Just "Coast"ing Along

So a few weeks ago, Brian and I decided to load up the bikes, head over to San Francisco and bike around.  Apparently, our big plans of biking the bridge and not to mention, all over the city, turned out to be wishful thinking.  We found ourselves in a nice Sausalito restaurant eating some great Italian food that I regret to inform you was never burned off from our preplanned biking trip...we never made it that far!  Haha!  Instead, we drove around the area across the Golden Gate that is part of the 49-mile drive.  It's so beautiful and amazing!  At the most western point of the road, there is an old fort that was used during some of the wars...I don't know exactly which ones but it was still pretty neat!  Here are some pictures to prove it...

Swinging into Spring...kinda

Way back in February some friends of ours came out to visit and we had a great time!  The weather was fabulous which made me think that Spring here was going to be warm and sunny but I think they just got lucky and came on a nice weekend!  Although it was a short little visit, we managed to squeeze in a trip down to Pebble Beach for the AT&T Invitational.  It was gorgeous!!!  We had a great time taking in the scenery while at the same time watching a little golf.  After the tournament, we headed over to Carmel to watch the sunset and then had a great dinner.

We were also able to head up to Napa and try out some new wineries which were fabulous!  There's so many out here it's crazy!  Anyway, here are some pictures:)

Liz and Paul on the beach

Me and Liz on the beach

Pretty good shot of the Golden Gate

Other side of the Golden Gate

Pretty scenery

In Carmel after golf tournament

Sunset in Carmel

Artesa winery

Sheep grazing through the vineyard

In the wine cellars

Winter 2011

So I've definitely been slacking on the blog posts...partly because I finally got a J.O.B!!!!!!  Woooohoooo!!  I was hired as a high school geometry teacher and haven't had much time to catch up on my blogging so here we go...

For Christmas we were able to go home and visit with our families for about 10 days.  We had a wonderful time and were able to see our new little niece, Kate:)  Unfortunately, I already uploaded those pictures to shutterfly.com and I can't get them back on my computer to upload to the blog:(  Either way, we had a great time and it went by so fast.

As for life out in California, we've been able to go skiing 2 times since the new year and have had some visitors.  Brian and I went skiing with our good friend from home, Paul Baker, over MLK weekend.  We had a great time and the weather was fabulous!

Brian and Paul mentally preparing for skiing the next day.

Up bright and early ready to hit the slopes.

Gettin' cozy in the gondola

View of Lake Tahoe from the gondola

Top of Heavenly

Vida in her Lake Tahoe scarf:)

Our next ski trip didn't go so smoothly...We decided to go up to Tahoe for President's day weekend in February and stay with some friends.  There is a group of pilots who rent out a house for the winter and kinda let who ever wants to stay there crash for $20/night.  It's a pretty good deal, but it's kinda like going back to college all over again...you know, sleeping on the floor, sharing bathrooms with 10 people, and getting zero sleep.  Either way, we were grateful to be able to stay somewhere so cheap.  But that's not all that happened on this trip up to Tahoe...the main problem came as we were driving up there.  We decided to leave around 10pm so we would get there around midnight.  We figured if we left later, the traffic wouldn't be so bad.  Unfortunately (or fortunately - however you want to look at it) Tahoe was forecasted to get tons of snow and it was a 3 day weekend which means that all of California wants to go skiing.  We were moving along pretty good when all of a sudden the interstate turned into a parking lot for 5 freaking hours!!!  No joke...it took us 7 hours to get there...I'll give you a minute to do the math...............that's right it was 5 a.m. when we finally pulled up to the house:(  Since the weather was so bad, there were multiple chain control check points as well as minor traffic accidents everywhere.  At some points we just put the car in park and turned it off.  People were out walking around having snowball fights as we just sat there!  We were exhausted!!  Poor Brian and Tyson (one of Brian's coworkers who we drove up with) had been up for about 22 hours by the time we finally arrived.  Knowing myself, I told Brian that the next day was going to be a half day for me...no way was I going to get up at 7:30 and ski all day.  Either way, the skiing turned out to be great and the weather was fabulous!  

The Year in Review

As an early Christmas present, I made Brian a video/slideshow of everything we've done in 2010!  It's been a fun year and we still have a little bit left so I might still add stuff to the video...but for now it's completely up to date!!  He thought some of you might like to see it so I said I would try to figure out how to post it on here...hopefully it works!

Time to "ski"daddle out of town!

The other night I was looking over this blog and going through pictures and I can't believe that we have done so much since we've been out here!!  It's only been 5 months and I feel like we go somewhere every chance we get!  That being said...we didn't go anywhere for Thanksgiving day...instead we had one of Brian's coworkers over and my dad was actually on a layover in San Francisco so he decided to rent a car and come eat with us.  I gave everyone a typical disclaimer for someone who is a "turkey cookin' virgin" by telling them that I had no idea what I was doing and that I hope it turned out good.  To be safe, I bought a 13lb bird, greased it up with butter, covered it with foil and put it in the oven.  I didn't try to do anything fancy, I just wanted it to be edible when it came out of the oven.  I surprised my self by being able to cook all the food (mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, homemade stuffing, gravy, cranberry salad, yams, rolls and pumpkin pie!) and to have it all ready at essentially the same time!  I don't know about how everyone else felt but I was pretty impressed with my abilities!

The day after Thanksgiving, Brian and I started talking about going skiing for the day on Saturday.  Lake Tahoe had been getting dumped on with snow (which is really early in the season) so we decided that we would try to go up there since the prices were still cheap since it's officially not ski season yet.  All day we kinda hung around contemplating every possibility that comes with skiing.  Now, this was mainly me as I seem to be the over rational pessimistic person when it comes to trying new things...I would say things like "what if we need chains on our tires tomorrow?" or "what if we can't get home because the weather's bad?" or "what are we going to do with Vida?" or "are you sure we can get up there and back in one day?"  Eventually, Brian convinced me that I sounded like a 90 year old woman and that I needed to suck it up...I mean how often are we really going to live 2 hours from ski slopes...and good ones at that?!  So I decided that we would go skiing on Saturday and that I just wouldn't worry about it...although I still had to plan the day out to get some peace of mind.  I started thinking that we should just stay up there Saturday night to avoid driving home on dark icy roads and that I should just go to Sport Chalet (like a Sports Authority) and rent my skis instead of paying double at the ski resort.  A million things were going through my head so Brian made the call to go to Sport Chalet to rent me some skis around 6pm.  As we were driving in the car, I turned and looked at Brian and said, "Why don't we just leave tonight?"  Brian looked at me blankly and said "I'm sorry what?!"  He was completely thrown off guard as I am not a super spontaneous, at the last moment kind of person.  I told him that I found a hotel online before we left for super cheap that would let us bring the dog and that would save us some unnecessary unsafe driving.  He was totally in, so we went and rented my skis, for the season I might add ($180 for the entire season, now until June 1), grabbed some quick dinner, went home packed up, and then left.  We got to Tahoe around midnight, but it beats getting up at 6 to drive up there.  The roads were perfectly fine, the weather was cold, but clear and the drive was fabulous!  We went through this little town called Placerville where they must have had 100 decorated Christmas trees lining the road!  It was so cute and made me so excited for Christmas!  

Once we got to Tahoe, I just got super excited!  I forgot how much I love seeing all the snow and how different and magical places look all covered in feet of snow!  It was beautiful:)  Our hotel room was perfect and less than a mile from the slopes!  We finally got settled in our room and decided to let Vida out one last time before bed.  We put her on her leash and walked her around the courtyard in the hotel.  She was completely confused!  At first we just thought she was excited to be there as she was spazzing out and sniffing everything!  Eventually, we realized that she didn't know where to go to the bathroom so she pooped right in the middle of the walk way!!  At least we're good citizens and clean it up but it was pretty hilarious!  After that, she just started jumping in the snow and having a good time! 

Saturday morning, we got up and headed up to Heavenly Ski Resort.  As we were pulling in, it started to snow, which made it so I had to get my snow gear on in the back of the car...which was kind of a tight space but was a heck of a lot better than having snow filled, cold ski boots (they're already uncomfortable enough!).  We skied all day until the snow and clouds got so thick that it was basically white out conditions and until I turned into a popsicle!  It never fails that I get cold skiing....I'm pretty sure I could be wearing 100 layers of clothes and still get cold.  It's mainly my hands though...they get so cold that at first I can't feel them and then they start to hurt.  After a long day of skiing, which I haven't done in a few years, I realized how out of shape I really was.  My legs were killing me and I was exhausted!!  We decided to go back to the hotel and thaw out before we went to dinner.  When we got back to the room, we were pleasantly surprised to see the kick off to the Georgia/Georgia Tech game, so we cozied up on the bed and watched the game for the next few hours.  Eventually, we bundled back up and went to dinner and then went back to the room to pass out!

Sunday was a beautiful day to drive home...it was sunny and all the snow from the day before had been cleared from the roadways so the drive home was nice and easy (minus the Thanksgiving traffic of course).  We stopped a couple of times to take some pictures of Lake Tahoe since it looks completely different in the winter than it did over the summer!  All in all it was a great trip...in fact, we loved it so much that the following weekend, we decided to go skiing again, just at a different resort.  Last weekend we just made a day trip out of it though, but we got free skiing for being military so it was well worth it!

Vida in the snow...it was funny because when she came inside she had all these snow dingleberries all over the place!

Getting ready in the back of the car

It was freezing!!

About 6 inches of snow after about 3 hours of snowing.  This is at the bottom of the mountain so up where you ski there was probably a good foot or so.

Getting ready to go!

Vida on the beach...this is a sandy beach in the summer but now it's just snowy and icy.

This is a picnic table...just to show you how much snow there is.

The gondola at Heavenly up to the rest of the ski lifts.

Lake Tahoe

The snow covered trees always look like creatures to me...maybe I'm just weird.

View from the top at Alpine Meadows...you can see the lake out there.

It was seriously foggy...

Just a cute picture of Vida after our ski trip...she needs a hair cut!