her head-gasket needed to be replaced, which came with a hefty price-tag. Meanwhile, one of Joseph's co-workers had a $2,000 outage and was fired, so he picked up her hours in order to help compensate for our unexpected bill. It is quite fabulous how one door opens after another closes. 
     Joseph working full time put a bit of a damper on our summer plans (what plans?) but there was still plenty of fun to be had.
     Living in SoCal (and with a self-professed 'water-child') makes us obligated to hit the waves. We headed back in July for a short fun trip, and again in August for the 'Super Trip'. We were in Huntington for ten hours, hanging with friends (including many of my old high school buds), boogie boarding and roasting s'mores when the sun went down. Ah the beach!

 {After drying off and waiting for pizza to arrive}

Then came another trip to Disney after the summer black-out. You know us- can't get enough. Hopefully we can afford to renew our passes. Prices are getting ridiculous!

 {Jungle Cruise with one of the best skippers we've had}

When September came, it was finally time to use our Huntington Library Free Day passes. The Huntington had been on our list since our early dating days, and we were so happy to finally make it.

                                                                                                                       {Can I keep him?}

                                                                     {Royalty must ponder}
 
To keep myself occupied between adventures, I've been cultivating my 'domestic' side. I made jam with my sister-in-law Rebecca, Joseph and I babysat her two oldest for three days (never met kids that were easier to put to bed...means they wake you up at 6 am though), and I tried my hand at baking bread. 

{Honey Oat Bread}

It was a delicious first attempt- I highly recommend throwing around some dough of your own. Its rather therapeutic: Honey Oat Bread

School's Out For Summer

While we are overjoyed at Joseph's acceptance into Cal Poly and the current buzz about the house focuses on school school school, all the fun is coming from summer summer summer. Over the past few weeks we've enjoyed two trips to Disneyland (the first we've had over the last three months, a new record of separation since we've been together, I think):

[Splash Mountain]

[Third Highest Score on Buzz- Joseph was VERY excited]

[Waiting for the World of Color show]

After our trips to the park, we finally cooked up the Easter ham we picked up on sale. Joseph insisted no ham dinner would be complete without the full spread, so we had "Christmas in June", exactly six months before Christmas.

 [Stuffing, GB Casserole, Carrots Ham]

 

Needless to say, we've been eating lots and lots and lots of ham. We then enjoyed the first of many fabulous beach outings with friends, and spent four hours on the sand (it got cold early) playing phase ten. And finally, last Thursday we were able to return to Redlands market night for an evening eating delicious lamb gyros, purchasing produce, and wandering through antique stores. Ah summer, how we love you so!

 

School!

Well I was accepted to Cal Poly Pomona this week which left me quite speechless cause i really wasn't expecting it. They had put me on their wait list a couple months ago so i thought that was their nice way of saying technically you qualify but we don't have room for you. Well it looks like they found room. I don't know if i will attend there because i am still waiting for Cal State San Bernardino to get back to me but hey i will at the very least be attending school in the fall! woot woot!

My Amazing Wife

So Kristin has officially been offered a job as a Supplemental Instruction Leader over at UCR.
Isn't she amazing?<3

The Best Honeymoon Ever!

We just want to start off by saying that the honeymoon was FABULOUS!!!!! We want to go back like yesterday.

So lets start at the beginning shall we? okay.

First Stop Cambria(a little town just out side San Simeon)-
Reasons we loved it here
1)They gave us each two fresh cookies that were still warm
2)They gave us a bottle of Martinelli's
3)Our room was amazing. It even had a fire place
4)Our room was a stones throw from t he beach
5)We were a hop skip and a jump from Hearst Castle
6)See 1-5
7)see 1-
8)see (ok you get the picture

picture time of Cambria

The view from our B&B

Our room at the B&B

And now Hearst Castle

Us at the main entrance

Next off to Monterrey

Now the B&B we were at the wasn't as nice as the one in Cambria but it had a pretty good size Jacuzzi tub so we are not complaining.

Monterrey Bay Aquarium

Hey look its us. oh wait that's two penguins kissing oh well close enough.

