Monterey/Pacific Grove/Carmel by the Sea

This past weekend, Amira's class was having an "optional" family field trip to Point Reyes, CA, which is located on the coast of California.

Due to the weather (rain), we opted to pass on the field trip, and instead headed to Monterey, CA to explore the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Figuring Amira would still be able to explore the oceanic sea life, but under drier conditions.

The weekend weather turned out to be absolutely perfect for the field trip, thus allowing us to take in so much more than the aquarium. We also ventured to Pacific Grove, which is noted for being the Monarch Butterfly capitol as well as to Carmel-by-the Sea, famously noted for Thomas Kincaid's work.

After visiting the breathtaking landscape of Carmel-by-the-Sea, I understood Thomas Kincaid's art much better-----for he depicts the actual beauty on the outside, but not the beauty on the inside of the town's people because there wasn't much beauty to capture upon. Although esthetically the little village on the sea was breathtakingly beautiful the people themselves were somewhat snobby and rude. Of course not all as we encountered some lovely people, but I would say as a general consensus the majority were snobby.

Here are some photos that captured our weekend.

OC Bound

As the days of summer start to wind down, we wonder where in the world the time went. Although, Amira and I have had such a fun-filled summer with so many wonderful events and memories all we can say is, "alhamdullilah".

To finish off the summer of 2007 Mindy, Vicky and I are heading to the OC (Orange County, California) this weekend. We are so excited about our trip we can hardly stand it. Our plans are to do anything, everything or nothing depending on how we feel.

One of Mindy’s desires is to lounge poolside at our hotel and snap her fingers for the Cabana boy to bring her refreshments. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the wonderful life of being a leisurely princess, don’t you think? I say, "snap away girlfriend"!

One of Vicky’s desires is to stalk Clay from the MTV reality TV show Newport Harbor. She thinks he’s so adorably cute. Although Ms. Vicky celebrated her birthday in April and is clearly not in the same age bracket as Clay, she still feels justified in her stalking of him because he’s considered of legal age (18). I say, "you go girl"!

Me? I desire to have a massage. All three of us actually thought the massage would be good, so we are scheduled for Sunday late afternoon for a spa treatment. I can already feel my muscles relaxing at the thought. =)

We also agree we’d like to take a boat ride on the ocean and since we will be staying in the Newport Beach area there will be plenty of boat excursions to choose from. So hopefully we’ll have time to maybe squeeze it in on Sunday before the spa treatment. ;-)

We have also been invited by a friend of mine to attend the annual Arab American Festival in Garden Grove, California, which I’ve always wanted to attend, so was delighted when I learned it was taking place while we were there. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, what more could anyone want but great Arabic food, music, entertainment and shisha?

As long as we each return feeling relaxed, refreshed, possibly exhausted as well as filled with laughter and great memories, then we can consider this a successful venture, inshallah.

I know the three of us will be a breath of fresh air to the OC community because we are the real deal---100% authentic. There is nothing plastic, fake, or superficial about us, so know we will definitely stick out amongst the land of plastic. Hopefully our good nature and our authenticity will rub off and start a trend. LOL

Look out OC, here we come!

Pooh's Vacation

Well what an incredible few days we’ve had with our cousins, Blake (a.k.a. Pooh) and Pat.

The entire family, which isn’t very big, all gathered at the airport last Wednesday night to meet and greet them. Gathered there luggage and off we went to a little diner to have coffee, tea and dessert.

Thursday my parents took them to Lake Tahoe to spend the day in nature and enjoying the spectacular view of the lake.

Prior to my cousins arriving I was asked for input on things we could do while they were here. Knowing most…..well ok not most, ME, is on a fixed income and yet still wanting something fun to do I found out about these free concerts in a beautiful park in the downtown area. Moreover, knowing my cousin was formerly in a band and played the drums, I thought he and his wife would really enjoy such an event.

