Day 2 In Santa Barbara – The Zoo, Hiking, Room Service and a Movie

All right you better buckle in for this one…it is going to be a long post. I can’t say sorry for it because the reason it is so long is that I have such an AWESOME boyfriend; he takes me to do SO many fun things. So consider yourself forewarned and while you are at it grab a snack and a soda, you might need refreshments. And remember...don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ok so where we last left off…Danny and I had put the “kids” to bed and were headed out to dinner…let’s pick up the next morning. As I mentioned above my boyfriend is awesome so on Saturday morning he let me sleep in while he took Aspen and Gracie out for their morning walk at 6:30am. If you know Aspen at all you know that once he is ready to get up to eat and go potty you are just wasting your time if you try and make him wait. They were gone for about 30 minutes so I was just falling back into a good sleep when eight muddy paws woke me back up. I couldn’t complain because they are so cute, I am sure that the maid staff at the hotel couldn’t complain however…white sheets and muddy paws don’ mix…SORRY Fess!!

In true vacation fashion after Danny got back with the dogs we decided to sleep a little longer…it was nice. I LOVE to sleep in, especially with my boyfriend and doggies cuddled up with me!!
With our morning nap complete, the dogs fed and out for a second bathroom run we decided to head to the hotel restaurant for the breakfast buffet. I was starving!! Not to mention I freakin love breakfast food…eggs, toast, omelets (I know technically a repeat of eggs but so good they deserve their own category), cereal, bacon, sausage and HASHBROWS all washed down with what else…a diet coke!! Maybe all these things are sounding even better to me right now because I am currently on a “diet”. Hehehe.

On a side note my smart boyfriend, at a pretty family friendly hotel, decided to wear his shirt that on the front says, “NERD” and peek around to the back in BIG writing it says, “BOOGER 69”…classy I know. Standing in line at the omelet station we thought about what his shirt said. I think it is a cute shirt but maybe not what parents want their kids to read, hehehhe. Good thing Danny had his jacket handy so he covered up the “BOOGER 69” part for breakfast. Yep…we are always looking out for others.

After breakfast we were headed for the Santa Barbara Zoo!! We plugged the address in our navigation and hit the road…for a mile and a half. The funny part is if we had stayed at the original crappy hotel the zoo was directly behind us!! We didn’t realize this so we would have put the address in the navigation and driven the block from said crappy hotel to the zoo. Hehehe.


I really wasn’t expecting much from the zoo…I mean I didn’t even know there was a zoo in SB until I drove by the sign on the freeway. But then when I read the information Danny printed out in preparation for our trip it said that it was consistently rated one of the best small zoos in the nation. I was a little pumped; after all I love to see animals!! As we headed through the zoo gates I was ready to rock!

Ok, so the first thing we came upon wasn’t really an animal but it provided a great photo-op courtesy of Danny:


If I had to guess I would say that we spent at least 20 minutes in this spot, adjusting angles and waiting for people to move out of the way so that Danny could get the perfect shot. He is a perfectionist!!

After spending some quality time with the blue parrots we set off to find some “real” animals!! One might not think this would be too difficult a task since we were at a zoo and all!! WRONG! This was very hard. First of all the zoo path didn’t go in any particular order, so you could make a turn and be back where you had already walked five times (seeing no animals) and totally miss a path you hadn’t even been on once!! We finally came across two lions but I couldn’t get a good shot of them since they sleep about 20 hours a day (they should hang out with my dogs)!!

We passed this little kid play area that had a train station you could board and the train went all around the zoo. Do you see where this is headed? NO! Well then you must be slow and in that case…let me break it down for you. Four dollars later Danny and I were onboard the train, with all the little kids, ready to take a trip around the zoo. Now mind you Danny did not want to ride the train but I thought it would be the best way to see all the animals, this way we could see where they were all located and get a game plan for the zoo. Holy crap…how many times can I be wrong in one zoo trip. We saw pretty much ZERO animals on our train ride around the zoo. We did however see the freeway and our first CRAPPY hotel.

