Do you remember when?

This was on my friend Catheryne's blog and I thought I'd do it too.

Here are the rules...
1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I have together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments. We all have some sort of memory... SO DO IT :)

Spooky Halloween

This year for the first time ever in our married lives Joel and I dressed up for Halloween AND we had a Halloween party. It was so much fun to dress up and to come up with cute costumes out the of the stuff we had lying around the house. We dressed up as Popeye and Olive Oyl. And I have to say that I think our costumes turned out to be pretty darn cute. The only thing we had to buy was some dried corn on the cob for Popeye's corn cob pipe and a can of spinach for Popeye.


Some of our guests were...

G.I. Jane and her martial artist
(aka Michelle and Dan)
Renaissance Fair Geek and the Samurai
(aka Edward and Meridth)

Elvis and his girlfriend from the 80s
(aka Dave and Katherine)

We had a few other guests, but I got busy and forgot to take pictures of them. I made "dinner in a pumpkin", something my mom always made for me when I was a child since my birthday was close to Halloween. It's basically just a hollowed out pumpkin stuffed with the same type of contents that go in a stuffed pepper. Our guests all brought yummy food and then we just chatted, played some games, and ate a lot of food, cake, and candy. I know it's over now, but Happy Halloween!

I'm growing older, but not up...

I had a birthday. That's right, it came again this year. I'm hoping this is that last year that it comes because if it comes again next year I will be 30 and that means I have to be responsible and a lot more grown up than I am - I think. Maybe not.

Anyway, it was a nice day for a birthday. I woke up at 4:30am as Joel's alarm went off. He got up and I rolled over to find a very sweet birthday card and a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates - my favorite. So I got up to give him a hug and tell him thanks. He also bought me a dock for my iPod, something I have been wanting for a while. I climbed back in bed to sleep in and soon I was awakened again by a phone call from Joel telling me that he was stranded on the freeway and needed me to come and get him and they guy he carpools with. So at 5:10am I was out the door in my jammies driving down the freeway to pick up him and Mike. They drove me back home and then went to work from there.

The rest of the day was spent lounging around the house doing not much of anything. Oh yeah, I did get some birthday phone calls, text messages, emails, cards, and gifts - thank you everybody! Then Joel came home and we went to the store to get the stuff for the ice cream cake he was going to make me. Then we came home and I made dinner and helped him with the ice cream cake. We had our friends the Wildes and the Gimbles over for cake and just sat around the table chatting for a couple hours. It's nice to have good friends. It makes getting older seem to be not so bad. For now :)

Even though I'm starting to dread them, with each birthday I have I feel blessed to be alive and to have the life that I do and to know the people I love. I have the best husband in the world and the greatest friends and family that a girl could ask for!

Boston

The week after my sisters and nieces left I flew out to Boston to work at a conference for my previous employer (from the job I had in Boise which I loved and miss terribly...). Flying from California to Boston takes a long time. Longer than I thought it would. Anyway, after a long flight with a short layover (thank goodness it was short) I arrived in Boston. It was dark so I couldn't see much on my way to the hotel. There were some baseball playoffs going on though so there were tons of people out and about. And actually I do remember that at one point I looked out the window and the sun was just about to set. We were driving by a park and there were children playing soccer and a young couple running. She was running forward and he was in front of her running backwards (and at a surprisingly fast speed without appearing to be making any effort at all - I am such a klutz I could never do that...). It just felt like a scene from a movie with the park and the sunset and the lights from the soccer field and the trees with the colored leaves.

Well, as exciting as going to Boston sounds, I don't really have anything else too interesting to report. I had a nice time but mostly I was just working long days, getting enough time to eat some dinner, go to bed, and get up early the next morning to start allover again. I was there for five days with that schedule. Even though I didn't really get to see much of the city it was still nice to go back to working with Stacee for a few days. It made me remember how much I loved the job I had in Boise and that I do miss working sometimes. But, me having a job just isn't in the plan for us right now so I'll just reminisce about when I used to have a job and not just any job, but a job that I loved...

Oh wait, I just remembered that I do have a funny story. At least I think it's funny. So, the conference we were working at was for the American College of Veterinary Ophthalmologists. Yes, that's right - eye doctors for animals. Anyhoo, one of the classes being given was a wet lab including refrigerated eye balls (from cows who had been freshly slaughtered the day before - sorry for the image). So, the eye balls arrived and the box was wet on the bottom. We were worried that the eye balls were leaking or something so I sent a text message to the doctor in charge that said "Hi Dr. X, it's Dacia. The eye balls are here but they are leaking. Help!" So I am waiting for Dr. X to respond low and behold I get a phone call. I answer it, and the person on the other line says, "I don't know why you have my number. I'm sorry your eyeballs are leaking, but I'm not Dr. X." It turns out that the phone number we had was one digit off. I can't imagine what that person thought we were doing with eyeballs, but I'm sure they thought it was very strange.

Girls just wanna have fun!

So my two lovely sisters Lacy and Tabrina came to visit us in October and they brought along two of Lacy's children Savannah and Sophie. We were so excited to have them come and stay with us and I'm so glad they did! Some of the things we did together were:

San Francisco

• Golden Gate Bridge - It was neat. You can see the pictures on the slide show at the end of this post.
  
• Golden Gate Park - We didn't actually go inside the park because we ran out of time, but it would have been really cool had we made it inside. However, we did find a little playground with a chain-link fence surrounding it. We decided to take the kids in there to play and soon discovered why there was a fence around it...mostly there were random kids from daycare etc. and some of them thought they should ask us whether or not they should be doing certain things like taking their shoes off and splashing in puddles. It was very sad to see that they thought just any adult at the park could tell them what to do. Tabrina and I took Savannah to the bathroom and there was a woman making herself throw up in one of the stalls and the other one was filthy, so we left.
  
• Haight and Ashbury -This was Tabrina's idea and while it was very interesting I wouldn't recommend taking children there.
• Fisherman's Wharf - We found it right before sunset after getting lost a few times so we just walked to a little Brazilian restaurant and ate dinner and missed walking around the wharf.
• Get lost - We spent most of our time in San Francisco getting lost. It took us two hours to get to a hotel that was supposed to be 30 minutes away. It was quite the adventure..

Monterey Area

• Monterey Bay Aquarium - So much to see there!
• 17 Mile Drive - Beautiful drive with lots of beach and other things to see like the Lone Cypress tree.
• Hang out at the beach - always fun and relaxing even though it can sometimes be cold here.
• Fisherman's Wharf - A cute little wharf with little shops and restaurants. We wanted to go on a glass bottom boat tour but the tours weren't operating the day we went there.
• Ride a surrey bike for five - This was so much fun, but a lot more work than what it looks like!
• Farmer's Market - Fun place with lots of vendors. Lacy bought some delicious caramel apples there.
• Point Lobos - We hiked down to a beautiful little beach and had the whole thing to ourselves for a few hours. The weather was perfect and it was so relaxing. Savannah and Sophie thought it would be funny to fill their swimming suits up with sand while no one was watching. It was really funny when they came over and showed us and everyone was wondering what was in their tummies. There was also a little bit of a hill there and the girls were rolling down it and doing somersaults down it. I wish I had some video of that...
  

Big Sur

• Drive along coast - very windy and beautiful!
• Short hike to a waterfall - The water was soooo pretty. It was a teal blue color.

Santa Cruz

• Redwoods - First we stopped at the Bigfoot Discovery Museum to take some pictures. It's the same museum that's shown in Harry and the Hendersons. The museum was closed so we just took pictures with a big foot carving outside. Then we went to a state park where there are lots of red woods and other trees. It was fun walking through all the trees and going inside one of them that had been hollowed out. It was really dark and spooky because we didn't have a flashlight.
• Beach and boardwalk - We had lunch at a little Mexican joint and then walked along the boardwalk hoping to be able to ride the roller coaster, but it was closed. We were so sad, especially Savannah. We went to the beach for about 30 minutes instead. The girls didn't have their bathing suits on but since we were going home from there Lacy let them swim in what they had on. It was so fun to watch them get so excited about being at the beach.

Other than that we just ate lots of yummy food and had fun being together. We also had a little birthday party for Savannah since she was turning six the day after they left. Sophie got a haircut from her Aunt Beana too and it looks so cute on her! I'm so blessed to have such wonderful sisters that I get along with so well and think of as some of my best friends too. And my nieces are so adorable...I miss them so much!

Here's a little video I made with pictures from their visit. Sorry the beginning with all the Golden Gate Bridge pictures is kind of long but I think it's fun to watch if you want to see what we did.

Anyone interested in visiting us?