My Birthday

    My 66th birthday will be this Saturday. Hard to imagine 66!

    Last night I went out to dinner with my sister Lisa, my cousin Mary Helen and my sister in law Connie. I wanted them to try a new place I had gone to with my co-workers called Mas Bella Restaurant.  

    We went on Mariachi Wednesday, they have several themed nights there as you can see from the little mini menu below. 

    We sat in the bar so we could talk, when you sit in the restaurant where the mariachi is you can't hear yourself think between the patrons talking and the music, but we could hear it playing in the background. Here's a little snippet I took. The sound quality is not great. 

    We had a great time and the food was great. I had the Chicken Taquitos and they were very good and quite filling, they were off the appetizer menu. Mary Helen and Connie both had the Tacos de Papa which are three crispy, potato filled tacos topped with lettuce, sour cream and pico de gallo, just in case you've never heard of them. 

    Lisa had her old standby, Enchilada, Taco, Rice and Beans which looked really good, I'll have to try them next time.

    My sister in law Connie had brought me a birthday gift, beautiful emerald and teal stemless Rachel Zoe wine glasses with my favorite flying creature, the butterfly. I love them and can't wait to try them!

    As we were in the parking lot hugging and saying goodbye one of the Mariachis was just getting into his car and he saw the Happy Birthday bag that I was carrying and he said, "How come you didn't tell us it was your birthday? We would have sang you Mananitas!" So my sister Lisa piped up and said "It's not to late, sing them to her here!" So he did and it was so special and he had such a beautiful voice. A perfect end to a perfect evening.

    Here are the lyrics in spanish to Las Mananitas. 

    Roughly translated...

How beautiful it is the morning 

when I come to greet you. 

We all come with joy and pleasure to congratulate you. 

The Day you were born all the flowers were born, 

and at the baptism font the nightingales sang. 

Dawn is coming, and the light of day has dawned on us. 

Get up, look at the light of day.

    Grateful this morning for friends and family and for the blessing to have lived another year. 

    

My Arizona Trip and whatever else comes to mind. (part one)

    When last I left you guys, I gave you a brief update letting you know my sister Lisa and I were flying off that morning to visit our Arizona family. We were leaving the cool, blissful weather of 105 in Bakersfield CA  for the blistering desert that is Phoenix AZ which was 109 when we landed! Many have asked us, "Why would you travel to someplace hotter?" Well...when it's over 100, it's all the same thing...uncomfortable! So one place is as good as another and we were off on an adventure!

Before and After, With makeup before and without after! You can tell we had a great time!

    We got to the airport and Lisa who is a worrier by nature anyway was super nervous. She was just talking and talking and jumping from one topic to another and not making much sense. Thank goodness for airport bars, we each had a beer with some chips to settle our nerves. Strictly for medicinal purposes!

Just one beer for the road, or should I say the sky?

Can't let Lisa drink alone, can I?

    The boarding and take off went off without a hitch and soon we were in the air. Lisa took the window seat and I had a great description of what she was seeing. We landed at Phoenix and the landing was a little rough, I think we were right over the tires and Lisa yelled out "Oh shit!" We had a family with 2 girls and 1 boy sitting next to us and their eyes got as round as saucers. 

    We had a hard time navigating the Phoenix Airport...that place is huge. But we finally figured out how to get out of there and our cousin Lucy was there to pick us up and take us to her niece Daniella's house where they hosted a dinner for us. On the driver there, Lucy almost killed us once when she accidentally turned into a one-way street, but she corrected herself at the last minute. I'm only putting that in here because I want to make sure that we all remember so we can kid each other when we're all in the same nursing home! In the photo is Lisa, Lucy and me in red...a few days later. Lucy is the daughter of my moms sister Herminia. Lucy has two sisters, Lydia aka Copa and Herminia aka Minnie. 

    After dinner we were taken to Lydia aka Copa's house. She  had generously invited us to stay in her home in a beautiful guest room where we had everything we could need, even non-slip socks! We were greeted by this sweet boy named Rocky. I fell in love with him the last time we were in Copa's house and I think he remembered me. Just look at those big caramel colored eyes! Who's a good boy?

