Daisy Heart Cake

Had a great weekend with the hubby, the doggies and our friends.

Friday after work I headed over to Rakestraw Books to see Barbara Walters. I was actually a bit disappointed :o( I had gotten a special ticket for $10, instead of the general public $3 ticket, so that I could be at the front of the line and be able to see her first. Thank god I had that ticket because I read they had sold about 750 tickets and all those people had to stand in the line that wrapped around the building and down the street and around the corner and it was HOT. Anyway, I was about 5th in line when I got there and of course I took a picture and then some lady comes and tells me I can't. So no pictures with her but no pictures of her either, that was dumb. They had asked you to open your book to a specific page that she would sign, you put the book in front of her, she signs it and then they shove you out the door :o( I think I was in there for a whole 2 seconds. I know that Barbara Walters is almost 80 years old and I understand that it's not going to be some chaotic book signing but geesh why can't we take pictures and why couldn't they of had her maybe speak to the "preferred" ticket holders. So silly. Anyway, I got my book autographed and she looked great.

Here is the picture I was able to snap.

Saturday I had to head out of the house early to go to Walnut Creek and pick up Ms. Daisy's birthday cake for Sunday. I also had a bunch of errands to run and then I headed back home to wait for Amy. Rocky, Amy & I headed up to Sonoma for the day. It was super hot there but also very windy which caused me to have some very nasty allergies, that part wasn't fun. The rest of the day was though. Amy is a hoot!

We started off at Cline, they were having a party for their club members, which we are, and we also had wine to pick up. When we went to the party in October it was inside one of the barrel rooms but this one was outside in more of a picnic style. The grounds are filled with lots and lots of trees so we were able to find a shady spot and lay down our blanket. They had bbq food which was all great. They had potatoe salad, corn, corn bread, chicken, beef and cookies for dessert. They were also pouring all of their wines and had a live band. We ate, had a few glasses of wine, listened to the music and after a few hours headed out. We then hit a few more places, Gloria Ferrer, Shug, Mayo and then of course we ended up at Mary's Pizza Shack as we always do after a day of Sonoma. Hubby was the DD so on the way home Amy & I slept all the way home:o) We were a bit pooped and I was not feeling good at all with my allergies in full bloom. It was a bit windy and I think with us sitting on the grass under the trees it just made for a bad combo. My hubby found some allergy eye drops, put a cold towel over my eyes (they were red and puffy) and then I went to bed.

my hubby trying to fly in the wind like superman, but see in the back the trees are sideways, it was super windy

pooped out hubby, I think it was 100 in the shade



Yesterday we had Ms. Daisy's 1st Birthday Party. I was suppose be gone the weekend closest to her birthday so this one worked out best. I am not going to Chile anymore :o( boo, hoo. I will probably be going later in the year which is cool but I won't be going this week. The good news is I'll be home for Memorial weekend with my hubby and I'll be home on Daisy's actual birthday, May 28th :o)

We had a nice group out at Pt. Isabel to celebrate her birthday.

From left to right: Brandon w/Riley, Bree w/Nitro, Daisy, Lindsay w/Annie, Patch, Sarah & Kieren w/Granite & Timm

Daisy was looking mighty cute in her pink dress and birthday hat which by the way, she hates. Patch was happy in his baby blue shirt though :o)

We had cake and Daisy gave out goodie bags filled with animal crackers, a toy and a ball :o) and then we headed out on a nice COLD walk. Patch tried to hitch a ride with Olivia, he was tired of walking.

Holy smokes we were all dressed for 100 degree weather and it was cold and windy :o( We still had a nice walk though and had fun with everyone. THANK YOU! Rocky and I bathed the doggies and then headed home. Everyone was whiped out for the rest of the day.

How Could I Forget!!!

I wrote an upate just a minute ago but I forgot about what I'm doing tonight. I get to meet this lady:
Her book, Audition, came out a week or so ago and she will be in Danville at Rakestraw Books signing them. I have a preferred ticket which means I'll be able to get in before the mass crowds show up :o) I'm really excited. I've always liked her and regardless of what people thing of the thinks she's written in her book, I will continue to like her.

