Birthday Recap!

This birthday weekend was fantastic, it started off on Friday with lunch with my Mom at the Cheesecake Factory (we go every year), a little shopping at Fashion Island and then it was off to my most favorite place Javier's for drinks and appetizers!  Jill, Sheila, Ricki & Louise came out and celebrated with me, OMG, I swear I ate my weight in chips and salsa and drank my weight in margarita's, but boy howdy was it worth it.

Saturday was more birthday fun with the family, we celebrated Shannon and Kathy's birthday's as well and we all had a great time.  Miss Mari, thinks Caroline is her little baby doll and Caroline milks it the entire time, so cute to watch these two interact.   

 

The best picture I could get of them!

Birthday dinner!

OMG!  I finally graduated to the adult table.  Again, best photo I could get, why do they move so fast?

Bad bad bad pic of me but it was proof I was at the adult table!

Mari was my present opener/helper, she was all over it, so cute to see her excitement!

Then it was time for cake, not sure if she wanted any!

The math problem!

Happy Birthday to us!

Someone liked her cake!

and wanted more!

Yep, it takes two hands to get it in!  Yum Yum!

Thank you to my awesome friends and family for a wonderful birthday, I could not of asked for better people to share it with!

xoxo, erin

ME!

Happy Birthday 

to ME!

Holy Cow, I turned 34 today!

How did this happen, I swear I was 28 just yesterday!

Anyways, this is your formal invitation to come celebrate with me and my friends tonight at Javier's (Irvine Spectrum) after work, hope to see you there!

A boy & his bike!

Yesterday was a crash course in bike riding for my nephew Cole!  Where he lives it is all hills so learning to ride a bike in their hood is practically impossible, so my sister took him to a local park to learn.  Cole has kind of struggled with the whole bike riding thing for awhile now, rumor has it he tried to learn one day and somehow there was a incident that involved Cole and a small dog and he has been afraid ever since.  Well this picture says it all about Cole's thoughts on learning how to ride......

I love the stubbornness, I think he might take after his Aunt and I am not talking about Shannon!

                                         Perhaps a little incentive (candy) will help?

Working on balance without the pedals.

 

Is that a smile?

Yep, I am over this!

Good job Cole, glad you gave it another try, keep up the good work!

Free Time!

Now that paddling is kind of over or more like I am on a forced break due to the minor back mishap paddling over to Catalina I am finding myself with serious amounts of free time!  It is crazy, I am trying to think back to pre-paddling days and what my life was like then.  I am slowly reintroducing myself to my civilian friends and family,I am finding myself with time to grocery shop (no longer are there mad dashes in and out of Trader Joes on my lunch hour), I have more than eggs & butter in my fridge, the monthly stock up at Target is no longer needed, my car has been de-cluttered of all things paddling related, laundry is no longer done at 10pm and in the next few days my house is going to get some serious scrubbing attention.  So with new found time, I have purchased a surfboard, started sewing lessons, cooked dinner twice this week (alert the press), been able to complete some baby gifts for two friends who had babies recently, rode my bike (there was some serious cobweb action going on in my helmet), went to dinner with friends, watched Cole play soccer, put some stuff on craigslist and have done absolutely nothing.  However, I have a slight hunch that once the back is healed, I will be back at practice again, hopefully next week since we (DOCC) went and signed up for "Another Dam Race" in Parker, AZ the first weekend in November.  Anyways, it has been nice to have some freedom, but I miss my paddling peeps, so I am ready for my free time to be occupied again soon.

Dinner that I made, mmm mmm good!

Part of a baby present for my friend Beverly!

Made this bib for my friend Kate along with some other stuff.

Check out these cute packages I found at Target.

The mirror I put on Craigslist, $40 and it is yours!

Glad it is Wednesday, cause tomorrow is my FRIDAY!

Na Wahine O Ke Kai - Women of the Sea

I have no words (shocking I know), but WOW!  Yesterday was the Molokai race in Hawaii and let's just say these ladies are amazing!  Check out this video, not sure what club these gals are from but this is them just trying to get out of the harbor before the 41 mile race started, I am pretty sure everyone faced this including the team from DOCC.

There is also another (must see) video here!

A local news report in Hawaii here

If this were me, I would be saying my last prayer and holding my breath for dear life, not sure if they were thinking this race was a good idea after all, lol!

Umm, ya that is a big wave!

The gals who made this epic trip!

Way to go DOCC, words cannot express how amazing you all are!

