How I Spent My Birthday

My Birthday was Sunday and to celebrate we headed to where else... the Happiest Place on Earth. Spent the morning and early afternoon there with some of my very favorite people and then when it got crowded we left. Later we went out to Outback for dinner and then came back home to eat cake. It was a fun day... with the possible exception of being a year older.

All About Me Cake

This year I made my own cake. I was excited to do it. Actually, I begged Jason to let me do it. I wanted an ice cream cake, so I decided to decorate it with butter cream. I thought it would be fun to make a cake that represented me - things I like: Coach, cooking, Disney, flip flops and of course, Starbucks. I really like how it turned out... although, at one point I almost gave up and bought a store made cake. I *shudder* at that thought. The making of this cake was one disaster after another. I'll share because it's funny.

Jason went to the store to get something for dinner. He told me to text him my list. I did. After he was home for about an hour I asked him if he had put the CoolWhip in the freezer. What CoolWhip? Oh... the stuff for your cake. He forgot to check his text. Well, that sucks.

We eat dinner, I finish up my butter cream transfers and then head to the store. It's already after nine. Ugh. My list: Cake mix (yes, I cheated, but I always make my own frosting), CoolWhip and ice cream. The first place I head in the store? The bakery... Maybe there is some plainly decorated cake that I can just scrape off the crappy store done design and then put my transfers onto it. Maybe. Because I'm tired. Really tired. And at this point I just want to go to bed. But no luck. They are all hideously decorated with way too many flowers and balloons to remove. And expensive. So I go get my supplies, pay and then drive home.

I preheat the oven. I gather up my eggs and my oil. Crap. I'm almost out of oil. I pour it into the measuring cup and it's just short of the quarter cup that I need. It's almost ten. I'm tired and there is NO way i'm heading back to the store. Instead I head to the computer and hop onto Google. One suggestion, just use extra water. Ok. This I can do. I add the little bit of water and dump it into the mixer bowl along with the mix and the eggs. I beat it for the required two and a half minutes. I check the batter. It's thick. Really thick. Why is it so thick? I added the three eggs, the oil mixture and the water... wait! I. didn't. add. the. water. Crap. I add in the water and turn the mixer on low and the water sprays me. Crap. I grab a spoon and try to mix it in. It works so I turn the mixer back on and mix it up some more. Not bad. It's usable. I put it into my four little pans and pop them in the oven and wait the twenty minutes, take them out and let them cool in the pan for the required ten minutes. I go to unmold the pan and the stupid things break apart and pieces of each are stuck. in. the. pan. Crap. I realize that I forgot to grease the pan. It's a nonstick pan. Nonstick my butt. I save what I can and toss the rest. I grease the pans and go for round two. I fill my pans and run out of batter. And I have no more oil. Great. Just great. I put what I have in the oven and hop back on the internet. Some suggest apple sauce and some suggest mayo. I decide on mayo. I grab the jar out of the fridge and attempt to open it. The lid won't budge. I'll have to go with the apple sauce. Ugh, it's cinnamon apple sauce and it's eleven thirty and at this point I don't care. The timer beeps and I take out the baking cakes, they cool and I remove them from the pans. Some come out without a fight and some, well they break again. It's midnight and I'm defeated. Who needs and ice cream cake. I'll just serve plain cake with ice cream. I grab a normal square pan, grease the crap out of it, pour in the freshly mixed batter made sans oil and with the cinnamon apple sauce. I bake it. I cool it. I pop it out of the pan. Success. It's nearly one thirty. I have to get up at six. I go to bed. Cake undecorated. I don't care.

The alarm goes off way too soon and I hop in the shower. While I'm standing under the hot water trying to wake up the light bulb goes off. I quickly finish my shower and head to the kitchen. I grab my pan and cover the bottom with plastic wrap and dump the ice cream in it. I spread it around the pan and then toss the chocolate-cinnamon-apple cake on top. I throw it into the freezer and I now have my ice cream cake. It may be undecorated but it's a cake. I head to my "party" and come home several hours later. I takes me maybe ten more minutes to finish the cake. Perfect.

Next year... I. will. let. someone. buy. me. a. cake!

Totaled

So, I just got the dreaded call from our insurance company letting me know that our car is considered totaled. I honestly feel like crying. That car has so many memories attached to it. It was my first new car. Picked out especially by me. I chose the colors I wanted and got all the options that I wanted. It was blue and beautiful. It was the car that would bring a newborn Dillon home from the hospital. I remember riding in the backseat with him and trying to convince Jason that his choice of music (Korn) wasn't fit for his little ears.