Rocky

    That's the end of our first day in Phoenix, Lisa's first flight. It was time to rest and prepare for the next couple of days. 

Weekly Wrap Up - Week of January 15th

         Every week I tell myself to jot down little notes on highlights of my daily life for my weekly wrap up...and every week I do not do this! Someday I need to do a blog post about procrastination. 

 

Monday - This was Martin Luther King Jr day, so I had the day off.  Just got caught up on household chores and did some crocheting.

Tuesday - All I remember is this was a super busy day at work. I know that our customers don't understand that we were off 3 days so we already come into the work week one day late, but I wish they could be a bit more patient. My biggest pet peeve are the ones that send me an email, a text and then still call right after to see if I received the email and text!

    Wednesday - I took mom to Walmart in the evening. The Walmart we go to during the week is about eight miles away. We used to enjoy going to Kmart there until it closed. We would make an evening of it by having dinner first, but now it seems that all the restaurants we used to love have really bad food and even worse service, and they are so expensive it's not worth it to go and be treated badly just to eat horrible food. Most of the time we just grab a burger at Jack in the Box.

    Thursday - Just a typical day of just working, nothing exciting.

    Friday - I was never so happy to see a Friday, I was exhausted from trying to get caught up at work. I also knew that I had a nice weekend planned. My sister Lisa had planned a get together with our good friend Lupe. We had not seen her for quite a while, so I was really looking forward to the weekend.

    Saturday - Woke up to a drizzling rain outside, I wasn't sure my mom was going to be up to heading out to go shopping which is her favorite thing on Saturday...but she was ready. We headed out around 11 am and first stop was her favorite fabric store. I wish I had thought to take photos of the inside of this store, but here are some photos from their website. It's an amazing place!

I believe these are polyester. Look at all those bolts of fabric!

Check out those prices $2.99 a yard and $3.99 a yard! And that huge box of zippers!

It's just amazing to walk threw a row like this and touch all the fabric.

    As you can see; just rows and rows of delicious fabric; cottons, flannel, felt, satin, silk, polyester. Fabric for curtains, upholstery, quilting, dresses, wedding dresses, bridesmaids' dresses...anything you can think of. The prices are ridiculously inexpensive compared to fabric at JoAnn's or Hobby Lobby. They also offer buttons, zippers, thread and beads. The only downside is trying to slide a big roll of fabric from the bottom, they are so heavy. But they have lots of people roaming around offering help.

    Then we had lunch at Lorene's Coffee Shop. I don't really care for this place, but I may have to rethink it because I ordered the burger and fries on the senior menu and check this out! It was as delicious as it looks and the fries were perfection. Mom had the chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli and garlic bread. I will definitely go there again whenever I want a good burger.

    But we weren't done yet. We went to another favorite store and again I did not get any pictures. Mi Hacienda Rustic Furniture store has the most amazing hand-crafted items by Mexican artisans. 

http://www.mihacienda.net/

    Mom and I are putting together a basket to be raffled at our family reunion in February 2024. We want it to be unique so that it will raise a lot of money. There was one special piece that we wanted to buy and we were lucky they had one in the color we wanted. I can't show it until after the raffle because it's top secret.

    Here are some photos of the items available. It is like visiting a museum, you could spend hours in there.

The little cats are so sweet. I love all the bright vivid colors.

I would love to have those teal vases, I'll have to check out the price next time I am there. Love the bowl with the green pears, that would be so pretty in my kitchen.

These two little guys would look lovely in a pretty garden and I adore the turquoise owl!

Now this is pure happiness right here. Can you imagine serving a frosty Margarita on the patio in the summer in one of these?

They also have custom leather saddles and purses.

    After that mom was about done. She gets tired really quickly. I made a quick stop at a grocery store to pickup up some strawberries and cream cheese for a special dessert I was going to make as I was going to a dinner at my sisters house with our friend Lupe. Lupe was spending the night, I was supposed to also, but my bed was only two blocks away and sounded much more comfy to me!

    Lisa had wanted to try a recipe she found on Facebook. It was a recipe for making Beef Stew, or was we call it in Hispanic households Caldo de Res. This was all she had for the recipe. She wanted to try it because we had never heard of putting apple juice and/or apple cider vinegar in stew before.

