Emuzines

Mandi came to visit this weekend, and we had a BLAST as usual. Our weekend was full of our seeking out adventures.

She was in later than expected on Friday, so we went out to have some tapas in downtown Davis. We came home and got snuggly in PJs and watched Friends episodes of our choosing until we fell asleep on the couch (”I want to see the one where Ross says, ‘It tastes like feet!’”)

On Saturday we headed out to the outlets in Vacaville, and did some Banana Republic, Fossil, Coach, etc. shopping and browsing. We both determined we don’t like most sweaters, but we ended up coming away with some good stuff. We justified short sleeves very well. Not surprising given we had given ourselves an out in  our rule (”Don’t let me buy any short sleeves UNLESS it’s a need”). On the way back, we stopped at a produce stand we had seen advertising pumpkin ice cream. We ended up with tons of snacks, including that ice cream. It has flecks of pumpkin in it. It’s delicious. Also on Saturday, we embarked upon our autumn meal extravaganza. We made corn chowder with buttermilk mashed potatoes (served in the same bowl with the chowder), bacon, and scallops. It was yummy. Then we took JoJo on a walk around the neighborhood and it rained on us a little. Again, into PJs and more Friends episodes until we fell asleep on the couch.

On Sunday we had a San Francisco adventure. Several, actually. We started off with brunch at Lime. Lime has a very nightclub atmosphere for 10:30 am, and the place was hopping. It serves unlimited mimosas which made for a very, very fun brunch. I ate a BAKED pancake with blueberries and powdered sugar, and Mandi had steak and eggs. They served the best biscuits in the world. And the best mimosas in the world–did I mention that?

After that, Mandi drove us to Union Square for some shopping. I came away with much more than I expected, sweaters included. Mandi bought some things, too, including a necklace from the street vendors. We then decided to check out Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. At the last minute I decided to drive it, rather than just look at it, and I turned onto it. It was fun and Mandi was a good photographer. After pulling over at the bottom for more pictures, we were pretty much out of time. We had to fight 49s traffic to get Mandi all the way to the Sacramento airport.

It was a fantastic weekend!

This was written a couple of nights ago. The summary isn’t complete, but I figured I should get it out before I slack off on my blog again. I won’t get to the rest this weekend beceuase Mandi is visiting right now! Yay! Last night was went out for tapas in town, and today we’re heading to the outlets for fall clothes shopping and then coming home to make an autumn meal.

Here is what I owe my blog:

Summer Summary, Part I

I sit here snuggled with Nik under a big soft blanket on an evening that feels very much like fall. The heat of the past months has subsided, and has been replaced with a cool(er), windy evening. The branches outside whip around, and the sky is turning a very Halloweeny orange. I was able to resist putting up my fall decorations under September 1 only, so the house has been covered with pumpkins and fall leaves for almost a month. I further resisted Halloween-specific decorations until tonight, and am now surrounded by witches’ hats and ghosts. Additionally, I have lit my Pumpkin Patch candle, so the house smells very fally.

 

I have completely neglected writing here all summer. It was a vicious cycle, missing a post on one event, and then not wanting to post on the next until I went back to that. This resulted in no posting, so here is my summer summary. I vow to try very, very hard not to lag on posts in the future.

 

Studying

This was my big summer activity. It hurts just to think about it even now. I had my preliminary exam for school last week. This was a three-day exam covering infancy/early childhood, middle childhood/adolescence, and adulthood/aging. Within these areas I needed to know details of biological, socioemotional, and cognitive development. In addition to the details, author names and article or chapter years. I had about 200 articles memorized, most with multiple author names. Hundreds—thousands—of facts floated and, luckily, solidified in my head through endless hours of studying. Ugh, enough on that. A painful experience, but worth it.

 

LA

I made three trips to LA over the summer. Always a great time. The first served as a break between the end of classes and the beginning of the previously-described activity. I fit in visits to my dad, Martha, and Justine (dinner and a night stroll in Long Beach), Mark (coffee in Redondo Beach), Kimberly, Zena, and Grady (incredible new dinner place in Long Beach), and spent lots of time with Mandi and my mom (and Logan!).

The second trip was for the Fourth of July. JoJo came on this trip, so there was lots of playful chaos. I went to a party at Danny’s, like last year, and played games and set off fireworks with them. We also went to what is my favorite Hollywood Bowl trip so far—to see John Fogarty. My mom, Mandi, and I go for this holiday every year, not caring who is playing. We didn’t even know who John Fogarty was before going, but almost every song was recognizable. He put on a fantastic show. Lots of good food again, as always, too.

