La Jolla Seabass BIG ONE

Well, yesterday was a great day. I went out of San Diego as a media person with some guys I know from Pure Fishing, which is a huge company in the sportfishing industry. I ended up getting probably my biggest fish I have ever caught – a 62-lb. white seabass.. I did a write up at this link here:

www.fishrapnews.com/news/newsArticles.aspx?x=5297

Here are some pics:

DisneyLand

Not much to say here but that we have hopefully started a new tradition of going to Disneyland on Christmas Eve or as close to it as we can get. It all started when the Crose-Dwiggins family came out to spend Christmas with us in 2006 and we planned to go to DL on Xmas eve. We had never been during that time so I think we were all excited to see the decor and different parades and fireworks and snowfall they put on for that time of year. Little did I know I would fall in love with the place at Christmas time and want to go back every year to see it. Hopefully everyone can come experience the magic of DL during the holiday season with us some year. There is nothing like it. Here are the pics from 2007's trip.

Christmas with the mouse

We're here!

Mackie and Daddy on the Jungle Cruise (a must ride in this family)

Mommy and Mackie on Pirates of the Carribean! (another must)

The haunted mansion (decked out as the nightmare before Christmas~ Totally Awesome)

It's Geppetto!

The Castle
Pocohantas!

Snow White!

Mackie and Sleeping Beauty~ Thank Goodness we got to see her~ We stood in line for an hour and a half and she was the only one Mackie really wanted to see. Someone was on our side that day!

It's a small world ~ Really cool during the holidays

Daddy and Mackie~ It's a small world! I don't know why she has that face but it makes me smile everytime I see it.

Us~ trying to take a shot of ourselves~ Not too bad

The snow that was supposed to fall~ too windy so it never acutally made it down.

Brandon and I with our snowless non existing fireworks! Thank goodness Mackie was out at this point.

The Castle so beautiful at night.

Main Street with all the lights and the huge Christmas tree at the end! Aww! How I want to go back already!

Still Trying to Catch Up

Of course I have been slacking already. I've been meaning to post our December activities and still haven't got to it. So I am going t try and double up till I get caught up. :)

First off is McKayla's Christmas recital. I am not sure if we told you about last years recital. McKayla would practice ALL the time at home and when it came down to the big day spent she spent the whole night crying in the teacher's lap. We felt so bad and wanted to get her but the teacher's kept giving us the look like "it's alright"~ She was the ONLY one crying and it lasted the ENTIRE night.

So this year rolls around and here she is practicing at home all the time and knows all the songs by heart. Brandon and I were a little afraid she was going to get stage fright again but she did great and sang her little heart out. We were so proud!

Aww! Mackie!

Our sweet "Angel"

Singing her little heart out!

Time to Update

So it's been a while and it was brought to my attention by my sister Sonia that the blog hasn't been updated in a while. (*blushing*) sorry about that! There are so many things I need to put on here so I am going to try and cram them all into a couple of posts.

First off I wanted to just mention that as I am writing this our little brother Fisher is in the operating room- we got a call a little bit ago from Bleu saying the first part of this three part surgery was completed and that he is doing great~ breathing just fine- I wanted to give the link to Bleu and Alison's blog on Fisher's forehead~ They have been updating it often so everyone can keep up with his progress. We know he is in the best of hands and will be back to his little self in no time.

http://fishersforehead.blogspot.com/

Here is the first of many activities we did during December!

Brandon's dad is part of this organization called the Rooster's~ they do alot of fundraising activities for different charities around Orange County. Every december they do a food drive that the family gets together and helps out at. Its a lot of boxes to be filled but tons of people there to help and keeping busy makes the time go by really fast. McKayla loves to help but it gets hard finding jobs that she can do and that entertain her at the same time. Well here are some pics from that morning.



Here is a pic of the usual group that goes every year. Nicole helped out last year and Nate joined us this year (He showed up a little bit after this pic)



There's Brandon! He helped out by breaking down all the boxes and cleaning up in the back area.



