Weekend BlogLog - July 4th

Ricky and I went to Westwood for 4th of July weekend. My Uncle Steve used to live there and was a fire captain who was killed in the 2003 Happy Camp Forest Fire with some of his crew. His hobby was buying old house and fixing them up. When he died he had 7 houses. Our family sold all of them but one, the one he lived in. It is now our family cabin.
This is his monument at the firestation. They built trees for
each of the firefighters, a picnic area and the rock with their
pictures.








Rick and I went to Chester for the 4th and watched the town parade. I had to ran down all the kids who were trying to pick up candy that people were throwing in the streets while driving by in their floats. They were greedy little kids, they had stashes of it. All I wanted were a few pieces to eat while watching the parade.

That night Rick and I went for blackberry shakes and had a BBQ in the backyard. Saturday morning we woke up and went to the small parade in Westwood and again I was fighting with the kids just to get one piece of candy. We rode over to the parade on some old bikes we found in the garage. We spent the morning riding up and down the streets in town (there are only a few). That afternoon Jessica and Jeff came and brought the kids. Ricky pulled Drew and TJ in the red wagon down to the park where they were having the Mountain and Bluegrass festival. We watched the snowmobile drag races on the grass and played around a bit.

Then we headed over to Lake Almanor which is a huge beautiful lake that is surrounded by mouthains and green trees. However, there was a large forest fire pretty close resulting in white smokey skies. We weren't even able to see the mountains and trees on the other side of the lake. We played at the park right in front of the lake. We played badmitton, horseshoes, teatherball and of course on the playground with the kids. We then had a BBQ.

Of course Rick and I brought the dinghy. We pumped it up and headed out into the water. We were relaxing and reading our book together when all of a sudden the lake sheriff pulls right up to us in his boat on the water and asked us if we had our life jackets in the boat. He actually made us get off the water since we were considered a "small craft" and didn't have life jackets. Luckily he just gave us a warning and not a ticket! Our first incident with the dinghy.





The next morning on our way out we stopped by the Lava Tunnels or Subway Caves in Lassen National Park. It was super cool. It was a great weekend, a little time by ourselves and a little time with the family. We were glad J&J were spontaneous enough to hop in the car to meet us for the weekend.

A few pictures of our Warehouse

Weekend BlogLog - June 27th

This weekend was Rick's birthday party so we did a lot of cleaning and got our house ready for people to come over and see for the first time. Saturday night was the night, it was a Fondue party. We had:

Cheese Fondue - A cheddar, bacon and smoked almond cheese fondue with broccoli, cauliflower, bread, apples and chicken wrapped in bacon.

Chocolate Fondue - Bittersweet Chocolate fondue with apples, strawberries, bananas, pears, mandarin oranges, pineapple, marshmallows, toasted coconut, chopped pecans and sprinkles.

We also served Italian Cream Sodas, one of Rick's specialties.

We had a fun mix of people there, some of our single friends, some married friends that we have known for a while and some of our new married friends from our Oakland ward.

Weekend BlogLog - June 20th

Caitlyn came to visit us from Utah this weekend. It was so fun to have her stay. She got in on Thursday and Rick and I met up with her in the city for lunch. We went to Birley's one of Rick's favorite sandwich place by his office. After I got off work, I met up with Caitlyn and we did some shopping. We went to Union Square, Chinatown, and North Beach. We then met up with Rick and headed back to the east bay. We had dinner at a little pizza place in Alameda. 

Friday morning I went to work for half the day and Rick and Caitlyn drove into the city. They went to Mama's Cafe which is a great breakfast place in Washington Square. They saw Coit Tower and Pier 39. I then met up with them and we saw Lombard Street, Ghirardeli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Point, Haight & Ashbury, and the Mission. We went to New Delhi Indian Restaurant for dinner. The food was great. The weather was so hot. I was sweating while we were waiting for our food. Of course no where in the city has air con since there usually isn't a need for it.



On Saturday we headed down to Santa Cruz. We went to Cafe Brazil for lunch and for Acai. The weather was hot and perfect for the beach. We rented some long boards and did some surfing in Capitola. We then had Togo's on the beach for dinner, which is my favorite thing in the world. Life can't get better than that! We walked around the boardwalk and went on the Giant Dipper - Santa Cruz's classic roller coaster.

