California

San Francisco! It was so nice to see it again. My honey and I went back to California for two reasons. To visit our family, (my parents and his older brother and his family) and to go to our 30th High School Reunion. Yup. 30 years! I still can't believe it!

So, anyhow.... we took a little side trip with a few people from our class. One of whom was a good friend of mine from those days. And we all went to Fisherman's Wharf. This is a photo from Pier 39 where we had lunch. My honey and I spent the whole day in San Francisco. First, as I mentioned, with some old classmates in the Fisherman's Wharf area, where we walked all up and down the street taking in the tourist-y feel of the place. We checked out the seals that took over an area for their own.

And then later we had dinner with an old friend of my honey's, and his wife. The old friend was my honey's best man at our wedding as well. It was so neat to visit with him and his wife, whom we had never met before. (They couldn't go to the actual Reunion Banquet because he had to fly out of the country for business the next morning) I must admit, I never thought "best man" would ever find someone who would put up with him! ;) She is a real sweetheart, but I am positive that she can be tough as nails. Seriously, she'd have to be in order to deal with "best man". Don't get me wrong, he's not bad, but he's had some ~not so good idea's in his lifetime~! He was a bit crazy. I often think that one of the reasons my honey and best man got along so well was because my honey was the one who would think of things and best man would execute them! I must say at this point, back in the day... my honey was a bit of a mischief maker. Anyhow, the two of them worked well together. My honey being the shy sort and best man, not so much.

So, dinner with best man and his wife was really nice. We ate at a nice little French place, and the atmosphere was very "European" which was really quite nice. You just don't get that "feel" here in the states. We sat and ate a lovely meal and had yummy wine and talked and talked and talked and never once did we feel rushed or hovered over. Very nice. And.... now I can't remember the name of the restaurant... blah! I'll have to ask my honey tonight and mention the name at a later date, because if ya'll are ever in the area, you really should go to this place especially if you've never been to Europe before!

San Francisco was fun. My honey and I have fond memories of this beautiful city. We actually spent our honeymoon in San Fran. 29 years ago! Hey, we were young and poor and it was

close. ;-)

At the end of the day, after walking around and visiting with friends and enjoyed a lovely dinner in town. My honey and I sat at the Pier waiting for ferry to take us back to Vallejo and talked about the days events. As the night enfolded us, sitting side by side on the bench, overlooking the water, I thought about all the choices we've made and all the things we've been through and I came to the conclusion that my life couldn't have been any better. It was just right, life was exactly the way I hoped it would be back when I was 17 years old and in love with "my honey".

Well, there are tons more pictures and lot's more things that happened on our trip to the Wharf. But I'll save you from all that and post a bit about the actual "Reunion" night at my next posting.

I hope ya'll have a wonderful day and I will get back to my painting of the dinning room.
And yes, I will post those pictures at a later date as well.

Ciao for now! ;-)

Saturday and it was niiiiice......

Saturday was a busy day! But a truly beautiful day! My honey and I spent the better part of the day working on scraping a house here in town to get it ready for painting. Our church is doing a mission project and we chose to help a family in our town by painting their house. There are photo's that someone took but I haven't gotten them yet. Someone said that they took one of me on the ladder that was up on the porch roof and I was on the top rung scraping away with my honey holding the ladder. Funny man... he used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes on a regular basis while in the Army, but doesn't like to get up high on a ladder. So anyhow... I wasn't on that ladder for too long, just long enough to really start feeling the "burning in the shoulders". That was our day. We finished for the day by 4:30 p.m. and headed for home. The house we were scraping was only a block and a half away so we walked back to our house, got ourselves a nice tall glass of barley tea, for me and a beer for him and sat on the porch and enjoyed a bit of rest. (Rest or no. We SO feel the effects today!)

Then we got up after an hour and got ready for a fun evening at our local winery, Soaring Wings. We showered off all the scraped up bits of paint and sweat, got dressed into nice clean clothes and headed for our garden where we grabbed some sweet, orange cherry tomatoes and fresh basil and prepared to kabob them on little skewers with some fresh mozzarella. Drizzled some olive oil over them all and sprinkled a bit of french sea salt and voila! Something yummy to take with us to tide us over until we ate some bbq pig! This past Saturday was Soaring Wings annual "Swine on the Vine" event and it's always a fun event. Food, wine and live music and going with friends, it's even more fun!

The evening was just beautiful. At one point the sun was setting and the moon was coming up and they were nearly at the same level at the same time!

I couldn't get them both in the same frame, though I tried. So here you get the one......

....And then the other.

I probably should have put the photo's the other way around since the moon was coming up on the left side of the setting sun. But you get the picture... (sorry, no pun intended) ;)

It was a wonderful way to end the day.

I hope ya'll had a great weekend too and I'll post again soon!

Squeezed in some bug hunting...

Hey all! Well.... It's been an exhausting week! I just got home yesterday and I am just worn out to a fuzzy, mess.

Last weekend sometime, our daughter called and asked if I would help her collect grasshoppers. She is doing research on grasshoppers what they eat, how the weather affects them... (probably didn't explain that right. She tells me I don't listen to her when she talks about her research, she may be right) . So anyhow... I go with her and we leave Monday afternoon (I managed to squeeze in a morning of painting the living room, which ultimately made us leave later than she wanted) so we drive until late at night to get to Fargo, North Dakota. The next morning we head to Grand Forks and begin collecting for real.