    This is how it turned out. It was actually very good. I really think the Apple Juice and Apple Cider Vinegar made a big different. 

    You are supposed to put it in a slow cooker I guess, doesn't really say, but even after 5 hours of cooking it was not done in the slow cooker. I was still practically raw, so she transferred it to her soup pot and it was done in 45 minutes. She also added cabbage because she loves cabbage. 

    For dessert we had the cheesecake stuffed strawberries that I made. Actually...these were made by Lupe because she wanted to learn how to make them so she could recreate them for her grandchildren. Recipe HERE if you would like to make them, they are low carb as I use Splenda instead of sugar. 

    We had a great playing the game Trouble, it's fun to play a game you used to play as a kid as an adult. Game took forever though. Remember playing this? What was your favorite board game as a child?

    Then we played Pon Uno, Pon Dos. I had never played this before, but we had fun. Pon Uno means put one, Pon Dos means put two, Toma todo means take it all. So you pull out all your change and you spin a top kinda like a dreidel and if you get Pon Dos, then you get to choose two of whatever coin you want. Say you put two quarters in the pot, then everyone puts in two quarters. When someone spins and gets Toma todo that means take it all, so they get to take everything in the pot. Cool little game, I enjoyed it.

    Then we sat around drinking wine and catching up. It had been a long time since the three of us were together. We used to go camping a lot, but Covid changed all that. Do you find that your friendships changed after Covid? 

    Sunday morning I got up and went back over to Lisa's house because I was supposed to be spending the night there. We had coffee and sat and chatted...why is it we never run out of things to talk about? Then I made us Chilaquiles. I didn't get a picture but mine are very similar in look to these.

    Chilaquiles are a traditional Mexican breakfast dish consisting of corn tortillas cut into strips and lightly fried, then you add scrambled egg. I did it differently this time, I fried the egg, then added crushed tortilla chops and shredded cheese and salsa. I've never had anything I didn't love if it had tortilla chips in it!

    Then I went home totally prepared to watch a great football game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills and promptly fell asleep. I woke up about halfway through the fourth quarter so I did get to watch a very exciting end of the game and I was very happy to see the Chiefs win, even though the Dallas Cowboys are my team.

    That's it for my weekly wrap up, I feel like I've written a book! For those of you that read every word and made it to the end...thank you!

Camping for Halloween - Pismo Coast Village and Lunch with the Cousins

    I know! I know! I have not done the second part of my post regarding the funeral for my brother in law Sean. I will, because it was one of the most amazing and special funerals I've ever attended. 

    Since his passing on August 4th, I have been spending the nights with my sister. She has never been alone, from living with our parents she went to live with her husband and I knew it was going to be difficult for her to be alone, especially in the beginning. 

    So my routine since then has been that I wake up at her home around 5:45 a.m. and get dressed and head to my house which is probably four blocks away. I do my normal morning routine and since I work from home and have since Covid began, I put in my eight hours of work. After work I spend a bit of time with my mom and then head over to Lisa's house where we have dinner, talk about the day, on Monday's we go to Grief Share, a grief therapy group that meets for two hours, then we start the routine all over again the next morning.

    Lisa and Sean LOVED camping! It was their greatest passion, after their children and grandchildren. They own a beautiful 5th Wheel motor home which they store at the coast and when they want to go camping, they make a reservation and the RV park picks up their RV and moves it to the campsite they will be in, they set it all up and hook up the water, sewer and electricity, they just come in and organize the inside and relax. 

    They had an annual tradition of coming the week of Halloween as all the RV's are decorated for the holiday. Because of the popularity of the event it books up fast so they had made and paid for their reservations months ago. Lisa wanted to go ahead and come, I was not so sure. I felt it was too soon, but if she wanted to do it, then I was coming with her.

    We left on Friday morning and her son Sean Jr came by to see us off, he's such a great young man and I'm so proud of him. You can see by the smile on their faces how much they still hurt for their dad and husband.

