Blowing out the candles of Another year

(by Vinny) Dec 24th. Megan's birthday. We made our annual birthday pilgrimage to Benihana's; a place where some things never get old: the onion volcano; the mickey mouse rice, Mason using his chop sticks so he looks like Wolverine; shrimp flying; and delicious fried rice. It was excellent! There are no pictures of that here but we have a wonderful birthday picture book with everyone's Polaroid’s in it! My Japanese chef was excellent, even if he spoke with a thick Latin American accent and had "Alejandro" written on his name tag. Megan's chef, one table over, was a greenie and we think it was his first time ever cooking there! But he sure tried hard! I sat a different table next to Tressa, who I would like to adopt but her parents refuse to allow it (c'mon!) Later we all went over to the Davies house where we had tons of fun watching the Christmas story acted out. I'll let Megan tell you about that later.... (so cute!!) We did have some excellent birthday cake for Megan. Here is a picture of Megan blowing out the candles on her cake. Looks like someone decided to help her out. Where was he when San Diego was burning down??? Forget the planes and firefighters!...They should have just called Mason!

vinny to the rescue...

There I (Vinny) was....driving through the town of Perris just as nightfall changed the sky to a navy blue. I could see a plume of black smoke rising like a tempest above the houses on a nearby street. As I drove closer I could see the yellow glow of a fire ascending upward. Some dude's house was on fire!! I quickly pulled over and ran to the residence, passing a number of people taking pictures and gabbing on their cell phones while watching the blaze. I could tell it was in the backyard and so I ran into the yard and along the house to the rear of the property. There was a 6 foot fire that had engulfed the fence, a tree, and was spewing out out of some molten black mass on the ground ( in a previous life they were 2 large plastic trash cans). Luckily someone had shown up before me and was trying to fight the blaze with a hose, unsuccessfully. I grabbed a second hose and together, like Eegon and Ray, we crossed the streams and tried to close the fiery portal of death. It was like Backdraft... only worse. The smoke was horrendous... but we fought on! The fumes were toxic... but we persevered! Finally we were able to contain the blaze and eventually extinguished it just as the fire department arrived. Now I don't want anyone calling me up about this or giving me plaques or writing my name on some town shrine. I don't want to be treated any differently than your average hero.

best face ever

i love kevin!

happy december to one and all!

december hit the southern california deserts yesterday with a bang! so much rain...my dad and i took a walk around the neighborhood, then both decided it was a pretty dumb idea. but come on, as adults, how often do we still get to walk in the rain with our dads? not a bad morning.





well, i haven't posted for a few a few reasons but the main one being that i was in the hospital. let me just say here that if my spelling is loopy or my writing a bit meandering it is because i took some sleeping pills to help me sleep, and as you see, i am quite awake, but not quite alert. anyway, i went to the emergency room on a sunday night. i had had a quite severe stomache ache for about 3 days but didn't think i had anything to worry about because mindi had just had a similar stomache bug. (thanks min!) anyways, i started vomiting blood and that frightened me enough to get me to the emergency room.





let's say here that if medical terms and needles and such freak you out you may not want to read, but it's really not gross. just informational.





they were out of beds in the e.r. and so i took up residency in a cozy little cot out in the hall, bum flapping in the breeze for all to see. just kidding everyone - i wore my pj's and they had pants! after a few tests and prods they decided to admit me because i think they didn't have any idea what they were going to do with me and wanted me out of their hallway. so they sent me "upstairs" to a real room with the bed that moves up and down and all that. by that time the iv they had started on me in the e.r. was bleeding all over my hand and i wanted a new one and i wanted one now.





no one in the hospital is ever in a hurry. my nurse tried to put in a new iv and blew out the vein. then the head nurse tried (twice) and couldn't get it to work either. so they paged someone from the ICU unit and i had to wait for her. finally she came and said that i have good viens, they're just deep. i think that was her nice way of telling me that my arms are too fat. anyways, she couln't do it either and finally called in GABE, my angel in blue scrubs. one painless poke later and the iv was in. he is officially my hero and and my angel! he used to have to take blood from beligerant drunks at the police station, so he got very good at drawing blood in difficult cases.