That night we went to the nicest place i have ever eaten. The food just put us in the greatest mood. The restaurant was called the fish hopper and it is right on the bay.

Our last stop was a little bbq place in Venice called Baby Blues BBQ. It was featured on Diners Drive-ins and dives and well it was fabulous!
We, the Mickelsons, would like to thank your for joining us on the recap of our honey. We know we enjoyed ourselves and hope you did too! Have a great day!

Home Sweet Home

While we know we're still behind on wedding and honeymoon updates, I just thought I'd drop by to let everyone know how blissful married life's been. For starters while trying to cook my first meal in the apartment (for another couple as well, mind you) the glass lid on the pan I was cooking in popped and shattered into a million tiny pieces (hello tempered glass). Luckily I was able to stay calm and salvage dinner, but needless to say I am adverse to that pan brand now. Then, yesterday I decided to toast myself a pita when I got home from school. I heard it pop up and looked over to the toaster only to see a five inch flame spewing out of it. Yes people, my toast literally caught on fire. Luckily I was able to blow on it enough to get the darn thing extinguished and save the toaster.

All of these shinanigans seem to occur whilst the husband is away, so I'm not sure if the apartment has an aversion to me or what. Regardless of the mishaps, Joseph and I are happy as can be and are enjoying the opportunities to laugh a little, even when the house smells like smoke.

Valentines Day!!!

Well since valentines day was on a Sunday Kristin and I decided to celebrate on presidents day since we both had the day off. We started the day off in the most romantic way i could imagine..........meeting with my insurance agent and talking about rental and car insurance. well that pretty much tapped me out for romantic ideas so since we were in Huntington Beach we figured we would go visit the spot where we had our first kiss and became an "Official Couple".(see pictures below)



Okay so the sun was in our eyes on the first picture and i was taking the picture so that's my excuses for the bad picture.

After the beach we were getting a little hungry so after making many wrong turns we decided to stop at the very next place we saw. it ended up being Hong Kong Palace in Rowland Hights. now this place was amazing! First we were the only white people in there(always a good sign) second the Dim Sum was amazing! So thus ended our Valentines Day Adventure. (as a disclaimer i did not proof read this so i hold no responsibility for bad grammar and miss spellings)

Christmas in January

After much poking and prodding at each other to get an update onto the blog, I have finally settled into a wanting-to-hide-from-schoolwork mood sufficient enough to allow me to forsake organic chemistry in favor of a winter festivities update. Indeed, as we crawled out of the haze of finals and flew past the fabulous wedding of two of our closest friends (including the man who introduced the two of us- Thanks Steven!) we realized that  there existed a  mass of Christmasey things to be crammed into a one week pre-Christmas period.

First- a trip through an hour of henious LA traffic to the most beautifully decorated building in the city.

{Our friends Sean and Amanda. I hope I don't jinx it by saying we think they're next.}

We then decided to take a stab and building a gingerbread house. In an attempt to kick it old school we bought a box of Gingi-mix (Joseph saved the day by finding some at our local Albertsons after our search together turned up cold) and built our house to massive scale:

{Gingi-us!}

Unfortunately warmish giant gingerbread houses aren't quite so structurally stable as one might imagine.

{When we fail, we fail good}

The next day, however, we redeemed ourselves at our friend's Christmas party with what I've got to say is the first place I'd choose to live were I a gingi-person :

{Took second place in the contest, but we were beat out by a giant castle. I can live with that.}

The next day we headed over to the Mission Inn in Riverside with our friends Monika and John. The lighting was spectacular. It was worth braving the frigid temps.

 

And we found the greatest vintage store I've ever seen. Three stories of well-priced random goodness.

Monika and I found our wedding veils:

And the boys channeled their inner Humphrey Bogart:

And finally, to cap it all off, Christmas came! Joseph and I were on the same wavelength and both bought games for eachother (in addition to a few other things). We will never be bored at home, that's for certain! It was amazing to be able to spend this first Christmas together, and are both ecstatic for holiday season- round two. Only eleven months now!

And now I'll tip my hat and close with a picture of Ethne and Joseph- because really, you can't see that girl and not smile:

Cheers!