Ok, so the train ride wasn’t really all that helpful in locating animals but if you were looking to see the outer edge of the zoo, crappy hotels and freeway then it was totally worth the money. For us it looked like we were on our own. Things did pick up a little after this. We found some elephants. Which I think are rather unique, I mean they are HUGE, gray and leathery but still manage to be cute at the same time!! Danny snapped this shot, and I am sure I don’t need to tell you that it involved another 20 minutes to get just the right shot (my little perfectionist).


After the elephants it was my favorite part of the zoo trip…the giraffe!! I know you might be thinking…how can a giraffe be all that exciting. Well these giraffe’s were great because I got to feed them (for a small fee of course)!! Here is me and my giraffe friend:


You also might ask why I wasn’t looking at the camera, Danny did. I have a great answer for that…the giraffe was very impatient!! If you didn’t give him his giraffe rice cake (I named the giraffe snacks this because they literally eat them one after another since every zoo visitor wants to feed them so they have to be low in calories or the zoo would have some FAT giraffes on their hands) he would LUNGE and HISS at you!! I didn’t know a giraffe could hiss either but take my work for it, they do!! I had to keep my eye on this one!

Once I was able to get away from the hissing giraffe we found these Meerkats, I snapped this picture and I love it because he is just chillin, cause that is what Meerkats do...chill!


I really do love any sort of apes, gorillas or monkeys so when I found this guy I was so excited, except he looked so sad.


I thought maybe he was sad because he was all alone but I found his buddy in the corner. Their enclosure was pretty small…I think they should get moved to a bigger zoo, but that is just me. Before we left he decided to lie down and looked a little sadder, poor gorilla.


On a funny note we found this cool wall that I look at as the perfect photo-op!
A little monkey “product placement” (shout out to Melissa)”:


Danny and his friends, just hangin out:


What in the heck? Is that chimp on my head? Why YES, it is!!


Me and my family tree!!


We did see some other things on the trip like snakes, roaches, lizards, penguins and such but overall nothing too exciting. Maybe I am just spoiled living so close to places like the San Diego Wild Animal Park and I should learn to see the value in small zoos. I think the problem is small zoos means small animal enclosures which equals sad animals and sad Heather.

I do have one last picture to share from the zoo, it is so sweet, they look like they are in love…maybe it was their ten year anniversary too!!


One “small” zoo trip down we headed back to the hotel to pick up the dogs. I missed them. We picked them up and headed off to a trail that Danny had researched (I know…what an awesome guy) to go for a hike. This trail was INSANELY pretty!! I don’t think I have ever been on such a pretty hike. It really was awesome. You drive right up to the back of the trail, park and walk right in. The view, in case you didn’t get this already, was AMAZING. There were all this beautiful trees and then just a huge cliff that dropped waaaayyyyy down into ocean (you really can't tell how far it is from the pictures).


While this part was pretty it did make me a little nervous because the dogs were off leash. I was afraid the dogs we go to get a quick peak and then slip right off the side. When ever we got around other dogs, and there were tons, I was the nervous mom constantly yelling at Aspen and Gracie to come back and stay right next to me. These other dogs seemed familiar with the trail and obviously knew that one step too far would end in certain death…Aspen and Gracie didn’t seem to be aware of this.

We found some nice fellow hikers that took this picture of two of us:


Of course Danny was upset because it didn’t have the angle that he want but for me it was one of my favorites of the trip because we were both in it, I think it is the only one we got on the entire trip. I always say I wish we had someone that we could bring along on all our outings just to snap pictures of us…our own little paparazzi!!

Here is one of me and the kids:


Of course Danny was happy with the angle on this one because he got to take it. This is also why it appears that Aspen and Gracie are attempting to run out of the shot, they got tired after posing after the first 500 shots. Hehehe.

I like this one because it isn’t a perfect picture, it was really windy and my hair was going crazy…and look how cute Gracie is with her tongue hanging out.


Here is one of me that Danny took at the edge of the cliff:

This one is cool because the sailboat in the background. There were a ton of sailboats in Santa Barbara…they are cute. Newport is full of powerboats, which are also nice and more convenient but I think sailboats are beautiful.

I am not sure if I have mentioned or not before how much I love my dogs…but it is a LOT!! That might be why this is another of my favorite pictures from the trip.


