return line

as we found ourselves in the return line at walmart late last night surrounded by an allstar line up of shoppers around us, we anxiously looked to the registers to gauge our time, when we got sucked in to the most awkward situation ever. i don't know what went wrong for this rock and roller, but gel-part made some sort of error and rocker was not happy about waiting for a manager to come correct the problem. their angry and blank stares crossed, ricocheted of the three-quarter carpeted walls and right into our faces.

a very happy thanksgiving!

we had so much to be thankful for this year! we had our very first feast in l.a. and our families came up! my mom showed me some of her magic cooking and was such a sport in my tiny 1930's kitchen.

colt and his cute corry ladies

cinthie worked it out on guitar hero!

some of mamma's delights!

we tried to learn some of her ways in the kitchen.

my old man doing a fine job with the carving

i did catch eye of a turkey giblet or goiter or bone. i don't know what it was, but it was foul! (and i don't mean in the bird sense.) i don't eat meat anyway and when i saw that, it was done.

other than that, everything was so appetizing! we had so much fun eating on our assortment of chairs in our little living room. we were so grateful that our friends mary and jake spent the holiday with us!

in fact, we ate so much we were sick! the girls decided to do an exercise video after. we were too full to move gracefully, or really at all. but, we laughed so hard we had to have burned some calories!

tonks

a couple weeks ago our sweet tonks passed away. we loved her so much. it has been devastating. we will miss her. we can't wait to see her in a little sweater, wagging her tail, sock in mouth behind the pearly gates.

i want to tornado punch the economy

dr. doogie howser

there has been a long standing joke about me and the doogster. i have been to regis and kelly twice. i love them. i got so excited both times to see a fun celeb. who can i count on not once, but TWICE.....neil patrick harris. one of the dullest and disappointing stars. well, last night colt and i went to a couple of art shows. who should be right behind me......DOOGIE. why? why? why not the beckhams?! (obviously not the beckhams because we were in culver city, we will never be where they would be) it got better. after colton and i had our budget friendly dinner at inn & out, we thought we would splurge on desert.....amazing pudding and totally worth it!

but sitting behind us was the child star of roseanne. i don't even know his name. you all know who i am talking about. the night of the 90's child stars. the galleries were really cool though. we went to shepherd ferry's studio (he did the obama hope poster.) i thought it was really cool. here are some of the show.

a light fantastic

and fantastic it is! colt has a materials class this term. for one of his projects he decided to make a light table. i have always wondered how any of these kinds of things are built. it was amazing to see colt create this beautiful table. he made the box, spun the wood on a lathe, stained and painted the legs, wired the electrical, sanded the acrylic, then tada........a light table. it is really cool looking and worth the house smelling like home depot for a week.

fashion island & balboa island......neither one is really an island

we spent the weekend with our dearest friends......... mary and jake carter. we are so grateful these two are in southern california with us. we had a lot of fun in newport. we did a little shopping at fashion island, ate some nummy food, and watched a beautiful sunset from the balboa beach colt titled this photo "technology." please blow up for full effect.

breaders cup

we were so excited to go to the breaders cup, but more excited to have don and joanie in town. they spoiled us rotten! colton had been planning to research the horses in anticipation for the big event, but luckily for us don and joanie are experts themselves. it was a beautiful day. santa anita was in her prime. we even got to sit at our own table with an umbrella. the horses were stunning. even more stunning were colton's winnings. he had decided the night before to put some money on 'desert code' whose jockey was dressed in a green shirt with a big toad on it. it was the long shot and we all thought he was crazy, but the joke was on us when the $2 bet on the 32 to 1 odds came in first place. we had so much fun, come back soon.

reality check

so, this guy came and spoke at my school the other day. he has his own design studio in new york and he is kind of a big deal in the motion graphics world. at the end of his great speech, he had some of the upper division students stick around for a challenge. i was fascinated by that idea so i stuck around. he gave this challenge and wanted to see storyboards and animatics the next morning at 10:00am (he gave the challenge around 9:30pm). so i thought, why not try? it could only be a good experience, and worst case scenario, if it doesn't go so good, i'm only in motion 1 and at least i tried? WRONG... not to go into too much detail because i know that most people become board with long blog entries. suffice it to say, he hated my idea and didn't see the connections and i was the only one out of the eight or nine students there who got pretty negative feedback. on top of that there were a handful of smirks and laughs from some of the people behind me. the words of kenny rogers came to mind 'you got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away and know when to run'. so it was one of those things. i decided to fold my cards and after that i called it a day, blew of my next class and came home and took a nap. these two sketches above were the first two of my storyboards sketches.

