80s club

temperatures that is, not age!
We've had unbelievable weather this past week, making me feel hot at times. Sierra has especially enjoyed being outside when I see her at lunch and after work as the light of day dwindles. It's pretty hard to enjoy the weather completely when you think about how large of a drought we are in and that this is technically our rainy season (supposedly going through March). As much as I enjoy the warm weather and sun, I would be happier overall if we would have at least two days of rain in the week.


Despite the drought, we still have quite a bit of green from the moisture we got before the new year. The wilderness park is quite green as well as the mountain outside our window. It is a nice change from the brown we see most of the year.
This past weekend was uneventful as I have been reading several articles in preparation for a class I'm going to in Salt Lake City. I am going to a continuing education class in pelvic physical therapy/incontinence management with another therapist from our clinic. It is the first in a series of three, which I tentatively plan to complete to get my certificate in pelvic physical therapy. Our boss wants to beef up our women's health program and get some concrete education behind a few of us. It should be an interesting class, but I'm not looking forward to the COLD temperatures! Think of me freezing in SLC next weekend! =)

Zodiac

Has anyone seen this movie? We watched it last night and enjoyed it, but it was pretty long (almost 3 hours!) A lot of the locations in the movie where they were investigating murders have actually been places in California that we have lived or been close to living. A few of the murders were in Vallejo, which was just south of us in Napa, another in Napa County at Lake Berryessa, and a possible one in Riverside. CREEPY!
Luckily, it seems the guy that they are pretty sure did it is now dead-so I'm safe. But still-pretty scary!

Mission Inn: To see the Lights

So it must be pretty sad that this was our second Christmas in Riverside and we still haven't gone to see the Christmas lights at the historic Mission Inn in downtown Riverside. Sure, we've been down there and we've driven past, but we have never gone down to see their lights in all their glory. Thus, Saturday night we set off with friends Josh and Erin to the lights...who cares if it's January right?
We headed downtown and we searched for a place to eat. Since we rarely go downtown, it took us quite a while until we found somewhere suitable where we didn't need a reservation. We ended up at a sports bar (Chargers to be exact, which we witnessed first hand due to the game Saturday night) and had very good food. We then headed over to the Inn and saw the great lights. The large Christmas tree was already down due to fire safety, but there were still lots of twinkling lights to see! The main lobby was gorgeous as well, but my photos did not turn out very well, so the plethora of photos are all from outside.
It was nice to see the lights finally and it is always a pleasure to go to the Mission Inn. I can finally say that I am a real Riversidian now that I've toured the lights!

To be a better blogger...

...is my new year's resolution!
The last month and a half of 2008 has flown by and now we are already in 2009! I am utterly exhausted from working long hours, traveling, and getting "ready" for the holidays. The new year brings getting "unready" from the holidays, which will take a while, as I still have Thanksgiving things out! I thought I would post some photos from the last month or so that I never got around to posting!
Happy New Year!

A great Thanksgiving

We made it through our first Thanksgiving in our home. We were joined by Nick's parents, Barb and Mike, from Fresno and Josh and Erin from here in Riverside. The actual meal was really good and we had a really nice time with everyone.
The early part of the week was a bit more trying. The whole preceding weekend, I was baking, cooking and cleaning, which gave the week a slow start. Then, I worked Monday through Wednesday 8-7, though a bit unecessarily. After coming home from work and eating, I proceeded to cook and clean more. Oh yeah-and on top of all of this, Sierra had massive diarhea making us get up numerous time in the night for checks and bathroom breaks, and clean-up, if needed. So, by the time Thursday got here, we both were dead tired. Sierra is doing much better now. We think she picked something up the weekend before at the clinic when she was spayed.
Friday I picked up a new Christmas tree at Lowe's and made a trip to Michael's with Barb. We also went downtown Riverside and walked around the Mission Inn and downtown area. We also had a tour of Nick's work. Saturday we did more of the same and went out to eat at BJs. Today, I have been taking it easy and putting up some Christmas decorations.
I can't believe it's only 3.5 weeks until Christmas! I have done zero gift shopping, so I have a feeling everyone will be getting gift certificates and/or online gifts! I also will be doing some Christmas baking, but not as much as usual, as we are going to be in Fresno.
I hope everyone else had a great Thanksgiving!

New projects, fires, and extra hours

Sorry about the lack of blogging lately, but I have been working a lot of extra hours and haven't been too motivated to do much on the weekends. Nick has done a number of projects including installing a new faucet, putting together a kitchen cart and tiling our master bathroom. Both have turned out very nice (see pictures).
The fires came fairly close to us the past weekend, about 30 minutes away. I didn't even know there was a third fire until I was driving down the hill from our house and looked toward LA and saw a huge orange blaze. We didn't have any smoke because of the Santa Anas, which is one good thing. A few of my patients had to evacuate their homes, but they were able to return last night. Hopefully, things will calm down. We really need some cooler weather and some rain.
We are really getting excited about Thanksgiving. We will be having it at our house with Nick's parents and friends Josh and Erin. I am so excited to eat some turkey!!!

Ending October

Sorry I've been bad at blogging lately, but here is my last post for October.
Two weekends ago, Nick put up our new light fixture in the eating area in the kitchen. I think it turned out really nice. Now, the kitchen project is done until we decide to tackle the flooring.


This past weekend, we decided to take Sierra up to Big Bear Lake in the mountains to see the fall leaves and get out of town. With temperatures still in the 90s, it was nice to get into some cooler weather. Sierra had a good time at the lake, but did have some difficulty with the drive up (she lost her lunch with all the switch backs).





Everything continues to be more of the same here. We're fairly busy at work and we have had some challenges dealing with new employees. Hopefully, the kinks will be worked out as quickly as possible, so we can get things running efficiently once again.
Nick is off this week and is tiling our master bathroom. We are also trying to get Sierra spayed this week and get the rest of her shots. We think we will do early voting this weekend at the registrar's office to avoid super long lines next Tuesday. I will enjoy watching the results coming in at home vs. standing in line!