    We always stop at TJ Maxx in Paso Robles to shop. Lisa doesn't really enjoy shopping and even less now that she is grieving, but she made the effort. We didn't buy much, but Lisa did buy me a beautiful coffee mug with Nutcrackers on it, I'll share that when I put up my Christmas decorations sometime in December.

    We headed to Pismo where we had lunch at The Sidewalk Cafe where we each had the most amazing Asian Salad. It was huge too, we actually had it that night for dinner and I still ended up throwing about 1/4 of it away. 

    We got to the campsite soon after and I was so worried that Lisa was going to be devastated seeing the RV and walking inside for the first time without Sean, but the people that were supposed to set up the sewer, water and electricity had done nothing and all the hoses and pipes were strewn about in the back of the RV! Lisa was LIVID!  I think it was a blessing in disguise, she was so focused on getting everything fixed that she didn't remember to pay attention to the fact that this was the first time she was back in the RV without Sean. Death sucks so much, this is such a hard time for her.

    After all that drama we decided to walk to the clubhouse and then to the small store next door where Lisa bought two beers and some pretzels and we headed to a small table where she and Sean used to go when they came together. We said a toast to Sean and sat there drinking our beer. We then realized that we are Arizona girls and we don't do beach weather well (it was cold) and we headed back to the RV.

Beer in a can in a brown paper bag. Sean's favorite beer would have been Bud Light but they were out of that so we had Michelob Ultra. It was a beautiful spot but way to cold to stay long with the wind blowing.

    We set everything up and organized ourselves and decided where we each were going to sleep and then we watched some TV and played some cards and finally decided to get some sleep as we had plans to go to lunch the next day with two cousins that live close by.

    The next morning we slept in for a bit and woke up and had coffee, we planned our day because we knew we were meeting our cousins Diana and Vera at 1pm for lunch. We ran a few errands and cleaned up some more and then met them for lunch at this lovely place, Marisol at the Cliffs Restaurant. You can see the ocean in the background in the picture below.

Enjoying a Jalapeno Melon Margarita with the cousins. My sister Lisa in front taking the photo. Left to Right is our cousin Diana, daughter to my dad's sister Leonor and Elvira aka Vera daughter to my dads brother Manuel, then me.

    We had such a great time, there was a lot of laughter, a few tears and many shared memories. 

    For dinner I had the Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps, which were fabulous!

    Lisa had the bacon and eggs, the bacon looked really good, but she didn't share! 

Cousin Vera I believe had fish tacos with potatoes.

Cousin Vera deep in conversation.

    Cousin Diana had the nachos which she shared with us all and still had enough to take home!

Cousin Diana enjoying her nachos.

    Afterwards they wanted to come and see Lisa's motor home, so here's a picture of the four of us. We had such a great time and can't wait to get together again!

Great shot of the four us and Lisa's motor home. Left to right: Vera, Diana, me in the front and Lisa behind me.

    There is nothing like family. We never spent a lot of time with my dad's side of the family, but my mom and dad both used to say to us all the time that "blood calls" and it does. Even though we seldom see these cousins there is a bond that we can't break, our ancestors blood runs through our veins and calls for us to be family even though we are literally strangers.

    I'm not going to lie and say that this has been a great trip, Lisa is here in body, but not in spirit or in mind or heart. Her spirit, mind and heart is with her husband and she is going through an agony that is unimaginable. Earlier that day we were driving through a busy part of town that has a lot of little shops and I had a memory while passing a bead store of my sister in law Connie and I bringing mom right before Covid to Pismo and taking her to several bead shops and there is one we particularly enjoyed with her and as we drove by I remembered that day and how happy my mom was and how special she felt and I also realized that someday my mom is going to be gone and my heart clenched in pain and it was brief, maybe a few seconds, but I then knew exactly how Lisa is feeling, it's an incapacitating pain and you feel as though your heart will explode  and there is nothing that you can do....except to be brave like my poor, dear sister is being brave. 

    More to come as I'm writing this several days later. Dinner with the cousins was Sunday afternoon. I'm writing this on Wednesday afternoon, October 26th and this morning they invited us to get together again with them for dinner and drinks tonight.

