All Good Things Must Come To An End

Or so they say. Yup, my eight week sabbatical is over! Thursday was my first day back at work, and true to Intel tradition, my cube was "decorated". I walked in to find the whole thing saran wrapped - as well as everything in it. They also loaded it up with 60 balloons and four boxes of Cheez-It's! I really do have an awesome team!

My Cube!

Sabbatical was really wonderful - I went back to work so relaxed and refreshed! I can't believe how much I did on sabbatical - the trip to Europe, house boating with the girls, cleaning and reorganizing the whole house, and lots of reading and relaxing. It was amazing! I really do live the most wonderful life!

I did get a little bored at the end (my husband wasn't home for the entire last month), so it was nice to go back to work and actually be around people! It really was the perfect amount of time off!

Girls Gone Not So Wild

My summer of fun has continued (I've been lame about posting... to be brutally honest, I've been either too busy or too lazy depending on the day).

Last weekend I was invited to join my best friends on the houseboat at Lake Oroville. It was a really fun, really HOT weekend with the girls... we spent a lot of time in the water to get cooled off!

Here are Brigitte and I with our cool cups (everyone had one for the weekend and it had their name on it - the washable, reusable solution to red solo cups that doubled as a souvenir!). Notice anything in this picture? :)

We Got Photo Bombed!

As always, I packed my box of Cheez-Its. If you don't know, my family is obsessed with Cheez-Its - my sister went so far as to serve them at her wedding (at the bar, of course)! I make a point to have them almost everywhere with me (a box at home, a box in my car, and a box at work).

They Make Life Good!

I didn't really take any pictures beyond that first night there... as it turns out, I was terrified to get my new camera anywhere near the water, and I was too busy playing to take any. It's not a bad problem to have. We spent the rest of the weekend floating, jet skiing, and hanging out. It was such a blast!

In other sad lake news, we had to postpone our yearly trip to Lake Almanor. There's a great big fire burning up there right now and it's pretty bad. I'm really bummed because it would have been a really nice way to close out sabbatical (just under 2 weeks left), but I suppose some more time at home to clean up and hang out is not a terrible thing either!

Today I spent the day at Kati's house working on the nursery with her. I can't wait to meet my new little niece! We painted the crib, the changing table, and cleaned up the room. Now all it needs is a new window and some pretty lavender paint on the walls!

Tour de Europe

We're back! Now that my brain and body are finally in the same time zone (seriously, it was harder coming home than going there), I figured I'd put together a summary post. Check out my Facebook page for all of the pictures - I'm so glad we had our new camera - I took almost 2,000 photos!
Switzerland was absolutely amazing. In fact, I'd say it was one of my favorite parts of the trip. We spent a couple days hiking around the Interlaken valley and really enjoyed the Swiss Alps. The pictures and views were breathtaking! It reminded me a lot of Yosemite, only much much bigger! We spent our few days there doing some serious hiking and had some of the most amazing times! I loved the long hike we did on our 2nd day there - we were literally out all day long... hiking, snacking, and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

Beautiful Waterfall

The Amazing Mountains

In addition to a fantastic trip, I've also crossed another item off my bucket list - riding up the Alp d'Huez:

Buy a house - completed 2007

Get married - completed 2011

Run a marathon - completed 2012

Ride my bike up the Alp d'Huez - completed 2012

Own a horse

Have babies

Climb Half Dome

See the Fall on the East coast

Visit Africa

Visit Australia

Let me tell you, I'm so glad I did the marathon earlier this year. I hadn't trained very much for this ride, but the running definitely helped beef up my cardiovascular health! This was incredibly hard for me, but a really cool experience. I'm so proud to have this one checked off! And I bought a really cool jersey as a memento!

The Switchbacks Of Alp d'Huez

After that, we watched stage 16 of the Tour de France which was one of the big mountain stages. This was my first experience watching a huge race like this (before I had only seen the Amgen Tour of California) and it was quite a spectacle. About an hour before the riders came through, they had a parade. A serious parade. They threw all sorts of fun stuff at us (sausage, candy, magnets, hats, etc) and the cars were all decorated like parade floats. Then we saw the helicopter come over the ridge and the riders were right behind them! They were absolutely flying down the hill into town... it was so much fun to see!

