Take A Bathroom Break Everyone, This Post Is Long...

I'm so sorry everyone!  I've missed blogging and I'm happy to have a moment to share all my CA fun!  I've been in Chico since Thursday and it's been a tight agenda between friend visits and going to our favorite restaurants! Not including our loved ones, restaurants is the thing Matt and I miss about Chico the most!

I started by going to The Bear, my very first restaurant I ever went to in Chico and met up with Jen.  I had my Jiffy Burger and had a great time catching up with Jen.  PS - if you are wondering what a Jiffy Burger is, it is a burger with peanut butter!  Oh yeah, I know, I know, you are gagging right now.  But don't knock it until you try it!

I miss it already!

Next I got my favorite peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies at Upper Crust with Jen.  I bought a couple extra to last me throughout the weekend!  :)

Then I went and got my hair cut and they did a fabulous job!  After that, I had some extra time before seeing my friend Chris, so I went to my old hangout and got coffee at my favorite place that was converted from an old train car.

Here is Chris and I at Cocodine, our favorite Thai restaurant!!!!  :)  Look at the cutie haircut of mine (if I do say so myself!)

OK, so then the next day I got a fabulous massage from my friend Tia and boy did I need it.  My poor little muscles were popping all over the place!  I had some time to kill before lunch so I went next door to Orient and Flume - an amazing glass artwork shop.  They were demonstrating glass blowing at the time so I was able to check one of the artists making a glass bird.

The glass starts in this huge oven.

This is what it first looks like before it's cooled, re-heated and shaped

After quite a few times of the glass being spun, shaped and placed back into the oven, it started to take shape.

It was amazing to see how flexible the glass was at such a high temperature.

And after much work, this was the end result.  The artist broke the bird off the metal stick and off to the oven it went to bake.  Fascinating!  

I then met up with Jill and Jen for lunch at Broadway Heights - once again, a very yummy meal!  :)

Thought I would include a few pictures of downtown Chico, I miss the downtown!!!  

Afterwards I went to see our friends Lori and Jeff and their 1 year old, Logan.  He's grown up so much!  Of course I got some great pics.  :)

Here is Jeff and Logan - Jeff's look of excitement can be explained by the t-shirt Logan is wearing.  Matt and I went to Ann Arbor and got Logan a U of Michigan shirt so he can waist no time to become a fan!

And here is Lori, a very proud Mama.  As she should, Logan was an angel the whole time I was there!  :)  He is such a cutie bug.  Since Lori, Jeff and us used to be neighbors, I had to drive by our house and it was a little sad to see other cars in the driveway.  But thankfully it looks great and I'm sure the new family is very happy there.

OK, so I need to get ready for church now... I'll have to cut this blog short.  But I will post the rest of our Chico visit before we take off on our cross country trip on Monday.  :)

CA In Review...Thus Far!

Well, I'll tell you one thing, to say I've been having a wonderful time would be an understatement.

Now, I'm going to cheat a bit, but if you would like to find out the scoop regarding my activities with my cousins, you can check out my cousin Kara's post.  Sorry to "borrow" your footage Kara, but you did such a great job!!!!  :) http://beantownmommy.blogspot.com/2010/05/california-2010.html

Since my cousins departure (I miss them so much!) I've spent each day with either Mom or Dad.  On Monday, Dad and I had a very fun day celebrating Father's Day & his birthday.  We thought we would celebrate both since I'd be in Ohio for both occasions.  We started by seeing Hubble, the IMAX/3D movie about the Hubble Telescope in space.  It was amazing!  At times, you had to remind yourself that you weren't actually there.  See it if you can - it's worth it!  Then we had a great lunch at my favorite Auburn restaurant, Awful Annies. I'm out of practice in taking photos so I'll need to be much more on top of it in Chico.

Yesterday, I had a wonderful Mother's Day celebration with Mom. We went for high tea - our favorite activity together - and discovered a new location that we adored.  It's definitely our new go-to place for tea!

Afterwards we did some very productive and fun shopping at the mall.  When we got home, we crashed and huddled around my computer for some online viewing of The Mentalist.  Mom and Dad also just got a DVR so we had fun setting up new recordings for them.  :)

Girls Day!

Yesterday we had a great girls day.  UB and Dad took the kids to a playground and out to eat while us ladies had a nice lunch and some light shopping.  I took this candid shot of the ladies.  I'm not sure if they even know I took it - I'm so sneaky!  ;)

After shopping we tried out a new bakery in downtown Auburn.  I took a picture of Mom because this is the first time I've seen Mom eat an ice cream cone.  Go figure - she used to be an ice-cream-in-a-cup-lady.  Apparently, since I've moved, Mom made the switch to cones.  Man, I come back to CA and everything has changed!!!  ;)

The past two nights we have enjoyed dinner with Grandma, Grandpa, AP and UB.  We've enjoyed our visits very much!  I'll have to remember to take pictures tonight.

