Alumni Party

Last year, the Alumni party was a time where Holli and I got to spend some real quality time with each other.  The Alumni party is held every year at a fancy hotel for all of the previous and upcoming graduates at MSU in the film program. The intention of the party is for past MSU students to network with successful graduates, current students to find a couch to sleep on when they move down, etc.  Being the finances of two film students and not having much to contribute to the conversation, we had to find a way to entertain ourselves.


Alumni Party 2013:

Ah, 2013.  What a year.  As you can see, this picture is probably blurry for a reason.  We really lived it up at the alumni party in 2013. We ate the snacks (hello bacon wrapped dates!  I freakin’ love those things!), we indulged in the libations without hesitation, we decided to take action/fashion shots in the bathroom- you know, the usual.

Alumni Party 2014: 

2014 will go down in history as the year that I became old.  There is no such thing as “feeling my oats” anymore unless I want to feel like I need Ibuprofen and a nap.  What kind of crap is this?  This year, we decided that we needed to recreate our epic bathroom picture.  We had to take a few shots and enlisted the help of our friend Tessa to be our Artistic Director to make sure the shot was perfect.  This time around, we had to try pretty hard to make the picture blurry...

 

The Natural History Museum

Since I was shopping for my wedding dress over Valentine's Day weekend, Owen and I had to postpone our day date that we had planned to the Natural History Museum.  The great thing about LA is that you can watch a documentary on TV and then go to the museum or science center the next day and learn more about it.  In keeping with our Netflix trend, we opted for the museum, followed by watching Monuments Men and meeting up with our friends Holli and Rory for dinner. 

Every Friday, Owen and I have "Taco Friday" where we, obviously, eat tacos and watch "Gold Rush" on the Discovery Channel, followed by Bearing Sea Gold. This season, not only are the miners digging for gold in Alaska, but also diamonds in the jungle of Guyana.  We love this stuff.  The mineral exhibit at the museum was right up our ally. They even had a HUGE exhibit about the California Gold Rush with tons of nuggets the size of your fist, but I was so distracted- it was like the first time in my entire life that I didn't get a picture of something that I wanted to.

There were rows and rows of beautiful rocks and mineral deposits.  I kept thinking that my mom, who is a notorious rock collector, would just love all the different colors, shapes, and sizes.

 The dinosaurs were ahhhmazing!  Literally, 90% of the specimens at the museum came from Eastern Montana, followed up by Wyoming and North Dakota.

Race on The Base

This past weekend a few coworkers and I ran the Race on the Base 5K!

I knew the race was coming up, but I didn't necessarily "prepare" in the traditional sense of, you know, running.  I mostly prayed that I wouldn't die and wouldn't get embarrassed from all of the little kids passing me effortlessly...but mostly that I wouldn't die.

We made it out alive and were very proud to show off our medals!

The To Do List: The Griffith Observatory

Owen and I have been watching a lot of Netflix documentaries about space, the universe, stars, planets, etc.  We brushed up on our vocabulary and headed to the Griffith Observatory with our friends Emily, Rudy, Brian, and Steven.

Ah...Albert.  I had to wait to get a picture with him, so I wasn't going to waste my time!

Silver City, NM!

Owen and I took a long weekend to go see his mom who lives in Silver City, NM.  It is only about a 10 hour drive so we thought we might as well go for an adventure and get out of the city.  He did most of the driving and I did most of the bossing around/sleeping-it was a perfect arrangement. 

Silver City is actually famous- it's the hometown of Billy the Kid, who went by "William Bonney" back in the day. The town itself has a lot of character from both Native American and Mexican influences. 

Ellen met us right outside of town because she was certain that GPS wouldn't be able to find her house...she was right!

Ellen knew that  I loved mining and mining culture and took us to see a very large, active, open mine. This is the Santa Rita Mine.  The colors were amazing- the picture doesn't do it justice, as it is both beautiful and devastating at the same time.

Billy the Kid's replica cabbin

Ellen took us hiking to show us the landscape, which is very different from CA and from MT.  

Big Cholla Cactus

Juan Pablo,  the Cholla  we brought home from NM, is sprouting new arms!

The mountains in the far back are mountains in Mexico!

While we were there, the Broncos were playing and Owen decided that he had to do all think is groups of 18, since 18 is Payton Manning's number.  So, he ate 18 pieces of toast and cleaned out a jar of peanut butter.

The next morning we had to leave very early, so Ellen cut his toast in to 18 pieces...so much more practical :)

Christmas Eve

In my house growing up, Christmas Eve was a big deal.  We had a big dinner and opened presents that we got for each other.  Trying to keep some of the tradition alive, Owen and I wanted to make a giant dinner that would keep us going all the way through our Disneyland adventure the next day.  We thought we would try our hand at prime rib.  Owen researched recipes all day long! We decided on the "low and slow" technique for our first attempt.  Most people who know me know that I do not do well waiting for food.  I think the scientific term for what happens to me is hangry.  Hangry defined:

Hangry

word of the day: February 07, 2011

When you are so hungry that your lack of food causes you to become angry, frustrated or both.

An amalgum of hungry and angry invented to describe that feeling when you get when you are out at a restaurant and have been waiting over an hour to get the meal that you have ordered.

"Damn! Where is that steak I ordered? We've been waiting for an hour and a half here. The service here is terrible! I'm starving! I don't know about you, but I'm starting to feel really hangry!"

After 5 hours, I was still alive (barely) and we were ready to eat! Christmas Eve success!

Christmas at Disneyland!

Disneyland

Disneyland was great-very overwhelming, a lot of people...but the details! The detail that Disney puts in to their rides, shops, landscaping- everything is magical.

Indiana Jones
It was a very busy day at Disneyland.  Lot's of people wanted to go to the Happiest Place on Earth to celebrate Christmas.  With that being said, we had to wait a long, long time for every ride.  Below, we wanted to capture a moment of sarcasm mixed with a little frustration because the Indiana Jones ride had a malfunction and shut down when were were about six people away from getting on.  Oh the frustration! We stood in line for a long time to have that giant boulder come rolling toward us!!  Don't worry- Disneyland also has magic mechanics that know what they are doing.  They had the ride up and going in about 15 minutes and the giant boulder rolling towards us was worth every second spent in line.

Pirates of the Caribbean 

Space Mountain

Cinderella's Castle! I had to send this one to my nieces.  

Iron Man!

Splash Mountain

The Haunted Mansion- this one was my absolute favorite! It was decorated as Nightmare Before Christmas. AHMazin!

Everyone I talked to said that the lights are just beautiful at Disneyland during Christmas and I have to agree...

I'm so glad we got to spend Christmas with these two.  We had such a great time, good food, fun rides- a great way to spend Christmas!