Weekend BlogLog - March 27th

This last weekend we went to Pismo beach. We invited a ton of people but most weren't available or canceled at the last minute. We ended up going with our friends Angel and Derek and had a great time. 

This year was very relaxing and low key. We got there late Friday night during high tide. We drove through the river, it wasn't too bad. We had a bonfire and relaxed. Saturday morning we got up and made a big breakfast - pancakes, scrambled eggs and bacon. 

We hopped in the Land Rover and cruised around the sand dunes for a little while. We spent some time jumping off sand dunes and doing tricks. Angel and I practiced our photography homework on shutter speed and tried to captured the guys in mid action in the air.

 

Angel and I took a nice mid day nap in the sun on top of a sand dune right next to the truck while the boys launched the kite in the middle of the dunes. 

We then all headed to the water and played around with the skimboard. The boys did the skimboarding while the girls took the action shots. The water was way to cold for us to want to get wet.

This is my sweet vintage skim board that I made 21 years ago. It is still skimming great!

We then headed into town to our traditional place to eat - Mo's BBQ, our favorite. We had tri-tip sandwiches, ribs, corn muffins, potato salad, baked beans and coleslaw. It was delicious. 

We then walked around the pier and bought some salt water taffy which is one of my favorites. Along the beach by the pier they had a kite festival. All the top name kite boarding companies were demoing their new kites. Rick loved this and tried out a new kite.

We then headed back to camp on the beach and played Settlers. Rick won this time. We started a fire and made smores, hot dogs and marshmallows wrapped in crescent rolls. It was all delicious. 

We played a little glow in the dark frisbee on the beach and took some fun night pictures of the frisbee in action.

We woke up very early on Sunday morning and packed up to make it home for church.

Monday Night Dinners

On Monday nights I teach a few of my young women how to cook. We have been cooking dinner together for several months now. Rick loves this because he knows he will get a good meal every Monday night. 

Last Monday night I invited my mom and sister Lauren to cook with us. We had fun. We made a homemade marinara sauce and sauteed some vegetables for a pasta primavera. We had salad and bread as well. It turned out delicious. 

We then made dessert together. We made chocolate covered marshmallows. We melted semi sweet chocolate and white chocolate and dipped the marshmallows and then added fun sprinkles, nuts and coconut. They turned out so cute and of course they tasted great!

Last Weekend

Last weekend my little sister came in to town so we spent some time with her. Saturday morning my dad and Lauren came over for breakfast. I made eggs, sausage and pancakes. We then headed over to the White Elephant Warehouse sale. We bought some great ice cream sunday glasses. 

We then headed down to San Jose for some pizza and games. We played Settlers and ate lots of junk food. This is a family tradition of ours. I won of course!

Weekend in Nevada

A few weekends ago we headed to Nevada for Rick's sister's baby blessing. We had tons of fun playing with the kids and visiting with everyone. They boys chased Rick all over the park and wore him down. Abby was as precious as can be in her little white blessing dress. It was fun to spend the weekend with them all.

Dominican Republic Amber

This is my beautiful piece of Blue Amber from the Dominican Republic.

Day 8 - Dominican Republic

We woke up bright and early and headed to a session at the Santo Domingo temple. If you know me at all, you know that I am obsessed with Temples and it has been a goal of mine to make it to all the temples in the wold. Obviously that goal gets harder and harder as they continue to build temples rapidly. My other more "do-able" goal is to hit two new temples a year.

The temple session was great of course. No matter what country, what language or what temple you are in, you can always feel the same peaceful, comforting spirit in each temple.

After our session we packed up and headed to the beach in Boca Chico before our flight. It was a nice, large, white sandy beach with calm blue water. Lots of people were swimming, sailing, kayaking and playing in the water. Rick and I got an umbrella, chairs and table and played a game of cards by the waters edge.

We then headed to the streets along the beach and ate lunch; rice, beans and fried chicken agian. Like I said, it's every where. A few hours later we headed to the airport, back to America.

Our trip to the Dominican Republic was a relaxing and enjoyable one. We loved it there!

This was one of Rick's favorite pictures. There was a man walking down the street by the beach selling floaties for the water. He had so many of them it covered his whole body. His head was in the very middle of it all peeking through the ring.

Day 7 - Domincian Republic

In the morning the Cocoa Boutique Hotel had free breakfast for us. They served us a large platter of fresh fruit; pineapple, bananas, papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe, and pomelo, a basket of fresh bread; cinnamon bagels, wheat toast, seeded baguettes, white rolls and mini croissants, cheese and meat platter, orange juice and cocoa with hot milk. It was one of the best free breakfastes I have had at a hotel.

