Hotel Del Coronado

Well today was my mom's last day here. We started our day late so we only got two things in.. we took her to see what Frank is doing at his new command and we checked out Hotel Del Coronado. We've wanted to walk threw the hotel since we first saw it but always have the dogs with us so we've been waiting for the right chance. It was really cool going there during the holidays, they have up all there decorations. And the best part...

The ice skating rink on the beach! ha You can see the layer of water on top, I have no idea how people weren't falling over more. What was even better is that behind me there were people in there bathing suits by the pool. Now if it were in the 80's.. or even the 70's I could understand being by the pool. But it was in the 60's!! I was layering up ha.

The Blind Side

What a nasty day today ended up being! I was a little upset when I woke up this morning to find out it would be raining on and off all day. I new it would be cold, but the rain was a suprise. I told my mom she got to experience a little bit of Christmas with us, and our first "storm" while living here ha. I was hoping to use our last full day to see a few extra places... but we ended up being lazy for most the day. Not something I like to do while on vacation, or while someone is visiting us on vacation.

I did know that I wanted Mexican food for dinner, which ment we'd go to the place by Grossmont. I figured we could try seeing 'The Blind Side' since it hadn't worked out on Thanksgiving. We ended up being done with dinner about an hour before the showing, so we headed over to Target to wonder around.
I found these really cute Christmas pillows I wanted to get for the couch, but they were $20 a piece! Oh well maybe a different year...

I loved this movie! I'm a sucker for true stories, and this one had me good. It was just an awesome all around movie done well. I've heard that the book is really good as well, so i'm thinking since this true story doesn't have an ending that will leaving me bawling my eyes out {Marley & Me!} I might try to find the book. I'm thinking it might be on shelves more since the movie is doing so well. WHICH BY THE WAY! You would never know since Twilight opened around the same time. ARR. Sorry Twilighters but this movie desereves the top spot for it's story.. don't hate :] ha

Day 3=THE ZOO!

{THIS WAS WRITTEN YESTERDAY BUT MY LAPTOP GOT A HUGE VIRUS OUT OF NOWHERE WHILE I WAS ABOUT TO POST THIS.}

If any of you dared to shop on Black Friday {or sadly had to work}.. i'm sorry! We spent an awesome day at the San Diego Zoo :] We've been wanting to go, and once my mom said she was coming down for a visit we knew the zoo was a must. We thought that Frank could only use his free pass for being Military once a year, but we're happy to find out he can go whenever he wants. I was told that I would get in free once as well.. but that did not happen. I did get a 10% discount for being a dependent though, so not so bad.

We got there around 10:15 and left around 3:15. We could have easily stayed until it closed an hour later, but I had a headache and we were starting to get cold so we decided to call it a day. The zoo is never boring I absolutly love going there! I hope to go again in the next few months.. a Sea World visit is due first.

I'm going to try hard to not post all my pictures.. it will be hard. While I was trying hard to take great pictures with my average camera people would come up next to me with there awesome cool nice cameras snapping away... I got a little sad about that. They didn't want to trade with me. I'm not sure why!? ha

Happy Thanksgiving♥

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family. We went to Mission Trails this morning for a walk, it was such a nice day for it. We walked up to the old damn and let the dogs cool off then headed back.

After we went home rested and showered we went looking for a place to eat. We ended up going to La Strada for our Thanksgiving dinner. It was really good! Expensive, but my mom paid so I didn't mind ha. We tried to go see 'The Blind Side' at a few different theaters but all the showings were at least an hour later and we didn't want to wait at an empty mall that long. So instead we decided to rent a movie from Blockbuster and have a lazy night. All in all i'd say it was a good Thanksgiving :]

Day 1!

I wasn't sure if I was going to do one huge post after my mom left, or try to post everynight. I will have HAVE to post everynight ha. Today we got up early {okay Mikey and I had to get up a little early, my mom is normally up early. Frank was at work} and headed out to Cowles Mountain. We had origonally planned to go back to the area of Mission Trails we went to on Sunday, but decided to try Cowles. I felt so bad because I had told Mikey it would be an easy walk.. SOOO WRONG HA Cowles was all up hill with a few spots to rest. Oh yes it was also all rock!! We had a great time, the dogs all got dirty and we ended up with great pictures! I can't wait to hike the whole thing one day. Enjoy the emense amount of pictures...

