Happy 2010 :)

This has the potential to be the longest blog post EVER. It has been a ridiculously busy (and definitely wonderful) couple of weeks. I headed home right after finals/the Friday before Christmas on the red eye and Rob followed on a red eye flight that landed in Cleveland early Christmas Eve morning. We had a busy couple of days, cramming in as much as we possibly could, but enjoyed every minute of it and loved the chance to catch up with so many of our friends and family and even share in a bit of cold weather and snow :) We had lunch at the Original Pancake House, went to both of our families church services Christmas Eve, spent time at Rob's Grandparents and Aunt Sue's house, played board games and laughed forever with my family, saw his sister's apartment and met up with friends at B-Dubs. And, realistically, that doesn't even cover half of it! On the Sunday before we left, Rob's parents came over for brunch and we pulled out our wedding cake! It was a lil past our one year anniversary, but we had froze it at my parents' house and planned on eating it at Christmas. It preserved fairly well and as I expected, Rob smushed it all over my face like I did to him at the wedding!

Wedding cake eating above and friends at B-Dubs below :)

We came back to Phoenix the Sunday after Christmas, but just for a few days. I had enough time to unpack, attempt some after Christmas shopping (I really wanted a tree on super sale, but the only ones left were ugly) and bake cupcakes! Cupcakes are my new thing for 2010, I've decided. Rob bought me a book about decorating cupcakes for Christmas and his parents bought me a book of cupcake recipes. I decided to try both out and baked Ohio State/New Years cupcakes to celebrate the Rose Bowl. I made chocolate chip cupcakes and homemade vanilla frosting...but the real accomplishment was that my decorating looked like what I intended it to! I made buckeyes out of caramels and tootsie rolls and block o's out of red m&m's. We brought them out to California, where we spent New Year's with Brian, Dad, Adam and Dad's friend, Jeff. Adam, who is my ultimate validator, gave them the taste approval. I was pleased :)

(Pictures of the set-up/work area and final product!)

Now...on to this New Years/California business. Dad and Adam bought tickets to the Rose Bowl and were planning on heading out to stay with Brian (in Carlsbad/San Diego) for a few days. As it turned out, Rob was able to get access to the Cutter plane for the weekend and we decided to join the celebration. It was so awesome to be able to fly over to visit family on what kind of felt like our own lil private plane. We headed out on New Year's Eve after Rob finished up at Quantum (one of his students had a checkride...and passed!) and arrived in California about 6:30. We went out to dinner, marveled at how the west coast doesn't "really" celebrate new years (they just show the tape delay of the ball dropping in New York) and ran around the pool at midnight with a dollar in our hand for good luck, as is the tradition passed down by Jeff. Typically, you run around the house, but Brian's townhouse, didn't really provide a clear cut path, so we went with the pool right next to it instead. We were all in bed by about 12:10. Party animals :) Everyone but Rob and me woke up early New Year's Day to make the trip to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl. We slept in and watched the parade on TV (but still want to go to the parade someday!) and had a low-key day. We met Logan (who moved from Phoenix to Carlsbad almost a year ago now) for breakfast at Panera, went for a run on the beach (my favorite!) and just sat around and watched football. Such a good start to the year :)

On Saturday, we woke up early and went flying/exploring with Logan. First we went to Catalina, an island off the coast of California that you can only get to by boat or plane. It was gorgeous! Rob had read about a trail that went around the airport on the island and was an easy walk. I'm not sure we were on the right trail or maybe we were but we turned the wrong way on it, and also, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to wear flip-flops. Long story short, not an easy or enjoyable walk. I got a cactus pricker in my toe. Argggghhhhh. Here are some pretty pictures of Catalina though :)

Boats and houses and a lil piece of a community on the island.

More of the island, taken from the sky.

Pretty flowers and mountains, taken near the airport after we landed.

After Catalina, we headed to Santa Barbara. We parked our plane at an FBO there and they had a crew car that we were able to use! It was almost a Mustang convertible (which would have been super cool), but the last person who borrowed it scraped the back up a bit, and the manager needed to look at it before it could be lent out again. Sad. We ended up in some new Nissan (nice, but less exciting) and drove down State Street, where there are a lot of expensive shops and restaurants, and ended at the fisherman's wharf. We had lunch on the top deck of a restaurant on the wharf, overlooking the ocean. It was beautiful. My apologies in advance to everyone on the cold east side of the country, but 75 degrees and sunny, without a cloud in the sky, was the perfect day.

Here is a picture of Santa Barbara as we were heading into the airport, which was just off the coast. When we left, we took off over the ocean!

Rob and I in the plane, getting ready to leave Santa Barbara and head back to Carlsbad.

I took this picture on the way out of Santa Barbara. You can just barely see the wharf jutting off the coast, which is where we ate lunch.

We flew all along the coast on the way back and Logan pointed out lots of famous sounding cities and landmarks like Orange County, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Disney Land (even though we couldn't quite see it from the sky), Hollywood/the Hollywood sign in the mountains, Santa Monica pier and Los Angeles.

This is Santa Monica pier, from the sky.

And this is LA. It went on forever and ever and ever! You can see a little piece of LAX in the bottom left corner, a highway and just a lil of the huge city that sprawls out around it all.

Our trip to California really reminded Rob and me about the benefits of living out here. He was really excited to add new, awesome sounding airports to his logbook (something different than Medina, Akron, etc.), and we both had an unbelievable trip. Honestly, the pictures don't do it justice. We made it back in the mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day with Dad, Adam and Brian before heading back to Phoenix. Rob logged the entire trip back as night hours, which was great, and I snoozed a lot of it (also great)! We woke up early this morning to look at a few additional houses with Ed and talk through the details of a deadline we want to give Bank of America on giving us an answer. We found a foreclosure that needs a bit of work (but nothing major) and has a lot of  potential that we are going to start pursuing. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will be one big step closer to being homeowners :) We will keep you all posted.

Rob has a ton of pictures on his camera as well that I still need to upload, sort through and post. However, I am thinking that the additional pictures (of Catalina and Santa Barbara) will have to wait until tomorrow/a little later this week. I need to start thinking about getting ready for school tomorrow and getting to bed. I have a feeling 5:15am will come awfully quickly after two weeks of sleeping in! It was a great few weeks, but will be good (I suppose!) to get back on a regular schedule. It was so wonderful to see everyone in Ohio and California and we cannot wait for our next trip back and to own a home and start hosting you all here in Phoenix/Queen Creek :) Check back soon for pictures and have a good first day back to reality after vacation as well! Love always, Sarah and Rob