when gracemas comes to town.

i really feel proud of that title. gracemas!

grace and dave were way way nice and came out to hang with us for a few days before they joined their families in all other parts of southern cal for christmas. we loved every second of hang time with them and felt like the time went by way too fast. 

something to note in the picture of grace and dave is grace's string cheese tucked into her belt. dave's favorite joke.

best news of the day is that tanner got to try his hand at being a host and came out on top! i always felt so sad when he had to miss out on the fun for studying. 

grace and dave were obviously really impressed with his knowledge and skillz.

 they flew in late saturday night (midniiight) but that didn't stop us from talking until 2:30 AM. i felt really proud of me and tanner for going back to our pre-married selves and extending our bedtime for the first time since we moved here. guess that's what no school schedule will do to a man and his wife.

sunday morning brought a nice blueberry pancake breakfast and a quick drive along the PCH pre-church. it's our favorite sunday morning tradition.

after church we changed into warmer clothes and headed down to the canals. i've been told by people in our ward that they look really nice at christmas and nobody was lying! except we got there a little early so we strolled around for a little bit to admire the houses and tried picturing what everything would look like at night..
cue minimal photo commentary

happy hannukah! looks like venice canals had a kayak parade

magic bells!

eat it up - this is our one happy group shot

 photo commentary is finished and back to the story we go:

we realized we didn't have to imagine what the canals would look like when it was dark and decided to walk to the beach for a sunset view.

for some reason the sand at venice beach had been pushed into a big sand hill which made for some magical silhouette photos.

and happy photos from the front

i like the out of focusness of this photo with the colors! dave didn't.

he liked this one okay though.

we walked down the boardwalk towards the skate park and smelled then saw the venice art walls. and really liked silhouette photos still.

 the skate park is really cool/crazy and we hadn't been there since we first moved here so it was a fun thing to relive. especially with skateboarders grace and dave.

crazy car lights make this photo funs

this venice sign is always my favorite - especially with the venice mural behind it.

we made our way back to the canals and it was well worth the wait. look how magical!!

after a successful night of adventuring, we went back to the house for indian food courtesy of trader joe's simmer sauce and frozen garlic na'an bread. then we invited david eff over for brownies and ice cream. just a really nice provo reunion.

monday came and brought work for me while tanner and dave ran at the beach and then group christmas shopping fest at 3rd street promenade. grace saw joanna goddard from cup of jo and tanner and dave felt stressed about buying christmas gifts. 

then a life changing moment happened that night when we went to roscoe's for dinner.

let's look at the photos below and then discuss.

not much to look at besides couple switch and the sign. 

chicken.

and.

wafflleeessss!

that is not out of excitement. but more out of the fact that it has always sounded like the grossest thing to me who hates having syrup mix with eggs or bacon.

and before any of you feel sick hearing about this i am going to say this:

i liked it!! 

despite everything i ever knew about myself. i liked it.

brooke was right when she said it's the sweet and salty flavor that makes it work. 

everyone else liked it too so roscoe's was a big success.
next time visitors come - we will take you there if you want us to.
and here is the look of a satisfied man:
i think this is one of the cutest pictures of tanner ever.

following roscoe's, we headed into hollywood so grace could see the stars she has always wanted to see. the scientologists set up a really nice christmas display in their parking lot that captivated tanner and grace.

we really loved all the glitter. and by we i mean i'm pretty sure i loved it more than grace. just such a nice hollywood surprise!

then we had a blurry family photo taken with santa

and the only words he said to us for the 3 minutes we were up there were "she's beautiful" when grace was taking the photo of us below.

after creepy santa, we went to the chinese theater to look at the hand and foot prints and really liked that.

then we took a man photo of tanner and dave and then turned red from the brightest sign in the world.

oh! and on sunday night we started the process of making gum drops at the request of grace. so after we got home on monday we had a group effort of cutting through the gummiest candy and rolled them in sugar to let them crystallize. the colors look nice!

i went back to work on tuesday morning while grace, dave and tan had the most magical morning everrr!! they went for a bike ride at the beach - grace and dave rented a tandem bike aaand they saw a movie being filmed with colin farrell! so i cried only a little and then felt nice when they came to pick me up for lunch at thai boom.

tanner's paparazzi photo of colin. he's so proud.

then i went back to work again while the crew drove through beverly hills and took a quick tour of UCLA's campus. but then they got the best tour when i took them through my office at the end of the day and gave them t-shirts.

we hurried over to tito's tacos for dinner and then hurried even faster to make it home in time for grace's virtual baby shower! apparently that news hasn't spread very well so in case you missed it..

grace is having a baby girl! she's due in april and it's very exciting. little baby poulsen!

brooke and megan took nice photos with everyone surrounding the computer screen with our faces on it and i took screen shots but those will post separately because i don't have any of them right now. but i will say it was a big success and so much fun.

after thaaat we hurried again out the door so we could make it to the griffith observatory before it closed. it was really magical and i wish we could have been there for more than 30 minutes but that's okay. next time. 

here's the view of LA from the top of the observatory.

and let's talk about how i was 90% sure the building below was turning into a transformer while we were standing right by it. the whole thing spun around in a circle to close and made the craziest sound. it was really exciting and more exciting when we found a mini version of it inside that we could play with.

this wall is really nice.

theeeennnn we hurried AGAIN over to nice cream so grace and dave could eat at one of our favorite dessert places here. we really made it to everything in the very last minutes but it's okay because we were in our last minutes with the poulsens. i got the most magical lemon olive oil gelato and want to eat it every day.

and finishing the post with a bang and mine and grace's favorite christmas bow that was free at church.

basically, our weekend was the nicest with our nice friends and we wish it could happen much more often.

now it's time for packing, wrapping, and cleaning our hearts out in preparation for the ultimate christmas vacation that we're leaving for tomorrow niiight!!!