Julia's Occupations: The End of an Era

King Jeremy is sitting in his high chair with his balloons just waiting for the cake to be lit.

Oh what a happy baby. May being 1 isn't such a bad thing after all.

This past weekend was a perfect weekend. My little cousin Jeremy had his 1st birthday party, I got to get together with two of my favorite cousins, and my car got washed for the first time in over a year.

Saturday morning after the usual Saturday morning exercise I headed down to Irvine for my cousin's birthday party. I must say he is one of the cutest little 1 year olds I know (he may possibly be the only 1 year old I know though). A good representation from both sides of the family were present to help Jeremy celebrate one year of life. Jeremy had fun showing me his new airplane toy that played music and you could ride on it. Very cool. But the afternoon mostly consisted of eating, talking, pictures, eating, talking and more pictures. I had fun just catching up with Catherine who I don't see enough of and talking with the rest of the family which I see more often, but not often enough. Then it was time for Jeremy to blow out the candles. I think he was amazed by the fact that his cake had fire on it and certainly didn't know what to do about it.

Thank goodness his brother Timothy was right there willing to help him out with the candle blowing out. After that we all enjoyed cake and then watched Jeremy "open" his presents while Timothy really did it. One year olds just really don't get the whole opening presents thing. He was more interested in eating the containers that the toys came in and sitting in the box his trucks came in.

It reminds me of my sister Susan who used to play in a little box all day when she was little. It was her favorite place to be. Ahh so many years ago.

After the eating and talking and many pictures were over Catherine, Melanie and I decided to make our way to the beach to enjoy some good cousin time together before the two of them head off to school at the end of the summer. Newport Beach was packed. We drove around for a good 20 minutes looking for somewhere to park. Just as we were going to try our luck at another beach we happened upon a parking spot. It was 4:00 by the time we got to the beach so we put our time in the meter and headed out to the sand. It wasn't really that warm and none of us ventured into the water, but good talks were had among all. How I love getting together with my cousins. We are so much alike and it's just fun to talk about our lives. At 6:00 we decided that we'd had enough of the beach as it was no longer really warm and our meter was about to run out.

After dropping Melanie and I off Catherine went home and Melanie and I proceeded to her house where we came up with the brilliant idea of washing out cars. I guess her mom has been giving her a hard time about the state of her car and we finally decided to do something about it. As for my red beauty, it has been over a year since she had any washing besides the windows. I know most of you think that isn't possible, but I promise your car doesn't fall apart if you don't wash it. A year may have been a little bit long, but hey you do what you have to do. So upon arrival at Melanie's house we parked our cars on the front lawn (to allow the lawn to take advantage of the water from our car wash) and got to work washing our beautiful cars.

Let's just say both of them were rather filthy. Most of you know what my car looked like before and here's a picture of how shiny and beautiful it looks now.

My favorite comment was when my aunt said "I didn't know your car had a shiny finish." I guess I might need to wash it more often. Oops. But the days of dirt from Utah, Nevada, and California are gone. Now I guess it will only get California dirt for a while. It was a wonderful bonding experience with Melanie and we greatly enjoyed it.

After the car washing experience Barbara took us to Pepe's, a wonderful Mexican food place, for dinner. It was lots of fun just eating and talking. After dinner I decided I better spend some time with Grandma and Grandpa and headed to their house. I finished watching the Dodger's lose with Grandpa and talked with Grandma as well before hitting the hay.

Sunday morning was breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa before they left for church and then I spent the morning doing some really good scripture studying and just had time to myself which was great. That's something I don't get enough of. Then I went off to church with Melanie. She was supposed to sing in Sacrament Meeting but woke up with a sore throat so couldn't do that. But it was fun to go to church with her and Geoff anyway. After church we went back to their house and then Barbara made a wonderful dinner which we all thoroughly enjoyed. It was much better than anything I would have made for myself that day. I have been sorely lacking in cooking adventures lately. Somehow I just haven't taken the time. I don't know if it's the heat or that the kitchen is always rather unorganized, but cooking has evaded me for the time. I think it's time to start back though. After a wonderful dinner I reluctantly ended the weekend by coming back to LA. It's always hard to come back after spending time away. I guess I'm just not meant to live in LA.