Weekend BlogLog - June 13

Friday night Rick and I headed down south to Arroyo Seco. We met up with some of our single friends and camped for the night. The next morning we got up to do the Arroyo Seco River hike. It is an all day hike up the river. At the end of the river there are some rock canyons that you swim through to reach a swimming hole and waterfall. It is fun, beautiful and has hot weather and cold water.

We got to the ranger station to get our day passes and they let us know that the river hike was closed, due to a fire a few miles away. They then recommended that we go over to the Pinnacles to go hiking in the caves. When we all got to the Pinnacles, the caves were closed due to a rare species of bats. We were able to find a short 5 mile hike that had a few caves so we did that and headed home.



On Sunday we went to my families house for a BBQ to celebrate Ricky's birthday. Ricky enjoyed playing the new wii racing game on the big screen.

Weekend BlogLog - June 6th

We had a little bit of the good this weekend and a little bit of the bad this weekend. The good stuff first... Friday night Rick went kite boarding while I went shopping. We then headed up to San Francisco to a party with our single friends. Our friend Erica had a going away party. It was fun to see friends and to be social. 

Saturday, my dad, Terry and Lauren who was visiting from out of town came over and we all went to Alameda Beach. We had nice hot, sunny weather. It was great. We had a BBQ on the beach with our new Mighty Grill that we got for our wedding. We grilled some Caribbean jerk chicken and some vegetables. The weather was perfect for kite boarding so Rick was able to show off his stuff. My family was enthralled by his very large kite and his new kite boarding skills. There were so many kite boarders out in the water, it made for the perfect day to watch. 

Sunday night we had company over for the first time. We invited a few couples over to play some games. Unfortunetly we did not have our camera with us this weekend so no fun pictures. Oh yeah, we also went to a Giants/Mets game in the city this week with our friends from the ward - it was fun!

The bad stuff second... Rick headed to the church Saturday morning for his new calling and the Subaru over heated and shut down. I wasn't able to pick him up because when we returned from Mexico the Land Rover had a flat tire. The tire was so flat that we weren't able to drive it, plus we realized that it was so worn down that you could see the medal wires poking through. Rick waited for the car to cool down and took it in and fixed it up. One down, one to go.

My dad brought his air compressor over so we could fill the tire with air and drive it to the shop for new tires. We used the battery to make the air compressor work, not realizing that it would run the battery down. We now had a flat tire and a dead battery. We thought about changing the tire and using the full size spare tire. Unfortunetly, Land Rover sold me a car with out the tire iron, and this being the first time changing the tire, I had to find out the hard way. We thought, no problem, Terry has AAA. AAA was scheduled to come about 9:00ish on Saturday night. This was not a quick simple solution of course, with this car being a Land Rover. AAA did not have a tire iron big enough for the lug nuts on the LR wheels and told us that we would need to call someone who handled commercial vehicles which is not covered under regular AAA. Fortunetly Rick found some tools to do the job and close to midnight the AAA guy was so ready to leave our parking garage. We headed straight to the gas station to get gas since the gas light was on and we had to let the car run for a little while since the battery had been dead. Of course the battery died again at the gas station and the spare tire needed more air.

Finally Sunday came along and we thought we were good in the car department, however a slight misunderstanding in communication resulted in our one set of keys getting locked into the Subaru. We discovered this at midnight when I was packing for my business trip the next morning and looking for the car keys. I needed to be at the SF airport at 5:00am the next morning and our Subaru car keys were locked in the car. The LR was out of the questions since it was being blocked in by the Subaru. Rick and I tried breaking into the Subaru for a few hours. Finally at 2:ooam I went to bed (since I had an important in-person meeting the following day with the largest food company in the world). Rick, my sweet husband told me the problem would be solved when I woke up. Locksmiths at that hour are outrageous and a taxi to the airport was $100. My alarm goes off at 3:45am and sure enough Rick was not next to me. I ran down stairs to the parking garage in a panic, thinking I needed to call a cab immediately so I can make my flight. As I opened the door to the parking garage Ricky had just gotten the car open. It took him 4 hours to break into the Subaru. I made my flight, and although I probablly looked pretty bad for my meeting, I walked in there with my black power suit and rocked that meeting! I am hoping the car troubles are over for a little while!

Our Mexican Cruise

As you may know we just got back from our 7 day cruise to Mexico. It was Ricky's first cruise and my 4th cruise. It was a family reunion on my side of the family. There were 36 of us. It was great fun!