Float In The Parade

Thomas Voeckler - The Winner Of Stage 16

After watching the Tour, we drove up to Caen to see some of the famous places in Normandy. One of the things I love about going to Europe is how much history is there. Everywhere you look there is an old building or a marker. And the history goes so far back! I had really wanted to see the D-Day battlefields (Mike had been before and said it was breathtaking). Breathtaking does not even begin to describe it. We went to the Caen Museum the first day we were there and caught up on the history... but standing on those beaches, knowing what happened there gave me goosebumps. It was also really touching to go see the American Cemetery.

Omaha Beach

American Cemetery

We finished the trip in Paris. One of the first things we did there was watch the last stage of the 2012 Tour de France. We headed out to camp out along the finishing route around 10am and got some great spots. It was seriously awesome to see the pros riding so incredibly fast down the streets of the Champs-Élysées. We also did some of the touristy sight seeing and made some time to head out to visit the World War I trenches of the Somme.

Us In Paris

Tour de France Finish

This trip was an amazingly fun adventure with my husband that I will never forget!

The Big Day

It's rare that I do any blogging about work, but today I have to give great praise to Intel. In just a few hours, I begin my sabbatical. That's right - 8 weeks off, paid, with no work to do. Time to have fun and recharge. I absolutely can't wait! The beauty is that I get one of these for every 7 years that I work here! What a great benefit!

Seven years ago, it seemed like I would never get to sabbatical... yet, here it is! We've got a great trip planned, I've got a bunch of concerts to go to, and some fun projects around the house that I've wanted to work on for a while.

Happy day!

Staycation Days 5, 6, & 7

On Wednesday I did some work in the garden. I've been wanting to plant cherry trees, specifically Bing cherries for the last couple years and missed the boat on bare root. I was stoked that our local nursery had both Bing and Tartan cherries - two more trees for Blankenheim Orchards! I also did some planting around the rocks that Mike used to build our waterfall. I didn't take pictures because it's really very much a work in progress - I'm testing to see if these couple types of ground cover are actually "deer resistant".

On Thursday, we headed over to Fitzpatrick Winery & Lodge for an evening's stay. Some of you may recall that we attended a crab feed a few weeks ago and entered a raffle - this was the prize that we won.

Our stay was absolutely fantastic - it was so nice to get away for a night and to completely chill out. We arrived around 7pm and were told there was only one other couple staying and that they were out to dinner, so we had the lodge to ourselves. Diana, one of the owners, checked us in and offered us wine for tasting - saying there were 4 bottles open that should couldn't pour the next day, so help ourselves to our "one" complementary glass. We hung out by the fire drinking wine for most of the evening.

Mike In The Great Room

Yay For Wine!

We really enjoyed their 30th Anniversary Zinfandel (we bought a case!) and their Merlot was very mellow.

We stayed in the "Irish Room", which was super cute. They had a great window seat that had a beautiful view of the valley and some of their grapes:

View Of The Valley

The bed and easy chair - we loved the color of the walls too - we're thinking of re-doing our bedroom at home!

Clearly I Need A New Camera...



The View From Our Private Deck

We're thinking of going back in the summer - they have a massive wood burning pizza oven and they do Friday pizza nights! This morning we woke up and were served breakfast - I had a potato and onion frittata and Mike had an omelet. It was absolutely fantastic - we definitely recommend this place to anyone coming up to our area!

Today I had the chance to do a ride along with my awesome brother in law, Tim. It was a really cool experience (my prior EMT training had been in the ER so that I got to see a wider variety of stuff). It was my first time doing a code 3 (lights and sirens) in an ambulance! I actually learned a lot - lately I've realized that it's really good to step back and watch other people work - there are lots of little tips and tricks to pick up on!

I've got a bit of a headache now, so we're catching up on "Idol" and then I'm headed to bed. Tomorrow I've got EMT class and then Sunday is the half marathon - I'm so excited to run with Kati for her first half!

Staycation Day 4: Taxes & Sausage

Today ended up being a lot busier than either of us had anticipated. I ran my 3 miles this morning (after another fantastic bacon, eggs and tater tots breakfast). Then we headed into town to have our taxes done and visit our friendly AAA office.

Let me begin by saying these two are never amused at my photo opportunities:

Identical Expressions

We went to Swingles after our tax appointment to get sausage casings. You know it's a good butcher shop when...

Swingles

Here's the Kitchen Aid meat grinder setup:

Kitchen Aid Mixer With Meat Grinder Attachment

And here's the actual grinding of the meat. We ran each batch through twice, to make it a little more tender. Then it ran back through to get stuffed in the casing.

