New Favorite Commerical

Oh man. This isn't going to be much of a post, but I had to post my new favorite commercial. I'm not sure why I think it's the greatest, maybe it's my love of Antiques Roadshow, but come on! This is good!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdfeW2h8Qo4

Haunted Heats Surf Competition

A few days before Halloween, some of the guys at church told David about a 'Haunted Heats' surf competition at Santa Monica beach. It was great because surfers of all skill levels could participate--no pressure. We had a BLAST!  The catch was--everyone involved had to be in costume. There were some amazing costumes! David dressed as 'Carl' the redneck (which Andy Phillips won't stop calling him no matter how hard I beg!). Pehrson dressed up as George W. Bush, and Bridger was Russell from Up.

There were all sorts of other costumes, too!

Pehrson had rigged up this really cool platform (like he was giving a speech). The first time he got up, the platform came up out of the water and he rode the wave in "giving a speech." It was great and he ended up winning the competition.

 Bridger's balloons were also a big hit with the judges. David's mullet kept falling off, and he was constantly chasing after it. Luckily, the mullet survived (although secretly some of us were hoping it would sink to the bottom of the sea floor.) But, because he had to keep chasing after it, he didn't perform his best. After he took of the mullet and the redneck garb he got some good waves.

Afterward, the sponsors provided lunch and we had fun swimming at the beach for a few more hours. It was great! What more can you ask than to spend a fun filled day at the BEACH in October. Sweet.

Truck-Or-Treat

The Friday before Halloween we had our ward Trunk-Or-Treat. It was great because it gave us an excuse to dress up!  Now, those who have seen our old blog (the one that I never updated and eventually had to get rid of because I forgot the password...yeah) will recognize what we dressed up as for Halloween. We wore these costumes for our first Halloween married, but since we were in a new state we figured 'what the heck!' and repeated them.

Ta Da! The Filthy Lukers. Except this time, we added a mullet for David and I added a few dollar store curlers. Nice touch, eh? The best part was, we told a few of our friends we were keeping our costumes a secret until the party. Some of them threatened to copy our idea, and we just laughed. Because there's no possible way!!  Many of our friends had super cute costumes too. Sadly, I don't have pictures of all of them, but I have a few cute ones, so let me know if you want to see what I've got.

David's One Year Older And Wiser Too Celebration

So, this year my Halloween-baby turned 27!!! The celebration started on Friday when we got up really early to be first ones in line at Disneyland. SO worth it!

Check this out--hardly any wait on most of the rides! We hit up nearly every one we wanted to and we were only there for 3 hours!

 You can barely see it in the picture but Space Mountain had a wait time of 10 minutes! We also walked right on Splash Mountain! David sat in the front so that I could use him as a human shield from the flying water. :)

Please also notice David jumping for joy because of all the fun we were having! And, we got to catch the Haunted Mansion with its new Halloween decorations. I can't say I've even seen The Nightmare Before Christmas (which is the new theme), but it was still pretty darn cool.

Please excuse the random family in the background--they're not with us.

After Disneyland, we rushed back home because David had class at one. I'm proud to say we made it with plenty of time to spare!

On Saturday, David was in a Haunted Surf Competition. It was so awesome! Anyone of all skill levels could enter, but the catch was everyone had to dress up. I'll post more pictures about this later!


Saturday night I blindfolded David and took him to a Thai restaurant that was recommended to us. Too bad, in spite of all my intentional and unintentional wrong turns, he still knew exactly where we were!  We enjoyed two of our favorite dishes--Panang Curry and Nam Tok. The owners talked to David in Thai and brought us out special fried bananas because it was his birthday.

Yum! So little time, never enough Thai food! On Sunday (the actual birthday) we opened presents and I made dinner (which was delish if I do say so myself!) We topped the day off with banana cake (which David requested, and which was also scrumptious) and blew out candles.

Happy Birthday, David!

Caramel Apple-ing!...?

Caramel Apple-ing? Am I even allowed to say that?! The sad thing about this post is that I spent forever writing all about our fun 'Caramel Apple Night' only for my post to vanish! So, weeks later here I am starting all over again.

Mandy and I had been dying for caramel apples ever since we saw a Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory in Huntington Beach. A few weeks later at Downtown Disney we saw even more delicious caramel apples and decided to make some of our own! 

