Bread and Stuff

So, this weekend I decided to try to make some bread…it was a good attempt, but it could definitely use some improvement. It makes good toast, but needs to be a little less “doughy” to use as a sandwich bread. I think the cure may be a combination of letting it bake an extra few minutes, decreasing the water by a couple of tablespoons (because it seemed a little sticky) and letting it raise a little longer the second time to get a little less dense bread. Maybe I’ll make attempt number 2 next weekend. Here are a couple of pictures of the first attempt.

So I’ve also been trying to learn a little more about my camera before we go on vacation in a couple of weeks. I don’t know how much I’m really learning, but I’ve taken A LOT of pictures. The flowers in the back yard and the bread pictured above have been my most recent test subjects. Here are some of the flowers.

Let’s see I also hit the Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning for my usual fresh fruit run…I love all the berries and cherries that are there this time of year. We also have a guy out of Concord that comes to our market with Afghan foods. I stopped and tried some of the stuff for the first time on Saturday and it was DELICIOUS!! I bought a spinach bolini, whole wheat pita bread, sweet jalapeno jelly, and garlic mint cheese….mmmm makes me hungry just thinking about it!

I also washed my car this morning which was VERY necessary. Especially since someone else is riding in my car with me down to SLO tomorrow morning. At the very least I needed to empty the case of empty water bottles out of the floor of my back seat (there may have been 2 cases :P). And we emptied out the spa and refilled it this morning too. I think it’s almost back up to temperature.

And finally we spent a couple of hours at our neighbor’s graduation party this afternoon. He just graduated from high school yesterday.

So, now that it’s almost 6pm I’m thinking about what I might make for dinner tonight….maybe filet with a tomato, basil, eggplant, mozzarella caprese style salad and I’m not sure what else yet, but at least it’s a start.

Catching Up With Friends

We went to a Pat & Katie’s house for dinner last night and Katie made the best pizza dough!! Not to mention she had ALL the fixin’s. It had been a really long time since we had seen them, so it was great to catch up. We got to meet their little boy who is now 9 months old. And their daughter gave us a little piano recital. We had a lot of fun. Katie gave me the pizza dough recipe she used, so if you are ever inclined to make home made pizza, try this recipe…you won’t be disappointed…

This morning we went out to breakfast with our neighbors. We had a really nice weekend. And on top of it, the weather was perfect this weekend!!

Links for Victoria Trip

Okay, here’s all the Victoria/Vancouver info I’ve accumulated:

Things to do in Victoria:

• Butchart Gardens
• Tree Go
• Whale Watching
• Empress Hotel Afternoon Tea
• Hatley Park National Historic Site
• Vancouver Island Brewery
• Art Gallery of Greater Victoria 
• Butterfly Gardens

Restaurants in Victoria:

• Wild Saffron Bistro
• Camille’s (dinner)
• Heron Rock Bistro (maybe for lunch)
• La Piola (Italian both dinner & lunch)
• Fireside Grill (lunch or dinner)
• Il Terrazzo Ristorante
• Romeo’s Place (pizza)
• Chandler’s (dinner)
• Fire and Water Fish and Chop House
• Marina Restaurant Oak Bay (brunch)
• The Black Olive (dinner or lunch…some Greek)
• Café Brio (dinner only offers small plates at a cheaper price)
• Canoe Brew Pub

Restaurants in Sydney & Brentwood Bay

• Seagrill (Brentwood Bay Lodge)
• Piccolo (Brentwood Bay)
• homestead café (lunch)
• Blue Peter Pub & Restaurant
• Theo’s Place (greek food & pizza)
• Fish on 5th (lunch or dinner)
• Hyland’s Fish & Chips
• Maria’s Souvlaki Greek Restaurant
• Mary’s Bleue Moon Café (Hamburgers)
• Pier 1 Restaurant
• RC’s Grill House
• Starke’s Deli & Sausage Factory
• Taste of Tokyo
• Woody’s Grill
• Rumrunner Pub

Steve and I both thought Chandler’s would be our top pick for a nice dinner, but Cafe Brio, Wild Saffron Bistro, and Seagrill would be close behind.

The Marina Restaurant Oak Bay looks like a great place for brunch Sunday morning if people are interested.

The restaurants in Sydney are generally cheaper and are probably good for either lunch or dinner.

It seems like there are plenty of places to choose from.

