Our 1st out of town visitor!

Our friend Courtney is arriving this afternoon from Portland, and Jon and I are SO excited to have a friend in town!!!

She arrives at 1:30 today and leaves Monday morning, so we are going to have a fun filled weekend!!!

We plan on going to a few different beaches, doing some wine tasting, of course take her to In-N-Out and possibly checking out Sprinkles cupcakes!

Courtney & I when she came to visit Jon and I in Seattle for my birthday :)

Hopefully everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Guess who got a new car??!!!‏

A part of Jon’s position as a manger, he gets a company car.  His company gives you the option of either using their company car or they give you a certain amount of money a month to spend on your personal car. 
 
When Jon 1^st got promoted, we chose to just take the company car, because at the time, Jon and I only had 1 car and we didn’t want to go through the hassle of buying another car, so we just left it in his company’s’ hands. 
 
Having the company car has been great for us, but we realized that it would be a smarter investment to buy our own car and pay it off while Jon is working with his company.  And if anything would ever happen and he chose to leave his position, he would still have a car.  So about 2 weeks ago, Jon started the fun process of looking for new cars and comparing prices and such.  
 
By that Friday afternoon, Jon called me and asked me to email him our car insurance information, and then proceeds to tell me that he needs it in order to drive off in his new car!  I didn’t think getting a new car would have been this easy, but when Jon puts his mind to something, its done before you know it!
 
Jon ended up getting a 2010 Mercedes Benz’s, which is a car I never thought that we would be owners of at our age.  Jon definitely deserves this car! He works so hard and always puts me and our needs before himself, he is such a selfless husband, that when he 1^st started talking about getting a car, I let him know that I supported him in whatever car he wanted to get, as long as we could afford it of course! Lol

The picture of his new car, that he texted to me.... after he bought it!  

My proud and hard working hubby! 

This is Jon’s 1^st car of his own! As a teenager and in college he drove his parents old 92 Honda accord, then back in 2008 it started to die, so Jon and I then became a 1 car family, with only my car.  Which worked out in Oregon because I rode public transportation to work, then when he got promoted to Washington, he got the company car. 

BUT NOW, he is a proud owner of his very own car! I think he likes his car more then me now :( lol

Our Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Jon and I had a great time this year! 

Our Thankful jar

Our home, ready for the celebration! I made the banner on the window, it says "Thankful" so funny and easy to make! 

I was up bright and early and started baking our dessert.  Jon requested chocolate cake with white frosting, which I of course made! I love to bake! Once the cake was cooked, Jon and I worked together to get our turkey ready.  I made Jon stick his hand inside the turkey to pull out all of the yucky stuff!  Then while I was chopping up celery, carrots and onions, Jon was buttering & seasoning up the turkey.  Our turkey was ready to go and in the oven by 12:00! Yay!  

Husband helping with the turkey prep! 

Miley and Jon enjoying some football

Our turkey all ready to go!

While the turkey was in the oven, I started to frost my cake, but Jon wanted to be a part of it too, so I let him take over the frosting.  It didn’t turn out as cute as I wanted it to BUT it was good, and it was nice to have Jon be so involved this year!

Me, trying to frost my cake...

Then Jon took over....

The final product.... Not bad for Jon frosting it and it was still a delicious cake! :)

Dinner is served! 

Pretty proud of my food this year, I even made homemade mashed potatoes & gravy! Yay me!

During dinner, Jon and I read out our “Thankful” cards we had been writing all month.  It was fun to read them and to talk about all the things we were thankful for, and also it was fun to think back on our past year, its crazy to see how much things have changed!!! I am so happy with our life and the place we are currently in. 

Miley also got spoiled this thanksgiving, she got to take part of our thanksgiving dinner and try out all of the food.  She was a fan of everything except for the celery and corn, silly little girl!

Miley's dinner :)

Enjoying her special dinner

Baby girl had to take a nap after all of that turkey!  

Our 2nd Thanksgiving as Mr. & Mrs. Burns 

Miley and I taking some silly pics together, lol

It was sad being away from our family, but it was nice that we got to face time with Jon’s mom, which was so much fun! It felt like we were all hanging out, we showed her around our place, and I showed her all the yummy food I was cooking and she even  got to see the turkey in the oven :) 

This picture makes me happy :)

And I kept in touch with my sister and she sent me pictures of the family, since they were all together for Thanksgiving.

I miss this silly crew! 

My mommy! Getting this picture made me a little homesick! Wish I was in Portland with my family!

My sister and her fiance 

Only 5 out of my 15 nieces and nephews :)

We ended our night by flipping through old pictures from the past 4 ½ years and laughing at all of the memories!

Pictures, pictures, pictures!!!

Last week Jon and I decided to FINALLY do the picture frame project I’ve been wanting to do since we moved into our apartment.  
First, I picked out all of the frames that I wanted on the wall and traced the size of each frame onto extra packing paper we had lying around our place.  

I laid out the picture frames I was sure I wanted on the wall

I then cut them all out, and we started to tape the paper onto the wall to get an idea of where each frame would go.  

I'm so glad that we did that step, because we moved the paper around A LOT and it was great when we were finally committed to the placement of the frames, it went by so quickly! 

Husband was a great help with this! We made a good team!

Once we put up all of our frames, the wall looked a little plain and bare...

So we put up more frames and our "Burns" painting a friend did for us, along with the pink "Love" sign.