California, Here We Are!

Well goodness, it's been a couple of quite days on the 'ol blog! It's hard to keep up with all the fun I've been having with my wonderful family. Cousin Kara is out to visit with her two daughters, AP and UB are also in CA, and of course, it's wonderful to see my parents and grandparents!!!  :)

Kara and I have been having loads of fun with the kids.  The first day we went mini-golfing at special request by Kara's oldest.  We had taken her last year and to our amazement, she remembered everything down to what color golf balls we all had.  So of course we had to let her choose what color we would all have this year, too!

Here we are having fun:

Afterwards, we went to In N' Out Burger because let's face it, us East Coasters don't have the privilege of having them on our side of the country!

California, Here I Come...

Wow, it is so surreal to think that I will be going to CA for vacation today.  I still can't seem to wrap my head around CA as a vacation - Hawaii, Europe, any other US state in fact.  But CA is where I grew up, how can that be a vacation?  But now it is, and I am very much looking forward to my trip!

This week has been filled with a lot of travel prepping - laundry, banking, paying bills, packing, etc.  Not much fun to report.  It's probably why I've been so on and off with the blog as of recent.  But, I'm hoping that my adventures to CA will bring me lots to blog about!  See you on the West Coast!  :)

Pictures...

I had promised pictures of my mini-getaway last week and here they are!

My bike ride took me into a forest and next to Lake Erie.  In the middle you can see a lighthouse that was off in the distance.

I stopped at a meadow to enjoy my surroundings

Next I climbed this hill so I could see a better view of the area.  This is the hill I climbed.

And this is the view of the lake and where we stayed atop the hill.

It was pretty brisk outside so here is Eskimo Kirsten having climbing down the hill.  :)

Ahhh...To Live The Life Of Matt

So, you might assume that I'm at home, missing Matt, and hanging out with the kitties, right?

Ha, ha that is not the case! :)

Right now, I'm sitting on an isolated bench staring at Lake Erie and enjoying life! I decided to reap the benefit of being Matt's wife and drove up to the resort in which he staying. I've been here since yesterday afternoon and it's really nice.

I've barely seen Matt since he's here for work and I don't want to disturb him - but here's what I figured. I can be alone at home with the same old stuff to do, OR I could be alone and enjoy beautiful bike rides next to the beach and swim all day in a heated skimming pool. Uh, let's face it, this is not a hard decision!!!!

I've taken loads of pictures, to which I'll post tomorrow. But in the meantime, I thought I would share my current view.

Oh and PS, Grandpa, I see a sailboat, so I think you owe me a buck! Sorry, Kara and Jill, I saw it first!!! (wink, wink!) :)

Date Night Was A Melt Down...But In A Good Way! :)

Since Matt is gone this week, Steph was my date and we went to The Melting Pot, a restaurant that's menu features only fondue.  Neither of us had been and we had a great time sharing our meals (especially the chocolate/peanut butter dessert)!  We both had been wanting to try it for a while but couldn't find anyone else interested in going.  So when we found out that each of us wanted to go, the plans were set.  I had heard it was a pricey restaurant, to which I agree, but it was well worth the experience.  I liked that you got to cook your own meal and experiment with different dipping sauces.  Yummy!

We thought we would go to the mall afterwards, but we ended up staying at the restaurant for 2 hours so we went home afterwards.

The weather turned out to be really horrid yesterday so I didn't go out to ride my bike in any of the new parks I have on my list.  :(  Oh well, I know the parks aren't going anywhere - unless this wretched wind blows all of them away!

Manic Monday

Whew, I'm still pooped after yesterday!  I'm still surprised how I can manage to fill up a day with so much activity and NOT have a job. It's amazing that once the gift of time has been given to you, how you can still manage to fill it up with the random things of life.

Well, onto Monday.  Matt left work around 1pm to head off to his retreat.  He came home for lunch, we said our goodbyes and he headed off with a co-worker around 2pm.  That gave him plenty of time to hit some golf balls!  :)  They had a welcome dinner at 6:00 and then the bar opened afterwards and (surprise, surprise) it was a huge gathering place!  Matt was good - as with his colleagues - but they did spend their entire night in the bar.  Matt even found his new drink - Jack and Coke.  Matt's taking his taste buds up a notch!  :)

As for me, my morning consisted of my daily routine of morning activities, blogging, daily desk work, etc.  My main objective was to find us new doctors.  I had partial success, but it's been tricky to find doctors with good reputations and are currently accepting new patients.  As for the afternoon, I left at the same time as Matt and ran some errands.  Afterwards I took a bike ride in one of many parks that I've recently discovered.  I've decided this week that I'd like to try a different park each day so I can ride at a less windy place. Since I live near corn fields, the wind is not blocked and it makes it a little too difficult at times.  I'd like to find a park that has a bike trail and, in a perfect world, has a water view.  You know, for a Nor Cal girl, I sure am happy that I moved to Ohio to finally have some water views - talk about irony!