Things We Did:
Laid around the pool, hot tub, played ping pong, played lots of games at night with all the cousins, went to a magic show, a dancing show, a comedian, and a game show, slept in late, danced, rock climbed, ate tons of food, had breakfast in bed, room service and played at three different ports.

Ricky was pleasantly surprised when he saw our room. It was nice and cozy and bigger than he thought, with a nice big ocean view window. He liked the food and enjoyed eating when ever he wanted. He gain 4 pounds on the cruise.

Cabo San Lucus - was our first stop. My immediate family took a water taxi over to a beach area and rented jet skis for a few hours. We jet skiied, swam around in the ocean, snorkeled and we pulled out the dinghy. We relaxed in the dinghy as well as played with the nephews in it. Then we went back to the main town and Rick and I left everyone behind and headed for the backroads of town. We found a shrimp and lobster shack and had a great shrimp and lobster lunch. We then spent the rest of the afternoon shopping around. Cabo has grown a ton since I had been there last and is much nicer then it ever use to be.

































Mazatlan - was our next stop. We left the ship by ourselves early in the morning and headed into town. Mazatlan is not a very nice place at all. It is kinda of ugly, smoggy, dirty and touristy. We shopped around in the markets in the morning. I got some beautiful turquoise jewelry that I absolutely love. Then we met up with my sister Mariah and her family. We played around on the beach while the kids went parasailing and swam. Ricky and I rented a hobby cat and went sailing. The guy taught Rick how to sail a catamaran (he knows how to sail a regular sail boat but hasn't tried a catamaran yet). Ricky then rented a boogie board and taught Conner and Dallin how to boogie board. They love Ricky to pieces.











Puerto Vallarta - was our last port. There were 21 of us who went on the zip line tour together. It was fun to get all the cousins and kids together for the day. We zipped down a bunch of lines across a large canyon. Even though it was a very touristy thing to do Ricky still enjoyed it. In fact it was his favorite part of the trip. After the zip line, Rick and I walked back to the ship through the town and on the beach.
















Some high lights of the trip
One of the nights a bunch of us cousins went to the game show called Quest. It was pretty funny. Everyone had to be in a group, so of course we were all in one group. They would call out something and the teams had to bring it up to the front. The teams who got up there first got the points. Some of the things were - a guy wearing women's shoes, a girl wearing men's sock as gloves, a girl with a tattoo, 4 pairs of pants (this one was a little tough for our group, no one wanted to take off their pants - for obvious reasons. The last one was the funniest. A guy dressed the most like a women. My 18 year brother was the lucky guy who got to dress like a women. He wore a red floral skirt, red patton leather shoes, beads, a light blue hoodie with fake boobs and a purse. It was hilarious. Our team won the gold medal!!!!

My sister Mariah almost won the hula hoop contest. She had 3 hula hoops going at the same time and lost by 1 second. 10 years ago she won the competition and her record was 6 hula hoops and 3 minutes.

This is a funny story: This is How Nice My Husband Is
My dad wanted to play a joke on the Sanders girls this trip since they played a joke on him on the last family reunion in Tahoe. He ordered a fart machine off the Internet and brought it with him. On the last day of the cruise we all gathered in the conference room to have a slide show of everyone's pictures to show grandma how much fun we were all having. The machine was placed in my mom's big purse. My mom first started off by setting her purse behind my brother in law James and then walked away. A few minutes later from the other side of the room, my dad used the remote control to make the farting sounds. Of course it got blamed on James. James who is bald got so embarrassed (even though he didn't do it) that his whole head turned bright red. This really made people believe it was real. A few minutes later my mom slyly grabs her bag and decided to drop it behind my Ricky. (Ricky wasn't really paying much attention to what had just happened). Ricky was sitting next to my sweet grandma. A few minutes later my dad uses the remote control again. This time it was more quiet and everyone heard. Ricky thought it was my grandma. Grandma started looking around saying who did that and getting grossed out by it. Ricky thought that she was too embarrassed to admit in front of the whole family that she had farted, so he immediately raised his hand and said I did it. At this point no one had clued in yet that it was just a machine since James' reaction was so real and Ricky was admitting it. Finally most people started realizing what was going on except one person. Our cousin Ed still had no clue until the very end when we showed him the machine. He was relieved. He couldn't believe people had been so open about it and kept on doing that in public. It was a pretty funny slide show!