Tuesday, February 26, 2019

An Anniversay, A Valentine and My Birthday...

With the exception of us having one of the coldest damn winters we've ever had (35 degrees?! Are you kidding me?!) February has been a pretty damn good month!

February 2nd is Patrick and my anniversary!  One year ago on February 2nd, 2018 I walked over to the Circle and met him at Haven Gastropub for dinner, then we meandered over to Provisions then ended up at Avila's.  We ended the night with the sweetest 1st kiss I've ever had.  Here we are a year later celebrating!

He planned a super sweet evening for us.  We started the night at Ten Bistro which was delicious!  I had my 1st black rice sushi!


Yummy!
He surprised us with a night at a nearby hotel for an evening away.  It had a random room we took a few photos in, enjoyed the jacuzzi in the rain and had a fun fantastic evening.

Our room for the night!
Love him

Random Neat Room in the Hotel

New profile!
It's been a long time since I ever imagined I would even have an anniversary!


Not long after was Valentine's Day.  It's been over 15 years since I had a Valentine!  We didn't want to be super extravagant but we did want to do something, so after searching around we found a restaurant that had a decent priced special and was going to have a Spanish Guitarist play.  Perfect!!  Or so we thought...

We showed up, dolled up a bit to Eats Kitchen in Hotel Irvine.  I had high hopes because I had read some good reviews.  Sadly no.  The place was more like a Denny's rather than a Gastropub like it advertises.  And although the special was a good price - appetizer, 2 entrees, a dessert and a bottle of wine for $90 - the food was not good. Crunchy weird tiny scallops, soggy couscous, bacon that was supposed to be prosciutto, lord.  The worst part - there was no Spanish Guitarist!!  That's the whole reason we went there.  It's so hard to find classical guitar performances around here so we were so excited.  It was some dude playing cover songs.  WTF.  So even though our V-Day dinner was a bust, we of course still enjoyed each other's company and later was fun too.  *wink*


My handsome Valentine

Meh
This was actually really good!  Those little marshmallow things were awesome!
Happy Valentine's Day!
Then a little while later - Is my Birthday!!!!

As per usual I was hemming and hawwing because I didn't know what to do.  My birthday fell on a Saturday so I felt I had to do something, but it's so damn cold and I'm kind of old and tired for big crowds and parties but I don't want to do nothing but AAAAAAAHHHHH!



Well thanks to my mother we ended up having a few people over to her house that night to celebrate me.  There ya go.  Done and Done.  She did it all in a Woodland Theme which was the fucking cutest and about 15 or so of my closest friends.  Thank you mom for rescuing me!

It actually started a few days early when one of my co-workers gave me a bottle of yummy wine and my team gives flowers.

I took the Friday off and my dad took me to breakfast to one of my favorite places - Eat Chow then birthday shopping!  Yay!

Love you Daddy!
That evening was my celebration with Patrick since he wasn't going to able to make my actual birthday.  So we went to a really nice dinner back at the place we went last year for my birthday called Black Trumpet!  It moved into a better location and it was just as delicious as I remember!

Fancy Ding Dong
He then gave me the best presie!!!

But what I also loved was the envelope it came in.  Seriously the sweetest!

I seriously love this

And yes I kept it
On my actual birthday one of my best friends took me out for a birthday pedi!

Cheers Robin!
I then pretty much just hung out at mom's helping her get ready for my little gathering.  It was so much fun.  She got a ham and made her potato salad per my request.  We noshed, drank, laughed, played Cards Against Humanity (yes my mom did too) and had a really awesome evening!  A perfect way to start of my 43rd year around the sun!

Keri gettin in on the grub

My mom rules
Terri knows my situation....so rad!

Robin was dog sitting so we had little Pug Friends!

Mom of course made party favors!  They were filled with Trail Mix
 The next day the celebrations didn't stop.  My friend Carol took me out to a lovely breakfast in San Clemente, then I met up with friend Shan who treated me to a Rose tasting!

