Smells like Christmas (sort of)

Tonight I was baking some peanut blossoms and finished a jar of peanut butter in the process. I barely had any left in the jar at all so I gave the jar to Chloe. It entertained her for about an hour. Mmmmm..... peanut butter. I feel the same way.

I am meeting with my AVID team on Thursday and since we always meet at lunch, I bake something different (a treat) every time. If for nothing else, they show up for the food. I found a peanut blossom recipe in my Pampered Chef Desserts cookbook but I also found my Grandmom's recipe (which she got from my Mom's Nanny Schroeder). Since I had the ingredients for the Pampered Chef one already, I just doctored their recipe with some hints from Grandmom (and Nanny). Not only did the kitchen (and whole apartment) smell good, but biting into one that broke in half (by accident, I promise) it just reminded me of the holidays.

In the process of transferring the cookies to the fridge, I must have dropped one because I noticed a streak of chocolate on the floor and Chloe gulping something in the living room. I was then reminded of the Christmas that Dolly, our fat yellow lab, ate an entire tray of cookies and a chocolate train (out of the wrapper) while we were at church and lived to get in trouble for it. That dog had a stomach of steel, however.

Anyway, we are on the lookout for an off-season bandana for Chloe. After the Mets ended their season yesterday, Keeper and I headed to Chase Field to catch the second half of the D'backs-Rockies game. I never thought I would cheer for Randy Johnson after he went to the Yankees (and we saw him get lit up by the Mets during a Mets-Yankees game), but now he's back in Arizona in his old age and it was kind of fun seeing him get his 295th win. Regardless, Chloe needs something new to wear from now until April. Any suggestions?

Keeping Busy Until Nicer Weather

I was at a loss as to what to name this post. Maybe I should have called it "The Boring Post". I wanted to throw something up here, but we haven't really done anything or gone anywhere exciting lately. School is super-busy for both of us. I am teaching a new class this year (AP Chem) and it is proving (as expected) to be a ton of work.
The club I sponsor at school (National Honor Society) is also a lot more work (time) this year as I have a super-ambitious president with lots of ideas. This is a good thing for our club, trust me, but as the faculty sponsor, I am giving them a lot of my lunch/after school time (meaning 5 hours of my precious weekend standing outside in 100 degree weather for a car wash). Soccer has started pre-season last week as well. Right now we're only going one day a week but we will up that to twice a week once October gets here. A new committment at school this year is being in the AVID program. This involves me mentoring five girls (2 sophomores and 3 freshmen). We meet at lunch three times a quarter and I check their grades and we discuss different study strategies to help them stay on track in their honors courses. AVID teachers also meet after school once a month and since I was on the "team" that went to Dallas, I am the head of one of our committees this year as well.
I also just got involved in coaching student runners to run the P.F. Chang's Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon this coming January. AZSR (Arizona Student Runners) kicked off this week with practices and I went on my first run with them this morning, at a park north of Phoenix. Our first Saturday run was only a mile, but these kids are not runners (yet!) and it was a challenge for them, especially considering that 9am is still too hot to run outside (for me) in September. The organizers of the program have already tried to get me to commit to their weekday practices but I have opted to attend the Saturday morning sessions for now.
On the business end of things, I am taking 2 online political science classes this fall (one at a time) to fulfill AZ Department of Education's requirements that teachers have college coursework in both the U.S. Constitution and the AZ Constitution. I really love spending one of my weekend afternoons doing reading and online assignments. Grrr. All faculty in my school district just had a huge technology upgrade; we got new MacBooks this week! But with it comes meetings, trainings, and "homework assignments" that "justify" the technology purchase. So in order to get my "extra" $500 in " Group Performance Based Pay" this year I have to attend all of these sessions and complete all of these assignments.
Anyway, this is it on my end for now. I am counting down the days until my fall east coast trip in mid-October. I am so excited to meet the newest addition to our family!

Are You My Mother?

While doing an early morning 11-mile training run this morning, Keeper and I encountered a coyote. Twice (same one). We couldn't help noticing some similarities... Then I was doing some reading and found out that coyotes can breed with domestic dogs in areas where both live. Like here. Hmmm....

California Trip Part 4: Sonoma

After San Francisco it was on the Sonoma for dad's birthday. We headed over the Golden Gate bridge, through the fog and into wine county on a Sunday morning and after a lunch in "downtown" Sonoma (some very good Mexican food), we headed to the Villa to meet the rest of the crew.

