orange county and the orange balloon.

i worked through january and february at my seasonal job again. i really hope having these two jobs on my resume is worth the stress. i've been saying that i'm going to work there again for mother's day so that i can have a full year on my resume by the time we get to san antonio, but i just don't think that would be the best thing. we will see. 

i worked monday, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday nights while i had the two jobs. i had friday, saturday, and sunday off, but it was filled with homework since i am taking four classes and two of them are my final upper division graduation courses (aka: demanding!). I usually spent all day (all. day.) friday and sunday afternoon/evenings doing homework so that i could hang out with jon on saturday's. isn't there a song or something called working for the weekend? yep.

the first weekend in february, we finally went to the orange county great park balloon! amandie told me  about it long ago, and i've since seen the balloon from the freeway anytime we drive through orange county.

we went with this cute family! what's better than three j's? 

four j's.

it was a somewhat gloomy day. i was hoping to see the coast from the balloon, but it was too cloudy. nevertheless, it was beautiful up there.

 it made me quite queazy to look down, we were so high up! just when we thought we'd gone as high as we would, we'd go a little bit higher...
jon and i walked from one side of the balloon cart to the other, and it tipped the whole thing!

it was a great experience! and best of all, it was free. i even saw someone i knew there! one of amanda's good friends from huntington was there with her little one at a birthday party. small world.

the main reason for our weekend to orange county was to spend some time with these two! my cousin bev and her husband scott. we've been here for almost three years and the four of us haven't ever done anything together. we went to dinner at ristorante rumari in laguna beach (and went a little crazy with the desserts) then went to the irvine spectrum to ride the ferris wheel that i've also seen a dozen times from the freeway and wanted to ride! it was so much fun and we were grateful to bev for planning a fun night to entertain two tourists:)

 bev and scott have the funniest stories ever! they kept us laughing the whole night. 

after hanging out with the rice's, we went back to the j's and spent the night there. we had intended on watching a scary movie, but instead stayed up until 1am talking and catching up. we miss having them live only fifteen minutes away. before our drive home the next day, we went to eat at 50/50. that's a hamburger with 50% ground beef in the patty and 50% bacon. we drove home feeling fat and happy, which is usually the case after hanging out with lynn and jeno, and i am not complaining.