3 posts tagged “friends”

We got back from our trip to California last night.  We had a simply wonderful time!

It was great to see the family, and sit and chat and just hang out together, since we hadn't had a chance to do that over the holidays.  I attempted to teach E's cousin Juanita to knit, and ended up with his Aunt Bonnie picking it back up instead.  Family time is fun.

The play we went to see was "The King and I" and it was a really great experience - I loved the story (hadn't seen the movie or anything previously) and our friend Greg who was the King did a great job.  The singing was really nice.  I enjoyed the way the stage was set up to rotate for the different rooms, that was really interesting to watch.  It really was a highlight of our trip and something I'll remember for a long time.

A big part of the trip reminded me how much I love *our* friends.  At the beginning of our relationship, I thought of them as Eric's friends... but I feel so much a part of the group at this point, it's a big blessing to me.  We don't have close friends up here besides my family, but our California friends are so amazing and really, who could need more than that?  Even meeting a new friend of the group was really nice and I feel like I walked away with one more super cool person that I know.  These guys are people with withstood a trip from down south to up here for our wedding squashed into a little car listening to crazy music almost 8 years ago and still are be-moaning it but still like us!  These girls are so sweet to me, make me blush, and I feel like I could tell them anything.  They are all a bit geeky and crazy, just like E and me.  They laugh with us and at us, but it's all in good fun.  Many of them drive a long ways each time we come down just so we can all meet up and spend an evening and better parts of the night together, laughing and talking and of course, gaming.  I just came home feeling so blessed.

The weather was fabulous the whole time we were there, and we got to do a lot of great things the whole time we were gone, including a date afternoon with just me and E (and Cheesecake Factory and Ben & Jerry's and the outdoor mall, woo!).  The flights were okay (ok, the second one was not as good as the first but whatever), and we weren't delayed in Ontario this time for a change.

I've got a bit of catching up to do now that I'm home, with piles of mail and newspapers, as well as a ton of digital catching up with my Vox reads and my newreader (yay, the strike is OVER!), but that'll come.  We grocery shopped tonight so we actually have food again, and I took an extra nap this afternoon, so that all helps with catching up.  Happy trips are GOOD!

I woke up the first day of the year, really wanting to write a recap of my year.  I skimmed back through the first months of last year because I thought I would have done something in a small way then, and I didn't.  So next year, I'll have this to look back on and see where I've grown.  Anyhow, I fought with myself on how to present it.  I fought with myself to sit down and actual type over the course of a few days it so that I had this remembrance to look back on.  And then I fought with myself on how to end it because there's so much to it, and so much more in my life I could be introspective about...

The biggest things that I am proud and/or excited about of this year are my reading, cooking, listening (music/podcasts), knitting, gaming, and watching.  So much that I wrote whole posts on them.  Some of the other things that I did this year were also very fun or important to me, but they weren't worth a whole post!

I blogged this year.  

After knit

This was done mostly here on Vox.  Sometimes, my blogging just took the form of updating my media lists for books and movies, because I just didn't have the time or energy to write real posts.  I also added some delicious links to my main blog (automatically), got a facebook account to track friends there, and did private posts on my livejournal.  

I also moblogged this year, continuing to carry my camera phone with me everywhere and taking random pictures to remind me of things we did.  Even though a lot of these turn into self-portraits, I don't mind.

I took pictures with both my phone for easy moblogging and my camera.  My camera photos are mostly of family events or special things, and many of these are not in Vox yet, just iPhoto.  But there are a lot of knitting photos in that pile, as well.  Those, I used the FlickrExport to send to my Flickr account (which I've by now caught up with the limitations of a free account) so I could use them both on Ravelry and pull them into Vox as needed.

I dealt with my health this year. 

I made conscious decisions to do things to reduce my stress level and help my CFIDS/Fibromyalgia.  Even though this was one of the worst years in the last 5 years for my health, I feel slightly better at the end of the year.  I also made a set of visits to the dentist to have fillings done, even though it's still very scary to me.

I traveled this year.

Ca trip palms

We started out the year in California on our trip last Christmas and so we had a long drive for that trip.  Then in June, I went to San Francisco for work.  Also in June, we visited the beach with the whole Locatis family.  In July, we flew down to California for a friend's birthday and had a wonderful time with friends and family.

We also did exploring local places.  We spent a bit more time learning what was here in Vancouver that we hadn't seen, and went to the Farmers Market many times over the course of the late spring-early autumn, which is also a nice chance to walk around Esther Short Park.  We visited new restaurants in the area, which is very adverturesome of me because I  usually stick with the same things I know.  And we went to the fancy theater, Cinetopia, several times as well.  Some of this, I got a chance to Yelp about, and other things I just read reviews before visiting to see what other people thought.

We went down to our favorite outdoor mall, Bridgeport Plaza several times, and once down to the Woodburn Outlet mall.  At least one time to Washington Square in Beaverton, as well.  We enjoy window shopping the most out of going to these places, and usually my reasoning for going has to do with the food that's nearby.

We even ventured into Portland more than we have in the past!  We visited the Pearl district a number of times to go to PF Changs and surrounding area including Powells, and made it to the Saturday Market further down from there.  We made it to an outdoor art show at one point, too.  And multiple trips to Pioneer Place were nice for going to the closest Apple store and more.

