Temecula Wedding Weekend

Last weekend, AJ and I went to the first wedding since our own. (Technically. We did go to Priya's in San Jose in May, but they had essentially eloped and then had a big reception with everyone, so we didn't get to see the ceremony). I was really reminded why weddings are the best, and it also made me so nostalgic for our own wedding! I miss it, I wish we could get married again. I was asking everyone how soon was too soon to renew your vows LOL.

It was quite the weekend too: the wedding was on Friday, there was wine tasting (which I did) and golf (which AJ did) on Saturday, plus the send-off dinner. What I found funny was, in a group chat with me, Palak and Sri (who you may remember as some of my San Diego friends who were on the East Coast the same time as me - Palak in DC and Sri in Philly, so we often got together, including for a Friendsgiving in 2012 which included a trip to Annapolis, Maryland) not only did we all have a wedding to attend this past weekend, but my wedding was on Friday, Palak's wedding was on Saturday, and Sri's wedding was on Sunday. What are the chances!

Our friends who were there all have kids and we were all very excited to spend together, out having fun, without kids, for the first time almost since any of us had kids really!

This meant that Sophie got to have the time of her life up at my mom's house for the weekend. It's always hard to leave her, but I'm glad for us doing it and getting used to it, Sophie seems very comfortable without us and hanging with new people.

It makes me both happy and sad that she doesn't cry when we leave LOL but honestly more happy.

It has been so hard to get back on our feet after the weekend away, really. I still feel so out of it! Here's an example. I will say that Tuesdays are always a little hard on me because it's my day in the office, then I pick up Sophie and we hang out and do dinner and bedtime and then I rush off to my ballet class so it's a very busy day. So yesterday I didn't have time to eat dinner before ballet so I was scrounging when I came home and decided to make a quick bowl of pasta. I put the pasta sauce on and I notice this one has a lot of vegetables and is very hearty! I take a bite and it's almost spicy. Then it occurs to me that I poured salsa on top of my entire bowl of pasta. Not pasta sauce. I still ate it though and it wasn't horrible. If anything it was probably less calories LOL. But that was a how-the-heck-did-this-happen moment.

Tomorrow is September, pumpkin spice is already back in Starbucks, but the hottest heat wave of the summer so far is just starting now. I hate that!

My Time Finally Came

I've spent the past 11 days dealing with COVID. I always felt like I must have had it already and didn't know it, but then when I really tested positive, it did feel new, so maybe I really did go 2 1/2 years avoiding it. But, my time came.

Amazingly (truly amazingly) no one else in the house caught it! Thanks to Debbie sticking around, I was able to truly isolate for 5 days, which sucked by the way, I hated not being able to hold Sophie or give her a kiss or anything at all. Actually the first few days weren't too bad. I was pretty down and out with aches and chills and malaise and just downed NyQuil and slept. Once I felt better, it was soooo boringggg being holed up in the room and trying to pass days at a time. But it ended, and then came the next 5 days where I was able to come out of the room and sorta live my life but had to wear my mask the whole time. That really sucked too. It got really old, and even if I wanted to just take a sip of water or eat I needed to step outside or go into the bedroom. It was so easy to want to throw in the towel and just be done with (especially because I felt fine!) but I wasn't going to make those days of isolation all for naught and make everyone sick in the end anyway. So I stuck with it militantly through my day 10 (yesterday), woke up today feeling great and tested totally negative! Such a relief! And AJ and Debbie's consistent testing continued to show them negative as well. I guess we really did it.

Yesterday was Sophie's day home with us, and French classes are on a break for the summer, so I decided to take her to the zoo where we could be outside and distance (and I still wore my mask in that heat - ugh!) and it was so cute because their little butterfly enclosure was finally open. I actually was really impressed - they had soooo many butterflies, and some of them were huge, and such beautiful colors, and they were everywhere! The pictures didn't really capture them but the video shows it better.

Oh and here's a photo of Sophie from earlier this month, just cause she's so cute.

I'm excited to finally be able to bake again as well, cause I definitely didn't feel good baking food during my COVID run, so now I get to return to my usual-scheduled programming.

There's Never Enough Time in Santa Barbara

It's just what the title says. I lived there for four years and it was still not enough time, and now every time I go back I have four years of memories I want to revisit and places to see again, and I don't even scratch the surface. And this time we were there with friends Kacey and Yohann to celebrate their joint birthdays, which they have started doing in Santa Barbara every year for the past few years since it's always over Santa Barbara fiesta!

We had such a good time staying downtown and enjoying the perfect weather, the beach, the wine tasting venues, the clubs, the bikes, and all the fiesta! If you think glitter follows you around, wait until a weekend of confetti eggs and see how much the confetti ends up everywhere... even now!

Kacey and Yohann were so cute, when we checked in we had a welcome bag with temporary tattoos, fiesta pens, advil, wet wipes, facial masks, face spray, fiesta bracelets, lots of confetti eggs and probably more that I'm forgetting. They always know how to do things right!

Our cute little hotel - others had suites in the
courtyard where we spent most of our time.
Our room was the top right corner here

Santa Barbara pier

Deep Sea Wines

Wine and food pairing with a bottle of our
favorites to bring home!

Beachtime

It's kinda hard to see here and it
just looks more like specks, but the
beautiful confetti getting everywhere
actually made for some pretty views!

This was AFTER we thought
we got rid of all the confetti before
going inside to the room LOL

Biking down State Street and along the harbor

"We are not tourists"

Even though we've been without Sophie, it seems every time we leave her it feels like the first time again. We checked in a lot and got great cute updates from Debbie all weekend. I guess Sophie is slowly growing quite attached to her bunny (no matter how much I've pushed little plush llamas on her haha) and is bringing it around with her everywhere now.

On Sunday we couldn't seem to drag ourselves away from Santa Barbara and left much later than we had been intending to... so we didn't think we would get home in time to be able to put Sophie to bed so we were FaceTiming with her on our drive home.

She still doesn't seem to really understand FaceTime, but she was still cute. She's 21 months old today! Unrelated, but kinda related, we need to move up to Santa Barbara already.