BTW, all photo's, video's and links were borrowed from the amazing folks at DOCC.

Soccer Saturday!

On Saturday I went to Cole's soccer game, it's amazing how every year the game game gets a little better as they get older and now it is starting to get really fun!  Life has finally got to the point where we can look back and see how the kids have changed in the last couple of years (sniff sniff, they are growing up).

2010

2011

2012

Go #4!  

Great job playing Cole, way to get into the game, we are so proud of you!

xoxo

Morning Retreat!

It's no secret that Gracie and I have the same morning routine (walk & coffee) pretty much every single morning, we are routine oriented individuals and we like to do the same things, eat the same foods on a regular basis and we all know the paddling drained all extra $$$$ so the scenery will not be changing much for awhile.  Well, the nice folks who own the shopping center across the street from our house decided to give it a much needed face lift and created a nice outdoor dining/hangout area, so now G and I have a nice morning retreat place and for a moment it feels like we are on vacation.  

And just for the record, it is NEVER cool to push a girl out of line before she has had her coffee!  Can you believe some jerk had the nerve to do that to me this morning, I mean seriously, I had been standing in front of him the whole time waiting to pay and then it comes my turn and he pushes me out of the way and when I pushed back and handed the girl my $$$ he looked at me and said "oh were you in front of me?"  Umm, no ding dong I was standing here in line for fun to see if you would notice me, DUH, yes I was in front of you, now MOVE! Really?  BTW, it is Thursday, yay, tomorrow if Friday, boy howdy do I need the weekend to come!

Just a little something for me!

I bought myself a little birthday gift today.......

Woohoo, I am sooo excited about my new/used surfboard!  If you are still looking for something to get me for my birthday, surf wax is what I can use.

Why they LOVE him!

This is what my brother does with his students besides playing Mario Cart, nothing like promoting violence against a poor defenseless ninja turtle!  Now, I wish I had taken physics in high school!

Friday Brain Dump!

Bunch of random things swirling around in my head that need to be exported before they get deleted.

Gracie and I go for our morning walk everyday and it always includes a trip to Starbucks, well the shopping center that we walk to everyday is getting a face lift so they have removed all of the benches, tables, chairs and garbage cans.  So not a big deal but I tie Gracie to a garbage can and go get my coffee, well the past two days I have nothing to tie her to and she is not allowed inside Starbucks, so I have had to resort to our ole dog obedience training, you know the "sit" and "stay", lets just say you really can teach an old dog new tricks or she has finally pulled the memories of her classes out of her Rolodex and put them to great use, because she "sits & stays" while I get my coffee and it is a freakin miracle that the $80 worth of dog obedience classes have finally paid off. 

I had an impromptu gathering at my house Wednesday night, it was fun, we sat around chatted, munched on food and drank wine!   I NEVER have people over, my place is really small, but I so enjoyed having everyone over and we all managed to squeeze in.  Hope to do it again soon!

I finally broke down and went to the chiropractor on Wednesday, dude, my back HURTS.  Let's just say he made things a lot better, but I think I might need to go back for a little more work.  ERRR, I have been icing several times a day and doing the exercises he gave me, I am sooooo hoping I did not tear something in my back and just for the record back pain is NO JOKE, it hurts.  So in the meantime I am sporting a new look, either till the tape comes off or my skin breaks out in a horrible rash, I think the rash might win.

My coworker Judi was attacked by a bat at work on Wednesday, it was wild!  She was opening up these wood doors we have at the community center and a bat dropped on her head and then fell to the ground.  She ran inside screaming she was attacked by a bat, but we did not believe her.   Sure enough there was an ity bity bat laying the ground looking dead.  So we stood around debating what to do with him and it was decided we I would take a plastic cup and we I would scoop him up.   Judi went and go the cup and as soon as the bat heard the plan he stopped playing opossum and flew away like a bat out of hell and scared the crap out of us.  We stood there for a minute screaming like a bunch of little girls!  OMG, it was soooo funny!

Judi and the Bat

Us standing around trying to figure out what to do?!

This was posted on Facebook on Thursday, such an awesome picture of a water change during the Catalina race.  

I went to my first sewing class last night, it was so much fun!  I know some of the very basics of sewing, like sewing in a straight line (yep, that is it), so I figured, I needed to learn more.  I have asked for sewing lessons for my bday (10 more days, (update) umm duh erin, your bday is in 14 days, reading this at 12:35pm today, what the heck was I thinking when I typed this?), so I am hoping a family member might gift them to me (I know, kind of backwards, going to the lesson before receiving it, but who cares).  I love our sewing instructor at work so much so I decided to take her class.  We made these cute little cosmetic bags for our first project.  

