a sunrise, a president, and birds.

After hiking Saturday I went to bed at 10pm.  This was in preparation for a 6am wake up call (or three because I tend to hit the snooze..).

The reason for the early awakening on my day off is simple.  This:

A California sunrise.

Just in case you are getting worried that I have turned into some kind of naturalistic-bran eating-don't shave my armpits-organic person, let me reassure you;


I'm still the girl that tries to learn Beyonce's music videos:

I still shop at Target.
I still love Christmas music.

And just the other day I had an internal debate for about 30 minutes about whether or not it would be a good idea to go to Taco Bell. 

I really wanted a crunch wrap supreme.

After church Sunday I headed to the Ronald Reagan Library, which isn't a library, but a museum.

And as I've described so many things in California, it was beautiful.

The museum sits on top of a hill in Simi Valley, about 30 minutes from my apt. 

While I learned a lot about Ronald Reagan and his presidency, I won't bore you with those tidbits.  

Hey, I got to go inside of Air Force One!

And I saw some cold war propaganda, which as some of you may know, is one of my favorite kinds of art.

A piece of the Berlin wall.

After I learned all I could about Ronald Reagan, I learned what I could about America's history...through Christmas trees. 

Each tree represented a decade in our country's history.  They were decorated with things that resembled inventions, Amendments, movies, toys, etc, and even social networking. 

All this while sparkling like a happily decorated Christmas tree. 

An interesting thing about people's perspective on this coast.  Their history is heavily based on the Westward expansion.  Our history on the East coast seems to have deeper roots, and an older story. It's almost as if the Revolution, Civil War, and etc are a distant memory, a far off country's history compared to the side of the continental US.  There was a tour group in front of me that talked about Washington DC and NYC as if they were foreign.  The guide asked the group, "has anyone here ever been to our nation's capital?" when someone said yes, she asked them to share about their experience.  The other group members were intrigued and murmured to each other that they wished they could have gone as well. 

Psh! My sister goes for a walk almost every night 'round the Capitol!! I went there when I was in the 6th grade! 

..I didn't really say that...but I thought it. Hearing their perspective made our country seem so much bigger. 

 After the museum I came home, made dinner, then Ashley and I watched one of ABC Family's '25 Days of Christmas' movies.  This is probably one of our favorite evening activities currently.  Have you been watching these?  All the favorites are on!


Update:  Remember when I mentioned an itchy infestation? Well I did..at first Orkin thought it was spiders. But we never developed Spiderman like powers... and the itching got even worse. They finally came today and were able to diagnose us with Bird mites. If you haven't thrown up yet, don't google it, because you will. They are nasty pest bugs that can infest a house near birds nests... I guess it's not so nice living next to the prairie..  They did some heavy duty exterminating today, we even had to take our Christmas tree outside so it didn't die as well.  However, if this doesn't help, we will have to move, and I reallllyyy hope it doesn't come to that.