I just got home from a really nice dinner with Sarah at TGI Friday, it’s nice to make a weekday a little luxurious. We didn’t eat much since we weren’t so hungry. We had a broccoli and cheese soup each and shared a plate of garlic bread sticks. It was simple but sooo good! We talked a lot about everything and I had a really nice night.

My day wasn’t so bad either. The girl was at a playdate the whole morning and the boy had a playdate half the morning so I had finally some time to Skype with mom. Haven’t talked to her (except messages on Facebook) since she was here a month ago!

I made lunch for me and the boy and today I tried a different type of couscous salad. I had some avocado in there, red bell pepper and pear and lemon juice on top. Really good!

In the afternoon we went to the pool. I knew one of the boy’s friends were there and they played with the girl for a long while until the friend had to go home. And when he did both of the kids got water balloons from another kid and they had so much fun together for another hour playing catch in the pool.

Last night I stayed up pretty late reading Catching Fire.  I’m not quite done with it yet, 60 pages left so if I don’t finish it tonight, then tomorrow! That must be some kind of record!!

I’m already done with the book I started reading just a few days ago. The girl is so proud of me for finishing a book in less than a week. She read it in two hours though… But I’m still impressed by myself. The book was really good and everything was as in the movie, so even though it was a while ago I saw the movie I recognized everything. I’ve started on the second one now, Catching Fire. We’ll see how fast I can finish that one.

Don’t have much else to write about tonight, so I will just go to bed and continue reading!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

A lot of stuff has been going on this weekend. Two bonfires, firedancers, beachvolley, a lot of dolphins, stand up paddling and surfing.

FRIDAY

As soon as I got off work at 6:30pm I drove to Ponto Beach to participate in the bonfire and BBQ. I was too late for the BBQ and I was way too tired to play any beachvolleyball so I just sat down in the sand, watching the last few games and talked to people. At sunset they set up the small bonfire and soon thereafter two firedancers entertained our big company on the beach. They weren’t particularly good but it was still a fun thing the organizers put together for us. After that we just sat at the beach listening to a guy playing guitar and singing, it was very nice!

SATURDAY

My day started extremely early, 7am at Moonlight Beach to drop off the firewood. Unfortunately all the firepits where taken again… So I drove to Ponto and was there super early for once. Not many people showed up, probably because they played on Friday and went home pretty late (didn’t stop me though, and I left the beach at 11:30pm). But that was perfect, not many players, the weather was awesome, cloudy in the beginning, not so much wind and then the sun showed up.  And, during the whole morning there were tons of dolphins just outside of the shore. There were like four groups just swimming by, but there were also two or more groups playing/eating in the same spot for a very long time. So I could see dolphins almost all the time. So amazing!!

After beachvolley I drove down to Fashion Valley to have lunch with Moa and Christin. I had a flatbread pizza with roasted pear, blue cheese and pecans. It was really delicious! And since I wasn’t sure we were gonna have the bonfire at Moonlight that night I bought the new cheesecake, S’mores Gallore. Chocolate cheesecake with melted marshmallows and crackers on top.

After the late lunch I drove back home, took a shower, talked a little with the new Swedish au pair on facebook and then I drove to Moonlight. After a while we asked a group of people around a firepit if we could share and we could. So we could barbecue our S’mores eventually. A lot of new au pairs came, most of them Germans. Always fun to meet new people!

SUNDAY

Today was my 8^th LCC meeting and we did stand up paddling. I brought Sarah and Christin to the meeting and we all tried the paddling in Carlsbad Lagoon. For once, we were a lot of au pairs, like 8, three who just arrived on Friday. We only had two boards so I went up first with our LCC. I was afraid I was gonna fall, but it wasn’t so hard. It wouldn’t have mattered if I did fall, it was a pretty hot day today. But now instead I feel skilled that I managed to do it right away. It was really fun, but tough on my arms.

After the meeting Chad took me to a surf contest in Oceanside, Supergirl Pro. When we got there we met up with three from the beachvolley group and watched the finals between two very young girls. It would have been soo cool to be that good at surfing, and after today’s afternoon it feels like I’m very far away from even standing up, at least out from the beach, on a real wave, not just the white stuff closer to the beach…

We had lunch at a Mexican place in Oceanside and then me and Chad drove to Terramar Beach. I tried for a while, and with a push from Chad I actually caught a pretty big wave and I was surfing on the top of it for a few seconds. Just on my stomach, but it was still a pretty amazing feeling!

This weekend was awesome, I’m super tired right now, but I love doing stuff all the time! Next weekend Hanna will be here for a short while. It will be so nice seeing her again. Can’t believe it has already been seven months since I saw her.

Unfortunately I don’t have any photos from today’s stand up paddling, but I will get tomorrow from Christin and I will post them then.

Goodnight!

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my two years in California. This full post can be found here.

What happened to July? And more importantly, what happened to more than half of the year?!

Today I did something I’ve never done before and should have done a long time ago. I went to Leo Carillo Ranch that’s just around the corner. It’s an “old” (probably even as old as a hundred years!) ranch with a lot of peacocks. I’ve seen the peacocks walking around on our street but today I saw them at their home. I’m kinda disappointed that I’ve only seen the males spread their feathers once (and that was at that peacock party at a house on the street), it’s so beautiful when they do that. We did see a baby peacock today though. It looked like a female but super tiny. I was there for a couple of hours with the kids playing hide and go seek.

Other than that it’s been a normal day with homework, reading and eating. My lunch today was a quinoa salad with chicken, aragula, spinach, feta cheese and salsa ranch dressing. It was so good that I will do something similar tomorrow but with the leftover vegetables from tonight’s tacos. Before lunch we made fortune cookies, they weren’t the prettiest cookies I’ve seen, but really tasty!

I don’t know what I will do now, read or watch another episode of True Blood… Tough decision!

In the shadow beside the house lies a baby peacock