Christmas 2009

Lets start out with this little gem:
Oh Laura how I miss you :) I love the new video camera mom got me for Christmas! It is a Vado HD and the reason it is so awesome is that it is pocket sized (like a regular digital camera) so I am more apt to carry it around than something big that will require me bringing a separate carrying case. Since I am still new at this thing you will have to cut me some slack. While editing the following video, it came to my attention that, since I am holding the camera, it picks up my voice much better (read: louder) than everyone else's. Also, since it is so tiny, I apparently have the urge to move it around a lot, resulting in an earthquake type scenario with everything I am trying to film - I'll be working on these two factors but for now you'll just have to suffer through. Ed Note: if you double click on the video it will open up a youtube page where you will be able to watch a larger version (mom).

Thanksgiving 2009

Mom and I flew to NY to stay with Katie and Sheldon at their apartment. My Christmas present from mom was a pocket sized video camera - yea!

Raquetball

Current tally: Chuck 8 games won - Paige 0 games won.
I feel the tide turning slowly but surely in my favor.
Do you feel it?

Darren's

Chuck and I went out for an awesome dinner last night at a restaurant in downtown Manhattan Beach called Darren's. We had such a good time that we couldn't leave without a picture, this is us and Darren himself!

From Julie: My 1st ever Gingerbread House. Where is Katie when you need her?

X-mas Fireworks

Apparently the Manhattan Beach city council is unaware of the recession... which is great for us because last Sunday we were treated to a winter festival complete with snow, Santa and a fireworks show! I find it especially interesting since they didn't even have a fireworks show for fourth of July (maybe it would have distracted the water balloon tossers) but they made up for lost time because the fireworks were unbelievable! The best part was that they set them off of the pier so there was plenty of room for us to sit on the sand and watch. Also look how they lit the building up at the end of the pier so that it looks like a Christmas tree :)

Merry Christmas from the Boys

Chuck and his roommates asked me to come over yesterday afternoon to take a Christmas card photo for them - here is the winning shot:

Swine Flu

This weekend I took care of a 25 year old teacher who got swine flu from one of his students. This was admittedly a bit unsettling - most of the people we care for are considerably older than us and their hearts and lungs are failing from years of eating cheeseburgers and smoking, but this guy is my age, he was completely healthy (he was a track coach) a week ago and now he is in our ICU because of a disease that he could still give to me... which is why Kell and I (Kell was the other nurse assigned to him - he was sick enough to need two of us!) looked like this all weekend:

Left:

Nurse

Kell

Right:

Nurse

Paige

The photos aren't great because they were taken on my phone by a nurse outside the room. Since this guy has Swine Flu he has to be in a negative pressure room, meaning that we have to enter and exit his room through an anteroom that constantly has the air being pulled out of it (like a chemistry lab ventilation hood) so that his germs can't get to the rest of the patients. The flu is transmitted through droplets of moisture in the air he breathes so we were safer because he is on a ventilator but we were still wearing special masks (that were very tight and hot) to prevent us from breathing in any errant germs and we had to wear the gloves, gowns, goggles and booties in the event that we came in contact with any sputum. Suffice it to say that I took a very long shower last night.

Snow Plow

I got this picture in an email from Julie titled "Jeff at 6am":

The Sultans in Turkey...

DC

A few weeks back Ashley and I flew to Washington, DC. We planned to stay with Anna and Ben but they had to go out of town at the last minute so we ended up staying in their very cool Manor House and tooling around in their car so THANK YOU Anna and Ben for your generosity and we were sad to miss you but hopefully you will be able to visit us out in LA soon! I have never been to DC and I had just finished reading 'The Lost Symbol' which is Dan Brown's new book that has a story set in DC, so I couldn't wait to get around to all of the monuments but we ran into a minor technical difficulty:We did manage to get some sightseeing done :)

He had me at "Merhaba" aka "Hello"

Jeff and I just got back from a vacation in Turkey visiting my best friend from 25 years ago...we were all like kids again for the week...

Thanksgiving Orphan Feast

We had such success with the Thanksgiving Orphan Feast last year that we decided to bring it back for year two. We went a little bigger this year (20 people) which necessitated the cooking of two turkeys but everything came out OK, witness Timmy's turkey coma:

Dudamel

For Chuck's birthday I got him tickets to see the LA Philharmonic! We have been trying to get tickets for awhile now but they keep selling out because the LA Phil just got a new conductor named Gustavo Dudamel. He is only 28, he is from Venezuela, he has crazy hair and he is awesome. I submit this photo as evidence:He jumped around on his conductor stand the entire performance, I was actually afraid he would fall off at one point but he made it through unscathed and it was an amazing show! Ed. Note: Please observed that Chuck's hair is extra poofed. This is because we decided to drive to the show (on the interstate) with the top down - we love the TT.

The Scooter Fiasco

Last year I took a course to learn how to drive a motorcycle. The end result of that class was me realizing that my days would be numbered if I attempted to navigate LA traffic on a motorcycle, but I wasn't willing to part with the idea completely so I ended up buying a scooter instead! I kept meaning to make a video or a post about it, featuring me zipping around Manhattan Beach, but the time never seemed right. The scooter was in and out of a repair shop and every time I got it back I would get excited and then a week later something else would go wrong. Not cool. My relationship with the scooter ended last weekend when I sold it to the next schmuck in line. I was going to post about selling it and then realized I never even posted about buying it, I guess that should have tipped me off!

TT

I got The Red Machine from Julie my senior year of high school, it has come with me to college and to California and it has been the best. But, being the responsible young lady that I am, I decided that I would preemptively start the search for my Car 2.0 before something devastating happened to the Pathfinder and I was stuck with a car payment in school (I was being responsible and positive). I brought my plan up to Dad who proposed an alternative: that I take their TT instead of buying something new. My initial reaction was no way, it is too small and I don't know how to drive stick shift. But I slowly warmed up to the idea (and the thought of no car payment) and thus the TT arrived last week. And I am loving every second of it.

Redfield Manor Garlic Patch

No more vampires allowed anywhere near Redfield Manor!

Happy Halloween

Game Faces

We had an intense beach volleyball game this past weekend which inspired the following team photo:

Back Row L to R: Dan, Jay, Drew, Min, Chris

Front Row L to R: Sarah, Paige, Chuck, Aliza, Kelly

And then we took one for the moms:

Back Row L to R: Dan, Jay, Drew, Min, Chris

Front Row L to R: Sarah, Paige, Chuck, Aliza, Kelly

Fall at Redfield Manor

From Julie: Katie and Sheldon came up for the weekend. Katie turned out to be a world champion "Segger". She flew around on the Segway while the rest of us just watched an waited for her to come back to home base at the barn.




And, Tapper and Guinness kept their attentive eye on her the whole time...

Jessie wasn't quite as interested in the whole thing....She was more interested in her new duck toy.

Chicken Farming 101!

We just processed our first set of meat birds (aka Chickens) at the Redfield Manor Farm. It's been an amazing experience to go from day old chicks to 8 lb birds in just 10 weeks!

6th Place at the Hunter Pace!

It was a bitterly cold, rainy, windy, wintery day, but that didn't stop us from entering the Rockefeller Estate Hunter Pace. And, since we rode with 11 year Cody Ryder, we were considered a "Junior Team". This was quite a help with winning our 6th Place Ribbon!

Latest from Redfield Manor. Its such a long walk to the barn...

How Sweet The Sound

I surprised Chuck Thursday night with tickets to a gospel choir competition called 'How Sweet the Sound'. It is a national competition billed as the search for the best church choir in America. There are regional competitions held in 11 different cities all over the US culminating with a final competition (between the winners of all the regional competitions) in Detroit on November 7th. The winning Los Angeles choir was P.S.A.L.M.S from the City of Refuge church. They won with a song called 'Souled Out' and I think you'll see why:

We Moved!

From L to R: Dan, Ashley, Drew, Timmy, Heidi, Kim, Mover #1, Mover #2, Paige

Again! I am still in Manhattan Beach but at a new apartment that is about a block from the beach. Kayla decided that she wanted to move to Hollywood so I convinced Kim and Ashley to come down to Manhattan Beach and we got a three bedroom apartment that is a five minute bike ride away from my old place. The best part of our new place is the roof. When you stand on our roof you have a view of the entire Los Angeles bay, from Malibu up North to Palos Verdes and Catalina down South. We took the picture above on the deck the night we moved, and the video below is meant to entice you all into coming for a visit! Note about the video: YouTube has lately taken to the annoying habit of removing the audio tracks of my videos because I do not own the actual copyrights to the music (forget that I own the actual song), so you will see that my video is mute... until YouTube gets this figured out I will just have to ask you to play the song yourself, on your own computer, in tandem with the video. The song that is supposed to be playing is called 'Smile' and it is by Uncle Kracker. On the bright side, if you do come to visit, I will be happy to show you the video in its entirety!