The third trip was just last month. This was a whirlwind of activity: celebration of Mandi’s birthday at Café Sevilla, Maddy and Mike’s wedding, Foti and Sarah’s engagement party, a surprise visit to my dad, Justine, Martha, and her side of the family at my step-uncle and –aunt’s anniversary party, taco truck adventures at 2 am, and more. Many of these occurred in one night, leaving me hardly able to move the next day. Luckily, Nik just drove me home and Jo and I slept!

 

North Carolina

What can I say about North Carolina, my annual weekend of extreme fun?!? My NC trip deserves its very own summary.

-Raleigh Melting Pot (“1, 2, 3, FONDUUUUUUE!”)

-Games, games, games

-Boating

-Water skiing

-Tubing

-Driving the jet ski (“OH MY GOD, 52!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”)…that’s how fast I got. I screamed

-Table for 12 at hibachi

-Balls of rice in my eye

-Flashlight tag

-Pool

-Fried pickles

-Shopping

-Coffee and Apples to Apples break

-Microwaved s-mores

-Golden Cheesemuffs

Mandi and I always love, love, love our North Carolina trips. Sharon, Paul, and Sara (Ryan was out of town, but let me sleep in his room!) are always great hosts.I frequently look through my old NC pictures just for fun. I wish I could get out there more than once a year!

I love living in the house!  Spring has definitely arrived in Davis, and the neighborhood literally smells like flowers.  I got out of the car after work today and it smelled delicious.  My backyard also smells especially nice.  There’s a tree that we thought was some sort of fruit tree…but is suddenly blooming thousands of white flowers.  I’m pretty sure that’s what’s perfuming the backyard (and maybe the neighborhood…), but I also stuck my nose to all our other flowers and they smelled nice, too.  I can’t wait to have a BBQ and patio set back there.  I do spend as much time as I can out there, gardening or playing ball with Jo.  She LOVES being out there, although the other day is was very windy and she thought a rose was attacking her, and she was scared.  The rose now lays on the ground, bit in half.

Everything here is great.  We have purchased everything for the guest bedroom, and actually are having our first guest here Sunday night, just for the night.  Nik’s friend Liz from college.  But I don’t know if the bedroom stuff will be ready on time…  But then Mandi and my mom (and Logan) come on Friday!!  Yay!!!  It’ll definitely be ready by then!

Nik hung our pictures yesterday and it’s looking very homey.  Not much more to do to set up, except figure out where all of my smaller decorations go and do the guest stuff. 

I had a long day of many meetings at work and am pretty tired.  But I have to prepare for a presentation on Monday, so I better go get working on that…

Our chapter was just submitted to Amaral (research director at the MIND Institute) and Dawson (prominent autism researcher out of U of Washington).  So cool!  My name is right up there next to Sally’s at the top.  I am so proud of myself!

We are all moved in and it is lovely!  So comfortable and pretty and…perfect!  I don’t have time to post pictures or elaborate, because I need to finish packing for Denver and Abby is picking me up in 3 1/2 hours, but I will later on.  JoJo has been a champion although she is confused about why we aren’t leaving the house.  She LOVES her backyard and keeps bringing me rosebush branches that I left out there in the planter.  Ouch.  Just now, she looked up at my desk hutch, where I usually keep pictures but now have my school and work bags.  She sat down, and cried.  The final straw…”‘Why is everything different?!’”

But we’re so happy!  Can’t wait to finish setting it all up.

We’ve sort of been haphazardly packing the last few days.  We are moving the furniture (via movers) on Tuesday, and we’ve been bringing things over, and are going to bring more things over tomorrow.  It’s been kind of tough to pack what we won’t need before Tuesday, plus what I won’t need for Denver, which is Wednesday.  Denver is difficult timing–should I pack for it before I pack for moving, before we move, after??  With classes starting up on Monday, too, kind of busy and disorganized around here.  Jo has been quite amused about it all, chewing on box corners whenever possible, and ninja sneakily sneaking onto the bed when packing activities leave the bedroom door open.  She made sure that we wouldn’t forget her squirrel toy:

So I spent Sunday through Tuesday with my family in Las Vegas!  It was my mom and Memere’s annual birthday celebration.  We did a lot of wonderful eating, relaxed in the spa, saw La Reve (great!!), met some dolphins, leopards, and tigers, and shopped a lot!  Here are some pictures from the trip.

