Merry Christmas!

Happy late Christmas! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed mine. I was given several days off, and was able to go see my parents, and my bro and his family. IT was very fun! I saw the behind the scenes of being a parent at Christmas, and it is crazy...stay up late and all of that. It was so good to see everyone, especially how much my neices have grown. WE got to read stories, play and eat good food too. I love visiting the family! My great uncle and I got to watch White Christmas on Christmas day as well. It is one of my favorite Christmas movies!

A Day of Adventures

My sister just came to visit me, and when it is just us, we are very good at having adventures or mishaps or whatever you would like to call them. She came down on a day I had to work and was waiting for me when I got off, so we went to my favorite mexican food place here in town and drove through candy cane lane, which is a housing development that goes all out in Christmas lights. After dinner, I had to go to the grocery store and normally would walk, but the storm had come in. Rain was dumping from the sky and winds have been at 30 miles an hour or so and my sister not so fond of walking in rain, so we stopped on the way home in the car instead of walking. I bought a flat of water and was putting it in my trunk, when a huge gust of wind blew the trunk door closed.....right onto the side of my head. Lucky really, it didn't hit my temple. SO, I just grabbed my head and put pressure on it to help stop internal bleeding, and said something like "Ugh, that hurt." AFter asking if I was alright, Lynn started laughing and so did I. She said, I've got milk and water if that will help, which made us laugh more. NOt to fret, I used advil and ice to help the swelling all night, and went it today to get it checked just to be on the safe side. Just hard headed I guess. I don't think it will bruise too bad, but sister disagrees. We spent the rest of the night playing games and watching a movie. She won Disney scene it, but I won the sequence game. We giggled a lot and enjoyed it. (the paragraph button will not work, so this will be a long paragraph.) The next day, we went to the local aquarium and on the drive home along the ocean (it was still really windy), we got a traffic cone stuck under the car. Note that the cones with black on the bottom do not squish down. She used her feet to dislodge it, and I pulled and pulled and we got it out. A construction guy stopped on the way by and helped us take off the protective thing under the car, because one side of it was on the ground. Ah...the adventures we had and so much fun. I'm looking forward to the next time! (Hopefully there will be no hits to the face next time. It's only a little dark, not a full bruise yet.)

Manzanita Trees

A friend and I went hiking several weekends ago and I saw a sight I had never seen. Did you know that older manzanita trees have a red part of their trunks that look like plastic. Really, not kidding. I was standing by one thinking, why would that tree have red plastic (first thought) and second thought that's not plasic it is the bark hence the picture. How cool are these trees, eh?

Hiking

The day after Thanksgiving, my friend and I went hiking (have to do something with all that good food, eh?) Anyway, we chose this hike that was 6.2 miles back to a lake. We got an early start so we would have plenty of daylight, and wore lots of layers because it was close to freezing when we started. (I had on 5 layers, which is pretty unusual for me.) Anyway, I am a firm believer in the faster you walk, the faster you get warm, so we started at a fairly good clip. The first 2 miles were a breeze, mostly kind of a gentle uphill that wasn't noticeable at all. (except on the way back when it was all downhill.) The last 4 miles were uphill (literally) with no switchbacks. It was so fun!! Switchbacks are great, but sometimes you just want to get up the hill. At one point on the way up though, I thought we would never get there (but we obviously did as seen by the picture.)
The lake was beautiful and worth every minute of hiking and getting up early. Lunch was eaten on a rock by the lake's edge and then a well earned rest basking on a rock in the sun (which was colder than it sounds, because of radiation in the rock which is a tidbit of information I learned that day.) Then, after that refreshing break, we hiked back down the trail. And, while I hate to admit it, on the way down I tripped on a tree root, but caught myself before I fell. So, we basically did 12.4 miles in 4 hours, and had a lot of fun. The only mishap occured because I have not been able to find any new shoes, and the ones I have are pretty beat up and they rubbed a hole in the heel of one of my socks and into my heel, causing blood to soak into my shoe and sock. I didn't bother saying anything because, well, that's part of hiking, but I got caught treating it with my first aid kit before we headed down the mountain. Oh well.