anyways, i spent a few more days in the hospital to have this test, then that one. they are so slow there. by the end of my stay there i decided that they were more likely to kill you than cure you. oh, wait, one more scary story. i had taken a migriane medicine and started itching incredibly bad. in my semi-lucid state i thought that the oxygen mask i had on was making my face itch (not the allergy to the migraine meds, duh!), so i took it off and fell asleep. well, this girl wheels around a cart every hour to monitor your blood pressure, temp, and oxygen levels. she said that when she came in i was blue. my oxygen levels were 13 and need to be in the 90's. she put my oxygen back on and kept trying to wake me up. finally my nurse came in and started talking to me, which made no sense, because my ears sounded like someone had stuffed towels in them. it was the wierdest sensation. after a couple of hours i was back to normal but that really scared me. i had basically stopped breathing.





i'm home now, and i have a diagnosis : i have h.pylori bacteria in my stomache. they biospsied the lining of my stomache and found this lovely little bacterial infection. i'm on ani-biotics and should be back to my routine of milking cows and running marathons shortly.





here's a photo of GABE my new favorite man in blue scrubs...

am i in heaven?

...nope, just sprinkles. which is my idea of heaven.

my mom and i drove up to orange county to go to roger's gardens (an awesome garden/gift store) and look at their christmas stuff and their gardens. -by the way, if anyone is wondering what to get for me for christmas i found it there! it's a chandelier and it only costs $2,700. that's just pocket change!!!

anyways, after roger's gardens we went over to sprinkles which is this awesome cupcake store in los angeles and orange county. (it was on oprah -- ooh la la!) i pulled out my camera and took a picture, while the girl behind the counter told me that there is no photography allowed in the store -- oops!

look at all the pretty little cakes!!!












yum!

we ordered a lemon one and a pumpkin one so that we could share them.







now brynn, i know what you are going to say. i put the milk in the photo specifically so that you wouldn't say that they look like boobs!!!


















the cupcakes are totally awesome.













mom loves the lemon one!!!

















we ate both of the cupcakes...







but we don't like the dots on top that they import from france - yuck.



















we decided to go buy some more to "take home to our husbands."







dad looks so happy!











and i am happy because vinny doesn't really like them - more for me!

mindi is my hero!!!

mindi durst is my hero!!!

thanks for figuring out my picture problem!

love you...

pics from the post of vinny's car trouble

am i alone here?

am i the only one who can't get photos to load onto blogger.com? it's making me so crazy!!!

hasn't this happened before?

Saturday I (Vinny) was out and about appraising and, as usual I found myself on a very unfriendly dirt road. I went to back up and there was this little rock I didn't see that hit my undercarriage. The rock, like the iceberg from Titanic, was much larger underneath and as I went over it the tiny piece that hit my front axle enabled my car to push the whole rock out from the ground, revealing a much larger menace which did some damage. My car became high- centered and I was stranded in a dead-cell-phone-area on the outskirts of the Cleveland National Forest (which is no where near Cleveland, by the way). Luckily these burly 3 men where nearby and although they didn't understand English they certainly understood my situation. They saved my bacon! I refer to them as my 3 amigos. They didn't want their picture taken. They didn't understand the word "blog" either. Oh well, I snapped one anyway and caught 2 of them on camera! Gracias amigos!

sorry - the picture thing on blogger isn't working, so stay tuned for the photos.

a proud sister

so i just got a call from my little brother Alex, who is a political science major at byu. he is an awesome guy. first of all, he is tall and handsome, served an awesome mission in harrisburg, pa, and he's super good in school. he's at byu on scholarship. i can brag about him since he's my brother. his gpa is off the charts amazing and he's hoping to attend harvard to get his law degree and mba all at the same time. anyways, he just called to tell us that he got accepted to the internship program he applied for. only 22 students are accepted all together. he is going to washington d.c. for the entire summer, but he doesn't yet know who he'll be interning for. isn't he amazing? we sure think so!!! stay tuned for some pictures of alex - i'm having trouble with my photos right now!

a sign from above?

vinny was in the car today, full of road rage at the slow moving traffic. then he noticed this license plate in front of him.

hmmm...

cravings...

this is how i feel about chocolate cake today!