The Grinding Of The Meat

Of course, Shadow wanted to know what was going on - he ended up spending most of this afternoon outside on the deck after this:

Is That Meat I Smell?

I think the grossest part of the whole process was the sausage casings. We opted for natural (read: intestines) instead of man made.

Rinsing The Casings

They come packaged in a very briny solution, so you have to rinse the heck out of them otherwise you'll have super salty sausage. We let them soak in really cold water in the sink for a while. Then you had to untangle one of them and feed it all the way onto the squirter thingy (that's the technical term):

My Second Phallic Picture On This Blog In 2 Days!

We were a little disappointed in how the attachment worked - it took a really long time to get the meat to dispense into the casing and the little plunger thingy pushed the meat down but then pulled it back up when you pulled it out. It was a very labor intensive process and got pretty frustrating.

Here are the final products:

Garlic & Pepper Sausage

Garlic On The Left, Spicy On The Right

All in all, it was fun, but it took about four hours from start to finish and pretty much everything in our kitchen was covered in raw meat and needed to be hosed down. We made a garlic & pepper sausage as well as a hot Italian sausage - using a combination of beef and pork. We noticed they were a little drier than we would have liked - I think that had something to do with the beef. We might need to pick fattier cuts of meat as well. But the flavors were definitely there! I think we might try some fancier sausages next time (like chicken & apple) to play around with the flavors. The other thing we noticed is that the colder the meat was, the easier it went through the grinder - almost frozen worked best.

It was a pretty busy day - now it's time to watch some "Justified" and "tosh.0"!

Staycation Day 3

Let me start with how I'm ending my day... with the most fantastic bath ever. Shadow wanted in on the fun, so I had to give him a bone to keep him occupied. I don't think he would actually climb in, but he would definitely keep coming over to poke me.

Shadow And The Tub

Here's the tub after the removal of the dog and the lighting of most of the candles. I gave up after one wall sconce because our lighter is dead and I was tired of lighting matches.

Ahhh...

I used my Philosophy "Milkman" bath gel... the stuff smells like chocolate. It was fantastic. I seriously thank God every time I take a bath for giving my husband the inspiration to add this sucker to the house before he had a wife. It has jets too, but I've been warned not to use them if I have bubble bath in there.

The rest of today was pretty mellow - we hung out around the house, read a lot (I made it though another Alphabet Series mystery book) and took a nap.
I did a "pen inspection" this afternoon - every so often I do a walk around Shadow's pen to make sure the fence is still intact and that nothing is funky. I found this helium filled balloon that floated into the bottom corner of the pen...

Hmm...

It's not often that you find a penis "blow me" balloon in your dog's yard...

Staycation Days 1 & 2

Well, yesterday marked the first day of my vacation and the first day of my first every "staycation". I am taking an EMT refresh course in order to recertify (you have to recert every 2 years). The class consists of 3 Saturdays of reviewing the different disease processes and working on hands on skills. That basically took up most of my Saturday.

Today was a  pretty busy day. I started off with a solo 12 mile run since my sister is home sick. I headed down to the Mokelume River to do my run since it was close to home and gave me a little more recovery time between "appointments" today. I actually felt pretty good for most of the run - the last mile felt really looooong. I headed home to torture myself with use the foam roller. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of foam rolling, here's the definition in a nutshell:

"It is accomplished by rolling the foam roller under each muscle group until a tender area is found, and maintaining pressure on the tender area for 30–60 seconds."

Yeah, that basically reads: "it's meant to hurt". On the upside, I think it is actually helping. I took a quick shower and nap after that and then headed out for the second part of my day. I headed down to Sacramento to participate in the C.E.R.T. We work a lot of larger distance events (the airshow, half marathons, etc) and have found that having EMTs on bikes has been really helpful. We had to do an agility course (cones, circles at low speeds, curb jumps, etc) and a 3 mile ride in under 18 minutes. All in all, it was a good little exercise, but I just had a really hard time getting into it because I was pooped from the run.

I decided to treat myself to some delicious frozen yogurt on the way home from the bike trials - we have a Big Spoon in Jackson now, and it was pretty yummy! Apparently when I run I have the appetite of a four year old because I couldn't get enough chocolate chips, sprinkles and hot fudge. Ok, maybe that's all the time.

Big Spoon. Yum.

Tonight we're just hanging out - Mike is getting over the stomach flu (yuck!) so we're doing mellow dinners (pancakes for me, grilled cheese for him) and catching up on some shows we have taped on the DVR. I tried the foam roller again this afternoon and discovered that it hurts even more now than it did this morning. That's good, right?