Even though my perfect car was no longer driven as my primary car, I still loved driving it. It was just four thousand miles short of hitting one hundred thousand miles. Jason kept joking that he was going to pull over at the milestone and jump just like they used to in the old Toyota commercials.

The guy at the body shop called earlier today to ask a few questions and the first thing he asked me was if everyone in the car was okay. When I told him yes, he was surprised. I am so thankful that we are all okay and that God was watching over us. It could have been way worse. We were lucky and after all - the car can be replaced and we can't.

Laguna Beach

Dillon absolutely loves the beach. He loves playing in the sand, splashing in the water, and looking for sand "shrabs". When we go he never wants to leave. I, on the other hand, have never been a "beach person." It's not that I don't like the beach, it's more like the beach doesn't like me. It gives me poofy, frizzy, curly hair and my skin gets all sticky and gross feeling. But the more time I've been spending at the beach with Dillon, the more it's growing on me. I'm not paying attention to the fact that I leave the beach with an Afro... as much. And I'm ignoring my overwhelming desire to run to the nearest shower, because I love how much Dillon loves the beach. It's worth sacrificing my cleanliness and overcoming my vanity to see the sheer excitement that Dillon has at the beach.

A while back we went down Laguna Beach (or as Dillon calls it Maduna) for the afternoon and Dillon was so sad when it was time to leave. He had fun building sand castles with Jordan and climbing on the rocks with Jason. I had fun taking pictures. The weather was nice - overcast but not cold. And though I had a smallish 'fro when it was time to go - it was so worth it!

Is Anybody Home?

So, someone left me a comment a bit ago asking if anyone was home on my blog and the answer is yes... I've just been locked in a closet or something. Actually, there are many reasons why my blog has been neglected lately including: I have been out of the house a ton, out of town a lot, my trusty old camera bit the dust and my laptop crashed. Other reasons include lack of motivation. I fell behind my blog and then it just seemed like a monstrous feat to even try to catch up. Like trying to fill a bucket with water when there are several holes pierced into the bottom of it. Just doesn't work. Also, after all the stuff that happened to and in our family at the end of last year, I hadn't really been feeling like myself. Some days it just felt like I was going through the motions of my life but that it wasn't really my reality. I had stopped doing the things that made me feel like me...

And then one day a friend gave me some books and I started reading them - something the old me did all the time. I devoured those books in nothing flat. And shortly after that I went scrapbooking for a weekend- the first time in over ten years that I had gone without Susan. And it was hard at first, but by the end of the first day, I was feeling more and more like the old Rachel. It felt good to be getting back into the swing of my former self. There are still days where I feel like I am in a funk that I can't get out of, but each and every day it's getting easier to be me. Easier to be who I was before.

I have really missed writing and posting pictures on my blog. And I am happy to say that it is one hundred percent up to date - yay me! Here's hoping that it stays this way. (So, scroll down and read the twenty-something posts that I just published and leave me lots of comments... or not)

Candy Apple Inn

This weekend I went on a scrapbooking retreat to the town of Julian. It's a cute little town full of history, bed and breakfasts and apples. We stayed at a place called the Candy Apple Inn. It's a house that the owner's rent out for scrapbooking. It was stocked to the brim with all kinds of fun tools and was decorated so cute. Each room had a different theme and name and it's own bathroom. The property was surrounded by trees and wild turkeys wandered around the yard.

One night I was outside on the deck talking to Jason on the phone and I heard a bunch of rustling in the bushes. It was eerie because it was so dark and I had no idea what was out there lurking in the woods. I ran back inside the house and asked if anyone had a flashlight because I couldn't stand not knowing what was out there. Was it the turkeys or raccoons or something else... something bigger? I went back outside - flashlight in hand and shined it across the yard there in the darkness eyes reflected back at me. And not just one pair but six or seven and they were not low to the ground. I went back inside before whatever was out there could come and get me and then I grabbed the other ladies that I was with and made them come outside because I still wanted to know what was out there ready to eat me (because I was sure it was a wolf or a coyote or a bear or the chupacabra...) As we stood there shining the light into the black abyss even more eyes were peering back at us. I adjusted the flashlight beam and finally saw what was out there... it was none other than Bambi and his friends! Boy was I relieved!

I figured that there would be no way I would be able to work on my albums the entire time we were there and I brought two books and a movie with me, but I was wrong. I got a ton of pages done - I think around fifty. I didn't read one page or watch my movie. Yeah, for fun and productive weekends!

Solana Beach

Nothing better than walking barefoot, hand-in-hand with my sweetie along a near-empty beach

Del Mar Fair and Kelly Clarkson!