Paint Night, Baby J and Cheesy Zucchini and Red Onion Flatbread

     During the Pandemic lockdown I really missed sharing a paint night with my sister Lisa and our friend Lupe. The three of us are like the Three Amigos and at times like the Three Stooges, depending on how much wine and how many shots of Agavero we've shared. But no matter what, we always have fun.

    Here's a photo of the three of us, it's pretty old, I believe from 2019, but I just love this one. 

    Because of the health of my mom she and I were very careful to stay in quarantine to prevent her getting sick, so paint night was put on hold until this past Saturday night, June 11th. 

    We had planned to get together at 5pm at my house, but Lisa and Lupe surprised me by showing up at around 4:30! They caught me still prepping and I didn't even have time to change the grungy t-shirt I was wearing, so needless to say there are no pictures that I allowed to be taken of me that night!

    However we did take pictures of almost everything else, but let's start with the food we shared. 

    Lupe brought our appetizer, a veggie tray with snap peas, carrots, broccoli, celery, baby tomatoes and ranch dressing. Wish we had a picture!!! Picture or not, it was so good!

   As for a beverage, we started the festivities with a shot of our favorite tequila, Agavero. It was delicious. I had bought two kinds of wine because I know some people don't really like wine and I didn't remember if Lupe did, so I bought a very mellow and sweet Stella Rosa, cause everyone loves Stella Rosa wines. I also bought a 2019 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon as I'm partial to Cabs. I don't remember who had what but after a shot of Agavero and half a glass of Cab I was not so worried anymore about people showing up early!

    By this time the Cheesy Zucchini and Red Onion Flatbread was done and we had that with a mixed spring salad on the side with Italian Dressing. Again no photo, but I have blogged the recipe, so here's a picture and a link to the recipe is HERE. 

    We then cleaned up and what I like best about these two ladies is that they jump in and help! Then it was time to get down to painting.

    But before I talk about the painting, we had a special guest. Someone that has made multiple appearances on my blog, someone near and dear to my heart, Baby J!!! She is Lisa's granddaughter. Here's one of the first pictures I posted about her on the blog back on Sept, 2014. 

    She and I have done numerous Art Projects every time she visits and it was so fun to have her join us for the first time ever for Paint Night. Here she is, all grown up and beautiful!

    I'll show her artwork first. She painted a bunny rabbit peeking out from the left side of the canvas. She's only halfway through in this photo, but you can tell she's pretty pleased with her work so far!

    Here is her final piece, she did an excellent job and she is the smartest, funniest, most insightful child ever. She astonished us with her knowledge and her vocabulary is over the moon. I know she's my niece but I'm not exaggerating, it's a flippin' genius!

    Here's the piece Lupe started, none of us really had time to completely finish our art piece, except for Baby J, but we got a good start. Lupe is wanting to try stenciling designs on some of her walls at home, so she took the opportunity to stencil on a canvas board and we all loved where this is going and hope she frames this once she is done. (You can see the intensity on Baby J's face in the background as she works on her painting.)

    Lisa decided to work on what was to me a very difficult piece, but I love what she's got so far and it's going to be beautiful once she is done. There's a waterfall in the middle part there that is not painted in yet.

    I had purchased a book for Lisa when we had our road trip to Ojai a couple of weeks ago and there was a photo in that book that I really wanted to try painting, here's the photo.

    And here's what I've done so far, I have quite a ways to go and in the photo it looks like the sun setting behind the tree, but in mine it looks more like dusk already, so I may add some stars and then paint the tree over it, not sure yet.

    We also had a surprise visit from Baby J's dad and Lisa's son Sean, who is a police officer with our local police department. Since he was there my mom took the opportunity to give him a handmade quilt she was making for his birthday but she couldn't wait until January of next year. She's so proud of him!

    He just stayed for a second as he was on a break and had to go back on duty, but it was wonderful to see him and I am so grateful to him for sharing Baby J with us all these year. Love you Sean!

    I will end this post with a photo of the joyful chaos that was on my kitchen table that night. I hope Baby J remembers this night, but if not this blog post will always be here for her, as well as all the other blog posts since 2014. 

    Thank you Lisa and Lupe and when can we do this again!