Reflections of 2011

What a year it has been! I think we can all agree on the incredulous year 2011 was for all of us. At the end of each year and the beginning of the next I always love to think back on the highlights and look ahead to hopeful predictions. Greg and I talked this over last night so I will share with you what we came up with...

2011 Highlights:
-I come back from the UK (January)
-We get ENGAGED (February 19th)
-I live with the Georges, nannying Claire-bear (Feb-May)
-Greg turned 21, YAY! (May 6th)
-We both pass Anatomy, Stats, and Nutrition with "A"s at Cuesta College (May)
-We spend a week in Ripon with O'Leary Grandparents (June)
-I see Yosemite for the first time with adult eyes (my last visit was when I was a 3-year-old) with the (almost) whole Jeffrey clan (June)
-We work hard on Grandpa Nelson's ranch in Izee, Oregon (June)
-We get MARRIED - the best dang wedding we've ever been to! (August 14th)
-We move to Long Beach (August)
-We cut down our very first Christmas tree at Lake Almanor over Thanksgiving (November)
-I turn 22! (December 1st)
-Nana Jeffrey celebrates her 40th anniversary of her 40th birthday with a fabulous party and week of family visits! (December)
-And finally a San Luis Christmas with the Jeffreys and O'Learys :)

No wonder we are tired right?! It was an exciting year, filled with learning, growing, changing, and blessing. We are so incredibly thankful for each one of you - our friends and family - who have encouraged us and stood by us along the way as Greg and I have started our life together this year.

In looking ahead to 2012 we are predicting it will be a much more steady pace of life for us. We will both be jumping back into school to finish our B.S. degrees as soon as we can. This will most likely mean we will be living in one city for the next few years and will be able to settle in here a little more. We are looking to rent a different apartment in the coming months that will be closer to CSULB campus. Also we have kept our eyes open for a second form of transportation for us as well as it is getting trickier to share one car.

We have no doubt we will again see the Lord's hand in provision and protection over us and our marriage this next year. We pray a blessing over you all for a prosperous year 2012!

"But you shall cling to the Lord you God just as you have done to this day... since it is the Lord your God who fights for you, just as He promised you. Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God."     Joshua 23:8-11

Christmas is coming!

This year, for our first Christmas together, Greg and I had the privilege of cutting down our own silver-tip pine from the mountains surrounding Lake Almanor. I got to wield the chainsaw in the woods but Greg got to in the living room once we were back in Long Beach and could make accurate measurements. Our tree now stands tall, just one inch from our eight-foot ceiling, adorned in our childhood ornaments as well as a new set of white lights. We have loved leaving the tree lights on and the window blinds open every evening to show off our beautiful holiday treasure.

We are definitely starting to experience the winter season, with spiced candles, pine wreaths, and the unexpected southern California freezing cold! Our apartment has been at a steady 50 degrees - I wouldn't doubt - until today as Greg, the life-saver that he is, bought us a space heater. In August when our heater pilot wouldn't light we figured it was no big deal. Ha.
I know we are in no place to complain or be pitied when a lot of you are in snow and ice, but this is supposed to be where the birds fly for warm winters!!

Since I last posted I have also celebrated my 22nd birthday :)

a little sleepy, but very happy

Greg's beautiful artwork

chest hair :P

Pazookie birthday dessert! we shared that one but then they brought me my own for my birthday... oh well, you can never have too many desserts on your birthday!

Greg totally spoiled me and made me feel so special! We had a wonderful breakfast in bed that included pancakes with bananas and real maple syrup (mmm the best!), scrambled eggs and lattes, along with a few birthday presents! He made me a gorgeous canvas piece of creative art and bought me the perfect pair of boots that I had been wanting. And there was also the cashmere sweater that feels like heaven. We had a fun dinner at BJ's restaurant (for "B.J. - Brooke Jeffrey" :P) with about fifteen friends - old, new, and related (my cousin who goes to Biola). We had a blast and stuffed ourselves with the famous pazookie dessert of hot chocolate chip cookie in a dish covered with melting vanilla ice cream. Divine, to say the least. I felt very loved and blessed by the people that the Lord has surrounded me with.
Wishing you all a joyous twenty days 'til Christmas.

in our spare time

We had some fun with photobooth last week...