Hot & Miserable

The doggies, the hubby and I were over heated last night. It's suppose to be cooler in Oakland right? NOT REALLY :o( It's 101 in Walnut Creek and yes it might be only 92 in Oakland but that is still hot. We live upstairs and we have no air conditioning :o( At 9pm it was still in the 80's inside our house. I ended up giving the doggies a cool shower to cool them down and I've been putting ice in their water. Poor doggies have been running around the house with their tongue haning out. It's not fun. I love warm weather but geesh this is crazy and we didn't even really get a chance to get gradually get into warm weather. We went from 40's to 100's in just a day or two. It's suppose to cool down a bit today and into the weekend so we are hoping it won't be as bad the next few days.

I haven't slept well because of the heat and was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday so I did not swim :o( sorry Amy. We plan on going again next week though.

On Wednesday night I had dinner with Olivia Poo :o) I hadn't really seen her since we left on vacation and I had a few goodies I brought back for her. I had a gift certificate to a wine bar in Danville that she gave me for my birthday last year so we thought we'd put it to use but when we looked online we found out that the store is closed for remodel :o( so that wasn't going to work. We still went to a wine shop though but we went to Walnut Creek. We tried Artisan Wine Lounge & Cafe since it had great reviews on yelp.com. We decided to try the Sangria and OMG it was yummy :o) Olivia tried a few of the wines but I stuck to the Sangria since we are going to Sonoma for wine this weekend. We also had a platter of cheese which was also very good. Afterwards we went and had a salad at Pyramid and sat outside since it was so nice out. It was a nice evening catching up :o)

Tomorrow Rocky, Amy and I are headed to Sonoma for the day. We are picking up wine and going to the Spring Party that Cline holds for it's club members, should be fun. Sunday is Miss Daisy's birthday party :o) she's very excited.

Have a great weekend and stay cool!

Swimming with the Fish

That is exactly what I did last night and I'm not happy about it :o(

Last night Amy and I headed to Shadow Cliffs in Pleasanton to swim. I hate swimming there, there are big ugly fish in the water and goose/duck poop from all the darn geese/ducks out there :o( Blech! The water is stinky and you just feel icky when you get out of there. Anyway, we had to do it though. We need to get swimming in open water before we do the Tri 4 Fun in June.

How did I get sucked into all of this? Oh wait, I didn't get sucked in by anyone. I sucked myself in and took Amy with me :o(

We did 5 laps which is about 800 meters. It was freezing in the water. There were two ladies out here putting on wet suits and told us we were brave for going in without any. She said the water was about 67 degrees. It felt much colder. When we got out it was nice and warm out but we were frozen. The swim went well and considering neither one of us has swam in open water in a very long time we did good. We are going back on Thursday.

And The Winner Is......

.......more on that in a bit :o)

Our weekend was fun but yikes I need another day off to recover.

Friday evening I met Amy for pedicures and then dinner. I had the funnest time with her. After our pedicures we decided to head over to the Walnut Creek Yacht Club for some seafood. They were pretty busy and told us they had no tables but could sit at the new Oyster Bar which they serve a full menu at. We agreed and as we were being seated we noticed that another one of our friends from TNT, Susan Wheeler, was there with a friend. We were seated right next to them and the whole night was a blast. We ate some super yummy oysters, seafood cocktail and salads.

We tried the Cielo Rosso, a drink made of Skyy Citrus Vodka, Campari, fresh basil, fresh ruby grapefruit juice, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup, lemon zest and sugar around the rim, it was delicious. This drink just won Manny, the mixologist (bartender), the Shake It Up competition in Las Vegas.

Saturday morning hubby and I headed out to the Spring Festival in Alameda with the doggies. Rocky's uncle is in a band and was going to be playing for a couple of hours so we decided to head out and check them out. It was a nice day for a festival. We had lunch out there and walked around and checked out all the booth's. We took the doggies to say hi to the animals at the petting zoo but they weren't too thrilled with that. Patch was scared of the goats :o(

After the festival we headed back home to relax for a little while before getting ready for the Gala. We headed into the city about 5pm because we didn't want to get stuck in traffic but there was none so we were there super early. We had a drink at Maxfield's inside the Palace Hotel while we waited for the Gala to start.

and the winner was.........

.....our friend Brian (with his wife Amy in the picture). We are all so very proud of him and were so happy when they announced his name. He worked so hard for the 9 weeks to try and meet his goal of $50,000. I am not quite sure what the final number was but I know that at the start of the night he was at $40K. At the gala people could give last minute donations and money from the auction items were also put towards their fundraising. I'll have to find out from him what his final total was. We had such a fun time hanging out with everyone and I even won one of the auction items. Hubby and I get to go to Infineon Raceway in August for the Indy Car Races. We are excited.

