A Merry Christmas in LA

This year James and I decided to stay in LA due to the price of plane tickets, recently moving and having no time to settle our things, and well... just being all stressed out.  My mom offered to buy us plane tickets home, and it almost worked out but in the end we decided to stay here, though I was so sad about not being able to see everyone. James and I had also decided to buy our families webcams for christmas. Well...my dad had the same idea! So we're still doing some christmas shopping for my mom, brother, and sister in-law. But the good news is that we were able to hook the webcams up and spend part of Christmas together! I've been able to chat and laugh with my mom, and see the animals as we talked to them from the computer.  On Christams my mom had my aunt, uncle, and grandparents over and I was able to see everyone and have a little bit of Christmas with them in Michigan. It was great to see and chat with everyone, it felt like I was right there! I miss them all a bunch! Another great thing was that we were able to open our presents with our family online so they got to see us open them. It was so neat! We also chatted with James' family on Christmas so we were able to see everyone one the east coase too! It was a very merry Christmas indeed!

Another fun thing that happened this Christmas was that James and the rest of my family kept a great secret and surprised me on Christmas..... strangely enough at chruch the week before Christmas there was a skit forshadowing the whole event...

On the 23rd James picked me up from work. He was really excited about his new hand held video recorder present from Brad and Nicole. He was taping me as I walked to the car. He kept holding it up in my face, while I'm somewhat used to this it was still quite distracting! I got in the car and he was still taping. I reminded him that could "turn the camera off now" as I thought there was nothing very exciting about filming two people sitting in a car. As I'm saying this I'm reaching for my seat belt, which I was having a hard time finding....all the sudden I feel a hand on my shoulder. I'm still trying to get my seat belt on...so I began to tell James to get his hand off of me, when I realized it wasn't his hand. He had both up front... one on the steering wheel and one on his camera. I began to ask just who was behind me, not exactly knowing what to expect. That's when my dad popped his head from the back seat! It was a great surprise!!!! Thanks to all of you who helped to keep it :) 

Here is the video James captured of the surprise....

Christmas Surprise from James Kanka on Vimeo.

What you get for your money in LA

These past two weeks James and I have been moving into our new apartment. I like to think of our place as our little cottage, because that's exactly how it feels. Apartments in LA just aren't the same as they are on the east coast, or probably anywhere else. We're happy with our find. To to have a refridgerator and a washer and dryer in the unit is big deal out here! James and I are also excited to put more of our money in savings as our cottage apt. will assist us in doing just that. Luckily our friends have been a huge help in getting us situated. While we still have piles of boxes to get through and two more rooms to paint...without the help from our friends we wouldn't have been able to move and get things as far along as they are. 

Work has been incredibly busy for both James and I so we've only had the weekend to really get things settled. We've made many trips to Lowes, and are about 60% done with getting everything unpacked. Ughhh....so much left to do....Well anyway here are the first batch of pics of moving in.

Also this past week we went to the E! holiday party. It was wild! It was held at LA Live an outdoor club in the middle of downtown. The sceen inside was a wide range of activity: pool tables, rock band video game, patio area, 2 open bars, dancing, platforms, etc. It was fun to meet more of James' co-workers. But the whole thing reminded me of a more tasteful version of spring break :) James and I had fun dancing! This week is my office holiday party and it will be pretty great if I do say so myself! 

New Place

Good news! We signed on our new apartment and already have the key. We'll begin painting and moving in this weekend! Yay and praise the Lord!!!! Though I'm not looking forward to the actual move...I am looking forward to a new place! I try and post pics as soon as we can. Thanks everyone for your advice and prayers :)