We are blogging again! Hooray, hooray—that's what the children say!

It has been awhile since we have blogged and we want to update everyone on what has been happening since August. Corey has kept quite busy with Architecture classes at Cuesta and Donna has had a full teaching schedule that keeps her constantly prepping and grading. From this point on we hope to be blogging more regularly. So join us in some highlights of the past months....(forewarning, this is the longest post we have ever blogged...you might want to pace yourself and read this in a couple sittings)

"YOUNGTIMER's" Party! (party for Corey's grampy!)

Grampy turned the young age of 90, so many of grampy's family and friends got together at his favorite restaurant, PF Changs, and had a birthday bash. Yummy food and fun times down there! There is Grampy, blowing out the fun golf cake. It is surprising any of us were able to eat cake after having our fill of PF Changs! Corey's parents hamming it up at the party. Now it is obvious where Corey gets his goofiness from! (everyone was told to wear Hawaiian shirts)

Other family members were goofing off as well. Jason and Jack were showing how well they could balance spoons on their noses. We tried to imitate but couldn't get ours to stick! During this trip we were able to stay with Vicki (Donna's sis) and Garrett (bro-in-law). We always have a fun time with them! We tend to get a bit weird around them—as seen in the pictures (and other people we are comfortable with). Don't ask us why we were even doing those poses, we don't know!

WE MOVED! Back in September right before classes at Poly started up. We had a whirl-wind of an escrow for Bella Montana (and fortunately got out before all of the financial craziness hit the fan). We were blessed in selling that home and moving to a humble location by Hawthorne Elementary School. The little one bedroom home looks out onto the school's field. It is great coming home after work and seeing several soccer practices in progress and waking up Saturday mornings to the cheering of parents encouraging their 5-year-olds playing soccer or "bunch ball" as some of us call it! Our new home is small, but has been great for us with a great location. This is it! Cute isn't it? This picture was taken before we moved in. We don't have the BBQ in the front (instead there are two chairs that look a lot better out there) and we don't have that bike hanging out on the right side. We do still have the huge pine tree on the left (you can see the branches) and the apple tree on the right (it produces some good apples!). This is a picture of our little living room (made to look bigger thanks to Corey's camera lens). You can see on the right that there is a wood-burning stove (yes, it is in working condition). We are looking forward to using it when it gets cold enough... it is finally cooling down! Our bathroom—as with the rest of the house, has a lot of character. On the plus side, we have a fun claw-foot tub, on the minus side, the sink actually juts out over part of it (it is a tiny space)!

So, we moved in a matter of 11 days. We weren't able to get straight into the rental and were able to crash at our friend's place. Joe and Kristen were awesome and let us stay in their guest bedroom until we could move into our other place. Our shoreline friends, and long-time friends in the area all came through for us when we had to move all our belongings to storage and a week later move most of it into the new little place. Getting settled happened quickly because Donna didn't want to start teaching with a half-unpacked home. It quickly began to feel like home. So, to really test out whether it was ready to live in, we decided to have Corey's 30th birthday party here!

OLDTIMER's Party!

Since Corey was turning the big 3-0, much more than a normal birthday party needed to happen, hence the theme "oldtimer's party" (since 30 is SO OLD!!). We had a blast planning what music would be played (thanks Pandora.com), the food that would be consumed (oatmeal chocolate chip cookies...wafers...all easily digested and eaten), and the games to be played (bingo—thanks Matt and Kayla for loaning it to us, and bocce ball out on the field—thanks to Evan and Sara!). We were able to cram 23 people into this tiny place—yes, it passed the test! The following pics show just what a blast we had and just how all-out our friends went to dress up. (our friends are the best!)

The birthday boy himself—enjoying the sherbet/ginger ale punch—looking quite young! Nice legs for an old man! Josh was extra chipper that evening. He brought his son (well, "grandson") along who wore a cute home-made tie just his size, and his adorable wifey.

Old-timers know how to party it up! Donna, Sara, and the Castros stuck around past their bedtimes! The Castros took bingo very seriously (they are using chocolate-covered raisins as the bingo chips!). They ended up winning one round and received a weekly pill organizer with large lettering. I think if they didn't have Depends protection on, they would have really lost control out of excitement! The Carters made a grand entrance, always looking so great! They brought along pictures of their grandchildren to show off to all the others. Yup, that really is Evan Thompson, showing his *best* side as he and his wife, Sara, came to the party after springing Evan loose from the ICU (who needs hospitals?). Sara looked so great with her new dentures that Donna tried to compete but forgot to put in her dentures and ended up making a quite hideous face for the picture, but fortunately her youthful husband still loves her!

