Today, Kelly from Kelly’s Korner Blog is doing a Blog Carnival about “Show Us Where You Live”. Rather than show you my particular town, I thought I would highlight the entire county that I live in, Orange County.  The town I live in, is decent size but I do many things throughout the actual county rather than just my town.

The Huntington Beach Pier-The beach, downtown stores, and restaurants.

The Ferris Wheel at the Irvine Spectrum-Shopping Center with stores, and restaurants.

Dana Point Harbor-Fishing, Boat Docks, and Whale Watching.

Anaheim Stadium aka Home of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Baseball Team.  They also host other events there too.

The view from the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel.  The Ritz Carlton is a beautiful resort.

San Clemente Beach Trail.  A great beach to run on. There is a paved path.

Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure.  We try to go here at least once every two weeks. We live about 15 minutes away and have Season Passes.

Oh, and we have the Real Housewives of Orange County. The original Housewives.  It’s pretty hard to compete with that.  I’ve seen almost all of the women around the area, either at the mall or Starbuck’s.

I can’t wait to check out other people’s hometowns!

If you are paying attention to the news, you might have heard that we are having some “weather issues” here in Southern California. You may be in your own house, because you are snowed in, or the roads are closed. But here, we have some rain.  It’s like a National Crisis here in Orange County.  We are on “storm watch”.  It’s pretty funny, because I have friends who laugh at me when I tell them about this.

But really, we aren’t prepared for this much water. I keep seeing flash floods, mini tornadoes, property damage, and messes all over the news.  We’ve been pretty lucky though.  Our house sits up pretty high, our driveway is properly sloped, and our backyard is draining. Angry Kid loves it.  He likes splashing around in the puddles and running around in the rain.  He actually took my umbrella away from me the other night. Not nice, but pretty funny.  He’s excited to wear his Batman rain boots every day. Seeing Angry Kid in his rain boots had me thinking. How come I don’t have rain boots? Why not? I need them, right? I mean, I usually wear my Converse, and they are getting soaked.

So in typical “Julie-Style”, I ordered some rain boots.  Now, if you know me, I get a little creative with my wardrobe.  I have often been told, “only YOU could get away with something like that.” Yea, well…someone’s gotta do it, right?

So I ordered these on Tuesday night, and got them early Wednesday morning.  I’m a total impulse buyer and I love that Endless does overnight shipping. I can only imagine how many people were at the mall this week looking for rain gear. While, I sat on my butt, and clicked “order”.

You are jealous, aren’t you? Everyone loves Hello Kitty. I think they are quite fabulous.  I may have even wore them to work last night. I took a picture of my foot yesterday while wearing my new awesome boots and my work pants.  I sent the picture via text to a few friends.  I got back some funny comments, but mostly, “love the boots”.

I may not always go with wardrobe choices that are very trendy, but for some reason, they work for me.  I’m going to Blissdom at the beginning of February. I’m pretty excited for this conference.  I will get to meet tons of my bloggy friends.  I am already thinking about what wardrobe items, I will be bring with me.  I will have to do a post about “my clothing” styles and choices.  I’m pretty random.What works for me, might not always work for everyone else. I don’t do it on purpose. It’s just my style.

Oh yea, this is a photo from BlogHer 09′.  YES, it was for a theme party. But you can understand “Julie Style” by this picture.  I had to represent the “Angry Julie” with the shirt. This is not typical “conference wear.”

Last week, Angry Kid and I were invited by Aracely to go to Pretend City. It’s local here in Orange County.  It seems that a ton of people that I know have gone there already. Shocking, since we usually check out the “new” kid places in town.  Hey, I need to find more places to entertain my kid. He needs to be busy.

Of course, we picked a rainy day during Holiday vacation, right? I had to go check the museum out at their busiest time.  I’m such a good planner like that.  Angry Husband would have lost his mind and turned around if he saw how many people were there, seriously.  But I’m much braver than that. Well not really, we had nothing else to do that day.

So I met up with Aracely, and watched Angry Kid walk away.  I was not going to stalk Angry Kid, and follow him everywhere. I let him roam.  I watched the other people, chase their kids around. Umm no thanks, exhausting.  I sat there, and chatted with Aracely for at least two hours, maybe more. I checked on Angry Kid off and on. He was in the art room coloring, or in the grocery store shopping. He showed me all “the monies” he made from his various jobs.

I would found him like this, you know “workin”. Cause that’s what four year olds do, right? They are plumbers. He even had a time card to punch in, at every station (job). He was so happy working on those pipes.  He walked around with me and showed me all the other jobs that he worked at. I tried to get a picture of him standing underneath the “Police Station” sign, but all I could was him working “Dispatch” in his fingerprint shirt.

Angry Kid tried to hide from me when it was time to leave. I knew that. I expected that.  But I was able to coax him out of there with a promise to come back again. He told Angry Husband all about it that night. EVERY DAY now, he asks if he can go back to Pretend City. I sigh, and say “soon, we will go back soon”… I guess it’s time for a membership.

And my visit wasn’t all sunshine, rainbows, and unicorns like it appears to be.  I was a little frustrated while I was there. I noticed that they had no proper kid identification system. Even Chuck E Cheese matches up the parents with the kid.  Pretend City needs some kind of hand stamp or wrist band. They have no gatekeeper or guard at the door.  They are good about helping look for a child if you can’t find them, but they would have no clue if the kid was completely gone.  Also, they had vending machines.  The vending machines were not working at the time. The guy from the vending machine company came and serviced them while we were there. He also told me that they have the credit card machine disabled. Angry Kid was screaming for food. And without an ATM machine and/or credit card machine on the vending machine, we were without snacks.

Would I go there again? Absolutely. Every kid’s place has some quirks.  Even Disneyland.