Things to do in Vancouver:

• Grouse Mountain
• Stanley Park – Prospect Point looks like it could be a good restaurant for lunch if we went to Stanley Park. I think the aquarium is at Stanley Park.
• Capilano Suspension Bridge
• Metropolis at Metrotown (Shopping)
• Museum of Anthropology
• Greater Vancouver Zoo
• Science World

Here’s the mass transit link for Vancouver Susan gave me…hopefully this will work instead of having to take the car over to Vancouver.

What do you guys think??

Whale Watching In Victoria

Here’s the site I found for whale watching from Victoria. It’s a little spendy, but could be cool. Could see Orcas, Porpoises, Seals, Sea Lions, Humpbacks, Minkes, as well as Eagles and Herons.

Price: $100/adult, Under 4 is free, $85/senior (doesn’t say what the age for a senior is)

Length: 3 hours

Departures: 9am, 12:15pm, 3:30 pm daily

Here’s the site: Whale Watching Tour

I also sent an email to WildPlay to ask about the Tree Course. Still waiting for an answer.

Let me know what you think.

Time Flies

And I’ve been horrible about blogging!!!

So I guess I’ll start with March…

March 9th was Shawn’s (our nephew) 11th birthday. We went to Shirasoni’s in Lodi for his birthday dinner the weekend before. Shirasoni’s is a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant so we got a little show from the chef. We all had a good time. The following weekend we went to Shawn’s birthday party at the Stockton Children’s Museum. The kids had a great time going through all the exhibits and playing outside. Here are a couple of pictures.

Now for April…

So far this month, I turned 30 on the 2nd and my mom turned 60 on the 6th. My sister, dad, and I had been planning a surprise party for her for about a month. The party was on Saturday April 4th and we were actually able to pull it off which shocked us all!!

It was a bit of a whirlwind trip, but we managed to get to Tomo’s for dinner, to Seascape for lunch and a little bit of beach time. It was a lot of fun.

Here are some pictures from the party

We could never have pulled the party together without the help of Julie and John Damron!! We are so lucky to have such great neighbors!!

Here are some pictures of our Seascape visit and the beach.

Sunday night we stayed with our grandma in Red Bluff. Here’s a picture of her with Adam.

Hopefully it won’t be over a month before my next post!!

February in a Nutshell

Since I haven’t posted anything since January I figured I needed to do a recap of the month of February. So here it goes…

So the highlight of the month was that Susan and Adam and my parents came to visit over President’s Day weekend. It was great to see everyone and spend a little time together. It always seems that no matter how hard we try to “do nothing” we end up running around all over the place when we’re together. So we spent a lot of time in the car, oh well.

We met Adrienne and Garrett’s families for dinner on Friday night. It was great to see them. It’s a little silly that I hadn’t seen Adrienne in over a year and she lives 20 minutes away!

Here are a few pics of our visit.

Here are a few pics of our visit with Susan, Adam, and my parents.

Here’s a little clip of Adam clapping. Susan said he started doing this for the first time on the airplane ride from Denver to San Francisco.

Sunday Susan, Adam and I met Kelsey and Rory for lunch. Here are a few pictures from lunch.

Unfortunately a few hours after I dropped my sister off at the airport on Monday, I came down with a 24 hour flu that was AWFUL!! I hadn’t been that sick in years!! And even more unfortunately, Steve came down with it two days later. Needless to say, it wasn’t a great week. We’re both finally healthy (with the exception of allergies).

We also got a new entertainment center last week. I really like it…it totally changed the look of the room. We also got 2 ottoman/coffee tables. The tops flip around to act as trays. Here are a couple of pictures of the new furniture.

$3000 Mouse

So our poor little Sam has had yet another traumatic experience. He spent the better part of last week puking all over the house. Thurs. we took him to the vet and they did an xray and blood work. It looked like there was something in his stomach, but they thought it might just be food. His blood work came back good, so they did an ultrasound and saw the same mass in his stomach, so they sent us to Dublin Internal Medicine Emergency Hospital to have him scoped. We took him in Friday night and they gave him fluids since he had been puking for so long. Saturday morning they did a repeat ultrasound to make sure they saw the same thing…but they didn’t!! So she asked us if we wanted them to do a stomach biopsy…we told her to go ahead and do it, so they scoped him to do the biopsy and low and behold they found a plastic mouse wedged at the bottom of his stomach just before the intestines….it was wedged in so tight that it took multiple tries for them to get it out, but it’s out and Sam is doing MUCH better he is back to his obsessive compulsive self :) He looks a little funny since they shaved his tummy and a spot on his leg for the IV.

Here’s Sam’s shaved tummy

Here’s our $3000 souvenir

I found Steve and Coco Bean sleeping on the bed…awwww