PCH Day 2

Day Two:

Day two was kind of a blur for me at least. I woke up with a headache. I thought it was just a headache, but as time went on, I realized it was going to be a migraine! Yuck!!! Brian had to go down to breakfast and then on to his meetings. I was supposed to go eat and then join him for the spouse’s meeting. I stayed in bed a bit, hoping it would go away. It didn’t. It just got worse. I threw up. I missed breakfast. I missed the spouse’s meeting. After it was over, I managed to get dressed and packed up and we headed out for our drive down to Monterey. That drive was a blur.

I thought I was starting to feel better, then as we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge and into Saulsalito, my vision started getting blurry—I was like great! I got a bagel and smoothie to see if that might help. (bagel and smoothie from here)

Bad idea. Brian drove up to Muir Woods and it was a windy road, so that along with a migraine was a bad combination.

Let's just say we stopped a lot along the side of the road. It was miserable. Then I had a bad headache. So most of the drive I had my eyes closed and/or was sleeping. Brian got to stop a lot and he took a lot of pictures. I remember a few pretty ocean views, Pidgeon Point lighthouse and some farmland.












I started feeling better towards the end. We stopped at Whale City Bakery in Davenport and had a cookie and Gatorade, then finished our drive to Monterey. What a beautiful city. We are staying in The Clement hotel right on Cannery Row. We had dinner at a little Mexican food place called Jose’s.

I was just happy to be feeling better so I could eat! We walked around Cannery Row for a bit, then ended our night with some dessert from the Ghirardelli shop. I had a sundae and Brian had probably the best chocolate shake he’s ever had! So decadent!! Yes, I know it's blurry but that's the best we got that night. We tried to get another one the next night for picture's sake, but they were closed!

PCH Day 3

Day Three:
We slept in a little bit, then headed back up North a little bit to Big Basin State Park, where there are redwoods. We hiked in there quite a bit. It was pretty—especially when it was so shady and green and lush. That took most of the day. On our way back to the hotel, we found a little sandwich stop off the side of the road. I had an egg salad sandwich and Brian had a tuna sandwich. Yum!



We came back to our room and got ready for dinner. One of the product partners, Invesco, invited us to go to dinner with two other couples to the Chart House. It was quite the treatment. They ordered wine, which of course we had water, but it is quite the ordeal…they put it in the HUGE vase looking thing, then poured in their glass, then they tasted it before he filled it up the rest of the way. We got quite the spread of appetizers, of which I just tried some coconut crusted shrimp. I didn’t want to try the other seafood, although I’m sure it was great. I had a delicious salad before my dinner of filet mignon and mashed potatoes. We finished it off by stuffing ourselves with hot chocolate lava cake. Wow. It was great food and we had a great time visiting with the other couples. The wife of the Invesco guy has a daughter who works for Lady Gaga, so it was interesting to hear her talk about that. We hobbled up to our room after stuffing ourselves.

Our room in Monterey:

PCH Trip Day 1

Last week Brian and I got to enjoy some time together on a trip to California.

Day One:

We flew from Phoenix into San Francisco. The flight went fast. The weather was instantly cooler! I put my jacket on right away. We got our rental car and made the drive to our hotel—the Fairmont.


Most of the people got convertibles, but we opted to take the different in cash and just got a Nissan Altima instead. It was nice though! We discovered that driving in San Fran was a bear. Almost as tricky as New York. The streets are so steep it’s hard to see if someone was in a crosswalk. We couldn’t imagine driving a stick shift there! Before our hotel we went to Lombard Street. There is only one way in and they have someone there directing traffic. I didn’t think you’d be able to drive on it. But I guess they let tourists drive on it. It sure was windy! It was fun though and very pretty. Imagine living on that street!







We got to our hotel and got settled, then we headed out. We were going to take a cable car, but decided we’d save the $5 each fare and walk down, then pay it to come back up. We walked down to Pier 39 and had lunch at Boudin’s.


I had a chicken salad sandwich on sourdough and Brian had a turkey sandwich. It was delicious. We walked to the end of the pier, stopping in a few shops here and there. There was a candy store at the end and we stocked up on salt water taffy. They had TONS of flavors.

We made our way over to Ghirardelli Square. They had the cutest couple of stores there. One was Gigi + Rose. SO cute. I found the cutest board book for Ruby called My Friends by Taro Gomi. It's by a Japanese author/illustrator. It has the darling-ist pictures. There was this other store that was like a tea party type store….called Crown and Crumpet I think. Our girls would definitely have a ball there at lunch one day. From there we walked back. By the time we figured out where we could get a cable car up to our hotel, we figured it wasn’t worth the fare, so we ended up walked UP to our hotel. It was quite the workout. That night we had a welcome dinner with Jones. It was on the top floor of our hotel, so there were amazing views of the city.

Dinner was good, too. We started eating and this older couple came and sat down by us—it was Jim McKenzie and his wife. Jim’s dad is like a huge Jones guy—like Tom Jones’ good friend and Tom was who founded Edward Jones. In fact, the training center in Tempe is named after Jim's dad. So that was kind of fun.

Random San Fran pictures:

Anyone want a crab? Ewww.

I really like watching the interesting people in any city we visit. We've seen some weirdos in Scotland and New York and now in San Fran. I could sit there and watch them for a while.

Pre-migraine day. Maybe the glow around my head should be a sign. Ha ha.

Libby's Seven!

Libby is another year older! Brian and I got home from our trip on her birthday, so she was excited to see what we had gotten her. After we got home she opened her gifts from us which were two shirts, some "high" shoes/flip flops, and a couple pairs of earrings.




That night she got to pick a "fast food" place for dinner. I guess Paradise Bakery is fast food to her! On Sunday my parents came over for dinner and she got to have her cake--chocolate fudge with chocolate icing. Yum! (my little camera was being very wonky, so we get very ethereal pictures!)



On Monday, I took treats into her classroom--Gogurts and a small Crunch bar. She seemed pleased to pass them out to her classmates. They all sang to her and enjoyed their treat.



Libby is a great girl with a tender heart. She loves Ruby to death and has so much fun with her. Right now some of Libby's favorite things are:
--Paradise Pasta salad
--cookies or brownies (but not too sweet)
--playing games (which works out great because her teacher sends home an educational board game every night for them to play for homework)
--structure and routines. She loves to have lists to check off, etc.
--cleaning--She always does her chores really well even though she does complain about it..I know if I ask her to clean something, it'll be done well.
--books. She enjoys reading.
--coloring. She loves to draw and color.
--sense of humor. She can be quite funny.
--She is very thoughtful in her decisions. When she has to choose something--like what shirt to get or whatnot, she puts a lot of thought into it.


She has weaknesses of course (bedtime and being loud!) but we LOVE having her in our family.

Happy 7th birthday, Libby!