thanksgiving

 We had a San Diego Thanksgiving again this year. We had so much fun together, ate lots of food, watched movies, and took a ton of pics. So without further adieu here are lots of pictures...

 I picked up Meg and Sara at the airport and then we met up with Dad for brunch at The Cottage- the Lemon Ricotta Pancakes are the bomb. 

We hiked the treacherous Ho Chi Minh Trail in La Jolla. Got a little muddy and I got a gnarly cut on my knee that is still having a hard time healing, but fun was had by all. 

We had Thanksgiving dinner at Seasons 52 like last year and then stopped off at Mount Soledad to watch the sunset. It was probably the best sunset I've seen up there. 

 We took some family pics at Sunset Cliffs. 

 We went on a kayak tour in La Jolla because it was 84 degrees!! 

 Love these people and so thankful they got to come and visit for the holiday. 

superb saturday

We've haven't had too many weekends recently where Sam and I just get to hang out. 

This Saturday after Sam finished the MPRE we got to spend the whole day together!

We went to the beach together which we haven't done in what feels like ages! It was the perfect beach day--no one at the beach and the perfect temperature. We took a nap, played catch--well I tried (I'm not too good at throwing or catching a football), strolled Belmont Park and got a snack.

 Later for dinner we went to a fancy, dancy restaurant in La Jolla called Donovan's thanks to my boss. We were so out of place compared to all the wealthy patrons. But we dressed up to try and fit in and enjoyed a bomb meal and dessert on Dr. B. So that was fun as well. 

It was the perfect day just me and my hunny. 

a magic halloween

We've been known to go all out with our Halloween costumes see previous 2014, 2015, 2016.

 This year was a little harder to convince Sam on an idea but can you believe he was all for being a schoolbus!? Our costumes are usually centered around my hair, hence 

Ms. Frizzle and The Magic School Bus! 

We also kept the tradition alive of do it yourself costumes. I found a blue dress that worked and got to work making it into the space dress that Ms. Frizzle wears in the first episode. I only burned myself with the hotglue gun a couple times... 

The bus was a little trickier and it took way longer to make than expected. We spent like 2 whole days on it! Surprisingly we had all the cardboard on hand from all of Sam's school book purchase and my online ZARA shopping addiction. Also we ran out of yellow paint so that's why it looks a little rough. And I looked totally ridiculous printing off Magic School Bus characters in the USD Law School Library. But we managed to pull it off! One little boy who was probably 4 years old and didn't even know what the magic school bus was went straight up to Sam and said, "COOL COSTUME!" I think he just had a thing for busses or he thought it was some sort of Transformer...

The best part of Halloween though was going to SkateWorld in costume, with all our friends. Literally the best night ever! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. 

life updates

1. WE BOUGHT A CAR!

It's been a long time coming and after months of searching, Sam found a good deal on a car. I literally came home to the new car, Sam didn't even have time to tell me he was buying it because he didn't want someone to snatch it up before us lol. But you can't get much better than a 2016 with only 8,000 miles for a decent price and zero problems!  Plus it's already an upgrade for us because BOTH the heater and AC work & the windows roll up and down. #winning

But within a month of having the new car, we got bad news that the beloved minivan also has to go. SOOO we are on the search for car #2. But who can afford to buy two cars back to back? Maybe I should set up a go fund me. Venmo donations now accepted also...

 2. SAM LOVES HIS NEW JOB!

Sam started a new job about a month ago. Bonus--it's about 10 mins from our apartment and he could potentially work there after he graduates...HELLO SAN DIEGO forever!! 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We still have a long time until we know for sure and it's a national firm so we could be moving to one of the other locations. But for now he's been working non stop writing memos and research papers for the firm and they just keep piling it on but Sam is thriving there. So that's a good sign. 

3. I'M THE YOUNG WOMEN'S PRESIDENT! 

As of 2 weeks ago, I'm the new young women's president in our ward at church and it's the most daunting thing ever! Not gonna lie, the first week was rough! But Jesus' got my back! I'm slowly realizing I can do this. And there are so many people willing to help me--my counselors and advisors are great and the girls are great. I just gotta grin and bear it and pretend like I know what I'm doing. There have been many phone calls to my mom, emails back and forth with my ladies, and phone calls to my yw prez bff Pagiey.   

4. ONLY 208 DAYS UNTIL GRADUATION!!

It's the final countdown! Well not really, 208 days is kind of a lot but 1 1/2 semesters left of law school sounds much more manageable. I think we've both agreed that Sam's done with school forever but there has been the idea of getting an LLM hopefully senioritis kicks in so school can be done fore good but we'll see. 

so it's fall now?

 It may be fall but we're still over here living our summer life. We've had a few heatwaves and that's totally fine with me because I'm not ready to give up summer. Except for the fact that the day after we bought our pumpkins at the pumpkin patch they shriveled up on our doorstep from the heat :(

 We've still been out surfing on weekends and sometimes we meet up after work, but with it being dark so early it's totally cramping our style.  

 I took Cortney surfing with me on our day off and we froze our buns off but had tons of fun. 

PS. Props to the old man beach bum who took this pic. But he also took a couple other pics just of my bum so....

  Maggie, Ky, and Everest came to visit us one weekend. We spent all day at the beach and Sam helped Maggie and Ky surf but probably not the best idea in 5-7ft waves. We had a beach bonfire and saw the prettiest sunset.  

We took a break between conference sessions to longboard at the bay. 

We've been hanging out with friends on Sundays after church for potluck lunches whether it be at the beach or Jacky or Cort's house. 

So far the only fall activity we've done is go to our fave pumpkin patch for the 4th year in a row. Got us some pumpkins and free apple cider even though it was 80 degrees that day. 

Even though it's still basically summer, that doesn't mean we can't do fall activities--We've been working on our Halloween costumes for a few weeks now and it did cool down one night and I got to wear sweatpants! So that was fun.