Working hard or hardly working

It's been nearly two weeks since we've last updated you on our lives, so here is the recent update...
For those who haven't heard, Greg and I are now both working two jobs which has been keeping us pretty dang busy. Greg is still working as a valet on weekends and during the week has been rocking it at In'n'Out! He has worked the dining room, cashier, produce prep, fry station, and drive through window. The hours at In'n'Out aren't exactly what we were hoping for as he's closing at 1:30am three nights a week now :/ However, we are very blessed that he got the job and he's been working so hard that he's already been moved up a level and got a small pay raise! Way to go Gregors! I have to admit that he does come home smelling of grease and sweat, but how I love it when he wakes me up by snuggling into bed at 2 in the morning, finally home.
My second job, I have started at Stacked restaurant in Cerritos, not too far from Long Beach. This has been a really fun experience for me to be trained for a brand new opening eatery! I am on the "hospitality team" - meaning my job can consist of hosting, service assisting and being a concierge of sorts. The thing with this restaurant is that it does not require the guests to be on a servers time frame. All of the menu ordering and payment is actually done through an iPad that is placed on each table. Most people I've told this to have jumped to the conclusion that machines are replacing humans! But, we really have been taught to help and serve our guests as a team which makes for a little lighter work load and happier customers honestly. We are able to interact and assist more than we could if we had the responsibility of writing down every order, entering it into the system, and then bringing food. It eliminates much of the unnecessary waiting most of us do at any other restaurant. Don't believe me? Come give it a try when you have the chance! :)
We have had to figure out a few extra things with these few extra jobs - like who gets the car when, and who gets picked up where, and how do we make time longer than a 30min drive between jobs in each day for quality time with each other?
The great thing is that we both know we each want that time together and can't wait to be home with each other. That assurance makes it a little easier to do our jobs well.

New Halloween Traditions

Greg is excited!

 Halloween, in the past, was always an opportunity to carry out tradition in my family. Well, we'll really take anything and turn it in to a yearly tradition... New Year's Day Pismo Beach walks, birthday breakfasts in bed, Easter morning egg hunts, cinnamon bread toast on Christmas morning, and pumpkin carving on Halloween!! I have found that I am more into traditions than I thought, because Greg doesn't really care whether we do the same thing as last year or not :P But, we always have fun either continuing or making up different traditions for ourselves. This year, Greg and I get to make up any tradition we want, which is pretty cool, right?!
So this was our first Halloween celebration as a married couple.
In the last post you saw we had bought our pumpkin already. Until a couple days ago it had been donning our coffee table quite nicely. But we figured it was time to turn it into a more enhanced piece of art. I got us a little carving kit, we laid the newspaper out on our back patio (if I can call the strip of cement a back patio), and got to work!

Our tools all set to go

 Greg cut open the top and we both gutted our little pumpkin out.

Separating pumpkin guts and seeds...ewwww.

 We drew a nice face on him after coming to the joint agreement of goofy face over scary face this year.

Eyebrows :)

Here goes the carving!

Gerald, the finished product of our creativity!

 We were pretty proud of the result to say the least! We put Gerald on our kitchen table for a couple of  days, but once we could see the mold he was kicked outside. Luckily that day was Halloween!

Making pumpkin soup together (sorry to disappoint but not made with our real pumpkin).

 The pumpkin soup turned out pretty good. It was the first time ever making it and now we know what adjustments to make for next time :) But it was a tasty harvest time dinner with steamed veggies and cornbread.

Roasted pumpkin seeds were delicious! Greg finished this bowl that night :P

Us on Halloween night - Princess Leia and Han Solo

For our Halloween costumes Greg and I worked to collect pieces of our outfits all the way up to the 31st! But we finally found him that black vest and red-orange duct tape. We had a 40 minute struggle with my hairdo, but Greg was incredibly patient and finally helped me to do my hair really well. A youtube video told us to wrap each section of hair around a tube sock, then pin it in a circle. It was quite the hair party. I was pretty impressed with Greg's hair-styling skills after I told him to let the perfectionist in him chill out :P
The Star Wars theme was Greg's idea I think. We have been trying to watch straight through different movie series and we had started with the Star Wars six. That was all the inspiration we needed!
We had a great time with a couple from our Bible study, who live around the corner from us. We passed out candy, ate some candy, drank hot chocolate and watched some more pumpkin carving outside together with the neighbors. It was a really great time. We then, drove to Huntington Beach to the parents' house of Greg's friend Andy. Surrounding the bonfire pit on their front porch we passed the rest of the night away eating, drinking, and laughing with their family. It was a great night and a great first "holiday" being married :) We might try this again next year...

Fall Time

Okay, so we didn't actually end up getting pumpkins here because they were way expensive (we stopped by Vons on the way home :P), BUT I had to make sure we did something fun and traditional for the Fall season! So here are the pictures of us with pumpkins and scarecrows. Happy harvest :)

"Polly" Our New Addition

Coolest dude on the block

Freshly washed (before the rain came...)

1996 black Nissan SX - our Pollyanna :)

Joined the Jeffrey fam October 2011

Selling Johnny...

