Labor Day Weekend

We had a great weekend! First of all it was a whole whopping three days for me, four for Peter. We both were thrilled to have some relaxing/fun time. I went to work Friday while Peter got stuff ready for our camping trip. I came home, packed up some stuff and then we headed off to borrow some camping gear from my parents. Then we drove to San Onofre State Beach where we met up with Chris, Mary and the girls. They got there a bit before us and had already set up camp. They had a big three bedroom tent and had brought Claire's portable crib. We had a two man tent that I put up by myself in about 10 minutes or less. We were cozy.

Claire spent the majority of the time eating dirt.
Peter made kabobs for dinner for the adults. The kids had hot dogs made over the camp fire. They were delicious!

Camille and Ellie were excited that we were there. They saw the camera and struck a pose.
Saturday morning we had pancakes, eggs and bacon. Then we headed down to the beach. The girls loved playing in the sand. Claire hated the beach water and especially the waves. Mary tried to put her down and she was like an infant on fresh cut grass. She didn't want to be put down. Her legs instantly shot back up. It was funny. We didn't have to worry about her going into the water, she kept her distance. At one point they all got hungry, but they had super sandy hands, so we were feeding the girls some Cheetos. I love the expression on Claire's face here.

Saturday afternoon we headed home and relaxed. Monday we got up early and headed to Home Depot and Lowes and bought redwood. Then we headed over to my work and built four garden boxes. Next weekend I have a few parents helping me shovel dirt/mulch into the boxes. My students are really excited to go out and plant the garden again. (We had four boxes planted last year, but had to take them apart to move out a temporary building.)

Wicked/Luau

Last Saturday we went and saw Wicked at the Civic Center. It was great, except for the seats. We had the stair railing in front of us so we had to slouch to see between the bars. As long as we didn't focus on the railing, we hardly noticed it, we were also sitting really far in the back. We went with Chris, Mary and Laurel. Chris made the comment as we were sitting in our seats, "If there's a sudden change in cabin pressure, air masks will drop from the ceiling..." We were about 7 rows from the very back. People around us were using binoculars. We had fun! While we were there we went ahead and bought tickets to see The Lion King in a couple of months. Apparently if you buy tickets directly at the civic center you bypass the $2.50 per ticket service charge as well as the $6.75 per ticket, ticketmaster charge. I think we'll buy from the civic center from now on.

Then tonight Peter and I went to a Luau! While honeymooning in Hawaii, we were bummed that we missed the Luau there, so Peter found one near here. It was down on Shelter Island. The food was amazing and the entertainment was great! Here's the menu:
I tried a bit of everything except the green salad, salmon and white fish. For dessert it was hard to tell what each dish was so I just grabbed one. I ended up eating pineapple upside down cake, Peter had mango cheese cake.

It was a bit dark so we didn't try to take any pictures, so here's Peter's famous stick drawings. He had to add a few "features" to his drawings, after all they were all wearing skirts. :)

As Seen on TV!

Have you ever tried these? You're supposed to be able to shove lots of stuff into a bag and then vacuum all the air out and have a nice flat pack to store. Well I was willing to give it a try.....And I like it! Now keep in mind I think they exaggerate a bit...there's no way any old regular vacuum is going to suck all the air out and make the bag flat. It's just not possible as they show in their picture on the front of the box. However it does say triple your storage space and I definitely have tripled my storage space!

Take this bag for example. It contains a queen sized winter comforter duvet.

This is what the bag looks like after I used the vacuum on it.

This bag contains one twin comforter, two twin sheet sets, 1 flannel twin sheet set, one bed skirt, two pillow shams, one queen duvet cover, and two pillow cases.

We had so much fun playing with what we could shrink we ended up shrinking the above items plus:
2 pillows, 2 baby blankets, 1 crochet throw blanket, 1 queen jersey sheet set, 1 queen fleece sheet set, 11 sweatshirts, and 5 extra blankets. I still have half of the bags left! I think it's a good sign that I'm running out of ideas of what to shrink.

Out of Order

I just got back from an interesting adventure. I went to Costco-normally an adventure, but for today I just got what I needed and left. Then I went to the gas station because I was seriously low on gas. There were three pumps on each side. I pulled in to the first spot and then noticed the lady in the second spot was leaving and the spot in front of her was open. So me being the nice person drove up to the front spot to fill up my tank. I swipe my credit card, push a few buttons and then the screen says to push the button for the grade of fuel and then remove the nozzle. Okay so far this sounds pretty normal right? So I go to grab the nozzle and....IT WASN'T THERE! I stand there a little dumb founded at the situation and clearly there was no nozzle, so I cancel the transaction, close the gas tank and pull to the other side. Here there are three stations again, two clearly marked with yellow out of service bags and the third....wait could it be???? It was missing the nozzle too. Luckily this time I noticed before putting my card into the machine. Okay slightly weird here! I pull back around to my previous side and go to the second spot and fill my tank. While I am there a lady pulls into the front spot. Her dad walks over from another pump and they start chatting. She goes to put her credit card in the machine and I tell her that the nozzle in missing. (Though I was tempted to watch and see how far she got before she noticed the missing nozzle.) They both look and start laughing. I mean really if the station is out of order they put the yellow bags around the nozzle to let everyone know not to use those pumps. Apparently they don't know what to do when nozzles go missing...no sign or anything. I think they all have hidden cameras and watch the people one after the other go and find out for themselves and bust up laughing in the background.

