Week 4 - Sis

This week was slooooow and so I had plenty of time to read. Sunday was a football and Nook day which wasn't so bad afterall. Worked my way through part of the week catching up on what was left of magazine stack. The articles were very interesting but remembering what I read seems to be a problem. The newspaper article was sent to me by my sister Judy. Psst! Chickie to her family. This article was about a beach my family spent a lot of weekends at. Martin's Beach in Half Moon Bay, California which is the subject of a suit to keep the right (Coastal Act ) for public use. It was a place of a kids dream. You had the water for cooling off and surfing, the wet sand for castles, the picnic tables for eating whatever tastes better while inhaling the ocean's air. Since there were usually at least three families sharing our day that involved a lot of kids. My parents had seven and the average was four for the other families. This meant parents had a time watching and making sure the kids were safe when playing in the surf or helping kids who got sand in thier eyes....with little help from their siblings. ;-) During the smelt season (delicious little fish) my dad, uncles and sometimes friends would rent these nets that reminded me of hammocks with a pole on each end and head out into the water, maybe 3-4 feet deep. Turning the net on its side the men would wait for a wave that brought the fish in and then fling the fish on the beach for the kids to gather in buckets or pails. This was a great adventure for the kids, free labor for the dads and food for the price of a rental fee. Running in the sand burns a good amount of energy, that means parents had a quiet ride home while the kids slept in the backseat of those big old cars. In my family's case, it was more like kids piled on each other with some of us complaining that the sleepers were crowding us. Hoping the re-opening of Martin's allows families in the near future to start a tradition of their own. Remember the last post and us receiving the valuable salami? This was the remains and a snack last night. WAH! Beautiful weather yesterday and today, so the only outing of the week the dreaded grocery shopping. Lisa says she wants to throw a hissy fit when we have to shop; my mental hissy fit comes at the counter when it says, "You pay this amount"!

Week 4 - Lisa

This is one of those weeks in life that you examine and just check off as unremarkable; yet it was full of drama and exhausting.  All job related so <insert Charlie Brown teachers voice here> whomp-whomp, whomp-whomp-whomp. There was no weekend adventure as I worked Saturday.  So what did I take pictures of?  Well Friday I made the 90min round trip drive to get some "soul food."  Thankfully we have found ONE Taqueria with the tastes of home.  My next pic is when I was deliriously waiting for water to boil at 10:30pm one night so I could have some noodle soup.  I started tripping out on the all the bubbles forming in my boiling water; I'll blame the fever for that one.  Next up is my Mama's crack cookies.  We sent home care packages this week.  I made fudge for my Tia Madeline and cousin Britni and my mom made her highly addictive cookies for my sister, Sia.  She froze some dough for us.  So delicious!  Lastly our big outing for the weekend was grocery shopping.  Oh how I loathe grocery shopping.  Like I want to fall down on the ground, kick and scream and have a hissy fit every time I think about having to grocery shop.  I think I'd be okay with it if I could pay someone to unload the truck and put them all away.  My mom is the kitchen organizer as she calls it her "place of work" so I do not even do that much. Yet, I still loathe it.  So I had to find a bright spot while pushing the cart and luckily there were some pretty flowers in the store.  Just as I was feeling a touch of Spring on this fluke of a beautiful 65 degree day and getting a little skip in my step I turn the corner and see the Valentine's Day display. "Oh the horror," I mentally screamed. I'll save my loathing of this holiday for February.  Do not want to seem all doom and gloom in one post.  ;> Let's just say it brings back harrowing memories of working holidays at Hallmark.  Stories for another week...