Such pretty babies!!

And finally to close out our segment on hiking if you ever find yourself in SB, looking for a place to hike, here is the name of the trail we were on:


I highly recommend it!!

I think it is totally obvious in the last picture that the dogs were pretty tired and looking for a break, well Danny and I were also looking for a break, but in the form of food!! A good hike works up a good appetite. We were so hungry that we decided to head back to the same place we went the day before, on the pier, since we knew that they would take the dogs and we thought the meal was pretty good. I snapped this picture of Danny checking out the menu:


AND right after that we were asked to leave!! Yep!! I said it!! Our waitress came up saying something about our dogs being cute but that she couldn’t have them stay. Now keep in mind that we were sitting two tables over from where we had just eaten, with the dogs, less than 24 hours ago. This of course made Danny mad…but made no difference to the waitress as she said, “it’s like California law or something…” and that is a direct quote. I guess the day before it was ok for them to break the law but not that day…maybe it is only a law on Saturday’s…hehehhe. We left.

Still hungry and having been kicked out of the restaurant we wanted to eat at we headed to State Street to see what we could find. We found a cute little California bistro. Another picture of Danny checking out the menu:


I realize this post is super long so I will spare you the details of this meal (we didn’t get kicked out) but let’s just say that it was our waiters first week and he wasn’t very skilled at his job. The food was good, at least, even if we had to wait FOREVER!!

So in the condensed version we went back to the hotel, checked out a couple more things around the hotel, took the dogs for a walk and then debated over what to do for dinner. We had a fairly long day with the zoo and hike so we thought it would be fun and romantic to order room service and watch a movie. So we did!!

It was a yummy dinner; our hotel did a great job. I forgot to get a picture of the food but Danny had salmon and I had chicken. I did get a picture of the soup that we started off with:


And here is one of Danny enjoying his soup and movie (we got Rambo 4 on PPV, nothing says romance and 10 years like Rambo, hehehehe):


And here is his approval on the soup (notice the diet coke because what meal would be complete with out diet coke in Heather’s world…NONE):


And so day two in Santa Barbara concludes with dinner and a movie, in bed. Make sure you stayed tuned for our final day in Santa Barbara, which includes such highlights as a trip to Solvang and a very (very) brief casino trip!!

Day 1 In Santa Barbara – Hotel Room and the Pier

So after we got the whole hotel fiasco taken care of we settled into our trip nicely. As soon as we walked into the Fess Parker Double Tree I felt so much more at ease and ready for my mini vacation. The girl at the counter was so sweet (her name was Heather…how could she not be) and really made our arrival pleasant. We told her about our horrible ordeal at the other hotel (see previous post) and that we were celebrating our ten year anniversary. She kept apologizing for our troubles at the other hotel and in order to make our anniversary stay at this hotel better she upgraded us to a garden view room!! She even felt bad that she didn’t have an ocean view room for us, but you could actually see the ocean from our room anyways. After she got us all checked in and gave us our warm chocolate chip cookies she asked that we hold on for one moment as she had something for our dogs. I assumed that it might be something to clean up their “business” but when she came back it was a little gift bag!! It was so cute, there was a magazine on the best dog friendly hotels, a tennis ball (score for Aspen) and dog treats (score for Gracie, Aspen too but mostly my little chub, chub).

Dog treats courtesy of the Fess Parker:


Once check in was complete, cookies were ate and gift bacg was in hand we got back in the car to drive to our room. Yes I said drive; this was a resort so it was all spread out so we weren’t being lazy. It actually wasn’t too far away but too far to lug the dogs and all of our luggage.

This was the view walking up to our room:


Our room was just to the right on the second floor and just after the palms trees at, the end, was the ocean; it is just a little hard to see because it was a cloudy day.

As soon as we opened the door to our room I was sooo excited. Our room was beautiful and HUGE!! We had two beds, tons of space, a balcony and it was CLEAN!! I loved it!! I couldn’t stop smiling I was so excited over the room!!

After we were done checking out the room and unpacking we decided to take a walk to get something to eat as we were both starving. It was a long drive there and we were running on nothing but chocolate chip cookies!! We walked straight out the path in the above picture and headed to the right towards the pier and State Street.