I'm not a lover of bugs of any kind. And I REALLY HATE having bugs ON me! I understand that they have a right to exist as I do. But for the most part, I am more tolerant of them OUTSIDE (so long as they don't get ON me) than I am of them INSIDE my house! So, I helped collect those grasshoppers. I take the net and I walk around in tall weedy/grassy areas, praying that I don't run into any snakes or field rats/mice! I also try to be quicker than those grasshoppers and catch them before they land on me. (Daughter tries to explain to me that they are more frightened of me than I am of them... I don't believe she understands just how much I don't like bugs in general! But I go collecting with her because I will do anything to just BE with her! So, again, I take the net and walk around and try to snag as many grasshoppers as I can with the net. Then I take the net over to her and she sticks her hand into the net and extracts each grasshopper to check to see if it's the correct species she's looking for. And we do this for however long it takes until she decides that she has enough from that area. Then we go to the next place and search for more. I thought I was doing a good job. But I was probably more of a hinderance than a help. I even tried to catch a few with my hands! (I had plastic gloves on which helped somewhat, but I could still feel them moving around in my hand! BLECH!) Picture me... grasshopper in gloved hand, running/ hopping and squealing all the way over to daughter to show her the grasshopper I ACTUALLY picked up in my semi-bare hand! And I did this to try to impress her. She wasn't impressed. She found me silly. Ah well... what can I say... ;) I got a few pic's of frogs,

cuz I thought they looked cool. I didn't get a picture of the snake I nearly stepped on! (Yes, I did see a snake on this trip) I didn't take any pictures of the grasshoppers, sorry all, BUT, I did take a photo of beautiful daughter in her grasshopper spit stained pants! The grasshoppers tend to spit when they are agitated (?) and she gets them on her fingers as she is trying to identify them. She just nonchalantly wipes the spit on her pants and continues on her way. Awesome!

So, we were out there in the sun, rain and wind! I'm not exactly sure, but I think she got just barely enough to sustain her research. We went as far north as Grand Forks, North Dakota and collected in various places along the way (which she tracked on her GPS) and the last place was a small town here in Nebraska that she had collected from last year. Then she dropped me off at my lovely house and she talked with her daddy for a little bit, then headed on her way back to her place (it's a three hour drive from here and it was after 8 p.m. before she left here) where she still had to take them to the lab to situate them. Poor thing, she is one tough cookie!

Did I mention that she did all the driving? I sat in the car and worked on my table cloth. Yup, I brought that thing with me! It has now traveled to 7 states. I personally find that cool! But I'm still not done yet.

Did I mention that I painted my living room? I did. It took my honey a few days to get used to the new wall color. I think I will leave judgement on the wall color myself for a few more days. Right now I'm thinking I'm not so sure I made the right choice. What do you think? Keep in mind... the house is a mess because I'm still doing touch ups in the room. Okay, now look. ;) This is with natural light, or what there is of it considering it's slightly overcast...

And this is with the flash.

So? Any opinions? Suggestions? Should I hang the curtains and clean up the room and re-take the photo's before you decide? Before "I" decide? Hmmmmmm

I'm baaaacccckkkkk

Hello everyone! I'm back from my vacation to Seattle and California. I went to Seattle first to visit with my son and daughter-in-law and let me tell you.... it was HOT! I got there just in time to experience their "unusually" warm weather. And as cute as my children's apartment was.... it was WAY TOO HOT! They did not have air conditioning and I desperately needed it! And to think when I left Nebraska it was unseasonably cool! So anyhow, we ended up going to the store and buying the next to the last fan in the place! EVERYONE was out trying to find a way to cool off. So, one of the first places I went to was Pike Market. That's the place where there are TONS of little shops, full of fisherman, farmers and crafts people. It covers roughly 9 acres and it's Seattle's market institution! It was so much fun going through and seeing all the shops, although, I didn't get to see any fish being thrown that day! There were even shops down below the street as well! In fact, I was so busy looking at everything that I forgot to take any pictures... except for the this one. That's my son hold flowers he bought for his wife! (I taught him well.. and yes, I'm going to take credit for that!) ;)

My son and I had lunch there at one of the little Italian food stands and it was really yummy! I had an Italian pizza and he had a strombolli. (Mine was better than his, although he would disagree).

Unfortunately, both of the kids had a pretty busy schedule so we weren't able to spend a ton of time doing things together. But, one thing that my daughter-in-law and I did together was head out to the Ikea there. Oh my! What fun! We both walked around just happy as two people could be! Oohing and aaaahing and sighing like mad. I was feeling quite nostalgic because I used to shop at an Ikea in Germany quite often and I truly miss it! She, because there were just tons of neat things that she would love to have in her home. We both walked out with a little something, she bought a cute lamp and I bought two tea towels. I know, it doesn't seem like much but it is so nice to pull them out and see them in my kitchen! ;-) And this is my daughter-in-law.. isn't she just too sweet? She's wearing her scrubs because that is what she wears to work.

We went out to dinner one night with another couple who are their good friends. It is so interesting to spend time with my son and daughter-in-law and see them as adults. I tried really hard not to act too "mother-ish". They see themselves as adults making it in this world and there are doing just that, but it's still a little difficult to see them that way. Those days that I spent with them helped me to see them differently. My son is still my baby in my heart but my mind is beginning to see him as a grown man. And my daughter-in-law is so easy to love. And the fact that she loves him dearly is easy to see. And that makes me love her all the more. As all you mothers out there know... you want what's best for you child and if they can find someone who will love and cherish them... well, you just gotta love the person who does that for them! ;-) And here we are, my son is getting ready to head for work at the time of this photo!

So, my visit with the kids was eye opening and heartwarming and it was really nice to spend time with them both together and individually!

Well, I will post later about my trip to California in the next day or two. Doing this blog is still a little like work for me. It's not as easy as all you seasoned bloggers make it out to be... So, until then, ya'll have a great week!