caaaaaaallliforniaaaaa loooooove!

gosh, all these songs keep popping in to my head for titles... and then they stick for awhile. in any case, for NYE i decided a trip to ca was in the cards and so i decided to take 10 days and visit a bunch of friends.

i started my visit off at catherine's house where we had a great time! we got to go out to dinner and go see the king's speech which is an amazing movie. loved it!

and then ms lyman picked me up and we went to san clemente to ring in the new year. catherine and her family went to the beach with her family to celebrate.

how cute is this picture of courtney's two boys?!

until devon figured out why my camera was turning everything orange and blurry, i got quite a few crappy pictures, but here is lil piper meeting her auntie sarah.

and here piper is meeting both her auntie sarahs!

sarah and dave brought alex his christmas present: some construction set with thousands of little parts! awesomeness!! here is everyone playing before courtney's other guests arrive for the evening.

a cougar in training?! here piper is with her scripps aunts

i just loved all the action in this pic!

what's so funny girls?!

here are all the scrippsies in attendance. it makes me so so excited for reunion!!!

kisses!

more kisses! apparently i didn't get the memo though...

we also played pool. until i was looking through my pics i'd forgotten about the ones on courtney's phone - she has all the funny pool playing pictures. ahem, c, where are they?!

eventually we all tuckered out and went to sleep. a VERY BIG thank you to courtney, peter, alex and sidonia for hosting such a wonderful NYE and letting us all stay over.

and then it was time to say goodbye to everyone (big sad face!!). even alex was sad to see 'baby hyper' as he called her go. could this be a potential match in the future?!?! here's alex saying bye to the baby hyper who looks like maybe she could care less.

from san clemente, i made a trip up to newport to visit brendan for the day/night. since devon, patrick and the pipes were headed to irvine, they said they'd give me a ride to newport. another BIG thank you for the ride! btw, where are all the guys in the above pics... ehhh, they were there... anyways, me and brendan spent the afternoon hanging out and watching bowl games over a few drinks and then that evening we met courtney and simon and their little girl, sammie, for a few drinks and apps at the rusty pelican.

courtney, sam, and simon (mom and dad are former nnn'ers)

we forgot to get a picture of all of us at the rusty p so we set up the self timer on simon's trunk (he'd given us a lift to/from the restaurant) and took this far off picture. in any case, that's brendan, courtney, simon and me.

simon and me: we were former partners in the east coast territory all those years ago. gosh, it seems like a million years ago... it was more like 7...

me and b being goofy