A Big Decision..followed by a vacation

Recently Charlie and I have been contemplating what our next step should be (not talking about marriage so simmer down). I am (mentally at least) done with school other then two online classes I am registered for and work got so slow for Charlie that he was laid off.  This was almost a blessing in disguise for him because he was unhappy at this job but it was fairly consistent with reasonable pay so there wasn't a lot of motivation to leave.  After this happened we had to sit down and think ok...now what?  We had always contemplated moving back to NY for a few years to save money, maybe give Charlie and opportunity to go back to school or focus more on learning the trade at his Father's company.  We talked endlessly about if it was the right choice to go out there, we were and are both convinced that there is more opportunities out there for us, more connections and chances to network (later proved to be so true).  But then again we would give up our great little apartment where we can see the ocean and walk to the beach and the temperate oasis of San Diego for three months of brutally cold weather..You can see our dilemma! All and all we decided no risk, no reward, so before a vacation out to NY we decided that Charlie and I are going to sell almost all of our junk here in San Diego and move into Kathy and Rich's transformed basement apartment.  We went out there for ten days and brought four suitcases to leave.

At first people were like, why are you going out there to vacation if you are going to move? And my response was, the trip was planned before the move AND it just helped us to solidify everything.  It was another little blessing in disguise because we got to talk to his parents about it and make sure they were comfortable with it as well.  On top of that, i had five different people either offer me applications, interviews and openings for jobs, all somewhat related to my area of interest.  Is that coincidence? I think not.. :)

It was nice to do this vacation because we had been very stressed about everything and constantly dwelling on what was the right choice..which we now know we made.  It was so fun to play with all the children, eat a ton of pizza and bagels, and hang out at the beach.

Ellie Bellie and Baby Ezra.  Although he may not look entirely secure i assure you he is :)  She asked me if she could hold him. Ellie has such a great personality! She is so unphased by things that may upset other kids, she's fun, tough, and super lovable. 

Jake was worn out from being such a great Uncle..

What a classic scene at the Psillos house right? There was A LOT of swing time as usual.

The kids were really into this movie called "Wreck it Ralph" and you could always catch them doing the dance at the end of the video.  I was trying to get a good shot of Colt and Zeke jammin out.  They are going to make two ladies very happy later because they know how to have fun and aren't too shy to dance!

And the adorable Cora Mae.  This was my first time getting to see and play with her since she was born.  She has giant beautiful eyes and an aura of preciousness.  She was a little sick when we were there but that didn't stop her from roaming around and having some fun like the rest of the kids. 

She is such a sweetheart!

I think because I am not a parent, I always forget to capture moments.  My photos are always sporadic and whenever I may have a phone handy so I never get a lot of good ones but I still wanted to share the few that I got.

This trip really put us at ease with our decision to leave California for the time being.  Although I am leaving my hometown and parting from my family for a bit, I need to remind myself that I have another family on the East Coast that I am very grateful to be apart of :)  We have many friends we adore in NY and most of all the man of my dreams will be with me.  I guess growing up entails a lot of these "big decisions" but with one door closing their is another opening.  This is just our next chapter and we welcome it with open arms.  

A Special set of Visitors

Summer is flying by! I meant to do this post a while ago but only now did I upload the pics, it will be a brief post but wanted to share it none the less..

Our friends Drew and Rosalie did a week trip of California, they went to SF, Napa, LA, and eventually made their way down to us around the end of June.  We only got them for two days but I was so excited about it.  Drew is one of Charlie's old roommates and Rosalie is one of my favorite people (Drews not to bad either ;).  I was already over joyed to have them over and set up a small get together with other friends that included a bunch of pinterest appetizers and drinks.  While going to the grocery store to prepare I got a text from Drew that said something like "Saturday I want to take Rosalie to Ocean Beach for the sunset so I can propose" I immediately screamed outloud "Charlie" while walking into the grocery store and pretty sure I freaked him and other shoppers out..hah. I COULDNT HELP IT! These are two people we love dearly and I haven't witnessed a close friends proposal or the whole shabang so I was pretty stoked..The trick was that I had to keep my mouth shut :-X..This would prove challenging for me..I was always the kid at Christmas hassling people to see if they wanted to know what presents they got and I know on more then one occasion I told them whether they wanted to know or not..