Tomorrow is a very important part of my staycation. I have dubbed it lazy Monday because I have ever intention of not leaving the house. I figure I need one of those on my staycation, and it might as well be at the beginning!

Lake Almanor Recap

Well, all good things must come to an end... today is my last day of vacation. I tell you, it was much needed. I feel very recharged and ready to face the rest of this wedding planning!

We spent a week up at one of my favorite spots, Lake Almanor. We could not have asked for better weather during this trip... it was mostly in the high 80's during the day and cooled off nicely at night. As always with vacation, I spent the first two days in a coma. I don't know why, but the minute I get away (especially to a mellow place like the lake), I can't peel myself out of bed! I spent some time reading, some time napping (ok, a lot of time napping) and some time catching up on "Ultimate Cake Off". Great show, by the way - I'd never seen it, but it was pretty cool to see some of the cakes they make!

Of course, we did some serious fishing. A lot of this week was spent doing still fishing with all sorts of different bait (live crickets, live meal worms and dead anchovy tails). We did catch some pretty nice fish:

Dad's 1lb 15oz Fish

Mom's 1lb 6oz Fish

Mike's Big Fish Coughed Up A Little Fish!

I'm not going to lie, I get a little bored with the still fishing business. I like the movement of trolling (and that we tend to catch way more fish), however, this was not a bad way to spend the evening:

Not A Bad Way To End The Day

I got in some very good water skiing at the beginning of the week. This is pretty much the only time during the year that I get to ski. I must say I'm not bad, considering that I only ski for one week a year. I didn't get very many pictures because I mostly skied when it was just Mom & Dad (Mike was busy doing a serious hike - more on that later), so one of them had to drive and the other had to watch me/man the flag. I did, however, have one of those great falls that I haven't had in a couple years. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but I think my ski caught the wake on the way back in. I did some sort of flip through the air and underwater. During this whole acrobatic stunt in addition to getting a lovely sinus wash, my back foot got stuck and then yanked out of the back binding. I ended up with a foot that looked like this for a day:

Hurt Foot

It may not look horribly bad, but it's still pretty bruised to the touch. I don't think anything is broken - I'm pretty sure I just got a nice bone bruise. Needless to say, I didn't ski after that - it hurt too much to stick my foot back in the binding (I did get back up after my fall... wanted to make sure I wasn't scared to get back in and out of the wake).

I mentioned Mike did some hiking. By some hiking, I mean he climbed Mount Shasta. I'm so freaking proud of him! He posted some great pictures on his Facebook page - if you have some time, take a look! We also did some cycling - including my first solo ride. The weather was beautiful and I managed to find some decent hills to climb!

We also did some kayaking while we were there. Both Mike and I had never done it before. It was definitely fun, but I think we would need to kayak somewhere like a river... we both got a little bored paddling around the lake.

Mike & I Kayaking

Now it's back to the grind. We picked Shadow up yesterday and am spending today doing laundry. We've got some cycling to catch up on (the USA Pro Cycling Challenge) and a movie to watch... it might not be a horrible Sunday!

Engaged!

The long awaited post... in case you didn't see Facebook... I'M ENGAGED!!!!

Mike and I took a trip up to Seattle and Vancouver last week. We spent the first day on a whale watching tour that was absolutely amazing. We were out for 6 hours before they found whales, but we finally got to see a whole pod of killer whales:

They were absolutely spectacular! We were totally frozen and exhausted by the time we got back, but it was well worth it!

On the second day, we did just about every touristy thing we could possibly do in Seattle. We bought these city passes that let us get into all sorts of places. We started with the Space Needle, which had a wonderful view of most of downtown Seattle. Then we went to the Science Fiction Museum and the Experience the Music Project. They had a whole section of Jimi Hendrix guitars, costumes and other stuff (he's from Seattle) which was really awesome to see. After that, we headed over to Pike Market to see the original Starbucks, the fish throwers and, of course, the legendary golden pig! Then we went to the Seattle Aquarium (I told you we did a lot that day!).