Happy Birthday to my friend Carrie, yesterday was her birthday, I sure hope she had a wonderful day!

And most importantly, my fellow paddler friend Phil and his family could really use your good thoughts and prayers right now.  His 15year old son Josh was diagnosed with a nasty brain tumor last week and had surgery on Wednesday, he is at CHOC in Orange recovering but has a long road ahead of him.  Phil has come upon some hard times recently and with this added to his plate he needs all the love and support he can get.  

Finished or am I?

After many mixed reviews on the paint color, the table has been painted, sealed and put back together again!    I love love love the color and think it is awesome and I currently find myself with some unstructured free time right now (very dangerous) looking around my house wondering what else I could paint that color.  I am currently thinking of painting these white bi-fold doors that go into my mini laundry room the same awesome turquoise  color.  However, if I do I will need to change the knobs on my kitchen cabinets and then there is a good chance it will just snowball from there, lol!    

I can hear the mothership aka crate & barrel calling me home to buy some necessary accessories for my lonely blue table!

                          So, what do you all think, should I paint the doors or leave them white?

Zip Ready, Zip Away!

Apparently after paddling 28 miles to Catalina that was not enough for a couple adventure seeking gals, so Sheila and I purchased tickets to do the Catalina Zipline on Sunday.  It was one of the Funnest things I have done in a long time!  The zipline tour was about 2 hours long, there were 5 different ziplines and 10 people in our group.  The first zipline was the hardest one to jump off the ledge, I was a little nervous and kind of felt like I was jumping to my death, but after that it was a lot of fun.  

Safety First!

Ya, I thought I might die at this point too!

Sheila! 

Me!

If you look close, all of that wake is the guys starting their race, we could see them from the zipline.

This pic should of been on the previous post, oops!

Ricki, Jill, Wennie, Margaret, Me and Sheila! 

Catalina or Bust 2012

OMG, let me just start this post saying I had a fantastically great time paddling to Catalina and the gals I paddled with were awesome, but after a series of events, lets just say we did not finish off so awesome, see why below.

- We had a horrible, no good start to the race (let's just say we were not near the start line when the race started.), ugh!

- First change our boat and the chase boat had a near collision and our extra paddle and a life jacket were tossed into the ocean.

- Three changes were missed (as in we had an extra paddler in the water and an empty seat on the boat)

- I changed from seat 5 to seat 6 missed the seat hit my back and really hurt it (like hurt it so bad, I wanted to cry).

- During the change from 5 to 6 somehow the steering blade went overboard and I had nothing to steer with, so I had to use seat 5's paddle (not a steering blade) to steer, seat 5 took seat 4's paddle and seat 4 bailed water out of the boat.

-Steering blade was recovered and back in the boat, now everyone had a paddle and we could move forward.

- We paddle along, make a few changes, life is good!

- Then at some point we make a change and seat 1 or 2, not sure who, lost their paddle in the water!  Yay, for seat 4 for paying attention and grabbing it!  OMG!

-At one point Sheila was laughing at something so hard she could not paddle, my back hurt so bad and all I wanted to do is get out to the finish line, so I YELLED at Sheila to put her paddle in the water and just paddle, not one of my better moments.

- Timing was off a lot, but at this point who f-ing cares, let's just get to the finish line.

- We see lots of dolphin's, whales and a "SHARK" (aka a sun fish).

-We finish in 6 hours and 15 mins. and I want to die!

- We make it to the bar and life is good!

All in all it was great, everyone paddled their hardest and we finished something that not that many people will ever do in their lifetime.  Thank you Jill, Ricki, Wennie, Jane, Margaret, Suzanne (from Oceanside) Karen and Sheila for the fun trip and I truly cannot wait to do it again next year.  

Race Day in Newport Beach!

Bumpy video, it was hard to keep steady!

Is that land we see?

Night boats!

Sitting eating breakfast watching the Men take the boats down to the water.

Good Morning Catalina!

After burning a ton of calories, I decided to have ice cream for breakfast!

Don't know who the dude is, but can you say "tourist"?

The lone boat, sad day for boat #13, left there all by herself.

FREE drinks, thanks Offshore!

Me, Jill & Margaret