After breakfast we toured around Zona Colonial. We saw the first church built in the New World, the first fort wall/military fort, Christopher Columbus' house, Cortez's house, Museums with old maps, money, and objects from the Spanish explorers, and of course the Amber museum.

Christopher's house

As you may or may not know, Dominican Republic is famous for their amber. They are the only place that has 7 different colors of amber, very rare. They also have inclusions in their amber; bugs, leaves, flowers and organic materials. The more inclusions the more money it is. They had some pieces that were thousands of dollars.

We learned how to detect real amber from fake plastic amber. If you put the piece of amber under a UV light real amber will turn a bluish green fluorescent color. If it is fake, the light will go right through it. There are a few other tricks. We spent the afternoon deciding between two beautiful pieces of amber, both with lots of inclusions. After a difficult decision I opted for a dark orange brownish color piece that can be worn around my neck. I was a little nervous, but I feel really good about my decision now - I love it! I will post a picture of it soon.

After a day of shopping and seeing all the historical sites in Zona Colonial we decided to walk down the main strip "The Conde" for some dinner. The sun was down and there weren't too many people on the street since it was a week night. There were few options as far as food goes, a bunch of fast food places some local and some from the U.S. We ended up at Pollo Rey or Chicken King in English. It was actually pretty good. I had fried chicken and fries and Rick had chicken empanadas, tostones (fried plantains) and one other thing but I can't remember what it was called.

After dinner we headed to Centro Santo Doming (yes we are crazy) to where we were staying our last night. We stayed our last night at the temple. In most other countries, the temples have housing for the patrons who are there to visit and go to the temple. It cost us $3 a night per person.

Of course you are on the temple grounds so it feels clean, comforting, peaceful and most of all SAFE. Our room was very American like. We had carpet, tile in the bathroom, marble countertops for the sink and real MTC like bedding with air con.

Day 6 - Dominican Republic

We woke up and headed into town to do a little shopping before the wind came out. I bought a sun hat and we checked out the amber and larimar. We ate lunch at a little shack on the side of the road. We had traditional rice and beans with fried chicken. You can pretty much get this meal on any street in the DR. It was good and of course pretty cheap.

The wind was suppose to pick up around 1:00 so we headed to the point to find a good spot for kiteboarding. We did a little hiking in the jungle along the water and this was the first time we came across bugs. I got a bunch of bug bites on my legs walking through the weeds and jungle mess.

The guys from the kiteboarding school showed up and everyone started pumping up their kites. Rick cruised right out there into the waves and had a few good runs in before I saw his kite slowly fall out of the air and in to the waves.

Usually when Rick drops his kite you can see the kite and you know exactly where he is. This time his kite collapsed and you couldn't see it. After about 10 minutes I started getting a little worried. I couldn't see him and I knew he was pretty far out there. We had no idea what the water was like out there or if there were any reefs or dangers (no one spoke English so we couldn't understand what they were telling us about the water).

After a long while of waiting and not seeing him I decided to pack up the stuff on the beach and drive down to see if I could spot him. Sure enough I found him way down around the point. His kite had popped in the air and came down. It filled with water so he wasn't able to use it as a sail to get him back to shore. He had to let the current pull him down shore. I was thankful he was all right and he was bummed that his kite popped. We packed up the wet kite and got out of town.

We drove to Santo Domingo in the dark. This was something the books, blogs and friends recommend we don't do - drive at night especially in Santo Domingo. It was definitely good advice however we didn't take it. Once we got to the center of the city it got a little crazy trying to find our way. Many people didn't have their lights on (including motorcycle drivers), they ran red lights, drove on the wrong side of the road and didn't stop at stop signs.

We decided to stay in Zona Colonial again since we loved it so much the first time around. We stayed at a place called Cocoa Boutique Hotel which wasn't available the first night we were there. It was a small boutique hotel with just 4 rooms. It was run by a couple from Ireland and Portugal. It was a beautiful place, everything was white with modern decorations. It was clean, fancy and seemed like a paradise in the middle of paradise.

We stayed in the room called Black Vanilla. It had dark wood floors with black and white decorations. The bathroom was super fancy with a bidet and a toilet in it. The shower had glass doors and hot water with soaps, shampoo and conditioner from France.

We ate dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant in Zona Colonial. It was a late dinner so we were the only ones in the restaurant. We had seafood risotta which was highly recommended in all the travel books. Risotto is one of my favorite foods so it was very enjoyable. However, I still haven't found a restaurant that makes better risotto than Ricky!