Break Time

I don't know what i'd do without my morning walks, it seriously gets me going. We haven't gone the long route in a while since we haven't been able to walk much lately. Today we {okay I ha} decided I wanted to go the long way to get a little more of a workout. We actually did it pretty fast too! Frank came looking for Mikey and I on the bike once he got home... weird thing was, we were talking about him ha. I was complaining about the fact that he didn't take leave soon enough and now he's going to be working just about the whole time my mom is here. ARRR i'm super pissy still about that.

On a side now.. I was looking out at Ellie sleeping on there bed outside just now, and I was wondering where Molly was. She wasn't laying in the window and I didn't see her out back. I knew she wasn't in the spare since I have it blocked off so they don't get the futon all dirty before I set it up for my mom. So i'm looking out there wondering where she might be. She was laying right next to Ellie!! HA She completly blended into the fence, I felt stupid ha. We tend to lose them at the beach sometimes when they are far away because they blend into the sand.

I really should get back to cleaning, I don't have anything to blog about but I just needed a break. I wasn't feel to well... I think I need a nap. Thankfully I don't have much else to do before we have to go get my mom. I am very excited for dinner though! We already plan on going out since I don't want to cook late, so i'm going to suggest Olive Garden :] We haven't had it since we first moved out here.. irronicaly my mom was here since she helped us move. I've been craving it for months, but we never have enough money. Thankfully my mom knows that we have no money and any trip down here means she has to pay for quite a bit. One day we will be able to take other people out for a fun night.. one day...

Well I guess I should get back to cleaning.....

Exhausted

I am so ready to just lay on the couch and pass out! How nice that sounds.. maybe in a few more hours. I guess I should be happy we slept in this morning instead of getting up at 7:30 like planned {Frank has to be able to nap in the afternoon since he works mid-check (graveyard)}.

Early in the afternoon we went out to Mission Trails for a hike. This was our first time going there, which is a suprise cause it's the closest place to hike near us. We really enjoyed the hike and scenery, and the fact that there were a million little trails you can walk on. We did about 2.5 miles but man it seemed like alot more! We decided that we need to get actual hiking boots rather than wearing our tennis shoes.. ahh one day ha.

Don't worry you don't have a smudge on your computer, our camera is broken and gives us that lovely "U" shaped object in the top left corner of the pictures. I dream of the day that I am able to get a really nice fancy camera :]

Dinner time! For dinner tonight I knew I was going to be making... ((this was from last night, my computer decided to stop loading anything and I was gone half the day at the park)) ....CHICKEN, MUSHROOM & PARMESAN WITH ORZO  from For The Love of Cooking. I decided I want to try making mashed potatoes for the first time in YEARS! I'm not that good at cooking two or more things at once.. and this wasn't a good time to try. I started with the potatoes and once they were on the stove I started the orzo. The whole time I was cooking the orzo dish I was freaking out that it was going to be horrible because.. well that's how it looked. This was a dish I was able to have big chunks of chicken for Frank, he loved that!
While I was cooking the orzo dish I had Frank mash the potatoes, but to my dismay they were not done cooking :[ So I had him nuke them in the microwave.. for like 10 minutes all together! We started eating the orzo dish once it was done while we waited for the potatoes. I was very happy to find out everything turned out rather good, both dishes.

I went searching for a mashed potato recipe that was really tasty and did fine one. I ended up making it my own way since I didn't want the potatoes to be as thick as the recipe called for. I'm sure the way I made them is nothing new to some, but it was for me so I was pleased.

Wash potatoes then slice and chop up {I leave the skin on} place in large pan and fill with cold water to just about the potatoes. Let boil till fork tender. Make sure they are done!! HA Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add minced garlic and cook till browned. Add milk and let simmer to your liking. add it in to the mashed potatoes, add just a tad bit of pepper and mash up! YUM YUM. ((I just put what looked like a good amount of everything into the dish, there was no measuring))


I don't have pictures for either because the camera was charging from our day out.

