Ten Highlights of 2010

I feel like I was just writing one of these posts for 2009. I certainly have years that are filled with fun things and changes. As fun as it is, I won't mind when grad school is done and things are a little more relaxed in my life. Here are some of my favorite things from the year. :)

Family Cruise in the Caribbean

At the very beginning of 2010 my entire family took a fantastic vacation to the Caribbean Islands of Puerto Rico, St Thomas, Dominica, Grenada, Bonaire, and Aruba. We had a week onboard the Caribbean Princess. My favorite part of the trip was seeing the joy on Valencia's face on our catamaran ride in St Thomas.

First Valentine's Day Spent with my Love

This was very special to me. In the 3 and 1/2 years we had been dating, Valentine's day had never been a convenient time to be together. Now that Tad and I live int he same city, it's usually convenient to be together. Tad planned a very sweet surprise date for me. We made a cherry vanilla cake, and then re-created our first date by going to Boomers for mini golf and go carts. After which we got our favorite appetizers at Applebee's.

On the ferris wheel at Boomers

Spring Break with my Biola Girls

For a fun change, instead of visiting my Biola girls (Becky and Krista), they came to me. We spent a few fun days catching up and exploring San Diego. We watched Walk the Line, had Rubios with Tad, and spent a day in Seaport Village. I sure do love those ladies!

The hat shop in Seaport Village

Mother-Daughter Trip to SF

In April, I happened to get a four day weekend, which happened to coincide with the California Council of the Blind convention in Burlingame. We flew up and enjoyed a long weekend of relaxing, shopping, and seeing old friends. We ate out at an old favorite Chinses restaurant one night, had dinner with friends from church another, and got to see my friends Amy and Dave as well as Valencia's puppy raisers. Oh, and I went to some convention related things lol

In front of our hotel

Elizabeth & Matthew's Wedding

My friend Elizabeth got married on April 24 at the Grand Tradition in Fallbrook. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding. It was also another fun excuse to get to dress up and go to a party with Tad. We enjoyed spending time together, meeting some new friends, eating some delicious food, and celebrating Elizabeth and Matthew's marriage with them. :)

Birthday Weekend with Becky

Becky's and my birthdays are 2 days apart and we have found a way to celebrate them together every year since we met freshman year at Biola. This year was no exception. I did the train ride up to Fullerton and had lunch with Becky at The Olde Ship (a pub!). We had our birthday dinner at Red Robin, and Krista and I watched Becky perform in the orchestra pit for Biola Youth Theater's production of Cats!. It is good to have a birthday buddy! =)

4 Year Anniversary

This was only our 2nd anniversary actually spent together, the 1st being our one year. Like Valentine's Day, Tad planned a surprise date for me, which consisted of a delicious Round Table pizza and a movie night in with mocchi to snack on. By dating anniversary 5, we will be married!

Family Summer Vacation

Our week of family vacation kicked off with a trip to the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Bowl concert. We went with the Biola Alumni Association and enjoyed a spectacular Tchaikovsky concert complete with fireworks. Several days later, we embarked on our trip to Cambria. It was a relaxing week of tidepooling, shopping, farm exploring, Hearst Castle touring, and Olallaberry pie, yum!

On the farm in Cambria. This is the next picture I'm going to submit for the GDB calender.

Sharp Community Re-entry Internship

This fall I had my first off campus clinical experience. And I loved it. I became a part of the family at the day treatment program at Sharp Memorial. I learned a lot, met some very cool therapists and clients, and became very confused about what I actually want to do after graduation.

Me with my supervisor Joann

Engagement

Probably the happiest day of my life to date - on November 23, my sweetheart asked me to be his wife. I am thoroughly enjoying being able to call him my fiance and enjoying planning my wedding. This highlihgt to be continued in 2011 ;)

Thanksgiving Day at my parents'

Looking back, 2010 has been a wonderful year with progress made towards my Master's degree and plenty of time spent with my love. 2011 can only get better from here!

The Very Blustery Day

Growing up, I loved the storybook "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day". Pooh Bear and his friends experience a very rainy and windy day, followed by a very rainy and windy night. In the morning they all awake to a flooded Hundred Acre Wood.

I had flashbacks to the story this past week. Southern California got hammered by a tropical depression that started last Thursday night and continued until this past Wednesday night. Over the weekend the rain was pretty off and on, but Monday night it poured, and it poured, and it poured.

I spent Monday and Tuesday night at the condo so I could hang out more with Tad before we both went on separate family vacations. Wednesday morning I was going to take the trolley to campus and then take the bus to Tad's place. I set out as per usual down the riverwalk, noticing how much higher the river had gotten. Halfway down the walk, I realized that the noise I was hearing was not traffic (as I usually hear), but water...not a good sign.

All of a sudden, as I approached the end of the riverwalk, where I turn and cross the river, Valencia stopped. I assumed she was taking an unplanned pit stop and turned to tell her no. SPLOOSH! I stepped into ankle-deep water. I turned back, and realized that the entire street, sidewalk, and last 10 feet of the riverwalk were completely submersed. The sound of water I had heard was a mini water fall that had formed from the street down the slpe into the river. There was at least 5 feet of water across most of the street.

Good girl Valencia!

It is a very strange feeling, looking at a usually busy street turned into a river. I called Tad and informe dhim he would have to pick me up, as I had forgotten my canoe. I then spent about 10 minutes taking pictures and video. All I can say is, I'm very glad I don't NEED to be taking the trolley any time soon!

Music, Graduation, Narnia, and Friends

My visits to Biola fall in very similar patterns from year to year since I make the traint rip up there for the same occassions every year: to celebrate Becky's and my birthdays, Symphonic Winds concerts, and graduation.

