2013 in Review- Part 2

Before we said goodbye to the summer we had a few more beach days (ok, make that a lot) and got to spend time with our nieces who came from AZ to visit and escape the heat.  They had a blast at the beach!  I swear they spent more time in the water than out of the water.   Aunt Sasha was acting as lifeguard because as we all know,  I'm a wuss when it comes to the water.  Don't worry, their dad was in the water with them.

Love these lil munchkins so much!!! 

After the summer we said goodbye to some dear, dear friends.  The Marine Corps not only brings deployments but it also brings PCS season.  In civilian terms that just means people move away and get stationed to other parts of the country.  In military life I have found that you can get so close to people in such a short time and then just as quickly as you became close those people have to move away.  But despite the distance, I know we will always remain close. One of the ladies I met via this deployment, Courtney, her husband Micheal and their newborn Easton moved to Quantico, VA.  I miss that little guy so much!!  I remember going to ultrasounds and touring the hospital with Courtney while Micheal was deployed. But it is so fun to see pictures of baby Easton and watch him grow.  I swear he was just a tiny little thing and now that little man is walking!   Just wished they lived closer!

Before Easton was born with Courtney at his ultrasound (left) and a day after Easton was born at the hospital (right)


Another lovely lady I met because of the deployment, Lindsay, moved with her husband Tyson back to Omaha, NE after Tyson got out of the Marine Corps.  I got so close to these girls over Josh's last deployment and I am so thankful for the time I had with them.  I've said this a lot but as much as I hate deployments I'm so thankful for this last one because without it I probably never would have met these amazing women.  California just hasn't been the same since they left.  Before Lindsay left we all did a little wine tasting in Temecula.  I love that SoCal has its own "wine country" and I love that it is only a 45 min drive from us.  We've been there a couple times this year and each time it never disappoints.  I LOVE a good day of relaxing in wine country, sipping on a glass of wine, eating fine cheeses and enjoying a picnic with good friends; it doesn't get much better than that.

Lindsay and I

The Temecula Wine Tasting Crew

Vino with these beauties 

Josh had a first this year.  His FIRST CONCERT ever!!! Yes, EVER!  Apparently he attended a concert after an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game but that does not count.  So for his first concert, we headed to the Hollywood Bowl to see Zac Brown Band.  Since we moved to SoCal, I've been wanting to go to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl.  It's such an iconic place; legends including Nat "King" Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, The Beatles, and Simon & Garfunkel have all headlined at The Hollywood Bowl.  So much history and such a neat venue.  If you've never been there, you have to experience a concert there in the Hollywood Hills; its unforgettable.  And Josh is surprisingly a big fan of country music so Zac Brown Band it was.  Although, I shouldn't be surprised Josh likes country; he's a hopeless romantic and whats more romantic and a lot a bit hopeless than country music.

The concert was amazing!!  The best part was a surprise appearance by Jason Mraz!!! He sang his song "I Won't Give Up" and man oh man does that song get me everytime.  I was able to get a video below, but excuse all the background noise.  If you listen carefully you can hear Josh singing along ;).  Josh's 1st concert = success!  I think it will be hard to top this one though.

With the change of season, or I guess I should say with the "change of calendar months", because there really are no true seasons here, came the fall: my favorite time of year.  Josh and I got to celebrate our 2nd anniversary, but really it was the first anniversary we actually got to spend together.  It was very special.  We made a nice dinner at home together and got to enjoy each other's company; something that we now never take advantage of thanks to a few deployments.

Nothing better than having my hubby home for our 2nd anniversary celebration

"Coelho" Wine and cupcakes from the bakery that baked our wedding cake seemed very appropriate for the occasion

Our anniversary, Nov 6 also falls very close to the Marine Corps birthday, Nov 10, which means the Birthday Ball.  I'm not sure what the opinion of other Marine Corps spouses is about the Birthday Ball but I happen to love it!  It's an excuse to dress fancy, get your hair done, and dance the night away.  How many times do you get to wear a ball gown in your life?  Well I have a reason to wear one once a year which I think is pretty lucky.  Oh and did I mention my Prince Charming escorts me to the ball each year; so yes it truly is every 5 year old girl's dream.

