Wintertime in Porterville

WOW, the once brown mountains are now GREEN! No joke, the pictures to the left are the same mountains that were brown all throughout the summer and fall. It's amazing what the rainfall did!


It keeps raining, and today, the most beautiful rainbows (TWO of them!) appeared in the sky. I took these pictures of them from just outside of my classroom. They seriously look as if they've landed right in the backyard of the homes pictured. I've never seen rainbows so bright and so close in all of my life!












And to add to the winter fun, the mountains further off in the distance now are snow-capped! Because of all the rain, we can now clearly see them everyday. It is so beautiful!










And of course, Jeremiah and I had to take a picture so that we can prove just how close and how bright those rainbows were today!

Maryland Trip

This winter break was incredibly special for me. My brother Frankie and his fiancee decided to have their engagement party in Baltimore Maryland on New Years Eve. Since he had surprised Jeremiah and I by flying in for our party, we decided to do the same for him this time. So last Tuesday, Jer and I flew across the country with my mom and dad and began an amazing trip in my hometown. I had not been back to Baltimore since I was 19 years old, and I was so excited to go! The first thing we realized when we stepped off the plane was it was COLD (and there was snow on the ground!!!) - well, especially compared with the 79 degrees of OC! As soon as we escaped the airport, we joined my brother Marc and his wife Aadra, and Frankie and O'Shea at a famous crab restaurant (remember, Maryland is famous for their crabs) and had the largest crab cakes I had ever seen (pictured in collage 2). What a way to start our trip, and eating fest! The next day, my dad played the role of tour guide and drove all around Baltimore City. It was so fun to see everything again, and even more fun to show it to Jeremiah for the first time. And, since our cousins live in my childhood home, we even got to visit there! (I lived there until I was 17!) We joined my mom's best friend Helene and her husband for lunch at a famous Baltimore deli, had my absolute favorite cookie in the world - the chocolate top, only found in Baltimore, and took a beautiful ride (I'd forgotten just how gorgeous Maryland is) through the state ending up at the famous Boyd's Bear Factory in Gettysburg. Jeremiah was absolutely amazed that in less than an hour, we had traveled to another state - you can't do that in California! We bought ourselves a beautiful Boyd's Bear snow globe with dancing bride and groom Boyd's Bears, and had a lot of fun traveling though the thoroughly decorated factory. Jeremiah had an equally fun time throwing ice cold snow balls at me everytime he could!
We ended our second day at my family's favorite pizza restaurant, Squires, and came back to the hotel exhausted! New Years Eve brought lots of snow, and then rain, but thankfully the roads were clear for the party in the evening. We had a great time bringing in the New Year with old family friends and a few of my Baltimore family members who were able to join us.


New Years Day was the most amazing New Years Day I've ever experienced. We had brunch with a side of my family that I had not seen in about 10 years! They are pictured to the left. The last time I was with them, I was the baby of the family, and now, as pictured, that is no longer the case! The house that we had brunch in belongs to my cousins Amy and Ron (in the far right in white and blue), and her house brought back so many memories. It was very special to me to be back there and to catch up with my family members as if no time had gone by, while at the same time meeting my new younger cousins who have more recently joined our family.

And last but not least, as if the trip was not nostalgic enough, we ended New Years Day by going over O'Shea's mother's home where one of my best friends from high school, Janet, came over to see me! We had not seen each other since my senior year of high school (she had graduated early and flew to Hollywood to begin a film career)! Words can not even explain how exciting and emotional it was for me to see her again, but apparently O'Shea's mother caught on because she let us sit at our own private table to eat dinner so that we could catch up on as much as we could possibly talk about in the few short hours we had!

Needless to say, this was an incredibly amazing trip, and I've made a vow to never let so much time go by again without seeing these wonderful people who were such a huge part of my life while growing up! This was truly a winter break to remember!

Santa Barbara Anniversary 2009

What do you say to a wonderful wife who wants to go on an anniversary trip, but knows that we can't because our anniversary lands during Thanksgiving? Well, you wait until Christmas Vacation, which is exactly what we did! Before going down south to the warm climate of Orange County, we went to Santa Barbara to take in the pristine views of the ocean. We had a suite overlooking the pacific ocean, which I still miss. In the collage, you can see a a picture of our balcony (the third floor). When we arrived at Santa Barbara, we took the bikes down from the bike racks of our car and took a bike ride through the heart of downtown Santa Barbara grabbing lunch at Quizno's Sub (which was free from a gift card I received - I love free stuff!) Interestingly, everyone who rides bikes cannot ride on the sidewalk, but you must ride with everyone on the street along with the cars.

In the morning of our last day, we ate lunch by a seaside beach grill that was located across the street. It was really great sitting next to a wonderful lady. Lastly, if you look closely in the collage, you can see what Jeremiah did during the anniversary between 2-10 pm (he is sitting in a chair)...

We rode our bikes up and down the bike and walking paths along the beach even biking through a bird estuary. Since we seemed to have become bike enthusiasts in this city we decided to take side paths, but when we approached some big hills we said "forget about it" (real mobster like). Interestingly enough, when we were bike riding a gentlemen approached us said that Melissa's wheel was backwards. Melissa and I looked at each other thinking "that is why she keeps hitting her foot on the tire". I thought to myself though, "how can a wheel be backwards? It's in a circle", but rather it was her handlebars that were backwards, so we fixed it after the Santa Barbara trip. This was the reason it was taking Jeremiah so long to put the bikes on the bike rack. She'd been riding with the bars backwards for a year now! Well, it was worth the bike ride no matter the problems with Melissa's bike. I mean look at those views!
You are looking at a front view of the Hotel Mar Monte which was not crowded at all and had excellent service. I mean excellent! I would highly recommend staying there on an anniversary with the date night package, which included a $50 dinner voucher and an in room movie. Since the hotel decided to accidentally give us another $50 voucher for dinner, we went to town on dinner because it was all free! They even give a bottle of wine or champagne, but we went with the wine. I have to say it was better than "two buck Chuck". Also, we made sure to watch Night at the Museum 2, which was great because it was free, but don't buy the movie. It is not worth it. The hotel even stowed our bikes for us because I forgot the locks for the bikes. Oops!

Below is another great picture of the vacant beach on Christmas Eve Day! It was quite relaxing and you can see why. We might make staying somewhere on the coast before Christmas a yearly ritual because it is quite peaceful amidst the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.