I spent time with family this year.  

We participated and helped with Megan's wedding in February, and that was a big wonderful event.  Our trip to the beach with everyone on the Locatis family side was a good chance for us to relax together.  We spend many weekends getting together through the year, with dad or one of us (usually dad) cooking for the whole group.  We visited with E's family after the new year, during several trips when they came up to visit at the beginning of the year, and then when we went down in July.  One of the fun things this year has been to watch Leah and baby Leonard (my niece and nephew) grow, and do fun things for them.  We've also had a lot of fun playing games together throughout the year with both sides of the family.

I met up with friends this year.

I have a really hard time reconnecting with people from my past.  This year, I took time to meet up with a friend from college, and even more amazingly, a friend from high school.  Even though I was super nervous, both meetings went so much better than my nightmares lead me to believe they would.  It makes me think I'm not as awful with people as I think, and maybe I'm starting to heal from past situations a little too.

But mostly, I've just learned how to be Kristine.  That's always a challenge, to be myself.  And this year, I grew more comfortable in that, even though it was another year where I had to say that I was in the 30-40 age range on questionaires.  I embrace my ISTJ-ness and do things consistent rather than trying to be something I'm not.

Thanks for bearing with me through this series of posts, even as the days of the month moved faster than my typing.  

We took a trip this weekend to Southern California for a friend's 30th birthday.  It was a great reason to go down, even though I do usually try to avoid going in the summer months during the heat! 

E took off Friday and Monday so we had a little more time to be down, and it really did make for a nicer trip instead of rushing.  It let us be a little more relaxed on friday for the flying (I'm always pretty nervous, this time was no exception, but once I get through security, I get a little more relaxed)  Security wasn't too bad, in the past I seem to have been flagged as someone who looks dangerous and needing a pat-down, but today they put me through a fluffing machine.  I have no idea what it was for, but it burst air from the feet upwards for a few seconds and then I had to stand still for 15 seconds while it did something. (I searched google to see if I could link to something about it, but I can't find anything.  bizarro!)

We went out to dinner with the whole family once we got down there, at a place called Isabellas (or was it Isabelles?), a really nice italian restaurant, and that was fun.  E's mom made some delicious orange cake out of fresh oranges that we had to try at home for desert.

Then on Saturday, we watched sabbath school and some of church on TV.  That's always a nice alternative to going to the huge church. :)  Plus, I could knit while watching that way, hee hee.  E's aunt and cousins came over for lunch and we had a nice big family meal.  I always like getting to see them, they are such nice girls.

Then we headed out for Gabe's birthday party and drove a few other friends (Robert and Sarah - Bert was in our wedding and E was in theirs) with us.  They are always trying to get us to play World of Warcraft.  My general excuse on that is that that "yes, I'm sure I would like it a lot.  I think I'd like it too much and get too addicted" :P  We laugh a lot when we are with them and that's really nice.  The party was great, they came up with little rebus's for everybody was was attending and had them on poster board on the various walls for people to figure out (I wish I had taken a picture of the one for E and me, it was quite fun).  They did some other trivia quizzes too, and we had fun trying to figure out the answers.  There was a ton of greek food, but I didn't really know what much was!  It was really nice to sit and chat with friends all evening.  I'll share pictures once I get them uploaded.  Once it got late, we moved the party over to E's house - and actually had ALL of Gabe's many games (like 5 gigantic bins and 2 smaller ones).  These are the awesome kinds of games you'd find at boardgamegeek, so it was a bigger selection than our local game store has!  The guys stayed up most of the night playing, I only made it to like 2:30 :)

The next morning, the games were all still there and so I did some looking for ones I might want to own (I'll have to do a geeky post about games sometime later) and played some with E and Craig before brunch... and most everybody showed up again for the day/evening of playing and visiting and even working on the Portland puzzle we got E's dad for father's day.  We hung out and ate together again (E's mom is so cool, letting everyone hang out at the house and then feeding us all too!).

Then Monday morning, we got up and ready to go and played a little more with Craig while waiting.  We made it to the airport in plenty of time (phew! we've missed our flight before, but traffic wasn't bad this time).  We finally decided to get some food at Carl's Jr/Green Burrito so that they we wouldn't stuff ourselves before the flight and could sit down to dinner when we got home.  When we got back down to our end of the terminal (still like 1 1/2 hours until take off time), they informed us that our flight was grounded due to communication errors in Portland still (later we heard there was a power outage at the Portland airport that caused this) and we'd have to wait for several extra hours.  So almost 3 hours late, we left Ontario.  Ugh, we've had the worst luck at this airport, definitely spent too much time waiting around.  But I had knitting, we played Mario minigames on DS, E read, we walked through all the little shops (there's like 4 in this terminal, not *too* exciting).  They gave us $6 vouchers because we had to wait and we went and picked out a fun selection of candy and nuts and magazines and then the lady said that they were only for food.  Well doh, it said "magazine concessions", that's retarded.   So we went and got danishes and muffins we didn't really need (the blueberry muffin is on the counter here, all squished in a funny shape from being in my bag!)

But we made it back on the ground, found our car in the lot, and went home.  And rested and watched some TV and went to bed.  It was a good trip, and even though I'll do more resting for a few days to make up for the late nights and walking, it was super, and we have great memories!