I quickly discovered something I didn’t know about Santa Barbara…they have a huge homeless population. As Danny put it, “They need Rudy Giuliani”!! This was both unsettling and sad to me. I always feel for people and wonder how they got there. I wish I could help them all get out, I am sure that once you are homeless it is close to impossible to change that. Most people aren’t willing to help someone that doesn’t have an address to provide. At the same time I have to admit it makes me nervous…I don’t know if that is wrong to say but it is how I feel. I like to feel comfortable in my surroundings.

The other thing we discovered about Santa Barbara during this first walk is that they aren’t what I would call dog friendly…in fact I would openly call many of them dog haters!! I know…what kind of person hates dogs? I thought the exact same thing so you and I are on the same page.

Still looking for something to eat we headed out the pier. We stopped at the first restaurant we came to where I went in and asked the hostess if we could eat on the patio with our dogs. She was very nice and said, “Sure. You just have to head up the back stairs and grab a table in the back so you don’t walk through the whole patio.” Please remember this information for a post yet to be written (thank you in advance). Our lunch was great!! To start off we got some garlic bred and shared a wedge salad (I freakin love wedge salads). For our meals Danny had some tri-tip kind of sandwich and I had a cheeseburger (I was in heaven). We shared with the dogs, I know you shouldn’t give people food to dogs…blah, blah, blah…but they were on vacation too!! Hehehe. Our server was nice and was great with the dogs. All in all a nice meal and it was pretty cheap for what we got.

I swear I had more pictures from the restaurant but I can’t find them…so sad. I had major camera issues getting the SB pictures off the card and on to my computer.

However this is my favorite picture of the day:


Aren’t they sweet!! I don’t think you can get any cuter!! Although you wouldn’t be able to tell this was while we were sitting at the restaurant.

Since we ate everything under the sun for lunch with decided to walk the rest of the pier…we needed the exercise. HOWEVER not even 20 feet from the restaurant we came to a candy store and anyone who knows Danny knows that he can’t resist candy…he is like a crack addict on skid row!! He went in and loaded up!! I waited outside. Once Danny made his careful selections, which was pretty much the whole store he came out to see if I wanted anything, I said no. Danny, said, “Are you sure? They have cotton candy!’ I joined him on skid row…I can’t turn down cotton candy…I know I am weak.

As we each snacked, each on our own addictions, Danny’s anything with the word candy in it, mine cotton candy; we headed towards the end of the pier. Once you get all the way to the end it is kind of freaky because there is no railing or anything to stop you from slipping right off, it just drops down to the water!! S-C-A-R-Y!! In a testament to how much I love my dogs I told Danny if one of them fell in I would jump in after them and safely swim with them to shore (which was FAR). This is saying a ton coming from me because I am terrified of deep water. Danny said he wouldn’t. He doesn’t fool me, I know he would.

Here is a picture of me and the dogs at the end, notice the tight grip I have on them. I said I WOULD jump in after them but that doesn’t mean I wanted to (I know I look like crap...no need to tell me...we had been driving for several hours).


After our brush with the extreme pier, we thought it was a good time to head back to the hotel. Once we got back to the hotel Danny jumped on his computer to check a few work things. I snapped this picture of him, I know it is dark but that is what makes me like it!!


Flash adjusted I took this picture of him and the dogs. My little family. Aspen always feels the need to give kisses, he thinks every occasion calls for them. Gracie just wants to feel loved.


After handing out in the room for a little while Danny and I decided to head out and get something to eat.

We put the dogs to bed and headed out!

Still the Luckiest Girl in the World 10 Years Later!!

I don't know if you believe in fairy tales, the whole happily ever after and glass slipper thing but I do. Last weekend Danny and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. I can't say that everyday has been perfect but I can say that I wouldn't change a thing. I think that the non-perfect days make me love him just as much as the perfect days do. My favorite times with Danny are the simple times, playing video games together, going camping, staying in the bed all morning just cuddling with the dogs, going to Disneyland for a summer evening, and to be honest the list never ends. I really do think I am a lucky girl and wouldn't trade the last 10 years for anything.