Sunday we were up and at it again. We headed out to the Giant's game with the Reye's Family for a day at the ballpark. It's kind of become a tradition to go to the ball game on Mother's Day. Rocky's oldest brother works for E-Trade and his company has a luxury suite at the park. Him and his friend book the suite and both of the families go for the day. It's been a lot of fun but I hear this is the last year :o( their contract is up. Anyway, we had a great time and I had fun hanging out and chatting with both of my sister-in-laws. We were made fun of because I don't think we watched any of the game we just sat and chit chatted the whole time and ate :o) I didn't even know if we had won or lost...oopsy.

After the game we headed home to spend the rest of the evening relaxing :o)

Auditions

Well things are back to normal, work, school (Rocky), band practice, laundry, daily house chores and running around like chickens with our heads cut off. Gosh, how I miss my 4pm naps :o( It's been a busy week and we'll have a busy weekend but a fun one.

Last night I held auditions for all my black shoes :o) Tomorrow night we are going to the Man/Women of the Year Campaign Grand Finale Gala.

Here is a little bit about it:

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Man & Woman of the Year 2008 Campaign culminates at the black tie Grand Finale gala. We'll honor our candidates, the 2008 Boy & Girl of the Year, and volunteers as we celebrate 9 weeks of high-powered fundraising between Bay Area candidates. The candidates compete to raise money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and to increase awareness of blood cancers.

This lavish, black-tie event will unveil the 2008 Man & Woman of the Year. The event features an elegant cocktail hour with hors d'oeuvres, live entertainment, live and silent auctions, sumptuous 3-course dinner in the Palace's Grand Ballroom and dancing to the sounds of the Bob Claire Orchestra until midnight. This event is all-inclusive; food, wine, cocktails and entertainment. Past candidates have included Mayor Gavin Newsom, Narada Michael Walden and Harry Denton.

About the Man & Woman of the Year Campaign: Established in 1990 by Hastings Clothier in San Francisco, the Man & Woman of the Year competition was in remembrance of John Spencer, a valued employee who died of leukemia at age 39. Since then more than 250 candidates have raised over $2.5 million to benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Northern California Division.

Our friend Brian is one of the candidates for 2008 and in 9 weeks he has raised almost $40,000, his goal is $50,000, and has done an amazing job. We are really crossing our fingers that his the winner. We are all so very proud of him.

The event is black tie and I hadn't really thought about it all until we got back and then I was in panic mode. Rocky needed to rent a tuxedo and I needed to go find a gown because ALL and I mean ALL of my pretty fancy dresses are strapless :o( and with my icky dry snake skin peeling that would not look pretty. Rocky took care of doing the tuxedo thing and will be picking it up this evening. I had to run out and buy a dress and the dress god's were with me because in about 20 minutes I was able to find one on my lunch Wednesday...PHEW!! I bought it and then drove right over to the alterations place to have it shortened because me is a little person and it was way too long. She had it done in one day so I picked it up yesterday :o)

The day I bought the dress I was wearing super high heel shoes so when I took the dress in to have it fitted that's what she fitted me with and then I realized that I didn't have fancy high heel shoes so off I went to buy new shoes. DUH!!! Anyway I tried on my dress with my shoes last night and it looked great but of course me being the girl I am I took out all my dressy black shoes and tried them all on to see how they looked. I was hoping just maybe one of my other shoes would work and I could return the new ones. The new shoes looked the best but hey it was worth the effort. I then realized, holy smokes I have a LOT of black shoes. These are only my dressy ones :o) I have lots of black flip flops and black boots and black work shoes :o) I think I heart black :o)

the candidates

the winner (the new shoe)

the dress of course is black (like 80% of my clothes in my closet)

We are super excited about the event and a few of our other friends will be there. It'll be fun to get all dressed up and go to a fancy party. We don't get to do that often.

Sunday we are going to the Giant's Game with all of Rocky's Family for Mother's Day. We've been doing it the last few years and it's always a lot of fun.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

TO MY FRIEND DEBBIE

and

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

TO OUR MOMMMIES AND ALL THE MOMMIES OUT THERE

Vacation Update...FINALLY!

Okay so I'm finally getting a chance to update on our vacation. We were very very pleased with our resort, the food, the service and the friendliness from everyone including the other vacationers we met.