Way back in March, Jason and I discovered that Kelly Clarkson was touring and we were excited to see that she was playing semi-close. She was playing the Del Mar fair which is about two hours away. Upon our discovery, we quickly hopped onto the Ticketmaster website and scored ourselves tickets in the eleventh row! It just sucked that we had to wait so long to see her.

Our tickets included parking (and we got to park like twenty feet from the front gate of the fair),fair admission and dinner. The dinner was delicious. There were several choices but we both picked the fillet with asparagus and blue mashed potatoes. We were a little weirded out by the fact that the potatoes were blue, but they were so, so good.

After dinner, I went to snap a few pictures only to discover that the batteries in my camera had died. I was bummed because I wanted to take pictures at the concert. So, I dragged Jason all over the fair on a hunt for batteries. I finally found some - just in time for the concert. As we were walking into the show, we saw the sign... No cameras! Seriously? Yup, there were actually two signs. I looked at Jason and he said just wait and see if other people were taking pictures. And were they? You bet they were. Everyone had cameras and everyone was using them and nobody said anything. Hooray!

Kelly is really wonderful in concert. She has an amazing voice and is so down to earth. During one of the songs she stumbled over the words and she just laughed at herself after the song. She said "well, at least you guys know that I'm not lip syncing." A few songs later her mic pack fell out of her back pocket and she blamed it on her "big butt" - her words not mine!

After the concert Jas and I walked around the fair for a bit and went for a ride on the sky way. We saw a teenage get his foot run over by a security guard in a golf cart and saw all kinds of strange fair food, including but not limited to chocolate covered bacon, mac and cheese on a stick and zucchini weenies. The most intriguing of them all were the zucchini weenies - hallowed out zucchinis with a hot dog inside battered and then deep fried. We didn't eat any of these strange foods, but we did share a giant cream puff that had chocolate whipped cream inside. Yummy!

Relay For Life 2009

Last year Tiffany, Susan and I walked on a team in the American Cancer Society Relay for Life. How things have changed in our lives since then. This year Tiffany and I decided to start a team in Susan's memory.

The Relay is an amazing event. Thousands of people walking in shifts for twenty-four straight hours raising funds for the American Cancer Society. I feel honored that I was able to participate in such an extraordinary event.

Tiffany, Jordan, and I arrived at the field, with Dillon in tow, right around seven Saturday morning... We left around ten-thirty this morning. Talk about a long day. It was hot. Probably high nineties. But it was also fun, rewarding, and emotional.

There were a few times when I could barely hold myself together because it made my loss seem more real. Sometimes it doesn't seem like Susan is really gone, but seeing the luminary bags that we decorated for her really drove it home.

There were bands playing all day, a bagpipe player during the Luminaria ceremony, and a DJ that played music until the wee hours of the morning. He made it really tough to get some sleep... We had a tent at our campsite and I was able to lay down for almost two hours, but sleep was next to impossible because all I could hear was boom, boom, boom, boom the entire time. Thankfully this didn't affect Mr. Dillon's ability to sleep. He slept all night long and was so excited to be on a "camp out."

My favorite part of the day was the Luminaria ceremony. It is amazing. People buy bags and then decorate them to remember those who have lost their fight with cancer, celebrate those who have won their battles and to honor those who are in the midst of cancer now. It is so emotional walking around the track and seeing all these lights shining. I think that I cried almost the entire way around the track.

Dillon had a blast - he thought we were at a parade. He got to ride around the track in a wagon that was built like a boat. There was a "kid zone" with bounce houses and fun things for him to do. And there were all kinds of yummy snacks for him - like frozen bananas and snow cones.

I am blessed beyond measure for all my friends and family and their friends and family who came out and walked on our team. And a special shout-out of thanks to Tori and Tricia who took one of the hottest shifts of the day - two to four in the afternoon and then came back to walk from two to four in the morning! You both are awesome!

And I know that I already said that I was honored to participate, but it really is special knowing that I was part of a larger picture... one that helped raise over $230,000 towards finding a way to stop this horrible disease, cancer. I really do pray that one day when someone has to hear the words, "You have cancer" it will be no big deal, because it will be no more terrible than hearing "you've got an ear infection" or "you have strep throat." And that is why I relay - to help make a difference.

Dillon in the "boat":

Derek's friend Tim in the "boat" (he felt bad for the guy pulling him so he donated $10 instead of the $3 that they were charging):

Jason's sister, brother and mom:

many of our team members:

the two to four crew:

the Luminaria ceremony: