Weekend BlogLog - Aug. 15th

This weekend Rick and I headed to Mud Lake in the Sierra Mountains. This is my favorite spot in the world! I have been going to the Sierra Mountains each summer since I was 9 years old. There is a little side road off Hwy 88 that leads you to Mud Lake. It is a dirt road that you have to 4 wheel drive to. We camp on the waters edge. It is amazingly beautiful! My dad and I have the tradition of going there each summer for some 4 wheeling. This year we invited Jessica, Jeff and their kids. It was fun to spend time with both of our families.

We got up there latter than everyone else because we had to work until 3:00 on Friday. When we got up there they had a big bonfire going and we were able to enjoy the light of the full moon refecting off the water. You can't get better than a full moon in the Sierras.


In the morning we woke up and my dad and I made a big breakfast for everyone. We did pancakes, bacon, and omelette scrambles with avocados, tomatoes, cheese, green onions, mushrooms and cilantro. It was delicious. We then blew up the dinghy's - we had 3. We relaxed in the rubber rafts on the lake with the morning sun beating down on us. We hiked around, threw rocks in the water, caught baby frogs, played with the cute kids and ate a delicious lunch. In the afternoon Rick, my dad, little Drew and I went 4 wheeling in my dad's "Monster Truck". Drew loved it! We thought he wouldn't last long and would be frightened by the intense 4 wheeling, but he loved it. We went to Devil's Hole and enjoyed the view of the whole valley.

That evening we made dinner, smores and popped some Jiffy popcorn and enjoyed the fire before heading out. Rick and I had to leave Saturday night so we could be home to teach lessons on Sunday morning. Everyone else stayed another night and enjoyed the amazing surroundings of the Sierra Mountains.

Weekend BlogLog - Aug. 8th

We left work early on Friday and headed up to Charleston Oregon to fish in a tuna fishing competition. I know it sounds strange. Why would we be in a fishing competition?? Well as you know Rick is one of the few who manages the StarKist Tuna brand. The brand team decided it would be a great idea to sponsor the Oregon Tuna Classic this year. So sure enough we drove until about 1:00 in the morning when we finally arrived in Charleston. The next morning we awoke at 4:00 and headed down to the lobby to meet our ride. They hired a professional fisherman and boat for the "StarKist Team" to join the competition.

Our fishing boat was nice and very clean for a fishing boat. Our skipper was Dan. Everyone took one look at us and immediately knew that we were not going to be contenders. I was dressed in designer jeans, a cute black jacket with fur around the hood, a scarf and beanie, Rick was dressed in his surfer hoodie and jeans while his co-worker was dressed in a nice wool sweater. They asked us if we brought our waiters and plastic boots - I think they were silently laughing at us city folks coming to join in the fun.

At 6:00 in the morning they shot the flare and all 65 boats raced away trying to find fish. We went out about 45 miles, no land was in site. It took us almost 3 hours to get out there.




The competition was the total weight of your 5 biggest fish. At 2:00 to 4:00 was weigh in time. Unfortunately we did not catch 5 fish. We got 4 and one got away, so we didn't get to weigh in. Rick caught the first one. It was a big 28 pounder. I caught the second one which was about 15 and Dale reeled in the third one.






We were a little disappointed we didn't get to weigh in but we still had fun. We caught about 60 pounds of Albacore. After the competition all the fish that were caught were donated to the Oregon Food Bank for the homeless. We took one of ours home since we didn't weigh in. We are going to sear up some fresh tuna for dinner - yum!



Of course we had to take pictures with Charlie the Tuna which came all the way from San Francisco. This town loves Charlie the Tuna, they even have a Charlie statue. They had two at one point but someone cut it down as a joke and stole it so the town is in the process of carving another Charlie the Tuna Statue.



After the competition we headed back to our hotel and had a big dinner with all the fisherman. Unfortunately we did not win the contest but we did win one of the raffles. We got a flare - yeah!
It was a fun trip.

Weekend BlogLog - August 1st

We got off work early on Friday and headed down to Santa Cruz to the car races. We met my dad there. It is a family tradition to go to the races at least once a summer. The races were fun and exciting as usual. The winner of the night was a 14 year old boy. He was pretty impressive. He blew away all the old pros by a long shot.

We stayed the night in San Jose and headed over to Sunnyvale Saturday morning for a family reunion. This is another summer tradition on my side of the family. We swam around, visited and ate lots of food.

Saturday night we celebrated our 6 month anniversary. How exciting! We headed over to Acote, a great restaurant in the Oakland/Berkeley area on College Ave. We ate there for the first time on the night we got engaged. Acote, is a tapas restaurant. We ordered some exotic drinks. Rick had a dry rhubarb drink and I had some unusual drink, I can't even remember how to say it. It was a sweet, floral drink that was similar to lychee. They were pretty good. We had battered squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta cheese, pork medallions, and carrot risotto. It was all very good but for as much as we spent you would think that we would have left the restaurant full. I guess not over eating is a good thing!

Sunday night we had our friends Tyler and Joelle over for dinner. We served individual cheese platters with aged Gouda and Camembert cheese along with baguette slices, fresh blueberries, apple slices and dried apricots. We then had Herbed chicken, Asparagus, and Rick's famous and very delicious risotto. Of course everyone loved the risotto and sadly enough there wasn't much left overs. We then had some french desserts from Draeger's which Tyler & Joelle brought. It was fun to see them and catch up.