Now for TODAY {Monday}! I took the dogs out to Balboa to go for a walk and hit up the dog park. I have no idea how much I walked because I just followed the signs and had no idea where I was going, so I decided to turn around and go back the way I had come. It was a long walk that's for sure! We ended the walk at the dog park where of course Molly and Ellie were the mean dogs. Something we are STILL trying to get them to stop. They had fun, they met lots of other doggie friends while getting dirty. Molly had to play in the mudd puddle {I so wish I had my camera for that! It was just her face though} and dirt pile there. She was in heaven ha. As i've mentioned before we have Frank's cousins jeep till next summer while he's in Afganistan. Today I decided I was going to take the jeep out to the park. It was fun driving it, i'd drive it everyday if we could afford the gas ha. We normally only drive it twice a week to keep it working. Frank asked if I felt big in it.. it's a lifted Jeep Wrangle {manual even better!}.. I told him I felt slow ha.

Well this was long enough :]

To sell or not to sell!?

I've been meaning to put up pictures from our dinner and dessert the other night. I made ZUCCHINI FUSILLI from cookinglight.com and paired it with a simple side salad. It was super easy to make and turned out so good! I wasn't too sure what Frank was going to think of it so I made him some chicken to take to work. He ended up putting the chicken in the pasta and really enjoyed it that way. If you don't like zucchini then you really should just skip over it..

For dessert I made BANANA, BLUEBERRY AND RASPBERRY MUFFINS from For The Love of Cooking. If you remember i've made these before, but was missing the blueberries. Oh how good they turned out :] I could have easily devoured them all within 24 hours, but was smart and sent them to work with Frank after eating 2.. or 3. I guess they were a hit because someone yet again told Frank they would pay for my cooking. We've been talking about it {selling food to people he works with} but i'm not so sure about it. We don't have the money to buy the ingredients.. and enough of them! And I wouldn't know how much to sell stuff for. Humm.. right now i'm enjoying just cooking new things and being able to put a smile on someones face if they like it. Good enough for me. Anyways here's a few pictures of the amazingly awesome muffins..

Now for some more goodies... I had 2 bananas that needed to be used soon and I had 3 apples I was wanting to use with the bananas. So I went searching for a banana-apple bread. I found one that looked pretty tasty at COOKS.COM. The recipe calls for walnuts that I did not add in {Frank and I both hate baked foods with nuts, but love eating walnuts by the hand full:]} and it calls for a whole stick of butter! I just eyed it and added a few spoon fulls of butter, which seemed to work just fine. I thought i'd try adding to the recipe a bit.. it's not something i'm good at yet, but I remember the other banana bread I made from For The Love of Cooking and the spices she used went perfect. So I put a dash of ginger, some ground clovis, and some cinnamon and nutmeg to the mix. It turned out amazing! I was so proud of how I was able to turn something good, into something amazing.

I was smart this time and made two small loafs rather than one large one, and shockingly they both turned out done this time! ha I'm going to bag one of them up for Frank to take to work tomorrow night, and am thinking about giving a few slices to our upstairs neighbor Holly. All I know is that if I keep it in the house too long... it will all be in my tummy!

Frank suggested that I take pictures of all the ingredients before I cook so that people can see what i'm cooking with and what's going in the dish. I said I had thought about doing that but I have just been linking everything I make to the blog or website I got it from, that way they get the credit they deserve. So I might start doing both... we'll see if I can remember to even take a before picture.

Onto something completly different. Today we gave in and finally got Ellie a new collar. She's been in need of a new one for quite some time now, but we haven't had the money to get her on. After spending too much time looking at all the pretty collars at Pet People we decided on a green collar with flowers on it. I'll try to get a picture tomorrow. I wasn't going to get one for Molly since hers is just fine, however the more I look at the both of them the more I want a new pretty one for Molly ha. So next month I think i'm going to buy her one so she can match Ellie :]