Danny is such a huge and important part of my life, he takes better care of me than anyone ever has or ever will. He makes me laugh, he holds me when I cry and he is the only person in the world that can make me feel better when I truly feel sad. Even though sometimes he likes to pretend it isn't true he loves our dogs just as much as I do and would do anything for them. He puts up with all my quircks, loving me not in spite of them but because of them. My slipper fits...perfectly.

Last weekend he surprised me with a trip for our anniversary. Danny knows me so well that he knew I wouldn't want to leave the dogs behind for the weekend so when planning our trip he made sure to include them. I took Friday off work, we got up early and the four of us hit the road. I still didn't know where we were going but I was very excited to get wherever it was. Once we got off the toll roads and on to the 5 north I firgured we might be heaeding to Santa Barbara...I had been wanting to go there for awhile and it was in the direction we were heading and somewhere that the dogs might me able to tag along to. I have this cool book on places in California that you can take your dogs too, restaurants, hotels, parks, etc. so I flipped to the Santa Barbara page and marked it, I wanted to have proof that if this is where we were indeed headed that I called it. Hehehhee. We continued on the 5 for awhile and we lucky to hit only one bad batch of traffic (if you know L.A. you know this is a rare occurance) and we arrived in Santa Barbara. I must admit that by this point Danny did have me a LITTLE fooled. He said that we were driving past some placed called Lompac or something, which is further than SB. Plus we were driving further into Santa Barbara...almost past it. I pointed out that they had a zoo (I love animals) and Danny said, "oh I didn't know Santa Barbara had a zoo." Once we were almost all the way through Santa Barbara my tricky little boyfriend said, "SURPRISE, we are going to Santa Barbara!!" Then he handed me a stack of papers with all the things he had planned for us to do, EVEN the zoo that he claimed to not know about. Everything he had planned (more to come on that soon) showed how perfectly he knew me...and I was so excited to do them all.

We pulled up to your hotel, I don't remember the name I think and tried to black out the bad memories (more coming on that soon too) and Danny ran inside to get us checked in. I could tell as soon as he came back that something was wrong, he looked pissed. He said that even though he had reserved an ocean view room they didn't have on for us. Our room was on the backside of the hotel, not even on the same side of the street as the main hotel. Uh oh...this was not going to be good. We got all of our luggage out of the car, the dogs and ourselves and along with the bell hop headed up to our room. As soon as I stepped into the hallway I knew it wasn't good, it was the hallway was semi-indoors and semi-out...and for those of you that know me, you know I don't stay in "hotels" that have outdoor entrances. The semi-outdoor entrance wasn't even the worst part of the hallyway, it was about two feet wide and had maroon paisley, floral carpet. WOW...I was just hoping that it would get better once we got in the room, I didn't think that it could get worse afterall... BUT IT DID!! The room was like the size of my closet, which isn't saying much. It wasn't clean. There was no balcony for the dogs to go outside and the window was tiny with a view into some random apartment. There wasn't really even enough room for us, our luggage and the dogs. Aspen was even angry with the room, he kept trying to move around and just grunting at the lack of space.

Danny was on the phone in an instance...he was more than angry. Thank god because I was trying to be polite but I did not want to stay there, I didn't even want to touch anything. I would have made the best of it for our anniversary but I promise it was bad and you wouldn't have wanted to stay there either. At first hotels.com was not being too helpful but if you know Danny they had no choice but to change their minds. I was already moving our stuff back into the car before Danny was even off the phone. I had faith in Danny's abilities and I was right...we were moved into the much nicer hotel down the street, which we passed on the way in at no additional cost.

It was off to the Fess Parker Double Tree where we got to begin our anniversary trip (you have to stay tuned for the details)!!

Summer Break - K.I.T.

Ok so my summer break isn't the same as when I was 15 and got three entire months of school off, which I would spend with my friends going to the beach, parties, looking for new boys, sleeping in past noon and eating Taco Bell. This break only lasts for two weeks, but I will take it!! I will take anything I can get!! By the time I get to the end of a semester I am totally burned out on school, can't wait for it to be over and swear that I am NEVER going back!! Of course I do always end up going back...but I at the end of every semester I swear never again.

