Brian's encounter with.... "One of them"

In the Brian Stratford dictionary "One of them" is defined as: the crazy people in California who think 60 degrees is cold and when it gets to 60 degrees or below, they will wear their winter gear ie: Snow boots, winter coat, gloves, beanie and/or scarf.

Let me set the scene for you. It had been kind of stormy, and when I say stormy I mean it just rained. The weather was only suppose to get worse. If you watched the news they warned everyone not to drive if they could help it. There was flash flood warnings, mud slide warnings and even a tornado watch. So there Brian was, standing at one of his school bulletin boards in his shorts and t-shirt,  when "one of them" approached him. The kid  was decked out in all his winter gear and he looked apprehensive as he clutched his rainbow umbrella with both hands.

One of them: "Are you from California"

 Brian: (giving the kid his "what are you doing talking to me" look) "No I'm from Utah"

One of them: "So do you think it's safe to drive?"

Brian: "In utah?"

One of them: "No outside in the storm"

Brian: (looks outside and it was cloudy but nothing was happening) "Uhhhh..... what storm?"

One of them: "In the rain!!!!"

Brian: "It's not raining"

One of them: "but the WIND!!!!"

Brian: (thinking back to all his white knuckled winter drives over Sardine Canyon) "I think your gonna be ok!"

Rules to California Driving

I had to learn these rules the hard way! So as a good citizen I decided to help others out by letting them in on the secret of California driving.

Rule 1) There are only 2 speeds you may drive 60 or 90+, nothing in between.

Rule 2) If there is an on ramp or an off you ramp you must slow way down to cause traffic to come to a standstill behind you. Nevermind if there are no cars actually getting on or off, you must slow down for no reason at all!

Rule 3) You must slam on your brakes at weird times. Say your going 60 and you just pull in front of someone..... SLAM.....then you must speed up again and then when it feels right.....SLAM....

Rule 4) If you see someone a mile in front of you just barely tap their brakes, you must slam on your brakes.

Rule 5) While merging you must always be as close to the person you are going to cut in front of   merge in front of and instead of speeding up you must slow way down, preferably by slamming on your brakes!

Hope these are helpful tips, and safe driving!!

Christmas Tree

This is our christmas tree......

all 3 feet of it!

Brian didn't even want a tree. 

I wanted a big tree with a village, a train and the whole shabang

We settled on this!

Christmas List

Top 5 in no particular order:

1) purple UMBRELLA
2) hot pink UMBRELLA
3) polka dot UMBRELLA
4) princess UMBRELLA
5) any kind of UMBRELLA

Winter is upon us!

Hehehe let me just laugh a minute about our winter storm. Hehehe......

"SAN DIEGO - A strong winter storm drenched San Diego County Monday morning, but the main front is not expected to hit the region until this afternoon.
The wet weather immediately affected local traffic, with the California Highway Patrol logging 100 incident reports between midnight and 9 a.m. On a dry day, the CHP typically records between 50 and 75 incident reports in the county during a 24-hour period, according to the agency.
Thirty-three of Monday's highway incidents were reported between 8 and 9 a.m. and 24 were reported between 7 and 8 a.m., according to the CHP."

Little side note to the above paragraph......I was in the traffic jam that those accidents caused....not fun. A normally 15-20 minute drive took me over an hour to get to work...AND I even left early! Oh ya and the 'wet' weather were getting, it's just rain. But moving on to the "Winter" weather report (this next part is my favorite)....

"Temperatures Monday were expected to peak in the high 50s to low 60s."

Doesn't that sentance just fill your soul with happiness? I know it did mine. And even though it is in the 50s I'm wearing my mid-calf white furry boots, my scarf, and my polka dot coat! Brian accused me of being "one of them"

Thanksgiving

It was really weird not being home for Thanksgiving, but I didn't mind all that much when I was laying out at the beach in the almost 80 degree weather. The breeze was a little chilly but Brian made me a little "heat cave" with a beach umbrella and our bags and it blocked out the wind and it was all nice and toasty! After a little bit we decided to go test out the water, not gonna lie it was a little chilly and the sea was kind of angry. I can't even count the number of times it almost tipped me over cuz the waves were pretty strong and I was only in up to my knees! We found a spot that had tons of little seashells but the waves would come crashing in and it would be all muddy and then  right before the water got sucked out again it would be clear enough to see but you only had a couple seconds to find a seashell and grab it before it got sucked up by the water. Brian even found a sand dollar which was probably the kewlest find of the day. After I got drenched, and stabbed by a seashell in the foot we called it quits. We weren't quite ready
to leave yet so we decided to go walk around the Crystal pier. This pier is pritty awesome because there are little houses on them and you can sleep on the pier.

Like my new ankle bracelet? Got it straight from the sea!

Thanksgiving dinner on the other hand didn't turn out as I had hoped. Brian and I had just decided on doing steaks and he found a receipe for the slow cooker that he wanted to try. It consisted of ketchup and brown sugar. I thought it was disgusting and ended up eating a bowl of cereal. Brian acutlaly didn't mind his that much and ate all of his.

Thanksgiving Dinner Grape juice, rolls, steak, potatos, and carrots (YUCK!!)

Hope everybody else had an awesome Thanksgiving!!!

Mom Time

The week before Thanksgiving my mom made the trip down to get some sunshine, and of course to see her favorite daughter! It was really fun to have her here but it went by way to fast!

Friday  night we went to the San Diego temple and went through a session. Oh my gosh....gorgeous!!! I have only been in three temples but so far San Diego is at the top of my list. On Saturday,  Brian decided it would be best if he stayed home to get some HW done, so my mom an I  went to La Jolla and walked around the cove. It wasn't a long enough walk for her so we decided to keep walking to Scripps Pier. When we got to the beach we took our shoes off and walked in the water which was a little chilly but felt good after you got used to it.  We weren't in a real hurry so we decided to head back to the car and drive along the coast and we ended up at Pacific Beach and got out to walk around a little more. While we were there we ended up running into the 3-day walkers. You could tell some of the walkers were hurting. I was hurting and I had only walked 5 miles but the walkers were on day two and mile 17. The walkers have three days of 20 miles each to equal a total of 60 miles. At one point on the boardwalk these ladies were dressed a little skankily and they had a boom box and were Dancing and cheering on the walkers. The lady in the red dress was the funniest because anytime a guy would go by she had to either dance with him or give him a hug and then give his bum a little squeeze or a pat for good luck.

These boys were a big hit!

After all of this excitement we decided to head back home to get ready for dinner at Anthony's, which was delish (I had a bowl of plain pasta!) The next day was Sunday and  my mom put in a roast to show Brian how one was really suppose to taste! (I had a mishap with a roast a couple weeks earlier! we just call it the garlic roast now). After church we relaxed for a bit, and then went to the Ocean beach pier to watch the sunset.

Sadly my mom had to leave on Monday but not before we made a trip to the pool to layout in the sun!