The Villa was beautiful. The pool overlooked vineyards and a horse stable owned by the crazy people who own the house. There were post-it notes w/ instructions pasted throughout the house with rules on just about everything you could imagine, and the applicable surcharge one would pay for breaking said rules. Heating the hot tub, that's a surcharge; leaving the pool uncovered overnight, that's a surcharge; turning the AC on, that's a surcharge; staring as my sandals, you better believe that's a surcharge. We didn't need the AC, so that wasn't an issue, but the hot tub might have been nice. The owner of the house, who came and went as she pleased during the week without talking to us, finally turned on the hot tub Thursday, it was hot by Friday. We left Sunday. But I digress. One more house note. For such a beautiful place, it contained a plethora of broken coffee makers and microwaves. Just odd.

In the Sonoma the wine flows like wine, my friends. During the week (before the Friday booze cruise, which gets its own paragraph), we hit up Cline and Jacuzzi, which were a few minutes from the house. We were also treated to a lovely time at Folio. I won't pretend to know how the biz works and the details are fuzzy, but they have something to do with Mondavi. We drank wine there.

We also had some very nice meals throughout the week. The Girl and the Fig had some interesting charcuterie. You heard me. Charcuterie. It consisted of many odd pastes to be spread on toasts, none of which were particularly appetizing, and was the second best charcuterie I had in Sonoma. My pork belly was pretty bomb-ass however. The best meal I had was at The General's Daughter in Sonoma. We were there for the final night of that particular restaurant's ownership, and it was amazing, and had a borderline hilarious $50 wine corkage fee (for every bottle past your 2nd). I ate duck. Mmmmm. Duck.

The golf was very good, and very scenic. I beat Corbs once, and he beat me once. I still need to collect on the 3 bucks dad owes me :>

On to Friday. The booze cruise was great. We hit Paraduxx, Vine Cliff, Darioush, and Trefethen. Quick reviews of the facilities themselves, not the wine: Good, Great, Eh, Ehh. Vine Cliff was awesome. It was on the smaller side, and was the most personal of the four. They had a nice little tour of the vineyard and the cellar (cave?) and we had a great little picnic next to their pond. Paraduxx involved a private little table and a free-form enjoy-at-your-own-pace tasting. Darioush was a demented Disney World looking Iranian Palace. We got a good chuckle over an $800 backgammon set, but my picture with the guy in the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad costume came out blurry. The people at Trefethen acted like we were being done a favor by paying to try their wine.

Bonus picture: Julie playing conceptual art / mini-golf! Never thought you'd see that sentence typed out did you?

Bonus fact: In case you were wondering, it takes 12 hours 2 minutes to drive from Sonoma to Phoenix. If not for some Magic Mountain traffic outside of LA, I would have rocked 12 hours. You better believe I tore ass on the 10 in Phoenix in a failed attempt to do so.

California Trip Part 3: San Fran-Tastic!

We left Big Sur and headed up the coast after checking out of Treebones on Friday, July 25th. We enjoyed the scenic drive and arrived in San Francisco for a late picnic lunch at Chrissy Field. I loved that the weather was cool and breezy enough to wear a sweatshirt! After walking around the park a little and checking out the beach, we headed in town to our hotel. We stayed about a block from the Chinatown gate, at the Baldwin Hotel. Although we found driving around the financial district a pain in the ass, we liked staying right in the heart of major shopping, food, etc. We hit up a nearby sushi restaurant for dinner and then walked down to AT&T Park for the Giants-D'Backs game. The D'Backs slaughtered the Giants (yay!) pretty early on, so the game wasn't too exciting but the park was beautiful. I especially liked that the hot chocolate vendor pours you a steaming cup right at your seat, complete with a topping of whipped cream. Who needs beer? After the game we headed out for a few hours with one of Corbin's college friends.

On Saturday morning, we slept in a bit and after a filling brunch, started out on Corbin's walking tour of San Francisco. No cable cars for us! We braved the hills all day long. We walked all the way to Lombard Street and then to Fisherman's Wharf. We had great weather and although the city was crowded with summer tourists, we had a fun day. In late afternoon we had a dim sum snack (my first dim sum ever) in Chinatown as we headed back to the hotel. After a much-needed nap we went out to a very nice French restaurant for dinner and then hit up a few bars near our hotel. We thoroughly enjoyed our weekend stay in San Francisco but were looking forward to a week in the country...

California Trip Part 2: Big Sur

After our wilderness adventure in Corrizo Plains, we headed west in CA on Wednesday, July 23rd. We stopped briefly in the town of Cambria for a coffee, then drove up Route 1. We met Corbin and Claudia at Hearst Castle close to lunchtime. In all honesty I had never heard anything about Hearst Castle before but I quickly found it in my guidebook and read up. After learning any tour cost $24 per person (and this was a "state park") Keeper and I made the executive decision to sightsee elsewhere for the day. Corbin and Claudia stayed to tour the grounds (and said the castle was fabulous) and we headed north, through San Simeon and Piedras Blancas. We stopped and took pictures of the elephant seals (smelly and loud) and decided to go to Sand Dollar Beach for some coastal views. We hiked down to the shore and spent some time relaxing by the waves. We lunched at Lucia Lodge and then headed into our home for the next few days, Treebones Resort.