I just, a mere hour ago, finished my last of three finals. I already have my grades for the first two, "B"'s on both, not great but it will do. I am a little worried about this last one...I have never gotten a "C" at CSUF and I really hope I don't start in the final home stretch. So please wish be luck. On the plus side I got my group project/paper back tonight and we got a 98/100!! Yep we ROCKED it!!

As with my Spring Break, I have a tough decision in front of me on how to spend my summer break. 1. Head to Cabo, hit the beach and clubs and of course have some drinks!! or 2. Stay home, go to work and get my paycheck so I can pay my bills. So which option do you think I went with? Yep...#2. I am actually looking forward to it though, so don't shed too many tears for me. I can get caught up on stuff around the house, read one of my many books that have been piling up on my nightstand (I think I will go with one of two biographies), of course UPDATE MY BLOG and one other thing I am forgetting...umm...oh that is right, have some sort of FUN. I have a lot to cram into my two mini weeks of break before it is off to summer school but I am sure I can do it! I have faith in myself.

And don't get your panties all in a bunch, I will be back tomorrow night with a real post, pictures and all, I just wanted to stop by and say hello. Oh yeah...don't forget to KEEP IN TOUCH!!

New Neighbors and Shinny Cupcakes (Cupcake Repertoire Expansion Attempt #3)

A little over a month ago I was out shopping with my friend Melissa and enjoying a nutritious lunch at IHOP, ok so I don't think that it would really qualify as nutritious but it was yummy, (we were originally supposed to go to Souplantation but veered of course some how) and I received a call from Danny. The house immediately next door to us has been vacant for awhile now, our neighbor Dave ran off to Washington to join the FBI...go figure. I mean who does he think he is to leave us without neighbors and take Aspen's bestfriend Joe away? According to Danny, after a period of what seemed like nobody looking at the house, there was two prospective buyers on this saturday. One of the buyers he was not fond of at all and the other he was very excited about. The ones that he was fond of were a young couple, Mike and Kasey and their two dogs...how perfect is that? Mike even works for a company where Danny is familiar with everyone that he works with.

Once I got home I must admit I was just as excited as Danny, it would be great to have some cool people living right next door, plus we don't really have any neighbors our age. We left them to look at their house...we didn't want to overdue it after all. After a little while we were back outside to take the dogs out and Mike told us they were putting the offer together as we spoke...YAY!! New neighbors that seem so cool. So anyways the new neighbors are Mike and Kasey, I will introduce them to my blog later, I like to release my craziness in small doses, I didn't want to snap a picture of them the first day we met. That would have been too much, right?

Last Saturday was moving day for the new neighbors, I knew this about two weeks in advance and I was very excited. I planned for the whole time as to what sort of "welcome cupcakes" I would make them. I went through many different options but since I don't know them all that well yet I settled on basic vanilla and chocolate but with a frosting twist...a shiny smooth frosting. So the new frosting on the cupcakes is "Cupcake Repertoire Expansion Attempt #3". The other ideas were yummy ones, I can't tell you what they are because I still plan on making them all some time soon. In this case I thought simple was the best option.

I heard them as soon as they got here...moving trucks aren't quite you know!! I jumped up, clapped my hands as I squealed, "ohhhh the new neighbors are here."...and no I am not 5-years-old, I just like new people, especially new neighbors. They are going to be living right next-door to me after all. If you know the neighbor problems I have had lately (think crazy guy attempting to run over my dogs) then cool neighbors would be a welcome change and you would agree that I deserve them. I ran downstairs to say hello. Danny stayed upstairs to change so he could offer his moving expertise help. I couldn't help move as I was in the middle of doing homework and lets be honest it was really hot that weekend. Hehehehe. I actually had perfect timing because as soon as I finished my homework I went back outside and the move was complete!! So it was off to bake for me.

I did one batch of chocolate and one batch of vanilla. After I let the cupcakes cool for awhile it was time to frost. I melted the frosting and dunked the cupcake in:

After the dunking process I rolled them, just the edges, in my carefully selected rainbow sprinkles:

And the finished product!!