This brings us to the holidays.  Life as a nurse means you work when others aren't working, lots of weekends, nights and yes, holidays.  This year I happened to work a lot of holidays: Thanksgiving and all of Christmas.  However, working on an oncology unit really puts things into perspective, especially during the holidays.  Presents don't matter, the perfect Thanksgiving menu or the most "pinteresty" table setting don't matter.  What matters most is family, your health and time spent together.  On Christmas at the hospital we played Christmas elves and delivered bags of goodies to all the patients.  Even if I had to be away from family, it was so rewarding to be there with our patients.  It also helped that we had an awesome group working Christmas, so we actually had a lot of fun.

Being Christmas Elves at the hospital

We wrapped up 2013 with a trip to San Fran to take a New Years Eve Cruise on the San Francisco Bay.  I've always wanted to do a big extravagant New Years celebration and since Josh and I have been checking off a lot on our bucket list ever since he came back this seemed to be the perfect time.  Josh and I are definitely not night owls.  The last new years we spent together my parents woke us up at midnight because we had fallen asleep on the couch trying to stay up.  If it hits 10pm we call it a late night.  Lame, I know.  We are old people at heart.

A New Years celebration deserves a sparkly dress.  Josh and I on the yacht.

But this New Years we channeled our 20 something-year-old selves and stayed out late to ring in the New Year.  We boarded a yacht and set sail on the Bay for a cruise.  Our good friends, Maria and Kyle, joined us for the celebrations.  I met Maria on the deployment (Kyle was deployed with Josh). The bay at night is gorgeous with all the lights and the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge in the distance.  And best of all, at midnight the fireworks were right over our heads.  I'm so happy we did this, it was such a fun experience.  I don't know how many New Years' we'll actually stay up for in the future, but to know we had this one will make up for all the ones we happen to sleep thru.

The dapper gents

The City by the Bay

It's good to start the year off with my husband home.  Here's to many more adventures together, good health, good times with family and friends and many many more happy memories.  Happy 2014!!  May every day be happier than the last. 

July Updates

Since I've been so behind on posting, I've decided to do one post for all the July happenings. 

Josh and I have been gone for most of July; its been a busy busy month!  At the end of June we traveled to Sedona, Arizona for my lil' sis, Mara's, wedding (lil sis from my sorority that is).  It honestly feels like just yesterday that we met during sorority recruitment and now she's all grown up and getting married!  Cole (her now husband) and Mara are pretty much perfect for each other and to see them so happy, so in love and getting married now is just the icing on the cake.  The ceremony was BEAUTIFUL!  It took place on a cliff overlooking the beautiful red rocks of Sedona.  The wedding ceremony (a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony) was even more beautiful than the picturesque location.  I literally had goosebumps even though it was like 110 out... I was that moved!  Mara and Cole incorporated a lot of personal touches, including advice from their family members and vows that they each wrote.  Being at the wedding definitely brought me back to my own wedding and made me reminisce about the feelings I had on that day.

Gorgeous ceremony site overlooking the red rocks of Sedona

Gorgeous Bride & Groom

View from the ceremony site... take my breath away!

Loved seeing my fellow Chi O Vice Presidents!! Just missing Melissa Beaver!

Family!! My lil sis and gran lil!! Love you both!

