Favorite Things….

What are some of your favorite things?

-Jessica

Help me choose…

So Paul and I wanted to get pictures done this year so that I can send them all to my family in Germany. I got my girlfriend Sarah to do a photo shoot with us down at the Mission Inn. So help me pick out which picture gets turned into a card and sent around the world.

There is the bush background:

The Orange Tree Background:

The Brick Background:

The Fountain Pic:

My personal favorite, the model pic:

Which is your favorite?

If you’re interested in Sarah’s Photography you can check out her website:

www.printroom.com/pro/sarahparra

and email her at sarahparra@gmail.com

Into The Fray…

I hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving. I had a great evening spent with family of all sorts, there was my immediate family, my in-laws, and a few adopted members as well. We played games, ate wonderful food and just relaxed.

Then this morning came. I’m not a huge shopper and generally you can forget about any kind of shopping that  includes “gobs of people” as my sister in law would say and anything before noon. However, I do feel like there are very few things that are truly ‘American’ experiences/traditions and Black Friday is one of them. What better way to express your true inner American commercialism then getting up before the sun, standing in the cold, and brawling your way through stores and checkout lines for an extra 50% off.

Plus, I got to spend a whole eight hours with my sis, just me and her. It was a good time.

She picked me up at 3am and we headed for the first store. Starbucks. Not open so we head to Kohls. Ridiculous line of people standing in the cold. While we wait in the car we decided to go back to Starbucks and wait for the line of “gobs of people” to get inside already and then we would meander over with our hot teas and mocha’s. Nope, meandering was out. You see, there isn’t very much that is really Christmas-ish about Black Friday other then buying gifts. The spirit is much more “I get mine so get out of my way’ rather then ‘Hustle and Bustle of Holiday Cheer’. When we realized there was an hour wait just to check out we decided to move on. We went to Mervyns, Osh Gosh, Cost Plus World Market (this was the only one I cared about because they were giving away free chocolate bars), Target(of course), and then back to a different Kohls which had a much more reasonable waiting time.

So, I can check Black Friday off my list. I don’t know that I need to do it again for myself but it was really great to hang out with my sister, so I would probably be willing to jump back into the fray again with her at my side.

Did you attempt Black Friday?

-Jessica