Our trek to Punta Cana began on Saturday, April 26th and it was a long one that didn't end until Sunday afternoon. Martin, my brother-in-law, was kind enough to drop us off at SFO on Saturday close to 7pm. Checking in and checking in baggage was a breeze and so was security. Then we had about 2 hours to sit around and wait. We grabbed a bit to eat and then sat and waited for our plane. The flight to Miami was about 5 1/2 hours and once we arrived in Miami we had a 5 hour wait til our next flight :o( of course we ate again :o) and then sat around. Flight from Miami to Punta Cana was about 2 hours. It was all pretty uneventful and all went well. We then had an hour drive to our resort from the airport. We figured out that with sitting in airports, flying, eating, getting luggage, traveling to the resort, it took us about 18 hours from leaving one home to setting foot in our home for the 7 days. That was a bit crazy and by the time we arrived at our resort we were exhausted. Oh but how lovely our resort was and we couldn't wait to get the vacation started.

Yikes I can't remember much of what we did that first afternoon. I think we just ate a late late lunch and then it started raining pretty darn hart. At some point we did leave for dinner but then headed back to the room and pretty much passed out. It was fine though because outside was a major major thunderstorm. It was still pretty warm though so it was no biggie.

Monday we woke up nice and refreshed.

Our routine pretty much every single day was something like this

wake up

take shower

put on bathing suits

put on suncreen

put on clothes

go eat breakfast at the breakfast buffet...yummers!

got back to room and grab our floaties and our books

go look for our lounge chairs under a palapa by the pool

sit by the pool or in the pool until lunch time (or at the beach)

have lunch (lunch was bbq everyday from a grill at the beach where they made hamburgers, hot dogs and sausages everday)

back to our place at the pool til about 3pm or so

either nap by the pool or go up to our room and nap on the lounge chairs on our balcony

get showered and dresssed

dinner

watch the enterainment group do their nightly shows

go to sleep

and repeat :o) for 7 days that's all we did. All Rocky and I wanted to do was relax on this vacation and that is exactly what we did.

For dinner we were able to pick from 7 different restaurants. We tried all of them befor we left except the Japanese one because it was packed each time, no biggie though. All the food was great and on our anniversary we went to the fancy restaurant and I even got to have some lobster, yummers! Happy 1 Year Anniversary to us :o)

We had lots of beer and lots of fruity drinks with fresh fruit to garnish them.

We had lots and lots of fresh fruit especially mangos.

The entertainment group there is amazing. Those guys work 18 hour days for 15 days then go home for 4 days off and then come back and do it all again. They entertain you all day long at the pool or beach with lots of games and activities. In the evening they put on shows in the theatre and then they head to the disco to have some more fun with you. It's crazy but they are so good at what they do and always with a smile on their faces. I was grumpy after 18 hours of traveling. Those guys work 18 hour days for 15 days straight and no one was every grumpy. The smile and say HOLA every single time they see you and they try to get to know you. It made being there fun.

We also met some people at the pool that we ended up chatting with everyday at the pool and of course we'd see them around during breakfast, lunch or dinner. HI MATT & DAYNA! We had fun hanging out with them and they are planning a trip to Napa so maybe we'll see them again.

The service by everyone at the hotel was great. Our travel agent had told them it was our anniversary so the first day we were greeted with a basket of fruit and bottle of champagne, which for some reason we never drank but it was nice that they provided it.

On Wednesday we also had massages at the Spa and we got to use the rest of the spa area for an hour before. We sat in the big hot tub with lots of massage jets massaging our backs. It was really nice and relaxing.

We did though get a sunburn which sucked :o( the sun there is much harsher and somehow we both managed to get a really icky sunburn. For a few days it was uncomfortable to take showers and even sleep. OUCHIE :o( I think the last 2 or 3 days we didn't really come out from under our palapas. We'd go in the water for a little while to cool off and then back under the shade to read. The first 4 days or so we lived in the pool, haa, haa, gee I wonder how we got burnt :o)

Sunday it was time to return home and the trip home pretty much was like the trip there except we had to do the whole going through customs thing in Miami since that was our point of entry. We had to get off the plane, get luggage, go through customs, check in luggage again, go back through security and find our gate. We had a 4 hour layover so it all went pretty well with no glitches and we didn' t have to run to get through our gate like some other people.

Rocky and I had such a great time and can't wait til our next vacation. We are always on the go and have so much going on that it was really nice to just hang out together and do nothing. It was the most relaxing vacation I've ever taken.

Here are a few pictures for you to see, I'd add more but adding pictures to blogger is such a pain.