Rose Everyday!
I then zipped over to Patrick's place because the little had something planned.  I walked into to a little surprise party!  She had decorated the house so very cute and gave me some fuzzy kitty socks!  Absolutely made my weekend!

Thank you Elise!

It was a perfect birthday weekend for sure!!





Feeling very happy and very loved!!




Thursday, January 17, 2019

Trying to cache them all...

Just some more fun Caching Adventures!

***SPOILER PICTURES!***

I have Sunday Brunch with one of my most favorite people on the planet about once a month, and she's also pretty competitive and we now do some caching after brunch!  It's a good way to walk off the bubbles.  Ha! 

We tend to brunch in Downtown Santa Ana and there's some person who has hid a bunch called B.R.C. Caching.  This person hid caches all along the PG&E Santa Ana Line and named them all after states.  So there's a whole bunch!  Julie and I had found 1 last time but were super ambitious this time and found 4!  We would have found 5, but one of the locations is really gross so we had to skip it.

Julie feeling around the scarier parts with her foot

Found it!

We couldn't find this one last time, but did this time!

Parking Garage Cache

We're getting good at this!
So the boyfriend is trying to get his little to enjoy hiking more.  He found there was a this trail in Aliso Viejo that had little fairy houses.  So we headed out to check it out.  As we started to walk he turns to me and says "Aren't you going to turn on your Geocache App?!"  I didn't think he'd actually want to cache, but I think he's trying to find other ways to get the kiddo interested and of course caching could be fun right?!  Sadly I was unprepared, so I didn't have a pen on me.  I did have a couple of little swag dragons though.  So I couldn't log dammit, but we still looked.  Note - this will never happen again.  I now have a pen and dragon swag in my purse, my going out purse and my hiking backpack.  I should be set.

Anywhoo - the trail is a super chill nature walk like trail in an adorable park.  We found 3 caches!

Super cool mosaics everywhere!

Fairies!




Hunting Fairies

Elise found our 1st cache!

Sigh.  Can't write in the log


Such a pretty trail!

Peace Tower

Teaching the kid tongue pictures

Found the 2nd cache!!



I found the last cache but made the boy dig it out from under the stairs
Thanks babe!


This was actually a memorial cache.  A little boy was killed and this cacher decided to do a cache in his memory.  He loved toy trucks so that little truck is to stay in there for the little boy who was named C.T.  We left C.T. a little dragon.  RIP little boy.

I did my very 1st Earth Cache.  It was a super easy one but still.  It was at Knotts Berry Farm!  The cache is called Ghost Town Rocks and when you read it, it talks about geodes and how they are made and how they are cut.  It's actually super interesting.  To log the cache you were to go to the Geode shop in Knotts.  I was there for Knotts Merry Farm with my mom, the boy, Taylor and Keri and when everyone but me and the boy peaced out, we headed over to log the cache!  We wandered around the store and watched a gal cut a geode with a giant machine.  Pretty cool!

Ain't we cute


During our holiday break - Pat was off too - so we decided to do a hike up in Pasadena on our Friday Vacay Day.  Unfortunately the Chantry Flats hike we planned was closed.  Damn!  Sad Panda.  We opted for a much more brutal hike down the way called Mount Wilson Trail.  Pat had suggested Chantry because my tummy wasn't 100% and that was easier.  But I didn't want to not hike so we did the harder one.  We just didn't do it as long as we would have liked.  But we did some Geocaching!

Sadly this wasn't a very successful one.  We looked for 4 but only found one.  I was hell bent to find this Letter Box Cache, but dammit we could not find it and we looked twice!  Ah well.  At least we got the one!  And of course the hike was gorgeous!  Seymour joined us as well.

So very pretty!

Quite green too!


Seymour was not into the geocaching


FINALLY FOUND ONE!
It was a Game of Thrones themed cache, so I'm sure they'll be quite happy with the swag I left!

Random Xmas Decor




Still having so much fun Geocaching but I need to get going for 2019!  We're already way into the 1st month and I haven't got out there!  I will remedy this.