Mommy and McKayla~ We helped out with organizing the ramen noodles area and the McKayla had a blast opening the small boxes of fruit bars and dumping the whole box into a bigger box. She was great at that.



McKayla got bored with that job and with Nana's help took a box down the conveyor belt to get it filled with all the goodies.

Now to find the pictures for the next posting~ I'll get caught up soon...I Promise

Early Morning

Just a quick post. Changed my hours at work for now in the winter so I go in at 8:30 and get off at 5. McKayla likes to stay a bit later in the afternoon to play with her friends. Anyways, decided to start getting up early to maybe work out someday, and have been hitting the beach for an hour or so before work. Been calm the last couple mornings, small surf and no wind. Been looking to get a halibut from the surf, but no go. Did manage this nice barred surfperch. Not bad considering they average between 5-7 inches. This one went about 11.5 inches. Caught a few small ones this morning, nothing big. Been nice seeing the sunrise at the beach and wetting a line...Not too cold...





Might go see the Newport Harbor Parade of lights (Christmas Boat Parade) on Friday... It's rated one of the top 10 Christmas light thingys in the country by some magazine or newspaper...

Hope everyone is doing well. We miss everyone...

Brandon and the Fam

McKayla at Gymnastics

Yesterday was McKayla's last class for this session of gymnastics. So being the last class parents are allowed to come watch. I must say that I was so excited to see how much McKayla has learned since our mommy and me gymnastic days. She has come so far in her "tricks" as Ms. Melissa calls them. She is already on the bars trying to pull herself up and flip over. Scary in my mind, but she seems to be getting the hang of it. We filmed her with our video camera and hopefully someday soon I will learn how to get the videos off of the camera and onto the computer. For now we took some still pictures and a video off my phone which I hope will work.

Here she is in her gymnastics stance and doing her stretches on the floor




McKayla being a butterfly~ flying all around!

Build-A-Bear

This past weekend was pretty exciting for McKayla. She is going to be the flower girl in Justin (Brandon's old college roommate) and Amy's wedding in March, so she got to model some beautiful dresses for us on Sunday. Sorry no pics of that~ Bad parents didn't bring the camera. We will get pics of her for sure when she is actually in the wedding and post them. I am sure you can all imagine how beautiful she was in the dresses anyways. For her gift Justin and Amy took her to a Build-A-Bear workshop in Fashion Island for her to create her very own friend. We have never been to a build-a-bear before so this was an exciting adventure for all of us. When we walked into the store we were bombarded with so many different animals, teddy bears, dinosaurs and even reindeers (for the holiday season) to pick from as step 1. McKayla took her time and checked out each and every one of the options but as soon as she saw the green dinosaur (a triceratops to be exact) she was sold. Next we take it to the sound station where McKayla got to pick out what noise she wanted in her dinosaur. She decided on a "Roaring" sound although she claims it is not a scary dinosaur but it is a good fit. Next we take it to the stuffing station where they stuff it a little bit and then they have the kids pick out a heart, rub it in between thier hands, pat it and put it in the animal. Here are some pics of McKayla watching her dinosaur get stuffed.. (Thanks Justin for the pictures)



After that Mackie got to pick out clothes for the dinosaur. They had more options for clothes there than I would have ever thought possible. She decided on a blue fairy princess dress and some high heels to match. Here are some pics of Mackie and daddy dressing the dinosaur.


So after all this you would think we were done. WRONG! Now it is time to get a birth certificate and name the dinosaur. McKayla picked out the name Sella for her dinosaur. The Birth Certificate is printed out and waiting at the cash register for you, but also near the register are tons of accessories for the "bears". McKayla being the girlie girl she is could not resist in getting Sella a purse. I am sure she would have gone all out with accessories if we would have let her. McKayla had so much fun picking out her new friend and we have a new member of the family that joins us everywhere we go. She even goes to work with mommy~ (mommy lets her keep an eye on the car to make sure no one breaks in~ just don't tell Mackie) Here is McKayla with Sella

Thank you Justin and Amy again for Sella~ McKayla loves her new best friend!