Two Years Later

Today we celebrated our two year anniversary! Peter bought me these pretty roses.
We went out to dinner at Marie Calendars. We were tempted by their pies, however we decided to stick with tradition. I got two miniature cakes from Edelweiss...Bavarian cream and raspberry to be exact-the same as our wedding cake. We split one and will enjoy the second one tomorrow :) I found this super cute card that totally describes me to a tee. Zoom in on the card for a good laugh...the best part is "criticized your driving skills..."

Peter got me some of my favorite gummy candies. Gummy peaches and sour gummy worms. Yes my hubby is a keeper. I picked up a memory foam mattress topper that is three inches thick. My parents have this exact kind on their guest bed that Peter and I have enjoyed. Peter has been just about nonstop talk over that mattress topper...I clued in and got it for him....for us :) It's wonderful!

We've had another wonderful wedding anniversary and look forward to many more :)

Adventures with soap...again!

What is up with me and soap?
I've decided that soap keeps picking fights with me and winning and therefore I don't like soap anymore. My latest adventure, I'm still trying to clean up. This bottle was full when I bought it. I drove home, opened my trunk and found a royal mess. Apparently the lid wasn't screwed on tight and it came off while I was driving and poured soap all over the inside of my trunk. Wish I took a picture of it. I bought a new swimsuit while I was out too. Luck would have it, it was covered in soap. I didn't know if the suit fit for sure or not, so imagine me trying to salvage the tags and try on a swimming suit that was basically swimming in soap. Luckily the suit fit so I cut the tags and threw it in the wash on the rinse cycle. I also threw in the wash cloths that I used to clean up my trunk...there were about 12 of them. Unfortunately I didn't think to rinse the wash cloths out before popping them in the washing machine so this is what I found when the rinse cycle was done.

OOPS!

So much for a quick fix. I ran the washing machine through a medium sized load and am waiting to see if that does the trick. I still need to take my trunk lining out of my car and go use a carpet shampooer on it. ARG!

Can you guess what we made?

What on earth could we possibly make with this much sugar?

This much pectin?...each box contains two packets of pectin.

All of these jars?

And all this fruit?

Did you figure it out? Not to mention we made 8 jars of strawberry a week and a half ago. We made half of the plums(8 jars) yesterday and the peaches(8 jars). We're waiting a couple of days for the rest of the plums to ripen up and figure that will be another 8 jars. Also strawberries were on sale today when I had a couple of things to pick up, so they jumped into my basket...can you guess what will happen to them? Peter wants to try apricot jam too. I think we need more jars :)

Road Trip/Hearst Castle

We just got back from a fun road trip. Friday morning we left and drove to Morro Bay. We stopped in Solvang for lunch and abelskivers. I didn't know what an abelskiver was, and it turns out they are delicious! They're kind of like a doughnut with raspberry sauce on top. Solvang is a cute town. There are storks on rooftops, windmills everywhere and flower boxes. The whole town has a European flavor to it. On our way to Solvang we drove by six old fashioned cars.



After lunch we were back on the road again. We headed up to Morro Bay. We checked in to our Inn. Peter had the choice of picking this super cute bed and breakfast, or an Inn that was right along the bay. He chose the Inn as it was a lot cheaper and had good reviews. It was alright. It definitely was right along the bay which was cool. This is Morro Rock. It was right across from our Inn. We drove over to the rock and then walked along a trail and watched people feed the squirrels.
Then we drove to Montana De Oro State Park to see if we could find some tide pools. Unfortunately it was not low tide so we didn't find much in the tide pools.

The funny thing about this beach is it was mostly rocks. Medium small flat rocks. Peter tried to build a rock castle. What do you think?

At night we walked along the embarcadero and had dinner at a seafood place. Peter had swordfish and I had beef tacos(I don't do fish). We also ordered Olallieberry cobbler and took it back with us. It was great! We ate so much we hobbled back to our Inn and relaxed.

Saturday morning we headed to Hearst Castle. We arrived way too early for our first tour, so we drove up the road a bit and went to see Elephant Seals.
Most of the elephant seals were asleep, though we did watch some come out of the water and some go into the water. The two in the above picture are fighting. We also watched two smaller ones play around for awhile. They were cute. The sleeping ones snored- it was pretty funny.
We stayed for about an hour and then headed back to the castle.
We had signed up for two tours, but after completing the two tours we decided to do one more. We went on tour number 1 which includes the ground floor of Casa Grande-Casa del Sol, Esplanade and Gardens, Neptune pool, Assembly room, Refectory(dining room), Morning room, Billiard room, and theater. Tour number 2 included Casa Grande Upper floors(a lot of stairs to climb), Doge's suite, the cloisters, the library, Gothic Suite, Gothic Study, Kitchen and pantry. Tour number 3 we skipped, and Tour number 4 was Gardens and Grounds and Casa del Mar-Hidden terrace, Neptune Pool dressing rooms, North Esplanade, Tennis Courts, wine cellar and all of the tours ended at the Roman Pool (indoor pool). Our pictures didn't come out very well. We had to turn the flash off and many of the rooms were very dark, so here's some of the pictures that actually turned out.
Do you recognize this picture? Perhaps if you're a Harry Potter fan it might look familiar. The dining hall in the Harry Potter movies is based off of this dining hall. Pretty cool huh?