So the day for our party finally came and Drew and Rosalie showed up with two bottles of champagne and their awesome selves.  The night was a success and we were up until 3 having a blast.  This was one of my adult pinterest drinks I was really excited about.  It had apples, oranges, blueberries, nectarines,a bottle of flavored carbonated water and some rasberry acai juice.  Drew and Roe had gone to the Hollywood sign and then ran into traffic, me being the nice person I am sent her this picture when they were in traffic and I said get your tushies over here!!!

The next morning we took a walk to the Pier to take in Oceanside and there happened to be the fourth of July parade which was pretty fun.  Then we headed down to Ocean Beach to meet a few other friends and roam around until sunset (I think i was more nervous with anticipation then Drew or at least he was able to keep his cool better then me lol).

We went to a few of our favorite watering hole's and did some shopping.  The sun sets around 730ish and it was about 6 when I started taking these pictures below and I was so excited I had to just focus on keeping my mouth shut but what better way to do that then with food, beer and pool.

Then it was finally time for us to go to Sunset Cliffs.  We were all a little buzzed with excitement and there was a lot of laughing and joking around going on.

Did i mention how gorgeous this place is? 

We knew that Drew was going to take here down without us to pop the big question.  I was going to film from afar and he gave Charlie his camera.  Charlie sort of followed them down saying oh let me just get a nice picture of you guys, it was funny because he seemed like paparazzi and I asked her later if she was suspicious and she just thought he was being weird. haha. 

Once they went down to sit by themselves I think i almost immediately started to cry. 

I've never uploaded the video's on here but thought I would include it!  It was such a sweet and tender moment.  I was surprised how emotional I was over it but I think it is because I just know these two are such wonderful people and what great lifelong partners they make for each other, I just couldn't take it!

It was a success and after this there were a lot of hugs, laughter, congratulations and smiles.  We ended the night with some awesome California style burritos and said goodbye to the newly engaged Drew and Rosalie.  

We love you guys and couldn't be happier for your!  Thank you again for letting us be apart of such a special moment. 

Musical Genius..

..runs in my family!  My Dad sent me this video of my brother Pavel playing the violin with one of my Dad's music groups.  The song is called the "Czardas (pronounced char-dash)" and it is a song I knew by heart by the time I was at least 3! I grew up with this music and to now see my brother playing it really warms my heart.  My Dad is so proud of him and it is really neat to see them all play together.  I am not sure how invested Pavel is into the violin but it is a skill that will benefit him the rest of his life whether his teenage brain realize's it or not yet.  I was so impressed that I wanted to share with everyone!

My Summer Bucket List

I saw a suggestion for this and I just thought it was a great idea..I recommend everyone to make one, that way you can plan summer accordingly.  Thought that I would share mine and put everyone in the summertime mood, plus it will give me something to blog about later ;)

SUMMER BUCKET LIST

• Go to a few concerts (including one of my Father's)
• Take a BYOB paint class with Niki (we have been seeing a ton of these around where you bring some of the materials, wine and appetizers)
• Get an 'A' in Spanish
• Read 3 books for pure recreation
• Awesome-ify my resume
• Finish my short story & Write at least 3-4x a week
• Lose 5lb (starting small)
• Camp or take a mini vacation
• Make a list of long term goals
• Wear my Del Mar floppy hat :)
• Try a new ethnic food
• Do a double kayak tour with Charlie (we have been seeing a lot of these deals also for around here, some go through sea caves, we've been wanting to do this a while)

Make sure you all enjoy the summer before it's gone!

A Little Bit of Everything..

My semester is officially over!  I was getting so exhausted by the end I kept thinking to myself, "am i sure i want to keep going on in school?" But I made it!  I feel like I am done and graduated but I am taking a condensed Spanish class over the summer, one more online next semester along with another online class for a minor I added to my degree.  I would have been all graduated with my BA in the summer but after some miscommunication and misinformation it turns out i had two classes, and so I would not lose a grant i had for last semester (had to be a full time student but only need two classes at the time) I decided to add a minor to my degree.  Fall of 2013 I will graduate with a Liberal Studies degree, depth of study in Sociology and minor in Sociology.  In about a year or so ( I want to get some experience working in the community specifically focusing on education in underprivileged communities) i plan to go on for a Masters in Sociology.  The year will also buy Charlie and I more time to decide if we are staying in CA and NY..Yes we still don't know... Anyway the whole point of that was to say that now i have some blogging time!  And i guess to let everyone know what's been going on with my school :)

I uploaded picture from my phone recently and have a lot of good random ones so I thought it might make a good post!  Some of these are on instagram with it seems like everyone except my Mom has one but hey it's a technological era right?