Keeper and I re-pitched our tent and were amazed at the view from our campsite. Corbin and Claudia stayed in a yurt. We decided to explore a trail through the resort and got as close to the shore as we could. We hiked back up to our campsite and had a dinner picnic of cheese, wine, and gazpacho that Keeper had prepared. We were up early on Thursday morning and made our way to the lodge for some waffles and coffee. The four of us piled into one car and headed up the coast for what we thought would be a day of serious hiking. Because of the wildfires, all of Los Padres National Forest was closed (no access to hiking trails) as well as some of the state parks further north as well. We ended up spending most of the day at Limekiln State Park. They had three relatively short hiking trails, so we did them all. We saw redwood groves, an impressive waterfall, and of course, the limekilns. I was more than thrilled to be wearing pants and long sleeves in the cool forest (these Phoenix summers SUCK!). We had a picnic lunch down by the water and stopped for another jaunt to the coast on our way back to the resort. Keeper and I decided a nap was in order and we woke up in late afternoon for some quiet reading at the resort. We had another picnic dinner (with wine) and borrowed some games from the lodge to play in Corbin and Claudia's yurt. We saw a pretty amazing sunset that night.

I can't get over how beautiful, quiet and relaxing Big Sur is. I was disappointed that some parks were closed, but in all actuality, it gives us an excuse to make another trip out there (when there aren't wildfires) and we will definitely stay at Treebones again!

California Trip Part 1: Corrizo Plains

So we've been back from our 12-day CA excursion but both Keeper and I started back to school this week so I knew the blog updates would have to wait until this weekend. We had a great trip but it would be super-long post to do everything together so here is part 1...

We left Tuesday morning, July 22nd for Corrizo Plains National Monument. Keeper tried to pick a park that was around a day's drive west of Phoenix. We considered Joshua Tree, but that is only four hours away (with climate much like Phoenix) so we had to get creative with our pick. Corrizo Plains is a little known place that apparently has great wildflowers (in season) and is a great place to view wildlife. I was a little concerned about it being too hot to camp here in the summer, but the nighttime temps were definitely lower than in Phoenix and we really wanted to try out our new tent so we figured what the heck.

We left the highway around Lancaster/Palmdale, CA and found ourselves on dirt roads in the middle of oil wells. There weren't many other cars around and we soon were on unmarked dirt roads that were only wide enough for one car. The views up and around the mountains were amazing although it was kind of a scary drive looking over the cliffs. When we found the entrance sign to the "park" we thought we might see some more people (or more signs at any rate). We didn't. We were following Keeper's Google Maps directions to the letter until we came to .....a fence. I would like to say that it was not a gate, but a fence. Nice job, Google Maps, nice job. We back tracked and turned up a road we "thought" might be in the right direction. After about 30 minutes of not seeing a single soul except one lone wild cow, I started royally freaking out. I had visions of a flat tire, running out of gas, being lost for hours in a place in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone service. Keeper tried to calm me down but I was getting hysterical.

We finally found ourselves on a road that actually appeared on one of my 3 maps (the whole national monument, according to any of my maps, did not have a single road going through it). We started heading in the direction of Los Padres National Forest and I thought, at the very least, we could camp at one of the campsites listed on the map. After a few miles, however, we saw official-looking signs (with mileage!) directing us to various places in Corrizo Plains National Monument (like to the campsite Keeper had previously looked up). We decided to give it a 2nd chance (now that we were no longer lost) and soon found ourselves in an incredibly beautiful (but desolate) place.

We pitched our tent at Selby Campground and I was still a bit apprehensive about being the ONLY ones in the whole place camping for the night. We decided to go for it. We had a lovely dinner of PBJ sandwiches and decided to go hike some of the Caliente Ridge Trail. We saw a gorgeous sunset followed by a starry sky like no other we'd ever seen in our lives. We did, unfortunately, pitch our tent over the burrow of some sort of rodents who spent the night scurrying and digging around the tent so neither of us got much sleep.

We were up pretty early to break camp and drive around the park some more. We walked down to Soda Lake (if you look closely you'll see Keeper standing out in the middle of the lake)... and found that it is completely dry in the summer. It was a very
unique and peaceful place. I think it would be really cool to go back in springtime and see the wildflowers. Overall a very interesting adventure. We left mid-morning and headed towards the coast...