ATWATER VISIT

We were able to go to Atwater mid-October to see the Templeton clan and attend a future Templeton's bridal shower for Shara. Val treated her long time friend Cary and soon-to-be-birthday-girl Donna to a pedicure on Saturday. Later that day Cary had brought in boxes of Val's mom's fun retro hats and Donna gave them each a try. They were fun...most had matching gloves! If only this was still the style!

Indiana Jones showed up to take pictures with "Jackie O".

Once Cary saw the hats on display, she decided to keep them for a while longer and have a tea party with her friends and have them all wear them—great idea! Below is Corey's Dad and Cary.

There is Pop Templeton looking quite distinguished! He enjoyed the hat show and participated as well!

That night we all went to the Branding Iron to have some good ol' steak and celebrate the upcoming birthday for Donna. Lee is smiling big at the thought of the steak he was about to eat!

The next day was Shara's shower. It was great seeing all of the family friends that came to support the upcoming wedding. We don't have any pictures of the shower BUT we do have a picture of what the boys were doing while the ladies were enjoying the shower. They went over to Dick's friend's house and was able to look at all of the African safari animals that were on display. Below is Dick next to little deer-like animals. As soon as Donna saw the picture, she wanted them as pets (alive of course), but without the horns—or at least filed down to a dull point.

LA VISIT

This was our last time seeing Kris as an unmarried man! He is getting married at the end of November to Shara. During this weekend we were able to hang out with Kris, the parents, and Grampy. It brought about some fun photo opportunities. The family men all together. After having a hearty dinner at Applebee's. Val kissing her dad brought about the biggest smile on Grampy's face! Fish-lips, a favorite silly-face of Grampy's. Donna's anger shows up after having too many pictures taken of her. "Take pictures of other people," she says. Ahh, the nice Donna (impy) is back, posing with Grampy (or grimpy, emphasis on the "impy")

A Tuesday Tea Party for Two Times Two!

We had a lovely ladies' tea with including Donna, Erika, Sarah, and Kayla. We wanted to have a tea before Kayla would run off and get married and be too preoccupied with her new husband to hang with us! The tea house that we love to go to is shutting down, so we figured we had better prepare and see if we can have a tea that is just as good! I think it was a complete success! Donna was able to bring out the lovely china and linens she received from Nana Templeton, for the first time! Corey was able to take some of these pictures before he was ushered out of the "no-boys zone". Erika made these melt-in-your-mouth scones! So good! And we had Carmel Cremé Bruleé tea (our favorite) to go with them. Erika relaxing after the scones were made, wearing a cute vintage apron! (See how hard she worked, she had to put on wrist braces!) Donna was caught wearing a vintage apron as well. Boy does Corey love taking pictures of her... This picture shows off the tea cakes before they were devoured (oh so delicately of course!).

SF Weekend!! Love going to the City.

