For the past week I have been vacationing down in the with my hubby’s family. We spent Christmas cooking and eating and then we did various things like shopping, gaming, and more eating. My hubby was extremely excited over purchasing a double down puffy jacket at the at Puente Hills Mall for $8.98! Actually everything in the store was $8.98 because it was a grand opening sale and the entire time we were in the store the hubby was saying, “HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE!” I thought it was extremely cute that he got excited over cheap stuff. Apparently there will be a Steve and Barry’s opening in San Jose sometime in the future and maybe they will have such a sale too.

Besides being delighted by cheap jackets, we went to a couple of the Southern Californian restaurants that my hubby has been craving for. We managed to go to and . He also wanted to go to El Pollo Loco. (There is certainly a theme of chicken to these restaurants.) I have to say that Chick-Fil-A chicken nuggets are quite good, and unfortunately the closest one in Northern California is about two hours away from us in Sacramento.We only recently found out that there is a Thai BBQ in South San Francisco, but everything in the SoCal location was $1.00 cheaper. I guess the rent is just higher in South San Francisco. We also had a LOT of boba milktea everywhere we went. When we visited the hubby’s friend J Allan and he drove us to Pasadena to see their “old stomping grounds” (Caltech). The entire city was gearing up for the Rose Parade and there were bleachers erected all over the streets. We ate at a small hole in wall restaurant called The Pasadena Sandwich Company. This is a place that makes sandwiches that are bigger than newborns and they’re mostly under $8. We all ordered something called “Trust the Cook”, which is basically a random sandwich. Then we ended the day with a lot of Rock Band.

Other highlights of the trip included a visit to the San Diego Natural History Museum’s special exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a short tour of the U.S.S Nimitz. The Dead Sea Scrolls are absolutely amazing because the Biblical texts they contain actually validate a lot of our modern day Bible. Additionally, the exhibit emphasized that the ideas written by the Jews in turbulent times thousands of years ago still applies to us today. There are also a lot of texts not related to the Bible and one of them that caught a lot of people’s attention is a copper scroll that is basically a treasure map to vast amounts of gold and riches from the temple of Jerusalem. It is believed that the treasure was hidden before the temple was destroyed. On the same day my sister in law’s boyfriend took us on a tour on the U.S.S. Nimitz because he lives and serves on the ship. The seasoned aircraft carrier is literally a fort on the water. I think there were about twelve to thirteen floors and it took us a while to walk up to the landing strip and flight deck at the top. We did go after sundown so a lot of areas were closed off or were going under renovations. The U.S.S. Reagan was entirely decked out in red and green holiday lights along the right side of the Nimitz and it was pretty impressive looking also. Unfortunately I have no pictures of these because photography was not allowed in either place.

One thing that really stuck out to me is how much sprawling land there is down south and how much we had to drive to each location. Here in San Mateo everything seems so crowded and there is a lot of apartment buildings and tiny single family homes. Down south it seems that the standard home has four bedrooms (at least in Chino Hills). I picked up an issue of the Home and Land magazine down there and I was totally amazed that you could rent one of these giant houses for less than the cost of our condo. It is possible that one day the hubby and I would move down there, but it would be at least a few years from now.

Anyway, I hope all of you had a fun and safe holiday and that today was a wonderful beginning of the new year!

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