Thanksgiving!! (I am such a dork)

 

I'm a dork because I can't believe I almost didn't blog all this.
So this picture isn't actually of Thanksgiving or that weekend. It's from Jonmark's birthday weekend, which was the weekend before. It happens to be my favorite picture of us ever and makes me smile all the time. This is us at True Food Kitchen where once again I was a horrible blogger and didn't take pictures of all our excellent food because I was too excited to eat it. I had amazing sea bass with brussel sprouts and purple potatoes. Jonmark had Salmon with Quinoa. Our desserts were organic non-dairy chocolate pudding (amazing) and ginger lemongrass frozen yogurt (yum!) It's such a fun and healthy fancy place to eat, and it was so fun to celebrate. (And isn't that shirt great of his- yep, that was a birthday present.) :-)

These other pictures, however, are of Thanksgiving weekend. On actual Thanksgiving Day, we hung out at Jonmark's sisters house and watched the Cowboys win and A&M lose. :-( We were there until Midnight when I decided it was time to go shopping. Unfortunately, I don't work nights anymore so my energy level was not what it was when I rocked it in 2009. Nor did I really need anything. BUT! I ended up with a 2" memory foam topper for my bed that was 70% off and it is incredible. I've been sleeping like a baby since I got it. (Not that I ever had trouble sleeping before....) But somewhere between an exhausted Jonmark trying to wheel through the crowd and me traversing the entire mall with a humungous box, I thought, "This is ridiculous. I'm buying everything online from now on." Oh, and Friday and Monday I totally did. But yes, it makes me feel kind of old.
Friday was errand/clean house/sleep/grocery shop day/oil change day/get a great deal on tires at Sears/online shop day.
And Saturday we headed to California. See, Jonmark grew up in Lake Elsinore, which is about an hour away from L.A. And his friend had a car part we needed to pick up nearby. So off we drove!

His friends were so sweet and we stayed and talked to them for a couple hours, and then realized we were only about 30 minutes away from his hometown so we were off again! Lake Elsinore is kind of a crazy little town. There is definitely a lot of character, and, according to Jonmark, a lot of people never leave. Is it the classiest town I've ever been to? Um, no. But in driving around I realized what an awesome place it would be to grow up. There are so many hills and trees and "adventure spots" that it was no question why Jonmark grew to love bikes and dirt bikes and pretty much any other adventure. And I loved the lake. Which was beautiful.
We then did a short little drive over to Temecula, which is a very quaint and a little more "snobby" of a town. (With, of course, better restaurants.) We ate at a place called Texas Lil's, which used to let you cook your own steak, but now, does not. Which we were totally disappointed about, but dinner was good anyways. We then drove around the cute little downtown and stopped in front of a picturesque little fire station to take a picture for Tate (my nephew), where I got pulled over for the 7th time with Jonmark. No, I did not get a ticket. I just had to politely tell the officer that, yes, I planned on driving away if the fire trucks got a call and yes, I was watching closely for other cars that might actually decide to drive down that tiny street. Ridiculous.
Later, we met up from some of his friends from back-in-the-day. It was awesome, to say the least. We met them in a little bar called "The Hideaway," while random people came up to hug him and grill him on his teenage years. (Picking out the Mormons in The Hideaway was about the easiest thing ever. Just find the 2 people wearing some sort of white in a sea of black and neck tattoes.) We listened to a fun little punk band and then headed back to Beaumont to the first friends' house.

Those first friends, Jeremy & Marci, you see, were having a belated Thanksgiving 'cause Jeremy is a cop and had to work on real Thanksgiving. So we went to Target and bought some toothbrushes and I bought some ELF makeup (which is super-duper cheap and I was so proud. Jonmark was less impressed that I thought we needed so much stuff for one night. Anyways, now it's in my gym bag so I can use it all the time.)
So the next day we sat around and ate an incredible Thanksgiving meal and talked about life in Cali as a teenager. Jeremy was actually there for Jonmark's accident so I made him tell me all the details of what he saw. Jeremy was actually the person who loaded up Jonmark's dirtbike into the truck after his accident. (yeah, it almost made me cry a little bit.) So after tons of talking and chilling and eating, we finally got back in the car and drove home.
And basically, it was an awesome weekend that I absolutely loved.