A few months ago when Kyle was in town we went to visit everyone in Huntington Beach.  They have a huge dog beach so we skated and biked around with Johnson (who was dog tired by the end of the day) and he got to hang out in the water and then sunbathe.

These two are getting too old for our shenanigans. 

Unfortunately as timing would halve it, their weren't much waves when we went up there but I know these guys still wanted to get in the water so they tried to longboard for about 30 minutes, at least they got some bro time in.

 This is the only time i have ever seen Charlie drink starbucks but in his defense it was more like a milkshake, Adam went to get us some coffee and they messed up the order so he brought an extra and the guys all shared it.

Surfer pose, -whatever it is Kyle is doing. 

 Until I got to this picture i couldn't remember the time of year it was but it was Easter! This was before we all went and had our Easter dinner at a burger place called Slater's 50/50 lol..I love in this picture out Kevin is smiling while the other two are so serious..

At dinner!

Over his spring break my brother took it upon himself to organize our boxes of photos which have never been put into albums.  It was such a huge project that no one ever wanted to do it but it finally got done!  I stumbled on a few gems..

I love this one because my Dad looks straight out of the motherland.  I remember when we went to Czech Republic the first time when i was in like 9th grade, so 2000, all of the guys were wearing these sports pants and matching jackets with, no joke, sandals and socks.  Hilarious. 

I just love this one to pieces.

                                                                  My "bunny" pose.

I grew up with Regina.  She is the daughter of my Dad's guitar partner Fred Benedetti.  We've been friends since we were babes. We've been to Hawaii together 3 or 4 times and we went to Europe together for our first time.  She is one of my favorite people on this planet.

Our cool denim dresses. 

This was another old one we stumbled across going through our photo albums.  For a while when i was in school we would do camping trips with my Step Mom's sister in Yosemite.  One year when my cousin came up (I think it was 2001) I went back to SF with them.  We went to a Giants game, ate sushi, Half Moon Bay (where the Maverick's contest is), and Santa Cruz.  This picture is of my cousin Ryan and I in Santa Cruz.  Ryan and I were always friends but he recently moved from Iowa (I guess recent as in a few years ago) and him and Charlie have become real close.  

Sushi!

This was from another sushi date I had recently with my friend Kristen!!

I had a TON of family come into town at the end of April.  I think there was maybe 12 people, mostly related through Kitty and Kitty's sister Frankie.  We all went to a Padres game one night, this is from that night.  Me and my Brother, Pavel. 

This is a mini lighthouse down at Oceanside harbor. We went for dinner a few weeks ago with our friends. 

At the harbor, beautiful sunset & handsome man. 

This is an old picture i stumbled on for a "throwback Thursday."  One time when i brought Hercules up to Huntington Beach.  Matt was using him to lure women over and I believe it worked..Too cute. 

Texas lake house.  Charlie getting air. 

Me and some lady friends at one of our favorite places to go for happy hour.  We were celebrating the end of school!

Richie, Erin, Zeke & Ez came for a quick sleepover last week.  It was fun to see how much Ez has grown.  He is so sweet and happy.  When i woke up the next morning and came to say hi he looked at me and gave me a huge smile, just melted me.  Melted me almost as much as the cute outfit Erin had him in for a wedding they were going to. 

He looked so dapper!

Being the dog people we are, this next portion is all of our old baby Johnson.  As usual his most photogenic poses are his positions on the couch..

When I was going through some of my old photos I found a few of Johnson when I first started coming to NY. 

But this is him now..And he doesn't seem to give a hoot.

Snuggling.

I sent this picture to Charlie when he was at work one day.

It has been getting warmer here!  We have had some days where it is 90 degrees but it has been fluctuating a lot.  I have a little fan set up for Johnson that he usually will lay in front of, this is how he copes with no AC. 

This is on the Oceanside pier, as you can see in his old age he doesn't seem to care about the rules..

And this picture was from this morning!  I thought it was so funny how he utilizes the pillow.

He was over me taking pictures.

And this finally came for Charlie!  Mesa College finally sent him his official assosciates degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences, language studies and humanities-Spanish.  The school was a totally pain in the rear towards the end but he did it!

And that is all.  Happy summer all!!!!