About a month ago we decided that our Toyota 4Runner would not be the most economical choice as we are now driving the L.A. freeways instead of four-wheeling through the back fields of the Monte Rd. house. So we put old Johnny up on craigslist to see if we could trade for a little gas-saver. So here are some of our goodbye pics. Selling Greg's first car was a tough deal, but we will keep all of the memories of Johnny with us - trekking almost all the way to the Oregon border, doing donuts in the fields where Ruth the goat now lies (we miss you Ruth), drive-in nights, and packing up our lives to move to Long Beach - just to name a few!

We ended up trading Johnny for a little Nissan 200sx with about the same mileage (though it's a '96 and Johnny is a '90). We have yet to take pictures with our new addition, but they are coming! She was nameless for a couple days, but we finally settled on "Pollyanna". So far Polly has been good to us, saving us nearly half of what we were spending on gas and looking pretty fly with her back spoiler and faded black paint job. We are learning to love her though! :)

Who eats SPAM?!

A few days ago, while doing some regular grocery shopping we were suddenly stopped by the cans of SPAM. Intrigued by it's mysteriousness and challenged by it's poor reputation, we decided to give the 'ole thing a try! (unfortunately the camera battery died before the meal was cooked up but here are a few pre-SPAM pics).

Prepared for anything in our matching aprons, I cooked up some white rice and steamed some veggies as Greg sliced up the SPAM into a big saucepan. We covered the mystery meat with some "sweet baby ray's" (I know Luke will appreciate that) to give it some more flavor than salty ham. It actually was not as bad as I was expecting it to be. We both finished our plates without much effort. Now it's not at the top of my favorite meals list, but hey now we can say we've given SPAM a fair try!

FIGHT ON!

All of you reading this who are on the Jeffrey side of the family know exactly what I'm about to write about :P But for the rest of us who need some educating here it is - USC Trojans dominate!

Even though I got a funny looking sunburn from that headband, we had a blast! Nana Jeffrey had given us tickets to sit with Uncle Ron and Aunt Janet. We arrived on the USC campus a couple hours early to hear the renowned marching band warming up. It was really great, so much energy and enthusiasm! Greg showed me the statues of "Tommy the Trojan" and "Traveler the valiant stead" :) At the start of the game the Trojan stabbed the middle of the field with his sword which was pretty exciting (although I was a little disappointed since Greg and I have watched 300 as well as Troy in the last month). We had a great time eating Uncle Ron's candied almonds and sipping on an ice cold lemonade while enjoying a great game together. As we left the crowded stadium three and a half hours after entering it, the scent of greasy bacon-wrapped hotdogs filled the air. The game was an exciting one ending in a victory for the Trojans over University of Arizona 48-41. (Sorry Andy! - but I did hear that you put your money on USC anyway! :P). The whole day was a wonderful first experience for me, and I think Greg enjoyed brain-washing me a bit too.

Greg's Turn for Date Night

Last night Greg took me out on one of the best dates ever! We drove down to the Pike (near where he and I both work) and decided on Bubba Gumps for dinner since he had never been before. We had some incredible sauteed shrimp loaded with butter and garlic as well as fish and chips (because Greg's never had that either). We enjoyed the sunset outside on the patio just opposite the Long Beach marina and Aquarium of the Pacific. It was gorgeous! Greg dominated the Forrest Gump trivia - if you've ever been to a Bubba's then you know what I'm talking about :)
About half way through dinner Greg notified me that we had ten minutes to be somewhere! So we finished up our meal and headed out over the water towards the Queen Mary. The plan was to catch the last tour but we were about fifteen minutes late, so we chose to give ourselves the self-guided tour. The ship was absolutely beautiful and simply humongous! There were twinkle lights hung probably fifty feet up from one mast to the other. There were so many different decks it took us a while to find the bow. It really was a romantic spot though :) Walking through the hallways to some Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller style music we left quite satisfied with our own tour of this Long Beach landmark. Marching back down four levels of iron stairs we gave some good whistles just to hear the amazing echoes, only to find the hotel lobby manager and a group of tourists staring at us as we round the corner :P Oh well...
We drove back to the Pike to catch the movie Abduction (which was really awful, but we laughed and decided we would be better actors). We had a wonderful time.
Driving back to our apartment I was still amazed that we live together and don't have to go our separate ways anymore. I love this no-goodbye-thing! Once cozied up on our couch we cracked out the cookies and ice cream and read a little before bed. It really was a fantastic date night and I'm not sure I can out-do him on our next one! Hope you enjoy some of the pics :)

Playing in our new city

So with all our free time during the weekdays (since we both work weekends) we have found some fun things in Long Beach. One of the best things about where our apartment is located is the big park around the corner. Here are some pictures of us hanging out and playing frisbee, football, card games, and reading there in the grassy oasis in the middle of our neighborhood!