It was a great adventure. We had crushed oreos, nuts, chocolate, brown sugar, caramel corn, sprinkles and probably a few other things I've forgotten. Some apples were fancy and perfect, others were made sloppily and eaten sloppily ( I won't mention names) but it was good fun. The true hero of the night was the apple slicer, which we discovered part way through eating them, which made it so much easier!

The Millers came over and posed with this Oh-So-Perfect apple, although I think the apple actually belonged to Mike. :)

Afterward, Blair suggested we play "Human Clue." Basically, team one goes in another room while team two picks the who, what and where. They act it out to one person on team one. Then that person has to pass on what they can remember to the next person on their team and so on (kind of like telephone). The funny part is that so much gets lost that by the end you're nowhere close. Let's just say we ended up doing the moonwalk, shooting guns (which came out of nowhere!) and acting like the headless horseman. By the way, I have video footage of each of the girls doing the moonwalk available upon request. ;) Here's my attempt. No mocking!!

Overall, a great night and an excellent celebration of the season!

D-school so far

So I haven't really contributed to this blog very much, so I thought I'd waste some time while I was studying for my mid-terms to take some pictures of teeth I've been carving. These have pretty much taken up most of my school time so far. I do study, but not as much as I carve teeth.

These are some Maxillary Central Incisors, Max Lat Inc, Canines, etc. I get to know the teeth really well this way. Youcan't see them in a lot of detail, but it's good enough, you get the idea.

D-school's been tough, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I prepared myself to work harder than I ever had at BYU, but I've been pleasantly surprised. I guess I even have time to learn how to surf :) It's great because studying is so much easier when you're actually interested in the subject. It's a lot of fun learning about all this stuff and I know I went into the right profession. I'm not as exciting as Melissa on the blog, so that's all I've got. I'm going to be 27 this month. Crazy.

Fall Decor and Getting Halloweeny

Well, seeing as how it's David's birthday and all, Halloween festivities are an absolute expectation. In true Melissa and David style, we wrapped our door in orange and cobwebs.

David insisted on getting some skeleton bones at the store. But, upon realizing he didn't really know where to put them, he gave up and put one inside of my decorative vase. :) Tacky, yeah kind of. But am I leaving it there? You bet.

Found this cornucopia at a thrift store. Oh yeah! Added some festive fall colors and viola! Sure, this doesn't hold a candle to my mom's classic annual fresh cornucopia, but I'm doing the best I can to live up to your greatness, Mom!

Today was a great sunday. We has an awesome stake conference. Two seventies came and called a new stake president. The spirit was there and it was wonderful. We sang in the Stake Choir, which sounded great thanks to a fantastic director, Lisa. After church we had Veronica over for roast I'd made in the Crock Pot. So many friends had tried to convert us to the greatness of the Crock Pot, but now I think it's a done deal. So easy! Then, they had us over for dessert. David, as per his classic tradition when he finds a good book, is reading away the afternoon.

All in all, it's a wonderful day to think about how blessed we are. We're so grateful for all that we have!

Dinner With Phil

This week our friend Phil came into town. He emailed us the day before letting us know he'd be around and we decided to get together for dinner. Because of the craziness of traffic, we decided to meet in Hollywood, which was sort of a half way point for both of us. We met at a small pizza place just a few blocks away from all the Hollywood action. Phil said he was craving either pizza or Greek food--so we ordered a Greek Pizza. We really liked it and would definitely go back! We ordered old fashioned root beer to top it all off! It was great talking to Phil. It reminded me of the good old "duplex" days when he was was engaged to my roommate and I was engaged to David. All four of us were around so much we joked that we lived in a duplex.  Here's a picture that we took at the pizza place.  It's great to keep in touch with good friends!

They're Filming A Movie Outside My Door!

Ok, ok. It was just a cell phone company commercial! But I still thought it was cool. Living in South Pasadena, so close to LA, we know they sometimes film movies and commercials in our city, but this was the first time we got so close to the action (although they did film a new ABC family show at the high school a few blocks away). I took this picture just outside our apartment complex. We knew they'd be there because  our apartment complex got a notice that they would be posting "No Parking" signs on street to make room for their entourage. It's crazy how long it takes to film a 30 second commercial...and how many cars/trucks it takes!  The last truck was full of a huge rack of brand new clothing for the actors, too.

By The Way...

By the way, my blog is supposed to have a decorative boarder with sort of a shabby look. When I use David's computer I can see it, but when I look at it on mine it looks plain. Can someone let me know if they can see it when they log on?? I hope so!

Fun Things!

And once again, the blog slacking commenced. It's usually due to my lack of pictures to post. So much has happened since my last post! We're having a great time in Southern California!  There is so much to do here and we're taking it all in. One of the recent adventures has been Disneyland Passes. Quite a few people in our ward have them and have loved them--so we jumped on board!  We've been a few times and had a blast. Here's a picture of us watching the Bug's Life movie. It was great, and parts of it really startled us--like when the hornet "stings" you in the back! :)

We went with a few friends to California Adventure the other night and saw World Of Color--the new Disney lights and water show. It was awesome!!!  At first, we found ourselves sprinting from place to place to find the best view. When we realized that there were color projections that you really couldn't see from the back we gave in and waited in line for a good seat. It was totally worth it!  The music was blaring and the lights and water were complex. It was great. We were sad we didn't get to ride any of the good rides, but the great part is--we can go back any time we want!!!

Naturally, we've also learned to love the beach. It's warm, it's free, it's fabulous. When we first moved here we went all the time (as we had nothing whatsoever to do during the day). Now, we don't go as much but we still make it happen as often as we can. A few weeks ago we went down to Huntington Beach with a few friends and bought wet suits during a sidewalk sale. Let me just say---Worth. The. Money. I've only used mine once but it totally takes the sting off the cold California water. David bought a soft top surf board and has been learning to surf along with a few other dental school friends. They're getting good!

David riding a wave in

But, of course, the guys took some spills too...

Notice the surfboard flying in the air.  All in all it was a great day.  The highlight was when the lifeguard drove up in an SUV and stopped to talk to us girls. He looked around and said, "Are you girls visiting from out of town?" Then, I said the four words I'd been waiting to say all my life while bumming around at the beach, "No, we live here." It was awesome!!! He then explained that he just wanted to make sure we knew what we were doing and weren't going to get hit by all the surfers while boogie boarding. A little while later we did decide to go out and we had a blast. It was the first time boogie boarding for a few of our friends and they did great! Then, we capped off the day with a trip to Cafe Rio, conveniently located near the beach. Oh yeah!

Well, there isn't much time for me to write more about all our adventures. All I can say is I am so grateful for the wonderful friends we've made here. The awesome neighbors who constantly  feed us cake, pie or treats every time we walk by!!! The great friends who laugh with us and plan fun get togethers. The welcoming friends who invited us to dinner when we first moved in, or taught David to surf, or helped me decorate my apartment. Wonderful people make life wonderful--and wonderful people are everywhere you go. I hope I can be as good a friend to others and they've been to me.

I promise to write more often!!!!

The New Blog!

Okay, I admit it. I slacked on our previous blog. So much so, that I made an entirely new blog! Maybe a fresh start will motivate me to keep up on it!  Well, let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start)...Sound of Music lovers, that was pretty much an indirect shout out to you. This is the blog of the Luker Family. The Luker Family consists of--Me and David. But someday we'll post cute pictures of our kids on here too!

Last month we moved from Boise, Idaho, where David's from, to South Pasadena, CA. David started dental school at the University of Southern California yesterday. They fed him an all you can eat buffet on the first day, so needless to say--he's liking it. I'm fixing up our apartment and running errands for now, but I start work at USC's health sciences campus in the next few weeks.

We had a crazy last year--whirlwind really. David applied for dental school. We prayed. He got in. We cheered. Etc., etc. We feel so blessed to be here and are really enjoying it. Before David started school we decided on one last hurrah and took a two week trip to Thailand. We visited Chiang Mai, Koh Samui and Bangkok. It was a great adventure filled with elephant riding, death defying sharp sheer cliff hiking (seriously. I'm never doing that again), kayaking, snorkeling, sweating, eating and shopping--and that only covers about half of it. Anyways, it was a blast. A few days later we went to Utah and Idaho to hang out with my family. We went to our family cabin in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho and tubed down the river (flipped on the waterfall!), swam in the pool and rode the Rhino. It was lots of fun. Then a few days later we went on a backpacking trip with David's family where we saw amazing waterfalls and the most gorgeous lakes I've ever seen. So...three vacations in a row.

Oh yeah, and then we moved to California for another month of vacation! :) And here we are. I'll post some pictures of our past and current adventures and try to keep the blog updated. Thanks for reading. Come Again.