The Three Graces-Famous statue

One of the guest houses with a fountain outside. There were fountains everywhere!

All of the ceilings in the rooms were very original and unique. This is the only one that came out good in the photo.

Another view of the garden

Neptune Pool

We bought a couple of books from the gift shop. The pictures are much better than anything we took.

While we were at Hearst Castle we had a break between our first and second tours, so we went to our car for sandwiches. When we got there we noticed these:
Corvettes everywhere! There must've been a corvette convention because they were all lined up. There were about 50-60 of them. Peter took a bunch of pictures along with other people :)
After our third tour we were a bit tired. It wouldn't have been too bad if they didn't bus us down after each tour. We spent in total 1 1/2 hours on the buses. So we left Hearst Castle and headed north to Julia Pfieffer Burns State Park in the Big Sur area. From here we parked along the street and followed a path down to McWay Falls. This is the only waterfall in the US (that we know of) that drops into the Pacific Ocean. Totally worth visiting!
Then we headed back down to San Luis Obispo and stopped for dinner at the Apple Farm. We were so stuffed we had to have our apple dumpling to go. We ate it back at our room.

Then this morning we got up, said goodbye to the seals in the harbor and headed back home.

Fourth of July Fun

We had a great Fourth of July this year! We started the day with a pancake breakfast at the church. Followed by a few trips to some stores. We then met at my parents house, where we started making ice cream. My nephews were very interested in seeing how the ice cream was made and they were even more interested when the ice cream was done and they got to lick the beater and the plate that we held the beater on. Gracie enjoyed it too as she licked up anything that fell on the ground or the slide.

We enjoyed BBQ hamburgers, corn on the cob, watermelon, salad and Italian sodas. It was great! Then we all settled down for what we thought was going to be a short nap. Well four hours later we woke up from our nap with just enough time to rush to the church lawn for fireworks. We got there at 8:45 and I'm sure there were a ton of people there that we knew, but in the dark we didn't recognize anyone, so we found a spot, put out our blanket and watched. The fireworks were being set off a block away at the middle school, so we saw most of the display. Once the fireworks were over, we ran to our car and got out of the parking lot pretty quickly. Many other people had the same idea we had, but there barely was a line when we got into it.

We headed back to my parents house where we enjoyed home made vanilla ice cream with Oreos crushed into it. It was delicious! We also made strawberry sorbet which was good too.

Laundry Mishap

Yesterday I was doing laundry, it was kind of a boring day so I decided to spice things up a bit and dump a ton of laundry soap all over myself and the floor. :)

Okay so we have the dryer on top of the washer in this tiny little area. Leaving very little room for anything, but just enough room to store the laundry detergent on top of the dryer. Really its a genius plan. Except for yesterday the soap spicket wasn't allowing the soap to come out and when I tipped the jug that didn't really help either. So I pulled the jug down and put enough in my wash. As I was putting the jug back up the liquid inside hit the cap that you have to twist a little to allow the air through. Anyway there was enough pressure and the cap wasn't on very tight and before I knew it I had laundry detergent in my face. I had the thing almost on top of the dryer too. I fumbled a bit and knocked down our container of stain stick too and finally got the container on the floor upright so I could get to the bathroom and wash off my face. Awhile later I emerged laughing at the mess I had just made. I had soap-very concentrated soap in my hair, down my shirt, shorts and running down one of my legs and I had now tracked it into the bathroom where I got it all over the counter and floor. Not to mention it was running down the door in the laundry area, all over the washing machine and all over the floor. I had made a big mess. All I can say is thank goodness it was clear soap so the mess wasn't too totally obvious. But let me tell you there was soap everywhere!
I left the mess all over the floor and went upstairs to shower. I was in the shower for a long time trying to get all the soap off of me. It was really concentrated-one of the kinds where you use less soap for the same amount of loads. When I returned to clean up I decided to take just one more picture of the clothes as well. I think when I wash these clothes I won't have to bother putting in any soap. There's plenty left over in the clothes.
Again thank goodness the soap was clear. I picked up the jug and there was soap all over it and all over the bottle of stain stick, down the door, and on the washer. I'm still finding it in wierd spots. We keep our ironing board back there too. It got hit as well.

Last night we borrowed a carpet shampooer minus the shampoo. For the last hour today I have been trying to clean that area. The floor is lightening up a bit, but to the touch it is still very soapy.