I really like how the picture with the gun on the other wall ties it all in... FYI, the gun is shooting out hearts and butterflies.

I knew that I wanted our sign that reads “Our life, our story” in the center, and I wanted the picture frames surrounding that.  And I LOVE the way it turned out!!! I get so happy every time I walk into our place now.  

Over this weekend Jon and I found this super cute shop in downtown San Jose, and we just HAD to get these little figures! Its our wedding, Dia de los muertos style! I want to put them on a little shelf and add to our picture wall.

Our place is starting to feel like home now, and I love looking at our wedding pictures, and  pictures of our family & friends.  Now we have to get moving on putting up more pictures and art work around the rest of our place!

Capitola Beach

Sunday, Jon and I decided to go on another adventure and go for a drive to Capitola Beach, which is near Santa Cruz, and just a short 45 min drive from where we live.  

The awesome view as we pulled up!

It was a great day to head to the beach! It was a beautiful day with the sun shining bright! We stopped into a cute little town with lots of fun shops, restaurants and cute little homes.  We spent our day enjoying the sunshine, checking out the shops, and had some lunch.  

The sun was SO bright, this was the best selfy we could take

Palm trees make me happy

Happy feet!

There were these awesome homes right on the beach that were painted pretty bright colors.  I told Jon that I want to plan a weekend beach trip back and stay in the pink house! How cool would that be?! :)

Look how colorful they look! I WILL stay in the pink house someday! 

We had lunch at Margaritaville and sat outside looking out into the water, and enjoyed some margaritas of courseJ  The entire time we were there, we kept saying “I can’t believe that this is our life now”  We have dreamed about living in California for so long, we still feel like it’s a dream! Especially when we find such great towns so close to where we live.  

Our view during lunch

The colorful houses were also part of our lunch view :)

The cute hubby enjoying the sunshine!

Margarita & sunshine! What more do you need?!

After enjoying the sunshine and the town, we drove along the coast and admired all the pretty views. 

It was a great way to spend our Sunday! I can’t wait until next week’s adventure!

Bonus dinner time!

Last Tuesday night, Jon and I got to dress up and celebrate all of his hard work and celebrated at his bonus dinner!! Jon’s regional manager flew in from Utah, and took Jon and I and also Jon’s area manager, Tom, out to dinner at Morton’s steakhouse.  We had such a great time, and I was VERY happy that I got to wear my new dress from Mod Cloth, that I got as my stylish surprise.  I’ll be honest, and when I first received the dress, I did not like it! But then I tried it on, and added a belt, and now I love the dress! Lol.  It can be worn with heels like I did on Tuesday night for a fancy look, or I can wear it with leggings and my tan boots for a more casual look, so awesome!

So proud of my man! 

Anyway back to our dinner.  We had a really great time, and it was really nice to have a special dinner for Jon and  recognize him  for all of his hard work from the past year.  He totally deserved it  because he works so hard for his company, and his company is so great about valuing and treat their employees well.  And of course, the dinner could not be complete without his regional manager handing over a nice check to Jon J  Jon wants to be responsible with the money, which we should be BUT we also should use a little bit of it to treat ourselves to a fun weekend getaway or even better vacation! Lol. 

The jumbo shrimp cocktail, SO good! 

Me, Jon, Tom (Jon's area manager), & Robert (The regional manager)

Moving on up!

So I’ve had a very exciting & interesting first 2 weeks at my job, which I still LOVE btw :)

Last  week, I started my 2^nd week at my job, Tuesday morning, started off as a typical day.  My boss was in her office for about 45mins that morning with someone from the HR dept.  As soon as the HR person left, my boss asked me to come into her office and close the door.  

Seriously! I was freaking out! Was I in trouble for something? I was so nervous because I has no idea what she wanted to talk to me about.  So I go into her office, close the door and take a seat, then she starts talking about how great of a job I’ve been doing and that other people have taken notice of how much of a hard worker I am.  She then started to tell me that the reason she was meeting with the HR person was because they had approached her about an open HR position that they wanted ME for! Can you believe that!  They had just posted an HR assistant position, and since they had seen my resume, they wanted me for the job.  Side note:  I was an HR assistant in Portland for 4 years and I LOVED my job, I had the most amazing boss who taught me so much, it was so hard to leave her and my job behind when Jon and I moved to Washington.  So my boss, being the awesome person that she is, said that even though she hired me to work for her and her department, she didn’t want to hold me back from this opportunity.  I was so flattered and amazed that I was being told all of this.  2 weeks ago I didn’t even HAVE a job, and now I had the opportunity to apply for a promotion and get a raise.  I just couldn’t believe it and was SO thankful! 

So I applied for the HR job Wednesday morning, interviewed on Thursday, and by Friday, my boss informed me that HR would be offering me the position!!!!!

I start at my new position the week after thanksgiving.  I feel so blessed, happy and SO grateful for this life. 

I'm a little sad that I won’t be as involved and hands on with our programs and working with the children, but now that I’ll be in HR, I’ll be hiring the right people to work with the kids! And I'm still part of this amazing organization, and in the end, that’s all that really matters.

I'm excited to be back in an HR role, that just feels like “me”.  I feel like life is now starting to fall into place and that good things are happening to us.  Hard work does pay off and I am so thankful that my company took notice of me and offered me such a great promotion.  Now Jon and I can start saving money to buy our 1^st house!!!! Life is good, California has been treating us well!