quick fire update

there are still a number of fires in southern california, but the one in fallbrook is either out or contained. the evacuation order on all of fallbrook has been lifted and everyone is allowed back in. the entire trailer park on reche rd, (near the spackman's house) burned down. also, sad to say, spencer hampton lost his house, too. our prayers are with all those who lost their homes. and we are so thankful for the fire fighters for working so hard to save so many homes. they are true heroes.

a moment of dancing in honor of scott's b-day!

happy birthday to an awesome brother! welcome to your thirties! we love you!!!

six months of waiting...

as all of you know vinny and i are trying to adopt a little girl from china. we put our application in with our agency well over a year and a half ago. this is an extremely slow process. today is the six month anniversary of having our dossier (all of our official paperwork) logged in at the chinese adoption headquarters in china. it's a big day for us! when we started this process we were told to expect to wait from our dossier being logged in and our referral date (the date you get to see a picture of your baby) about one year. now that estimation has reached TWO YEARS and could still possibly climb higher. but we know that all things are in Heavenly Father's time frame and we are ok with the wait. it's just more time to buy frilly dresses and dream about how we are going to decorate the nursery! seriously, we can't wait to go to china and hold our sweet baby in our arms, but the past six months have gone by faster than we expected. thanks to all of you and your support during this wait - we love you all!

no soup for you!!!

let's boogie!

here's a little something to make you laugh...

update on fallbrook

ok. so, late last night we heard that certain neighborhoods in fallbrook were being let back in. my parents made some phone calls and learned that their neighborhood is one of them. they packed up this morning and headed home to see that ALL IS WELL! my mom even said that the air quality isn't too bad. there are definitely areas that still aren't allowed back in, like east of Gird Rd, but the fire is gradually being contained. our thoughts and prayers are with all of those who are displaced and especially with those who have lost their homes. we have heard that at least 200+ homes were lost in fallbrook. we have heard rumors of people we know losing their homes, but i won't post this until we know for sure. i'll update again when i learn anything new.

fires in fallbrook

just a quick note for those wondering about my family in fallbrook. there are two fires raging there, and the ENTIRE town of fallbrook has been evacuated. my parents and their dog are staying at our house. my cousin brett went into fallbrook very early this morning and my parents house is safe, as is my aunt and uncle's. my dad left a little while ago to go check out the house, but every road leading into fallbrook in barricaded. craziness. i'll update again later if anything changes.

Car Splash Fuzzy Memories Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

incognito

today vinny and i went grocery shopping. it's time to make some soup!

i know i don't look happy in this picuture, but i am. i just don't like how my smile looks.

love you all! come on over for hot soup!

Monty Python - Dead Parrot

Apple Pie in the sky

Yesterday Vinny and i went to Julian with my mom and dad. we all piled into the mighty avalon, where dad tried to kill us a number of times on the winding roads.

(The avalon is the middle car - dad did an awesome job of parrallel parking!)

The weather was cool and fresh. and so were the apples! for those of you who don't know, julian is a sleepy little mountain town where we go in the fall to pick apples and eat and eat and eat apple pie. preferably with cheese on top. want a taste?

sorry, we ate it all! there is also a shop with tons of kinds of yummy stuff: from candy to nuts to chocolate to apple cider to candy apples.

these are vinny's favorite apples - covered in sugar!

vinny kept looking for the tree that grew these apples... but couldn't find it.

we also saw a sad homeless man. do you recognize him?

Wait, isn't that dad?

come to think of it, where's mom?

oh, there she is!

peekaboo, mom!

we had a super fun time in julian!

the monty python sketch is one of Vinny's favorites. enjoy!

middle of the night

i'm trying to sleep, but (obviously) cannot. so i decided to show you where we came up with our blog name - soul rebels. we love the band old crow medicine show (thanks bridget!) and i fell in love with their cover of bob marley's tune. it's awesome. and if vinny and i are anything, we are soul rebels.
Enjoy! i think i accidentally did the slide show as a seperate entry. i'll get the whole blog thing soon, i promise!

Soul Rebel - Old Crow Medicine Show

here we go...

Vinny and Megan welcome all to our blog. It may be odd, it may be boring, it may be super cool; whatever it is, it is us.

love is a place

and through this place of

love move

(with brightness of peace)

all places

yes is a world

and in this world of

yes live

(skilfully curled)

all worlds

--ee cummings