times are tough

fleas + economic crisis + student loans = a homemade haircut by yours truly. a talent learned while on a mission comes back to serve the needy.

fashion-turn to the left, fashion-turn to the right

well, our very own d.j. got another gig. chase played a really fun fashion show last weekend. it was fashion week in l.a. and a really cool boutique called rojas asked chase to do their music. our good friend jose works there. he not only hooked us up with the fashion show, he hooks us up with great clothes! the show was super fun and had some killer stuff. the models were amazing and i would die to be able to rock a walk like they do!
p.s. chase was a huge hit! when he started playing "rock the boat" by aaliya the crowd went crazy!

i wish my parents lived in california

my folks came down for a visit last week. i have been crying since they left........i am not kidding. we had so much fun. the night they came into town we went to the julieta venegas concert at the nokia theater. it was a cultural event. we first ate at taco nazo, we were the only people not from mexico. that theme continued into the concert, julieta is a mexican musician. she doesn't sing in english and my mom and i don't speak spanish. we just make up words to her songs, and this didn't stop us from singing at the top of our lungs.
the fun did not stop there. lucky for us it was dollar day at the santa anita race way. lance could not have been happier. everyone got a hot dog, drink, and ticket for a dollar. we were also able to see a statue of our relative georgie wolf. he was a jockey that road sea biscuit. my mom put a dollar on atticus jack, the horse with the curly hair, and he won!
our luck stopped there since we had to leave for the bonnie hunt show in culver city. my mom has always been a big bonnie hunt fan. it was really fun to see her show and meet her. she was a hoot in person.
what bingham visit would be complete without a stop at disneyland? there were halloween decorations everywhere. it looked spooktacular! here is a photo of why i need my mom here, they remember everthing, even plastic bags for splash mountain!

make your way

a piglet in l.a.

we found barn yard animals in the middle of downtown los angeles! last weekend we got to go to the l.a. county fair. it was huge!!! and the amount of food was unimaginable! we ate ourselves to death. chase enjoyed a smoked turkey leg, colt and i had balboa bars and grilled corn. if you want something deep fried this is the place for you, they even had deep fried avocados. we felt a little like pigs ourselves.

i fell in love with this little guy. i wanted to take him home, but i found out he will weigh 400 lbs. when he grows up. needless to say, colt said no.

we are just keeping up with the kardashians

last night colton and i got to go to dancing with the stars!!! it was so much fun. we got to sit right behind bruce and kris jenner along with kourtney kardashian. love them! unfortunately, we also saw kim get the boot, but at least we got to see her boot...tay ........amazing. we got to get all dressed up and see everything in action. i am obsessed with t.v.
after a most fabulous show, colt and i walked around the gove and enjoyed an ice cream. it was an enchanting evening.

breakdowns, beck, beach boys, and the baby

what an eventful weekend! our friends the johnson's came up........they are wonderful. we are so grateful that chase went to spain and met tim, because then we met tim and nicole! and now we are all in california together. we had so much fun! we ate, shopped, and hung out in melrose for hours! not by choice. the saab once again started acting funny. next thing we know colton is running his little heart out looking for a service station. then he returned with a little treasure named art acosta, a mechanic who saved the day! the johnson's were such troopers, we sat on that corner waiting for kim kardashian all night!


the next morning we went into old town pasadena for breakfast and a stroll. it turns out yoko ono has an installation with a handful of trees where people can leave wishes on. we spent a while looking at wishes and even made a few ourselves. rumor has it that all the wishes will be put in a time capsule and stored somewhere in iceland. weird.


then the next day my man and i enjoyed his birthday gift. i got colt tickets to the beck show at the hollywood bowl. the venue was gorgeous! an outside ampatheater where you can bring in picnics and enjoy the outdoors. beck was mindblowing! we also got to groove to mgmt and spoon. we were afraid we weren't going to see any of it because once we got through the first gate our tickets seriously disappeared!!! after a frantic search they reissued us tickets and the others are still a mystery?! but we rocked out pretty hard. beck did it all. he worked it out with the l.a. philharmonic and then a simple beat mixer.


the next morning was so wonderful. my amazing friends dan and nicole blessed their beautiful baby presley. that baby is so sweet and so beautiful. it was our first meeting and i fell in love. nicole is the most natural mom. she looks like she has been doing it for years. and on top of that she made the most delectible brunch! i ate myself sick. the pesto chiken salad and homemade cupcakes were too good to resist.
after the lovely morning we headed over to visit tim and nicole at their new condo, then headed over to three arch beach. who also happended to be at three arch breach that day... the beach boys playing a private concert? unreal. as they sang "i wish they all could be california girls" i couldn't agree more. both nicoles and there sweet friends couldn't be more wonderful.