December in California

EDIT: Meant to post this two weeks ago, but things happened. Please still love me

Last weekend was still a bit slow as we were still recovering from covid, but Mitchell did have an improv show! He says it went really great and he was very funny and he's very good and he's the best. So I think it went well. 

We didn't do much during the week, but the next weekend we went to a little vegan fair. They had lots of food stalls, and a few gift stands. I bought some handmade scrunchies, and then we bought some tacos and tamales to eat. We also tried some doughnuts, which were flavoured lavender rose and chocolate. While we were eating these doughnuts, we met an old couple who were involved with the church where it was being held. We had a good chat, and they only tried to recruit us a little bit into the Center for Spiritual Living. 


After the fair we went to the mall, and Mitchell was very nice and followed me around as I bought lots of clothes. 

Sunday morning Mitchell chatted to some friends while I slept (I'm still sleeping 11 hours a night when I get the chance) and then we went for a little lunch date in the Canyon Crest Town Center on our way to get groceries. 

The City of Riverside hold an annual Festival of Lights. We'd been last year, but it was pretty small because of covid, but this year it's getting back to how it's been in previous years. I met Mitchell in Downtown after work, and we walked through all the lights. There were lots and lots, with lots of photo opportunities with all the different styles. 



On weekends, they have a Santa too, but he wasn't there on the Tuesday, which did make it less busy. They also had some food sheds, selling hot chocolate, churros, kettle corn, gingerbread cakes. We'd planned to get dinner there, but the only savory option we could find were some tamales (which was fine with us, we love tamales!) but they were labelled as dessert tamales even though they were described as having corn and cheese in the centre. We picked these anyway, and they were tasty, but the dough was definitely sweeter than normal. They did have options with strawberries or pineapple, so maybe they made more sense, but we didn't try them. We did get some hot chocolate next which was nice as it was getting chilly now the sun had set. It's not been too bad, but this week it has been getting down to about 3 degrees at night.  

We then went for a walk along through the Mission Inn which hosts a lot of the lights. They had lights strung all across the entrance and two giant nutcrackers standing either side of the path. We actually went inside with the crowd and got to see all the lights they had in there. It's very fancy in the lobby, with several restaurants and bars to the sides. They had lots of trees and poinsettias, all lit up.

Main entrance

Through the window

Inside and a Mitchell

The side entrance

 After the Mission Inn, we took a detour down a side road, which took us to the small fairground. They had a carousel, a ferris wheel and a few other rides which were pretty empty being a school night. 

That was the last part, and we walked back to the car via all the lights again, even spotting a few more on our way. 


Isn't he cute?

That's it for this week, and this weekend we fly home! So it may be a couple of weeks until we update again, but as we're probably visiting all of our readers at some point over the holidays I hope you won't mind too much!

Lots of Love,

Emily and Mitchell

xxxxxxxxxxxx

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