A chocolate cupcake:

A vanilla one:

Lots of cupcakes:

Yay!! I think they came out so cute. I was so excited to give them to the neighbors I could barely wait for them to dry. Once they finally dried I loaded them into a basket and took the over to the neighbors. They seemed to really like them, I hope they tasted yummy too!!

Cupcakes in a basket:

Danny was so thoughtful and wanted to help make some cupcakes. How lucky am I to have such a cute helper!?!? I gave him a couple of cupcakes (I can't trust too many of my cupcakes to others) and let him loose. Here are a couple of samples of his work:

I know what you are thinking...chocolate cupcakes and sour jellybeans. Even Danny admitted it wasn't exactly the best combination, but hey he was super cute for trying.

This cupcake was his favorite, and probably tasted the best:

So anyways I am super excited to have what seems to be some cool new neighbors. Aspen and Gracie even got two new friends in Sasha and Tyler (a cute, petite little boxer and what looks like a Australian shepherd). Welcome to the neighborhood Mike, Kasey, Sasha and Tyler.

And to close this posting a little insight into what makes me, me! The other night Danny and I were looking out the window because we heard something going on outside, I looked over to the new neighbors house and asked Danny, “Do you think the new neighbors like us”?...yes I know I am a needy girl. I just want to be liked. Hehehehehe. All Danny could do was look at me, shake his head and say, "you are so weird..."!

My FAVORITE Night of the Week!!

What night might that be you ask? Friday? Nope. Saturday? Nope. You are on the wrong track. While I freakin love the weekends, I mean who doesn't, each week I get giddy on Thursdays because I get to watch Grey's Anatomy. I can't even wait for the DVR to record it, I watch it commercials and all.

This Thursday was extra great because I got to pick Danny up from the airport. He went to Vegas for a couple days, I wasn't able to go because of work and school. It really was great to have him home, I always enjoy my time alone when he first leaves but then I quickly miss him.

Being the nice boyfriend that he is, he sent me this picture of his view:

I sent him this picture of my view:

Which view do you think looks more exciting?

After I picked him up at the airport he was kind enough to agree to dinner at Red Robin, my favorite place...him not so much. I was excited because we hadn't been to the RR in Foothill Ranch yet, I love first visits to places. And trust me I knew this Red Robin was coming months before it actually opened (my whole weird shopping center thing). The food was great, I acturally splurged this time I ordered a cheeseburger!! I don't remember the last time I had a RR cheeseburger, it was probably on my birthday! I also had plenty of french fries, I swear RR has the best fries on the planet. Besides the food our trip to RR was just ok. When the girl brought our food to the table, she looked at the two baskets in her hands, then looked at us and said, "help me out here!"...ummm ok.

Ok, enough about food and Danny on to the really exciting stuff. I can't tell you how bad it is killing me for Meredith and Derek to be apart! I really wish they would just get back together!! I ABSOULTELY loved that they were working together in this episode, I think it was a way for them to work on their relationship that just HAS to be coming in the last couple episodes before summer break!! Summer break is so outdated and I really hope that NBC is actually going to move towards year round TV. If you don't know what I mean by that just think year round school...smaller breaks throughout the entire year and not three entire months off in the summer months. A much better set-up as three months without my favorite TV shows is just way to long.

Even though I didn't get enough Derek/Meredith action it was a great episode. I loved Addison being in town. It was hillarious when she ran into Derek and Meredith in the hall. Hugging Meredith and telling her how great it was that she can hug her after she stole her husband, the look on Meredith's face was PERFECT!! I also loved how she kept saying they were a cute couple and neither Meredith or Derek corrected her...I think it was a sign!! At the end of the episode, after Addison found out that they weren't dating and in fact he was dating Rose, she told Meredith that Meredith letting Derek getting away was killing her. Even she knows that they are meant tobe together. Anyways my favorite moment by far came at the end of the episode. It was when Meredith told Derek that she really enjoyed working with him (even though they lost their first clinical study patient) and as she shook his hand Derek just held her hand looking at it so lovingly. Awwww I thought my heart was going to explode!! Hehehehe, I am fully aware that I am obsessed, there is no need to tell me. I can't wait for next week.

So Red Robin and Grey's all in one night, I would call that a great night!!