I had a wonderful break in California spending Christmas, New Years and everything in between with Ryan and all my family. It was a REAL break, doing some traveling around but not too much where things are constantly go, go, go and you end up being more tired after the vacation than before.
Trip highlights:
We landed in San Francisco and spent the day there visiting Stanford since that is Ryan's top choice for applying for post-docs. Then we stayed with my uncle's friend and his family in Sonoma for another day to rest up from our extremely hectic day of preparing for our trip and travel (long, frustrating story that does really belong here). Nonetheless, our time with them was refreshing and I am pretty sure Ryan fell in love with northern California.
Then we headed down to Porterville for some pheasant hunting. Beautiful scenery, clean crisp air, good company....but no birds.
Back down to southern California for my brother's birthday on Christmas Eve. Christmas cookie-making with my sisters.
We actually didn't do a whole lot on Christmas day since we delayed opening presents and everything until the 29th when Tante San (who now lives in Washington) and Meryl came in from Vegas (Meryl had to work until the 28th but they wanted to celebrate with us so we waited for them). The 29th was an awesome day full of family, much like old times when we were all together.
Lot's of game playing.
Ryan did a lot of duck hunting with Oom Jopie and Oom Tiki. He got 3 ducks! He's definitely got the hunting bug now. He also spent a few days up in the mountain snow-shoeing with Oom Jopie, Ingrid and Brad. I couldn't go because I had my tea-date with the high school girlfriends, which was totally worth it.
Sight-seeing in the cold, with a hot tea latte, the Mister, Ingrid, Chanelle, Ashley and Stevie at the Festival of Lights downtown at the Mission Inn. Too bad everything was closed off inside....I wanted to explore but security was tight.
We saw a lot of movies. That's the nice thing about having nothing to worry about and being able to VEG. I am kind of movied out now though. We saw Avatar (awesome, but the 3D gives me a headache after a while), Invictus (great story), Sherlock Holmes (very entertaining) in
theater and many others on DVD, including Food, Inc. Life-changing I tell you. I used to eat a lot more healthily before I came out here, but for someone that oftentimes doesn't leave work until it's already quite late, and is too tired to make something for herself and a convenient drive-thru dinner becomes "worth it" so that I get go to bed earlier and do it all over again, I would rather now go to bed on an empty stomach. And now knowing what goes into most of the food that is out there, indulging myself and eating whatever I want (as I have been doing these past few years - it's lazy, I know)....not anymore. What spending my money on food like that means for the planet, corporations who think they can run us around by monopolizing the agricultural industry and producing food that IS NOT GOOD for people but good for their pockets, animal treatment, and my own personal health....motivates me to be diligent about taking the time to plan out meals, be smart about what I buy, be better about enforcing a better work/life balance so that I can take care of myself (and helping Ryan to do so too), and knowing what it is I am eating. You are what you eat. The convenience, easiness, (and now) cheapness does not justify it at all! Really, you won't want to eat drive-thru again. go watch it.
We also went to San Diego to visit my cousin Briana and her husband, and catch up with some of the guys I met while interning at Pfizer.
I promise I'll have more posts detailing some of said highlights and crafts done, with pictures of course. My camera is dead, and I need to find my charger. . . I'm really hoping it didn't get left behind in Cali. Have a super fine weekend!
Trip highlights:
We landed in San Francisco and spent the day there visiting Stanford since that is Ryan's top choice for applying for post-docs. Then we stayed with my uncle's friend and his family in Sonoma for another day to rest up from our extremely hectic day of preparing for our trip and travel (long, frustrating story that does really belong here). Nonetheless, our time with them was refreshing and I am pretty sure Ryan fell in love with northern California.
Then we headed down to Porterville for some pheasant hunting. Beautiful scenery, clean crisp air, good company....but no birds.
Back down to southern California for my brother's birthday on Christmas Eve. Christmas cookie-making with my sisters.
We actually didn't do a whole lot on Christmas day since we delayed opening presents and everything until the 29th when Tante San (who now lives in Washington) and Meryl came in from Vegas (Meryl had to work until the 28th but they wanted to celebrate with us so we waited for them). The 29th was an awesome day full of family, much like old times when we were all together.
Lot's of game playing.
Ryan did a lot of duck hunting with Oom Jopie and Oom Tiki. He got 3 ducks! He's definitely got the hunting bug now. He also spent a few days up in the mountain snow-shoeing with Oom Jopie, Ingrid and Brad. I couldn't go because I had my tea-date with the high school girlfriends, which was totally worth it.
Sight-seeing in the cold, with a hot tea latte, the Mister, Ingrid, Chanelle, Ashley and Stevie at the Festival of Lights downtown at the Mission Inn. Too bad everything was closed off inside....I wanted to explore but security was tight.
We saw a lot of movies. That's the nice thing about having nothing to worry about and being able to VEG. I am kind of movied out now though. We saw Avatar (awesome, but the 3D gives me a headache after a while), Invictus (great story), Sherlock Holmes (very entertaining) in
theater and many others on DVD, including Food, Inc. Life-changing I tell you. I used to eat a lot more healthily before I came out here, but for someone that oftentimes doesn't leave work until it's already quite late, and is too tired to make something for herself and a convenient drive-thru dinner becomes "worth it" so that I get go to bed earlier and do it all over again, I would rather now go to bed on an empty stomach. And now knowing what goes into most of the food that is out there, indulging myself and eating whatever I want (as I have been doing these past few years - it's lazy, I know)....not anymore. What spending my money on food like that means for the planet, corporations who think they can run us around by monopolizing the agricultural industry and producing food that IS NOT GOOD for people but good for their pockets, animal treatment, and my own personal health....motivates me to be diligent about taking the time to plan out meals, be smart about what I buy, be better about enforcing a better work/life balance so that I can take care of myself (and helping Ryan to do so too), and knowing what it is I am eating. You are what you eat. The convenience, easiness, (and now) cheapness does not justify it at all! Really, you won't want to eat drive-thru again. go watch it.We also went to San Diego to visit my cousin Briana and her husband, and catch up with some of the guys I met while interning at Pfizer.
I promise I'll have more posts detailing some of said highlights and crafts done, with pictures of course. My camera is dead, and I need to find my charger. . . I'm really hoping it didn't get left behind in Cali. Have a super fine weekend!
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