All the Chi O girls with the new Mr. and Mrs. Hirschfeld

After the wedding, Josh and I road tripped up to Lake Tahoe, California.  We decided to split up the normally 10 hour drive by stopping in Vegas for a night.  I'm not a big gambler, but I do like all the glitz and glam of Vegas.  I think I'm just too cheap to waste good money on gambling.  I'd rather spend my money on shopping and get something good out of it :).  But despite this, I did decide to "splurge" on the penny machines.  However, my patience ran out quickly (after losing $2) and I forgoed the penny machines I was on.  My mom swears by the Monopoly machines so I took my crack at one and won a couple bucks (BIG WINNER!).  Someday I may get up the courage to bet more than $2, but until then I'll stick to penny slots.

$2 richer, Josh and I hit the road again and headed up to Lake Tahoe to meet my parents and friends at their cabin.  I don't know how it happened, but we ended up taking the backroads the entire way up to Tahoe and for about 50-100 miles I swear there was nobody or nothing around.  We saw a few ranches with some "happy cows" grazing, but that was pretty much it. We were so "backroad" that there were even a few times when we (well probably more me) thought we would run out of gas.  I HATE this feeling and I hate those "No gas for the next 60 miles" signs even more.  We were doing all our calculations to figure out if we would make it.  By the grace of God we did make it!  Alleluia.   We did take advantage of the open roads and Josh decided to test the limits of my car (also read, Josh decided to see if my car could do 100 mph).  Don't worry mom and Uncle Bryan (who is also a California Highway Patrol), we were very safe about it and we won't be doing that again anytime soon.

A ranch in the middle of nowhere (Josh's dream, not even kidding)

Open Roads

 
After many many ours of backroads, we finally made it to Tahoe!

Tahoe in the summer is almost, if not more beautiful than Tahoe in the winter.  The weather is gorgeous, you can boat on the lake, hike, camp, picnic; its paradise.  Well, paradise quickly turned into anything but paradise when I was woken up from a nap in the cabin by my mother who said "Sasha wake up there is a BEAR!".  Immediately I jumped out of bed and said "What? Where? What am I supposed to do??"  Looked out the window and there was a brown bear; yes, a real live brown bear!  I've never really been a fan of bears.  When we went to the zoo earlier this year I couldn't bring myself to stand by the bear exhibit long because I swore they were going to jump out of their cages and come hunt me down.

BEAR!  Only feet away!

So, back to the bear.  I guess he had managed to roam around the open garage and found a closed container full of food.  He pulled the container out and smashed through it to get at all the food.  This bear had no fear!  Luckily we were above the garage in the balconies watching it all.  Although he did charge up the balcony once to try to get my parents' dog!  The house is on the main road that runs around Lake Tahoe, and people had stopped on the walking trail to watch the bear.  Seriously people?  I would have started to walk as far away from that thing as I could.  Eventually the sheriff came with his rubber pellet gun.  He had to shoot the bear a few times to get it to finally go away!  Apparently, this same bear has actually come into the house before to raid the fridge and he has broken into cars to get food!







After the bear encounter I was a little less excited to go hiking in the woods, so we opted for a day out on the lake instead.  For me, a day on the lake is a little frightening because I have a slight fear of boats (I have crashed/sunk too many boats for my liking; if you ever have time I can tell you all about the houseboat crashing, the Catamaran sinking; those are just a few) but I braved the water and ended up having a GREAT time on the lake.  Josh and I even ended up kayaking later in the day.  All and all, Tahoe was a great success (as it always is).  Hopefully I'll be back again this winter for skiing (fingers crossed for some good snow).

Our boat captain for the day!

Boating around Lake Tahoe

July, also means...  my birthday!  I'm not a huge birthday person, but my birthday does happen to fall close to my Poppop's which makes it special.  This year Poppop and I had a joint birthday party and celebrated a combined "100th birthday" (my 25th and his 75th).  All the Sullivans got together and in true Sullivan fashion we had BLAST!

It wouldn't be a party without a little icing fight!