After the aquarium, we headed out to have a yummy steak dinner. I took some chocolate cake back to the hotel for dessert later. We decided to go back up to the top of the Space Needle that night (our city passes let us do one trip during the day and one at night). When we got up to the top, there was a crazy storm and they had 30 mile an hour winds. I guess Mike had planned on proposing up there, but made the last minute decision that 30 mile an hour winds were not entirely romantic:

We headed back to our hotel (the Mediterranean Inn) where Mike suggested that we check out the rooftop viewing deck. We wandered up there and I started taking pictures of the Key Arena and Space Needle. That's when Mike told me that he had something for me. In typical Anna style, I asked if it was better than chocolate cake. He said yes and asked me to pick a hand and then held out the little box that every girl loves to see. That's right, he proposed! :) I am beyond excited and so incredibly happy. Here's our official engagement picture, taking right after:

It was definitely still a little windy, but it was absolutely perfect!

The next day we drove up to Canada, after stopping to visit with my college roommate, Jennifer. I haven't seen her since we graduated, so it was so great to spend a few minutes catching up! We drove into Vancouver where we spent a couple days hanging out at the Vancouver Aquarium, Stanley Park and Grouse Mountain. They had a spectacular grizzly bear habitat at the top of the mountain that was absolutely amazing to see:

This was the most amazing vacation... I'm beyond excited and completely happy! Now we've got a wedding to plan!

I've got the rest of the pictures on Facebook... if you haven't already, check them out!

Mellow Weekend

I decided to take this weekend easy since I'm only about halfway through my antibiotics and gearing up for vacation. I would hate to be sick!

We're headed to Seattle next week... I'm super excited! I haven't been there since I was in high school. We know that for sure we're going to do some whale watching and some hiking. I spent the morning going through websites that discuss all of the coolest things to do there. If you have any suggestions, email them to me!

In other news, I successfully finished traffic school yesterday. I did one of the online courses and was prepared to be working on it for the next week. To my surprise, it only took me a couple hours and I passed the final test with 100%! Glad that I'm past that little experience and will definitely be using my cruise control from now on!

It was super nice to have a weekend to be mellow... I plan to continue that trend for the rest of today and hopefully every night after work this week! T-minus 5 days until vacation!!!

Return from the Lake

No, it's not a horror movie... we're actually back from vacation! There will be several posts over the next couple of days (two book reviews, vacation and a concert review) because we've been so busy!

Lake Almanor was fantastic! The weather was beautiful - warm during the day, chilly at night. As is my usual tradition, I pretty much spent the first two days reading and napping. I like to call it recharging, but I've been told by some that it's letdown. Whatever you want to call it, I had a great time doing it. We fished every single morning that we were there and ended up catching around 40 fish! They ranged from big to very small (Mike set a new record on the boat!) and we had a fantastic time.

One of Mom's fish:

Dad's monster fish:

One of my fishies:

One of Mike's bigger fish:

And, finally, Mike's record-setting fish... that's right, the smallest ever caught on the boat:

Mike and I also got a great hike in... we had wanted to climb up Mount Lassen, but the trail was closed for the entire week due to helicopter training and work going on near the top of the peak. Instead, we climbed up Mount Harkness, which is about 2,000 feet shorter than Lassen. The hike was beautiful - right near the middle there were some fantastic meadows full of wildflowers and beautiful views of the surrounding lakes and mountain peaks. Once we got up to the top, we discovered that there was a fire lookout... meaning we had a spectacular 360 degree view of the entire area. It was awesome! Here are some of the pics:

Juniper Lake:

The view of Lake Almanor from the top... I've never seen it from above and was a little shocked at how big it is:

Here's the lookout tower:

It was also our week of seeing things that we'd never seen before. One of the days that we were out fishing, I looked over at the rocks (we troll at about 2 miles per hour, about 25 feet off the shoreline, so we can definitely see the rocks) and saw this sleek black looking thing. I thought it was a cat, but it turns out, it was an otter! It had pulled something (a fish?) up onto one of the bigger rocks, eaten it and then was getting ready to go swimming again. It dove off into the water and swam away before I could get a good picture, but in all of the 15ish years that we've been going to the lake, we have never seen one of those! Also, all along those same shores are falcon nests... they're constantly diving down to pick fish off the top of the water to take back up to the babies. We saw one go after a fish that we were not able to revive after catching it when all of the sudden another falcon swooped in. The second falcon was apparently very angry that the first was hunting in it's area because it smacked into it like a linebacker! We could hear the crunch from 50 yards away! The second bird sort of splashed down into the water, collected itself and then flew away. It was spectacular:

We also had some spectacular water skiing and jet skiing days... it was a wonderful trip! Tucker and Gracie also had a wonderful time... they loved swimming and running around on the grass! Gracie really took to the boat and had a fantastic time!

The rest of my pictures are up at Facebook... if you want to see more, head on over!