Just As I Am: Recaps from last month

Time has just flown by this year! Everyone that agrees with me raise there had. Ha! I knew I wasn't the only one. With as busy as things have been I just haven't maintained the regular postings. I'm not sure the direction that I'll take the blog in the coming year, I'll have to see. But the month of November wasdefinitely something to share.

It all started with my acceptance into WSU for the spring 2010 semester! Go Cougs!!! The goal of getting my BA is starting to take shape again. I'm going to be crazy busy over the next little bit, but I think that it will all work out in the end. My classes for the spring are as follows: Sociology 350: Social Psychology, Political Science 101: Into to American Nat'l Government. Womens Studies 398: History of the women in the West and Anthropology 350: Speech, thought and Culture. Now why would I torture myself with 12 credits? Because my VA tuition waiver depends on it, and with a savings of $1900 that's something worth working through. It's all about time management.

After I received the good news it was off to CA to visit my family. My Dad was celebrating turning 60 and his impeding retirement. As his gift my step mom flew me and his brothers and sisters out to help celebrate the momentous occasion. To surprise him I decided not to say anything until I got off the plane, which meant a week of not sharing anything, now that was torture! So to let him know I bought a Cougs sweatshirt and wore it on the airplane down there and let him guess. He didn't disapoint and got the messgae right away. Jack wanted to cross the Golden Gate Bridge on our way out of the city, which is usually a little out of the way, but we didnt really have a lot going on and on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning it was a an adventure not to be missed. It had acutally been almost 12 years since I had been there as a "tourist" so I told my Dad that if we were going to drive across it then we needed to at least stop so I could take some pics.

Jack looking out at Alcatraz a.k.a. "The Rock"
Alcatraz

My Dad, Jack, Matthew & Me

Statue of Joseph Strauss

Heading into Marin & my Dad's house

After we got back to FF we realized that we were hungry and my Dad had a boat race that he wanted to go check out with some other Pelican enthusiasts (Pelican is the type of boat) in Benicia, so we packed up again and headed out there where we feasted on Nations Hamburgers and watched a decent race. Lest I concern my readers my hamburger bun was the lettuce, and for those that have a Nations burger know they are generaly not the easiest things to keep together but surprisingly w/o the bread mine fared better then the rest of everybody's burgers.

Here are the pics of the race. Seriously it was in the upper 60's low 70's all weekend. God gave us some spectacular weather!

My brothers playing by the water.
It took all weekend to dry Jack's shoes.

After the afternoon we met up with my aunts and uncles for dinner in the evening in Napa. It was a nice time to cathc back up with everyone. I hadn't seen my Aunt Elaine and Uncle Brian in 6 years, and for my Aunt Denise, Uncle Steve and my Uncle Mike it had been like 10 years. So yeah it was time to catch up.

The next day my Aunts and I grazed our way through Calistoga, St. Helena and Napa. We window shopped and stopped at this bakery called the Bouchon. I couldn't eat the macaroons there (pumpkin1 seriously I wanted one), however, they did make these chocolate covered rice crispy treats called "Forghetaboughtits" (say it with a NY accept). Here they are in a nut shell. Take a rice crispy treat, cover the top w/caramel, cover the whole thing w/chocolate, and then top lightly w/some sea salt or gray salt. Seriously "Forghetaboughtit"! That with some black coffee made the topping of the afternoon.

We ended up at the golf course waiting for the guys to finish up, but because they were being held up by some guys who refused to let them play through (you golfers know what I'm talking about). Overall bad form. This made people scramble to make our dinner resevations, but once we were all there we had a great time.

My Dad w/one of his B-day gifts.
A personalized autographed pic from Arnold Palmer

courtesy of my Aunt Elain & Uncle Brian

Aunt Elaine & Uncle Brian

Me & Aunt Elaine

Uncle Mike, Jack, Matthew & Joey

Uncle Steve & Aunt Denise

It was a nice dinner

The next day was more shopping and eating, this time in Sonoma. I bought some great Pomegranate syrup here. We stopped at this store called Tiddle E. Winks a vintage 5 & dime and a chocolate tasting room. Ahhh, heaven! After we met up with the guys at yet another golf course, where my Dad had decided to put together a tournement for him, my family and his friends. So why didn't I golf? One because it was going to be expensive to take my clubs with me and two because it has been a while since I took on a full 18 holes and I didn't want to hold the guys back. Besides shopping with my aunts and having girls time was great.

My Dad putting together the scores

The Golfing guys
Aunt Elaine, Uncle Mike, Dad & Aunt Denise

The family

The day was capped off with us all sitting at Ledgends & Heros watching the Steelers game (can you guess where our loyalties are). Now this was a lot of fun for me because while I enjoy watching the games here, I rarely get to watch them with anyone else let alone other Steelers fans, those are sparse in Sea Hawks country. Hmmm, wonder why;) LOL. So it was fun to cheer them on with other fans & family. It was also fun because my uncle is from CO and not a Broncos fan at all . It was close pretty much the whole game, although the QB felt the need to keep holding the ball instead passing it, but they came through in the end 28-10. The Terrible Towl keeps on flying high. They will redeem themselves after their Baltimore game last weekend too (sorry to break it to ya Julie;)).