Friday with work and preparing to get together with the family afterwards was a little crazy, but we survived it. Family gathered at my house to head to the concert (Held every Friday night from May until August). The performers are local area bands. The night before Tesla was playing but we didn’t find out about it until it was too late. Anyway, we packed our ice chest, our blankets, jackets, chairs, etc. (looked like a group of rednecks gathering) and headed to the park. We got there relatively early so were able to mark off a territory in the grass that allowed us a great view of the crowd, located well enough away from the speakers, under beautiful trees and most importantly created a barricade that just encircled our group.

However, this event was extremely short lived because one of the family members made such a big fuss over the event that we had to load all of our stuff and leave before things really got started. My poor cousins were so disappointed because they didn’t understand why we had to leave; they were having a good time. They were enjoying the little bit of music they heard, they were enjoying the great outdoors, and were enjoying watching the people, but were overruled.

(By the way - this is the bottomside of a Muffin Top)

So, another family member, a little baffled by this situation, suggested that maybe we should go to another park and hang out there, which we did. Anthony (my nephew) and Amira had a fun time playing on the equipment.

Saturday morning we got up early as we had to meet my cousin and brother at the Mall because it was Pat’s (Pooh’s wife) birthday and we were also celebrating Anthony’s 11th birthday later that day. Around 1:00 p.m. we all gathered at a bowling alley where they were holding Anthony’s birthday party with 15 of his closest friends. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEECK! They were allowed to bowl for an hour, then went into this party room where they had pizza, soda, candy, ice cream and cake. Can you just imagine the over stimulated energy in that room of 14 boys and 1 girl? Oh my Gawd! I had to take shifts going in and out of there because it was too much. However, my poor sister-in-law was pretty much left to handle everything on her own, so we had to jump in and offer whatever kind of help we could to her. Poor thing! She’s an amazing woman. Will definitely have to blog about her later and her incredible story.

Later Saturday afternoon we all went back to my parent’s house to have a bbq and celebrate Pat’s birthday.

My brother had bought Anthony paintball guns so when they go camping over the summer they can have paintball wars. Must be a guy thing because I certainly don’t understand it. =) My brother, his friend and my cousin decided they needed to test the guns out in my parents pasture to make sure they worked properly.

However, I felt bad for Anthony because I got him a huge box of paintballs as his birthday present and he never got to use them because the 'guys' burned them up. :-(

We had a lovely evening with good food and good company. Dad started the fire pit they have and we all gathered around it after sunset and just visited for hours. Great fun!

Sunday morning came quickly, but we were on a mission now to take my cousins to San Francisco for the day. We drove to a town called Vallejo and caught a ferry that takes you right to the Fisherman’s Wharf on the San Francisco bay. It’s about an hour or so boat ride and it is most pleasant. It’s certainly the way to travel into the city. You don’t have to fight traffic, pay for parking, or end up going down the wrong one-way street. We meandered around the Pier 39 area, had lunch, and watched the sea lions. Talk about loud----oh my goodness. Although really cute, they are loud and obnoxious. We walked up to the cable car and road it from the Wharf area down to Union Station where they turned the car around. We jumped back own and road it through a different tracked area, which allowed us to see some of the major highlights of the city in a really short period of time. However, since the boat to return to Vallejo was coming at 4:00 p.m. we were quickly running out of time, which meant not a whole lot of sight seeing or gift shopping for the cousins……felt bad for them because no one asked them what they wanted to do. Well, I did, but was over-rode by others. My cousins kept saying, "Wow, this seems to be happening so fast and we’re not getting to see much. Why can’t we just stop and look?" I told them I didn’t know, but that if they decided to return to California to call me secretly and I’d meet them and do whatever they want to do. =)

On the way back to the boat, I discovered my camera was broken hence the reason you won’t see anymore vacation pictures. I was so bummed, but things like that happen. Hopefully have it up and running again soon, inshallah.

Monday back to work or maybe I should say back to catching up on our sleep…..LOL After Amira and I finished working we went back up to my parents house for a final dinner with my cousins as they are leaving. It’s always so sad to say goodbye to family/friends/loved ones because you never truly know when you will see each other again. However, we are so blessed with wonderful memories from their vacation, alhamdullilah.