Surprise!

Okay, quick recap of my days over the past week:

Monday - a friend invited Jessie and I to hang out, so we went to see March of the Penguins. Very cute.

Tuesday - Jessie came to "monkey training" with me again and when we were done, we picked up my friend, Raquel, from work and headed straight to the Arclight. Guess what we saw. Howl's Moving Castle!!! It was a sort of Japanese field trip, since I tutor her in Japanese. Afterwards, we went out to ice cream and talked about the movie and stuff. Eric came over and spent the night.

Wednesday - I went to work and Eric brought me lunch and hung out with me half the day then we went home and packed and went out for one last meal at Daikokuya. On the way back, Eric filled up the gas in my car and said goodbye then Jessie and I were off. We left sometime in the 7 o'clock hour and only stopped twice for a couple minutes. We never even turned on the radio or anything because we were talking the whole time, and the time flew by. Soon it was 4am and we were entering the Redding city limits.
Our plan was to sleep in Jessie's room and get up and surprise everyone later in the morning when we get up and come downstairs. Of course, there was a kink in our plan - Mom was asleep in Jessie's room. Plan B: we spread out the dirty clothes, laid a blanked across them and curled up like it was a nest. Unfortunately it wasn't easy to fall asleep after the two Double-Shot Espressos we'd both had.
Mom left early in the morning and we snuck up to Jessie's room then and slept in until Mom got back. We were walking downstairs to surprise her just as she was coming in holding my shoes that I'd left in the garage saying, "Who's shoes are the..." Then she saw us and was totally surprised, it was great!!! After all the freaking out about Jessie's plane ticket and everything, we had actually had a plan all along.
We hung out with Mom for the rest of the day and went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and War of the Worlds. Loved 'em both!

Thursday-Saturday - Hung out with the family. Didn't feel too good most of the time; I think I'm allergic to Redding. We bought Howl's Moving Castle the novel and Jessie's been reading it to us. It's so different than the movie and yet just as good. I got a Costco account and some much needed groceries and appliances. Rachel and I left Saturday evening and stopped only once to eat at Anderson's Pea Soup. This trip seemed to take longer because I was very tired and Rachel was crazy. We got in at about 2am and brought everything into the house. I took a shower and we both went to sleep.

TODAY - We slept in until 10-something, so no church. Instead we busied ourselves putting stuff away, then we went to Westwood. We walked around and looked in shops at stuff and got ice cream sandwiches from Diddy Rese. We got donuts from Stan's, but saved them for later. On the way home, we stopped at Target and picked up some things that I needed and Albertson's for fruit and vegetables. We got home and put everything away. Now we're just hanging out and I think we won't do anything too crazy tonight. I have to get up at 6am at the latest tomorrow morning, I think. My appointment says 7, but I don't know if that's am or pm. Knowing my luck, though, it's am, so I'll assume it is.
Oh, and Rachel and I had some Willy Wonka fun in Westwood today. Check it out: