Nor Cal Weekend

Who knew traveling could be so easy?  If you know anything about me I usually have the worst travel karma EVER!  I'm never someone you want to travel with, but for some reason the travel God's were on my side Thursday evening.  I had an easy peasy subway ride to JFK, breezed through security, had time to have a nice meal in the French Bistro (flying Jet Blue--side note: new goal to try every restaurant in the Jet Blue terminal), casually walked over to my gate and then was able to board the plane early.  The Captain greeted the plane letting us know that this was a flight going direct to Cancun and if we were on the wrong flight we needed to advise a member of the flight crew immediately.  No one moved, because hell I'd rather go to Cancun vs. Oakland any day.  Best part of flight, we arrived early!  Seriously I didn't know travel could be so easy.

Friday morning was spent doing something I love, shopping at Nordstrom.  I took a little ride down to Corte Madera for a little shoe shopping.  Then stopped by Sonoma for a quick visit to the campus and then had the most amazing lunch, In-n-Out!  Had a #2 animal & protein style with animal style fries and a pink lemonade, don't judge its been 8 months since my last animal style.  Oh, and Friday night we had Golden Spoon for dessert and I totally forgot how much I really do love fro-yo.  I had chocolate and peanut butter with brownie crumbled for a topping.  Delish!

Oh So DELCICOUS

Saturday morning was spent at Pezzi King winery for their late harvest picking event with my parents.  Thanks to the torrential rainfall most the planned events were modified and thus more alcohol was consumed.  But overall it was a really interesting event; we got to see an abbreviated version of making wine and were able to taste juices, wine from the tanks and some of their bottled reserve vintages (I was taking pictures and posting to facebook then I got a text from Megan “Enough pics of the scenery and events.  Post some pics of urself.  I want to see the new and improved bbk J”).  Then they fed us a Mexican feast that was delicious and kept refilling our wine glasses while we were all under tents while the rain poured down around us.  By the time we left we were soaked and cold with our stomachs full of yummy food and great wine.  Quick stop at home to change into dry clothes and then I headed back to campus for the ACAC semi-annual meeting.  When I got to campus Alexandria and Melissa were anxiously waiting to see the new ladies, lol (they’re just so popular).  The meeting was a meeting, nothing too exciting but I think lots of great ideas/next steps came out of the meeting.  Excited for the next 6 months of great ACAC actions.  But the best part of Saturday, we watched the Goonies!  "Hey you guys!"

ACAC - well those of us who made it out for HH

Sunday we celebrated Ian's birthday (its really Thursday) with BBQ ribs, potato salad, chocolate cake decorated in Charger colors (it didn’t help the Chargers) and ice cream.  It was all very delicious, maybe too delicious.

Ian's Happy Birthday present from Jackson - a Hug!

And guess what, again Monday the travel Gods were with me.  It might have taken 2 hours and 15 minutes to drive 68 miles to SFO but I breezed through security, we might have boarded 30 minutes late but arrived 30 minutes early.  Those are some amazing tail winds!  And I even got into a cab within seconds of getting outside.  Only crappy part of Monday was unpacking.  Unpacking is almost as bad as packing.

Jackson:  This 3 year-old is now an iPad pro.  He can turn on, login, change pages & play games on both my Dad's and my iPad with ease.  Honestly, its disgusting how smart and tech-savvy today's youth is but he's just so cute when he's concentrating so hard on the games.  Now both our iPad's have pages of kid’s games (some I think I'll save and play later).  His interest has now become obsessive so I don't know how Ian & Teresa are going to handle "can I play with your iPad?" when there are no more iPads to play with anymore.  Side Note: Must clean iPad after sticky/buggery fingers have been all over it.

Makenzie: Let me tell you, she is just so precious!  There are ugly babies out there (I'll be honest, not all babies are cute) but Makenzie is so freaking cute, like Gerber baby cute.  She's such an easy baby until she got sick Saturday Night/Sunday Morning (poor thing has two eye infections and a cold) but I could love on her all day long.  And she loves her Auntie Lyssa because Saturday night she slept in my arms during the Goonies and Meghan said "You look good with a baby" maybe that’s just because it was so easy with her (I never considered myself a "baby" person).  I can't wait till she gets a little older and I can dress her in fabulous outfits with ruffle butts and bows.

One of the best parts of the weekend was seeing Meghan, my bestest friend in the whole wide world.  Since I moved to NYC and she went back to school we don't ever get to see each other, so it was really awesome to spend some time with her and catch up on each other’s lives.  But we have the type of relationship that we always pick up from where we left off no matter what's happened in between.  Love that girl!  Now we just need to plan a movie weekend.

Lets talk about the rain issue... I left NYC with rain in the forecast expecting a Sunny Nor Cal and got rain.  WTF?!  This is supposed to be nice, crisp sunny weather and I get torrential downpours.  I did not pack for this!

So my Mom is a total caregiver and both my brother & I take advantage of her.  Mom wants to be needed and boy do we need her when she’s around.  “Mom can I have a glass of water?”  “Mom can you do this?”  “Mom can you do that?”  And she does! And its not like we can help it, especially me since I never get to see/use her as much as I like.  Gotta love Mom!  She is a pretty amazing lady for always being selfless with her kids.

Since both Mom & Dad cooked every night, I was eating way better than I usually do.  This too delicious home cooking did a little number on my weight loss; I gained 2.8 lbs – yikes!

Overall it was an awesome weekend and wish I could have stayed longer, especially to love on Makenzie.