Here I am with my mom and aunt Debbie, eating Dim Sum.  We weren’t sure what everything was, so we said YES! to a lot of food.

 

 

 

 

Next, we checked out the Bellagio, and I got some ideas for my future garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the whole group at our twice-frequented restaurant.  Everything there tasted wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following the food theme, lunch at Mon Ami Gabi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again, the whole group before seeing La Reve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t like to play much, but I gave in for a half hour to play some colorful-looking and -sounding slot machines.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pepere, on the other hand, LOVES to play!!  He could sit for hours in one chair.  How cute is he?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I fell in love!!  This little guy was the most adorable thing I’ve seen in quite some time.  I could have spent hours watching him play with his stuffed toys.  SO CUTE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers!  Italian sodas and chocolate macaroons.  Yum.

Hello!  I have been neglecting my blog–weird how once I get free time, I am so much less productive.  I’ve been on spring break and it’s been so nice!  I will add a general update soon (telling tales of Las Vegas), but this will be an update on the house.  We are done with painting.  We chose a green for the office, a blue for the guest bedroom, and a bold rust for the master bedroom.  I think they all came out really nicely.  The carpets are also done, and I have been working feverishly on trimming the rosebushes and other extremely overgrown plants.  We are officially moving on Tuesday, although we have been moving smaller items over already.  We’re really excited to get in there.  Here are some pictures…

This is the office before, immediately prior to painting.  The picture doesn’t do justice to the dirtiness of the walls and carpet.  The kid must have spilled soda on the walls and floors, and left it for 5 years.  I also found 2 boogers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the office after, with new paint and carpeting.  This is Nik’s favorite room.  Oh, it has pretty new brushed silver outlet plates, too.  That was my doing.  Can’t wait to see it with furniture and decorations!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t yet have official after pictures of the master bedroom or guest bedroom, because we hadn’t finished putting the new faceplates up, and I wanted it to be as complete as possible before I took the after pictures.  But here is a “during” picture of the master bedroom.  The master bedroom is MY favorite paint choice.  I think it will look really nice with our dark bedroom furniture.  More to come…

Here, I am painting the master bedroom.  It has vaulted ceilings, so we had to get this very long extender arm to paint.  We were so exhausted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some general pictures, which you may have already seen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There we go!  I hope you all will come visit me soon :)  E-mail me if you want the new address and don’t have it yet.

So…the house has closed, we have keys, and we’ve been busy working on it!  I don’t feel like going through all the steps to upload pictures, but here is a link to some: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018743&id=1262058331&l=699a7  Maybe Nik will feel like adding them officially onto here, but it’s kind of a complicated process and soon I am going out with my friends, hence short time…

We are going to be painting all the bedrooms, and redoing the floors.  Today we got quite a bit done, more than I thought we could.  All the nail/tack/pin holes are patched, and we cleaned the walls of the office, and put up three paint testers.  There was only one small injury wherein I scrubbed the wall too ferociously, and the sponge flew across the room and my hand smacked the wall.  But it’s been a lot of fun and is going well.  I thought Nik was right behind me, coming home just now…but he’s been gone an extra hour or so–not sure what he’s up to.

The quarter is almost over (one more class) and tonight my friends and I are going out to celebrate.  Better go get ready…

Tonight was the faculty-student recruitment dinner for incoming recruits to my program.  I am not too into the social things, the small talk…but my friends would be there and I decided to go with David.  We had a pretty good time, a little awkward, and I was way overdressed…but I’m still glad I went.  Tomorrow is the student only recruitment “dinner” (aka party)…but I have to work very far away, pretty late…so I may not make it.  Fridays always wipe me out, and the past week has wiped me out too…so I can’t imagine I’ll be energetic enough to come home and get ready to go out. 

I am almost done with all of my school stuff.  My two presentations this week went well, and I’m nearly done with my papers.  Nik and my mom keep telling me breaks are ok, so I am currently in my pjs, cuddling with Jo on the couch with my heart blanket (thanks Memere), and watching TV.  And earlier today I took a nap–unheard of!  I still feel guilty taking breaks and relaxing…how annoying. 

So looking forward to Vegas in a couple of weeks.  I get to see my Mom, Memere, Pepere, Aunt Debbie…eat a lot, go to a show, the spa, relax (nonguiltily), eat some more…