The park I tried yesterday was not conducive to bikers (the path was only big enough for runners) so I'll try the next one on my list.  I pumped some iron in the gym after my bike ride because it recently dawned on me that I'm getting a good leg workout, but nothing for my arms.  I hate going to the gym, but I don't mind working out on the weights.  I'm hoping that little routine will stick.  ;)

Finally, I had a meeting about my upcoming events this week. Thursday is game night and Friday is movie night.  Should be fun!  :)

A Weekend of Celebrations

Well goodness my, lot of happy moments over the weekend.  First off, Matt's birthday!  He was elated to finally open his gifts after patiently waiting all day!  We celebrated by going out to dinner and we had a small party afterwards that included cake, ice cream and opening presents.  He got some new flavors of beer for his brew kit, a big box of cookies, and some mula to spend however he would like.  :)  There will be more parties for him once we get to CA in a couple of weeks, so Matt does not hesitate to remind me that the entire month of May is now officially his birthday month.  :)

We had such lovely plans for fun throughout the weekend.  It would have included going to the movies, visiting a retro candy store I recently discovered and visiting Ann Arbor for a cheese tour and Artisan Fair.  But alas, we decided to poop out and be bums the entire weekend.  I'm much better but am easily coerced into relaxing and since Matt is between business trips, his perfect weekend was to hang low.

We did have some great conversations with our moms - Happy Mother's Day to all our special moms out there (you too, Grandma!)  Sounds like they all had a nice day and we can't wait to see you soon.  :)

Today starts the first day of Matt's "business trip."  I put the quotes in bold for additional affect of how loosely this term should be used.  Whereas Matt will be gone until Friday, Matt has been told that he is off to a work retreat so he can learn to better himself overall.  HOWEVER, I just heard from him this morning and he said that he'll need to stop by the apartment before he leaves for the retreat because he heard there is a golf course up there and he needs his clubs.  I've also heard there is unlimited, FREE alcohol and gourmet meals all weekend.  Um, yeah, I don't think that is called a business trip, do you!?  Sounds more like a vacation!  Lucky DOG!!!!  Ah, he deserves it - but he sure has been getting a lot of things he deserves hasn't he!?!?  :)

Birthday Wishes To My Sweetie Pie (aawww)

Happy Birthday to Matt, Happy Birthday to Matt, Happy Birthday Dear Matty, Happy Birthday to Matt!  In case you couldn't tell, it's Matt's birthday today and we have a lot of low-key fun planned this weekend.  Matt's request was to keep his birthday activities simple because he is between business trips.  Poor guy, he just got back from a trip to PA and then he's off on another trip all of next week.

So, we are going out to any restaurant he wants and open presents tonight.  Tomorrow we'll be going to a movie and beforehand, I want to take Matt to a retro candy store I found in Toledo.  You can't see a movie without retro candy, right!?  Well, actually, I hope the candy itself isn't retro - that would be yucky.  OK, you can't go to a movie without retro covered candy, right!?

I'm feeling much better today.  I still have low energy but I think I'm well enough for a bike ride around the complex.  Let's see if I can do at least 3 laps around the building.  :)

Another Sick Day

Still sick today, but thankfully I'm up for blogging and some computer stuff this morning.  I mainly have a soar throat and low energy - which means I probably won't be leaving the apartment again today.  Which is really too bad because on Tuesday, I had a breakthrough of really getting to know the lay of the land.

For those that ask me if I feel like a resident vs. still feeling like a visitor, I've told people that it's hard to feel like a resident when I really don't know any street names or how to get from A to B. Now finally, when I have the car all to myself this week, I figured out which major roads connect - and then I get sick.  :(  Oh well, way worse can happen. I'll have to explore more next week.

On a different note, Happy Birthday to my cousin Kara!  I hope you have a wonderful day and congrats on the new camera.  Can't wait to see it in action!

Sicky Kirsten

Hi All,

Just wanted to write to let you know that I'm not up for blogging today because I'm sick. I'm probably going to try and sleep most of the day.  I think it's just a cold, but I'm pooped.  :(  Hope you all have a better day!

All By Myself...