We went to SF to celebrate Donna's birthday, as well as celebrate Rachel Ja's wedding (she was a bridesmaid in our wedding). The goal of this trip was to stay in a hotel near Union Square, relax, shop, and make sure Corey rode a cable car (he has never done that before!). We left after work on Friday and drove up to start the weekend early! We decided to get a birthday cake (cheesecake) at the Cheesecake Factory in Union Square. After a lovely hour looking out onto the Square from under the Macy's sign, we were able to be seated. We decided to do appetizers and then get the piece of cake after. By the time we were finished with the appetizers we were too tired and exhausted to even want cake (what we originally went there for!). Below is the view we could see from the Cheesecake factory. Beautiful! Saturday was the wedding day for Rachel and Roland. It was walking distance (a mere ten blocks or so... but seemed longer to Donna who was wearing heels) so we decided to walk there and enjoy the sights (and shopping) as we went. This wedding was in a beautiful church off of Sacramento street. Loved the stained glass windows. Donna's college friend from the dorms never looked happier than coming down that aisle. The invitations and programs were well designed (by one of the bridesmaids). Donna is shown below holding up the interactive program. There was a break of 3 hours between the ceremony and the reception. (We thought that was crazy, but it seems that this is a common custom for weddings in SF). So, we were able to spend more time looking around and walking in different parts of SF that we had never seen before (yes, Donna switched to more comfortable shoes for this part). There is a beautiful park past Market street that we had never gone to, but were led that way on the search for buildings Corey wanted to capture. We found the Jewish Museum, that architect Daniel Libeskind redesigned—the design was inspired from two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Quite a contrast to the buildings next to it! Below are shots from the park that we discovered. From the other people around, you can see we weren't the first to discover this place. Donna, now getting tired of being the model, points at a building to distract Corey from taking pictures of only her (it worked for a few seconds). We went over to where there is a memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. More photo opportunities seemed to arise...These pictures were taken behind the man-made waterfall. And more fun pictures... Little known fact: Donna LOVES ginko trees! The leaves are so beautiful to her. The first time she ever picked up a leaf was back in 2004 when Corey and Donna went back east to visit Kris in DC and they have huge ginko trees there that were changing to a rich yellow color. The last thing we squeezed in before the reception was going to the sfMOMA. The last half hour of the day is FREE. We just thought we could take a couple pictures from the lobby—but upon hearing that good news we raced up the stairs and tried to get a fly-by viewing of the museum. We saw a couple things...but then had to race back to get our car and drive to south SF for the reception. Below are pictures of the lobby. This wall of shiny gold beads caught Donna's eye (yes, it was only the entrance to the exhibits, but she found these more enticing)! Now to the reception. The reception was held at a seafood restaurant, where the entire two story restaurant was dedicated to this luxurious reception. We had our first experience with traditional Chinese meals. Items like jellyfish, shark fin soup, duck, and other treats (some a bit scary to the unexperienced consumer). Corey tried a bit of his chinese (he managed not to accidentally ask someone to kiss him this time...if you don't know the story you should ask him)! We were seated in the balcony, where we watched the reception via a big screen on the wall! (yes, it was a pretty big wedding) We had a pretty fun table, filled with Rachel's friends from high school and college. Below is a picture of Donna with her two friends from college. (Donna had not seen Kerry since the dorms back freshman year—boy does time fly!) At one point in the reception all the lights went out and then Rachel re-appeared from a side-door in this traditional Chinese outfit. She made her rounds and was able to give Donna a big hug. The wedding was great fun, and quite an experience. Now that it was over at 9:30, the night was still young and Corey needed to ride a cable car before the weekend was over. We figured riding it at night before it shut down for the evening would be a lot less crowded than the morning when it was filled with eager tourists. We rode on the Powell/Hyde line (the best one that goes up the biggest hills and starts and ends at the best places!). It was a blast. Corey got to hang off the poles and see many sights of SF in a quick trip over to Fisherman's Wharf. (The ride back, the operator actually stopped the cable car in the middle of the route, got out—even though cars were piling behind us—and walked over to his car and got out his jacket because he was getting cold!!) Hitting our destination, we promptly headed over to Ghirardelli square before the dessert fountain closed. We ate some great chocolate ice cream there! The last day in SF was dedicated to SHOPPING! To help this truly happen, Kim came along to shop with Donna and give Corey the day off to go and track down and take pictures of architecturally pleasing buildings. We first had to get fueled up at the nearest bagel shop and prepare for the day of bargain shopping at Loehmans! Kim and Donna both found great deals and came out (hours later) very happy. Corey also had a great time finding some good sites to take pictures of. Here are a few below. To end the SF trip, Kim's husband, Brandon, joined us for sushi. This is a picture of Donna and Corey amusing themselves before the sushi came. (Donna is trying to imitate Corey)

Kim and Brandon pose behind our huge dish of sushi rolls! YUM! We finished off that dish easily!

Matt & Kayla BARNES! Just this past weekend we were able to celebrate, with many friends, the wedding of Matt and Kayla. We had the pleasure of working with both of them in the Jr. High ministry at Shoreline. Matt had asked Kayla to marry him at the end of a Wednesday night youth study! Now here they were, getting married, FINALLY! The ceremony was held at First Baptist and was filled with lots of shoreline friends. Kayla and Matt have never looked happier!Now leaving the church as husband and wife, Matt and Kayla are ready to party it up at the reception! Jack and Jinell Arnold pose at the end of the ceremony. This was Jack's first time officiating a wedding (but you wouldn't have known it—he did great).

On the way over to the reception, Corey can't resist taking another picture of his bride. Yes, he is in the driver's seat taking a picture at a stoplight! Crazy! Well, the reception proved to be quite entertaining. Our table was filled with fun characters (though some of them decided to flee the premises because they couldn't handle being at the "crazy" table—Ben and Nicole being two that didn't even show up to the reception because they were so scared!) Joel Carter is trying out new fashion ideas with the napkins. He says, "Sarah made me do it!" The girls were part of the chaos, though they will put all the blame on the guys at the table. Sarah had so much fun, she fell over and sprained her ankle, and there just happened to be crutches for her to use! (well, maybe that is a bit of a lie, but it makes for a better story than just falling off a curb—we love you Sarah!)

During the night, there were a few crazy things that went on. Donna was overly excited to tap the glass to make Kayla and Matt kiss, and ended up cracking the glass and spilling water all over the table (Kayla, if you read this, we are very sorry for the additional cost of the glass)! Erika, pictured below, took a double-dog dare to show off her "cake goo through the teeth talent" to the guys sitting at the table behind us. It was great seeing their disgusted faces in response!

Overall it was a fantastic wedding and we are so happy for Matt and Kayla! Well, that is it for now! We warned you that this blog was long. Take a break and look away from the computer so you don't go cross-eyed! More to come (we will be updating more frequently).