I’m Back!

It’s been almost 6 weeks since I went on my blogging hiatus.  I still posted all my design team projects during that time, but there were no personal posts.  My evenings were so refreshingly free!  I had gotten into the routine of spending quite a bit of time on the computer in the evenings prior to my blogging break.  When combined with working all day on the computer, it had gotten tedious.  My break was much needed and much appreciated!

Why did I decided to come back to blogging?  One reason is that I’ve been blogging regularly for 5.5 years and I’ve enjoyed most of it.  Another was this picture.

I was looking for vacation photos to scrapbook a page for a Lily Bee assignment and decided to use this photo.  For the life of me I could not remember the name of this place.  I half-panicked.  Then I remembered I had blogged our entire trip to Oahu, Hawaii in December 2011.  So I found my post about our hike to the Makapuu Lighthouse.  I read the whole post and it was so much fun to remember the details of the trip and all the fun we had.  Then I realized that THIS IS WHY I BLOG.  I love to document all the fun that Todd and I have together.  (And sometimes apart, when I’m scrapbooking or doing crafty stuff, ha ha.)  Without my blog, I wouldn’t remember even half the details about all our adventures, local or far.  When I blog, the details of the everyday are preserved and I don’t need to feel bad if I haven’t scrapbooked it yet.  I can scrapbook about a trip 1.5 years later and look up all the details on my blog.  This is why I blog, and I’m going to continue to do so.  And of course, the scrappy and crafty posts will continue too.  I will probably have less of the types of posts where I spend hours researching or making something and spend hours blogging about it.  I don’t really have the time for those on a regular basis.  But it’ll be a good balance and I’m happy to be back!

While I was gone from the blog, we had a lot of fun living life, hanging out with friends, seeing the sights, and eating of course.  We had the meal of our lives at Addison at the Grand Del Mar, which Todd blogged about here on his blog. 

We got to visit the kitchen and meet Chef William Bradley!

We also spent a week off work and had a staycation in San Diego.  There was a lot of fun in the sun, eating, and furniture shopping for our master bedroom redo.  You can read about our staycation on Todd’s blog.

Lots of things happened while I was on my blogging break.  The most significant being that Todd was recruited to a new job at a new company.  So after 7.5 years with the same company, he left that job, had two weeks off, and started a new job.  Coincidentally, around the same time I was offered the manager of financial planning & analysis position with our R&D division.  After considering it for a few days, I turned it down. 

Here are some other things we did:

• Saw Star Trek Into Darkness twice.  Once on 5/23 at Cinepolis (first time!) with Dejah & Roby, and once with Todd’s parents while they were visiting.  Yes, we loved it that much.
• Ate at Mia Francesca for the first time.  Yummy Italian pastas.
• Went to visit Sally & the babies on 5/25. 
• Got Midnight Edition of Project Life. 
• Todd made salmon cakes.
• Went to visit AJ & Meera on 5/26.  Made ninja cookies.
• Todd finished ripping every single CD he owns, and filed away his CD collection for storage.
• Had meal of a lifetime at Addison Grand Del Mar on 5/29.
• Ran at the beach on 6/1.  Found a new favorite Mexican place to eat at called Lourdes Mexican.  The best chicken soup and tortilla!
• Met up with Donna Jannuzzi to exchange Project Life cards and to hang out.
• Made lots of crafty things.
• Went to Bencotto for dinner on 6/6 with Dejah & Roby.
• Todd had his goodbye happy hour on 6/7.
• Went to a String Art Workshop and made CA string art on 6/8.  Met up with Linda Barber at CKU.
• Todd's parents visited.  We watched the NBA Finals.  We visited a new church.  Hiked Lake Poway.  Had Father’s Day dinner at Stone Brewery.
• We had a week of staycation which included lunch at Hotel Del Coronado, furniture shopping at West Elm and IKEA, dinner at Buona Forchetta,  We bought a new bed and mattress.  We went out for breakfast.  We made homemade double chocolate ice cream.  We had chicken shawarma after watching The Avengers for the 3rd time.  We went to Nighttime Zoo on Summer Solstice.
• A raccoon died in our backyard under our deck.  Todd and his dad took care of it, but it was so gross.
• Todd cat-sat Roby & Dejah’s cats for a week while they were gone.
• Todd rented a carpet cleaner and steam-cleaned the carpet in our entire house.
• Todd started his new job on 6/24.
• Went running at the beach again.
• Made homemade udon noodle soup, so good!
• Celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary on 6/25 with dinner out at Gordon Biersch and picking up our new West Elm dresser.
• Todd painted an accent wall in our bedroom before our new furniture start coming.
• I went to a crop with Kelly, Donna, Samantha, and Pearl.  Was there from 12 to almost 6!  Donna made peanut butter chocolate brownies and they were so good!  Had a lot of fun with the girls, and got two layouts done too!

I’m excited to be back to documenting my adventures on the blog.  See you around! :)