Some of the cousins with Poppop

Oh, so I usually wouldn't do this (brag) and I'm not a big gift person, but I did happen to get spoiled this year with a lot of pretty awesome stuff.  First of all, since Josh was going to be gone for my birthday (more training), we celebrated early.  Josh took me for a day at Balboa Park and then dinner and at the end of the evening he surprised me with tickets to "Wicked".  I was SOO surprised and so excited!! Josh also surprised me with a GORGEOUS closet which I now can't help but just sit in and stare out.  Seriously, he did such a good job and I'm currently trying to recruit him and his talents for other parts of the house.  I knew he was going to do this, so I gave him a few ideas, but he pretty much did everything himself.  AND... my parents got me a Giada cookbook, but not just ANY Giada cookbook.  That's right... it was a SIGNED Giada cookbook.  My mom had waited in line for over 2 hours to meet her and have her sign the book just for me.  I'm not one to be starstruck or have celebrity crushes.  But... if there is one celebrity I would just die to see it would be Giada.  I pretty much would love to be her or just be her friend or just meet her; I'd be ok with any of the above.

Birthday Presents!!

This month Josh was also gone a lot doing a few training exercises on the ship he'll be deploying on.  He has a total of 3 training exercises before the deployment each lasting between 2-3 weeks.  He's been training a lot and working hard.  When he comes back from his last training exercises in August he'll have 2 weeks off and then he'll leave for deployment.  This is Josh's 2nd deployment and he'll be on the U.S.S Green Bay serving on the 15th MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit).  He'll be sailing around the world and their ship will serve as a "disaster response team" essentially.  I am so proud of what he does and all the hard work, time and sacrifices he makes.  They really don't pay these guys enough for what they do. 

My Marine hard at work briefing his Marines before a mission

As I was helping Josh pack for the field, I couldn't help but try on a few things :)

So until Josh's deployment, we'll be trying to make the best of our time together.  We'll be visiting family and going on a few mini vacations.  Hopefully I'll post again soon, but I may have to do another "month" update in August. 

Grown Up Prom

                           

Last weekend Josh and I went to prom... well "grown-up prom".  One of Josh's good friends, Stephanie, is part of a social society in LA called "The Spinsters'.  Its basically a sorority for women in their 20s and the only catch is that you can't be married (hence the term "spinster").  Every year they put on a big ball.  All the men wear tuxes and all the women get dressed up in their beautiful long dresses.  

Josh and I have a been to a few balls (thank you Marine Corps) and we LOVE an opportunity to get really dressed up.  I think I've said this before, but Josh and I are two old souls.  We would have loved to have grown up in the 30s, 40s or 50s when people would get really dressed up to go out to dinner.  Josh's mom told me this story of when Josh was little and it pretty much sums it up: Josh's mom told him to get dressed for dinner and Josh comes out looking very dapper in his mini kids suit.  Yes, a suit, how cute is that?!?!

The gang: From left (Mitch & Lindsay, Stephanie & Bobby, Josh and I)

 After getting all dressed up, we all headed to the ball.  The venue was absolutely gorgeous; I can't even begin to describe it but I'll try.  Ok, now imagine what Hollywood was like in the 1920s; the glam, the glitz, the class.  This is basically what it was: Old Holywood to the tee.  The venue was called "Cicada".  On a typical evening Cicada is an Italian restaurant in downtown LA but they do lots of wedding receptions and events there on the weekends.   I highly highly recommend going there for dinner just so you can experience the gloriousness of this place.  When we walked in there was a huge gorgeous chandelier in the middle, a 7 piece band that played all night, gold ceilings, orchids EVERYWHERE and lots of beautiful people in tuxes and long dresses.  I literally felt like I had stepped back in time to Old Hollywood circa 1922.

Bobby loved the orchids

 We all danced the night away and had such a fabulous time!! We already can't WAIT for the next ball; or should I say "grown up prom".  Thank you thank you thank you Stephanie for the invite!!

Probably my favorite photo of the night.  This came after I said "Show me your sexy face".

Bobby is so "Mad Men" in this shot. I love it!

After a LONG night of dancing the shoes finally came off