My good friend Justine graduated on Friday, and thus, I made a weekend trip out of it.

I took the train up to Fullerton Thursday afternoon and was picked up by Krista. Becky was finishing finals at CSU Long Beach, so that left Krista and I to amuse ourselves. We grabbed lunch from Baja Fresh and then went in search of gifts for Becky's elementary school band kids. After looking at some ridiculous things at Dollar Tree, we decided on giant chocolate snowflakes. We counted out what we THOUGHT was 23 and checked out. The cashier didn't want to count them and just scanned one 23 times. When we got the snowflakes to Becky, we discovered there were actually 26, oops!

Before meeting up with Becky, we stopped by Starbucks in La Mirada and ran into our former professor Yvana who happens to be expecting again. She told us that our other two profs from the major were on campus grading papers, so after we got our drinks we headed to McNally. It was nice getting to chat with 2/3 of the profs. We couldn't find Tonya, as she had been out to coffee with another former student and never came back. From there, Krista and I had an hour to kill and just sat in her car in the parking lot.

The main focus of our evening was Becky's elemntary school band concert. She ahs some really cute kids, and the other performances were cute too, especially the Kindergarteners singing. After the concert we did a late night Wendy's run and then went back to Becky's to crash for the evening.

I didn't get to go to bed quite as soon as I would have hoped. One of Becky's roommates was having a long last night with her boyfriend before the break. They were making cookies, watching movies, and generally being loud until at least 2 am, and didn't take the hint that I needed to sleep on the couch. Becky fell asleep on the floor, and when it became obvious there would be no moving her upstairs, I bid a curt goodnight to her roommate (at midnight) and went to sleep in Becky's bed.

Friday was a driving-all-over-the-place day. Becky and I picked up Jen from Hart and set out on some errands Becky needed to run. We grabed lunch from In N Out and were intending to see Narnia with Krista, but all 4 of us missed the showtime. Instead, we bought tickets for a showing after graduation and explored the big bookstore next to the theater. The cool thing is that I've seen all 3 of the Narnia movies, with Biola friends, in the Downtown Disney theater.

Becky and Jen went back to Hart to pack Jen's stuff up while I stayed at Becky's place to take a shower and get ready for graduation. Since Jen had some extra meals for the semester, she swiped me into the caf for dinner. It was fun reliving a Biola caf experience for the evening. She and I ate quick and ran over to just barely find seats in the gym for graduation. It was a very nice ceremony. I loved the speaker and the special music (a beautiful arrangement of "Be Thou My Vision" sung by Donte and accompanied by the orchestra).

We found Justine no problem afterwards for hugs and congratulations. Then Becky, Krista, Jen, and I grabbed some quick snacks from the reception in the caf and zipped off to our movie. We made it in perfect time, just at the end of the previews. I loved it. I'm sad to say I didn't succeed in finishing the book before watching the movie, but from what the others said, it seemed like it stuck pretty closely to the story. What I loved most (other than the music, hehe) was how much of the Christian messages were left in. It was refreshing after the disappointment of them being changed or taken out completely in Prince Caspian.

Saturday morningI awoke, got ready, and had Becky "drop me off" at the Albertson's center to meet Justine. Upon arriving at Alberton's, Becky's car stalled, then would start and not go into gear. She didn't have her phone with her, so she called triple A on mine. They eventually came an hour and a hafl later, but we did enjoy hanging out and having breakfast at Starbucks with Justine. Once we knew Becky would be able to make it home safe, Justine and I set out for FullertonAmanda's house in Fullerton.

Amanda was busy baking Christmas gifts for her fellow Sunday School teachers, but we kept her company and caught up on life. She fed us lunch (in addition to broken sugar cookies) and then took me to the train station.

The rain made things complicated, but it was a weekend when I got to have quality time with 4 of my closest friends from Biola, which made it very special. :)

Wedding Planning

Tad and I have been engaged for almost a month now and have a tremendous amount of planning already done, all thanks to my mom. Right away she jumped in and started doing research for us. She, thus far, has kept a perfect balance of being involved and providing suggestions, but also letting us make the decisions. She's made me a wedding planning binder, collected a couple bridal books, and is making me a scrapbook of our engagement and wedding planning time.

Here's all that we've accomplished in the last 4 weeks :)

We're getting married on July 23, 2011 at PLC (my home church) with a reception to follow at the Courtyard by Marriott in Rancho Bernardo. Since PLC doesn't have any outdoor place to take pictures, we're using the duck pond right by the Marriott. I have asked Raelene to be my maid of honor and Becky and Krista to be my bridesmaids. Tad has asked his best friend JC to be best man (ironically JC is getting married two months after us, and Tad will be in his wedding party), his roommate Nate to be a groomsman and will ask my brother Stephen to be a groomsman.

I have my dress. I'm absolutely in love with it!!! My mom and I found it on our first day shopping. We went first to the shop where she bought hers, a place in La Mesa called Amour. I tried on several dresses there and really liked one of them. We were all set to buy that one after looking at another couple shops. We looked at a secondhand place which had beautiful dresses that weren't any cheaper than the brand new ones. On a whim, we decided to go to one more store before deciding on the dress I loved.

There's a place called Here Comes the Bride across the freeway from my condo. We wandered in, without an appointment, and were helped by this delightful lady named Jeanie. She was so helpful and sweet. I tried on 5 dresses there, and knew right away when I tried my dress on. It is modern, sophisticated, and very me, and that's all I will say before the wedding :D

We've also ordered our cake topper, booked our DJ and photographer and are looking at florists. We've picked purple, yellow, and silver for our colors.

As I said, we've got quite a bit done for the amount of time we've been engaged, and I'm loving every minute of planning! :)