Say goodbye to this guy for a few days because he's off on a business trip.  And to make matters even more lonely, Stephanie is in FL this week.  So, I guess I'll be spending this week with me, myself and I.  Maybe I can strike up a good conversation with Bonnie and Chazz - it's been a while since we've had an in depth conversation. ;)

Yesterday was all jumbled around.  Matt was supposed to leave in the morning with a co-worker and head straight to PA.  Instead, when he arrived to work, he was told that he would be leaving later in the afternoon with a different co-worker.  His poor colleague!  Talk about last minute notice - imagine going to work on a Monday and being told you would be gone for the week.  Thankfully he lives alone.  Or, imagine being the person that was originally traveling with Matt.  I hope she didn't cancel any plans for this week.  

So, I was given a surprise bonus of having lunch with Matt while his co-worker packed.  :)  That evening I did a lot of desk work, and chatted on Skype with M&D.  It's weird to think that in a couple of weeks I'll be in CA.  It's even weirder to think that CA is now a vacation for me, rather than just driving somewhere to visit different members of the family or friends.  

This week I'll have to be a little mysterious on my daily activities.  We have a lot of holidays and birthdays this month and someone may be taking advantage of the time alone to get her shopping done.  ;)  I'll try to fill in the gaps with some witty banter.  :)

Grab Your Passports!

Matt and I decided to flee the country for the day and go to Canada. Why?  Because we can!  So off we went in the afternoon.  Matt had heard that Windsor was an OK place to visit, but we heard that they had some really beautiful views of Detroit.  We decided to take the vista drive to Canada so we drove over the Ambassador Bridge - one of two options to cross the boarder.  

Waiting to cross the boarder.

We heard Windsor had a Caesar's Palace so we checked that out first.  Our intention was to do some light gambling and have a snack. Instead we were too lazy to deal with the currency exchange and did the next item on our list - walk the riverfront path.  On our way, I saw some beautiful flowers and had to take some pictures.

Caesar's in the background.

The riverfront walkway was across the street.  We went pretty far down until it started to rain so we headed back to the car.  Silly us, we forgot our umbrellas in the car!  We did manage to get some beautiful shots, though.

We got hungry by this point and were told we could find a good local place nearby.  After cruising the streets we found a Canadian BBQ place and we stopped there.  

Nothing like Canadian BBQ, eh?  Matt and I shared a Ruben sandwich and a local beer.

We decided since to take the alternate route back to the states which was by way of the tunnel.  Unfortunately, a car stalled and we had only one lane so we were stuck down there for almost an hour.  But it gave Matt and I some extra together time and I was able to take a shot of us crossing the boarder.

And here we are waiting to get back into the states.

Matt felt that the American guards were much nicer than the Canadian guards (despite their reputation). They were very suspicious as to why we would want to go to Canada for the fun of it. The American guards did a much better job at chit-chatting while asking us to explain every deep, personal secrets of our lives.  ;)

Mint Julep, Anyone?

We hung out with the same group that went to the baseball game on Friday because we had a crazy idea to have a BBQ and dress up for the Kentucky Derby.  The ladies each looked for big hats but struck out given the last minute nature of our planning.  Oh well!  But, we still had fun dressing the part regardless.  

Some gussied up ladies (from L to R): Gloria, half of me, Gloria's daughter Sam and Stephanie

As I'm sure you can imagine, the boys were less enthusiastic about dressing the part.  The guys are Dave (Dad, he's the Spartan fan!) and the back shot is of Michael, Gloria's son.

I want it to be put on the record, that it was NOT my idea to match Matt.  I was ready first and he insisted on wearing his favorite shirt because it's so comfortable.  So we had to endure with the, "Oh how adorable, you two match" snickers all night.

We decided that it was only appropriate to put some money on the game.  We were big spenders by betting .25 cents each.  Since none of us actually knew which horse to pick, we ended up choosing by the horse's name and what we were drawn to.  I chose Super Saver since I'm known for loving coupons!  And if you followed the game, you'd know that I picked the winner.  Ah, see, never mess with a Super Saver!  You'll always make money in the end.  Of course, I didn't actually collect on the bets, but it was to remind everyone who the winner was from time to time.  ;)

Our Friday Was A Hit!

Hmmm....Thursday was my last post huh...someone is sure having fun and slacking on her posts!  Well, thankfully I took pictures to remind myself what fun I've been having.  :)

Matt and I and a group of friends went to the Mudhens minor league baseball game on Friday night.

This stadium is really cool because it's a sunken field right in the middle of downtown Toledo.  One of our players hit a home run over 3rd base and I kept waiting to hear a car screeching on it's breaks.  Thankfully someone from outside the gate caught it.  :)

Unfortunately, we lost, but so far the team is doing well this season (although I don't know how since all the games I've seen so far they have lost!)  The exciting part of the evening was at the very end when I caught a baseball!  We think it may have even been the game winning ball.  :)  The visitors threw it out from the dugout and I was the only one paying attention so I got it!  Now I can say that I've gotten a ball from a game.

Here is Matt and Stephanie having fun at the game: