Recently in traveling Category

This week's {pretty, happy, funny, real} is going to be a little different. I wanted to share a few photos from the trip Bella and I took with her class last week. They could be considered in more than one category so I'll just lump them as one big {p,h,f,r} category.

Bella's fourth grade class has been learning about California history. She is working on her Missions project right now, which is special since Bl. Junipero Serra is buried at the Carmel Mission. (Our family parish.) Last week her class took a two day trip to Sacramento and the Gold Country.

After our stay and tour at the capital, we headed to our camp in Coloma, CA. The surrounding area was so pretty and the camp was situated right along the American River.

We stopped at various places and museums - Sutter's Mill, Sutter's Fort, A Gold Mine, etc.

One of my favorite visits of our trip was to the California State Railroad Museum. It was amazing! I told Brian we have to go back and bring the boys with us. They would love it.

We learned all about the First Transcontinental Railroad. They actually had the Central Pacific Railroad No. 1 Gov. Stanford, which was Central Pacific's first excursion train in the 1860's.

I hope you enjoyed this tiny peek into California. :- )

Please say a prayer for me and for Bella. We're going to her class trip to Sacramento and the Gold Country. We'll leave at the crack of dawn and will be gone for a couple of days. I'd appreciate it if you prayed that we have a safe journey...and that Brian survives caring for the boys while we're gone. (Thankfully my mom flew up from So Cal to help out.) I'll post pics next week. :-)

In the meantime, in honor of RoL's 9th bday, here is a flashback post from 2003 that also has to do with traveling.

Man, I love visiting my family for these week-long trips but I hate all the packing and unpacking. Brian can always manage to put all his stuff in one small suitcase but Bella and I have loads of bags of things we "need" to take with us! I tell you, if God answers our prayers for another child soon we'd also better add "and a mini-van" to the prayer because I don't know how I'm going to fit another human being in our car on these 400 mile long trips! But I guess that's another story.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, really touching. (Except for the fact that my sister EL was missing! But we'll ALL be together during our Christmas visit. :)

Oh my gosh, then the day after thanksgiving we girls hit the malls for all those insane bargains you'll get if you arrive at 3am and stand on your head while reciting "Twas the Night before Christmas" in Spanish. I refused to stand on my head but I did manage to get $100 worth of savings before making morning Mass. But that's not the story I'm meaning to tell...

At the end of the day my two sisters and I were tired and hungry. We stopped at a fast food place to grab a quick bite for the drive home (which would take an hour). We're sitting in the parking lot passing out the food and straws when a cop circles around my sister's truck. My sister jokingly says, "Hey, that cop thinks we're suspicious; he's checking us out." I told my other sister to hold up her pepsi so he can see we're just eating. They laugh until the cop parks behind us and gets out of the car.

He walks slowly over to us and shines his flashlight into the backseat where I was sitting. It was not yet dusk but the windows are tinted. He asked where we were headed. My sister told him but he just looks suspiciously at us. I noticed that he also looked a little nervous so I told him, "We've been shopping all day and we just stopped to eat our dinner, officer." Obviously he has nothing to worry about unless we decide to attack him with the pair of pajamas and slippers I got on sale.

Well, in the meantime, we hadn't noticed that there was a whole gang of policemen driving up and surrounding our car. We were blocked in making it impossible for us to "escape". Finally the cop realized that we were not dangerous. (I should have offered him one of our tacos). He apologized and explained that someone just called in that there was a silver truck (same as ours) with some guys and a girl (so now I look like a guy?) and they had a gun. (Okay, no wonder he looked a little freaked.) My sister then let him know that we had just seen that truck and the kids he was talking about. They took off when we entered the parking lot a few minutes ago. The cop thanked us and he and all his buddies removed their cars so we could leave in peace. (Thanks be to God. )

When we got home and told our family the story my mom just shook her head and half-jokingly said, "You see what happens when you take Bobbi with you. She always has a way of being involved in some kind of escyndalo!"

Hmmm, I prefer to think of it as more like adding a little spice to life. haha!

Have a great weekend!

Thanks to our complimentary stay at Pebble Beach last weekend, I have lots of photos to show! It's a little out of order so the story makes more sense.

My happiness was seeing the ones I love the most having a good time.

Maybe this should have been in the funny category but we were excited to be treated to such delicious food! On Friday, after dinner at the Italian restaurant Peppoli's we were too full for dessert. However, we were hungry later that night so we ordered their room service dessert special. It was chocolate raspberry cake/soufflé with a raspberry center, a dish of raspberry sorbet with vanilla ice cream on top and hot chocolate fudge to drizzle over it all. Ohmygosh, it tasted so good!

If that wasn't enough, in the morning they brought us room service breakfast. It's a good thing we had a lot of walking planned to work off our meals!

We are truly blessed to have this once a year mini-vacation but Brian always dreads me coming back home afterwards. It takes him a few days to reprogram me to let go of all the pampering, special treatment and being able to use the bathroom uninterrupted. I have to get back into the mode of stinky diapers, sticky hands, dirty dishes and piles of dirty laundry.

He says I'm like Lucy after she comes back from the home show...

After seeing all that luxury her own house makes her say, "Yesh!" LOL! (If you don't remember the episode, you can watch it here.)

Well, I'm happy to report that I'm back to myself again and ready for the next mini-disaster to photograph for next week. ;-)

When I was younger I loved cork boards and bulletin boards. I would fill them with various photos, pictures, quotes, comics...whatever took my fancy. Even after Brian and I were married I had boards up in many of our rooms. (Heck, even my blog has too many photos on it!) However, after we did the remodel, I took all the boards down but one. Sure, the walls looked neater and more "grown up" but I missed them. But not anymore since I now have my online boards at Pinterest!

I had seen the word "Pinterest" at various blogs I follow but I had no idea what they were talking about. A couple weeks ago I finally checked it out and I am hooked! Instead of bookmarking things I want to remember, I pin it to my online boards. I not only have a quick reference but a pretty visual. And with their iphone app, I have it at my fingertips for those moments when I have to kill a few minutes while I'm waiting for something.

I must also admit that Pinterest has helped awaken my creative side. Instead of immediately dismissing a project or recipe as too hard or requiring too much time, I suddenly have the desire to give it a try! And even if the project is a dismal fail, at least I'll have something funny to post about later. ;-) So here are a few samples of pins on some of my boards - Styles I Like, Things that Make Me Smile, Recipes to Try, Organizing the Home, Decorating Ideas, Favorite Icons and Beautiful Places near My Backyard.

Disclaimer - Pinterest is fun but highly addictive. You must use self-control. (Don't say I didn't warn you.)

A friend of my sister on the east coast is moving to the San Francisco and they were asking me if I knew of any solid Catholic churches there. I had no idea but thanks to Lisa in San Fran I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of great churches. (I'll have to plan a trip soon to check some of these out!)

So in case you are traveling to San Francisco and want to find a church to attend Mass or make a visit, here's Lisa's recommendations.

San Francisco is blessed with many beautiful and good churches. Here are a couple of suggestions.

St. Dominic's Catholic Church (Dominican Friars)
2390 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
(415) 567-7824
www.stdominics.org

I've been a long-time parishioner here and it's one of the largest parishes in the Archdiocese. It's one of the most beautiful churches in SF; good homilies and holy priests; reverent Masses; a solid parish with various devotions and activities throughout the year; excellent choir; vibrant young adult group. They've been very supportive of the Walk for Life West Coast since we first started it in 2005, and youth groups camp out there during that weekend each January.

SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church (Salesian Priests and Sisters)
666 Filbert Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 421-0809
http://www.stspeterpaul.san-francisco.ca.us/

Very beautiful church in the North Beach section of SF. Much smaller parish, but very solid and orthodox, and reverent Masses. Has a young adult group also. They've been most supportive of the Walk for Life West Coast since we first started it in 2005. They let hundreds of young adults camp out that weekend each year who travel from all over to attend the WFL.

Carmelite Monastery of Cristo Rey (Carmelite Nuns across the street from St. Ignatius Church at USF)
721 Parker Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 387-2640

Daily Mass: 7:00 a.m. each day

The Nuns here are great - have known them half my life.

Monastery of Perpetual Adoration
771 Ashbury Street (between Waller St. & Frederick St.)
San Francisco, CA 94117
(415) 566-2743

Haight/Ashbury section of SF

Daily Mass: 7:00 a.m. each day (The Chaplain is solid and orthodox)

Cathedral of St. Mary
1111 Gough Street
San Francisco, Ca
(415) 567-2020
http://www.stmarycathedralsf.org/

I rarely go here myself, but they have good and solid priests, the homilies are good and the Masses are reverent, and they have a good choir. The Cathedral is in the modern style.

There are many other churches worth visiting/seeing like Mission Dolores .

There are also other special places that I can recommend in the Bay Area that are worth a weekend visit -- like Our Lady of Peace Shrine in Santa Clara, and St. Albert's Priory in Oakland.

Bobbi's note: Brian and I have visited the Our Lady of Peace Shrine in Santa Clara. It is a beautiful church and worth a visit!

Hello, All. I am back from our trip a little earlier than expected. We were in great need of a little cooling fog! Actually we had a wonderful time. Brian said that this was one of his most enjoyable trips and it was. I get such a recharge seeing my family, although leaving them behind again is always tough. But I am thankful we live relatively close. Heck, what's a 7 hour drive these days? And Bella is getting to be such a trooper in the car.

I am so proud of her! It is also nice to be back home. No matter where you go and how much you have it is always a wonderful feeling to return to your home and simple life. (Well, "simple" in theory, at least.)

I've been reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy and I just finished The Two Towers last night. I want to finish it all before I see the final movie. It was almost 1am but I could not put the book down until I finished it! (If you hate movie ending-spoilers, skip to the next paragraph!) I was heartbroken when Sam thought Frodo was killed by Shelob. I couldn't believe that he would die that way! There was no way that stinkin Shelob was going to end it all like that! But the tragic ending was filled with hope that all is not yet lost and Frodo could still be saved! Man, I can't wait for Bella to go to sleep tonight so I can catch a few more pages! There's nothing like reading an incredible story for the first time and not really knowing how things will turn out.

It's funny but watching LOTR and TT has been incredibly uplifting for me lately. The way society is going with so much evil and sin around that it sometimes feels like we are helpless and hopeless. It's as if there's a huge dam with a growing crack and we're trying to repair it with a band aid. You know it's only a matter of time until the dam breaks and you'll be swept away in a tide of water.

Yet when I see Frodo, Sam and the company working for a common, almost-impossible, goal and fighting a larger-than-life evil, I see us. God has placed a task in our hands (loving Him above all else and joining Him in heaven with as many people as we can help bring along with us) and in the meantime there is a powerful enemy hell-bent on making us fail. And just as Sam and Frodo had friends and gifts that helped them on the dangerous journey, we have the Sacraments and the Church to guide us and give us the strength we need to carry on and fight until the end of our days. It's something I have to remind myself often. We're in this together! love, b.

1. How are you planning to spend the summer [winter]? We leave next week for a trip to So Cal. The rest of the summer we'll be here. Since we live in a tourist town it gets hectic so we like to go to the out of the way places or walk downtown in the eve when all the shops are closed. I hope to enjoy the beach more. We went last weekend and it was so beautiful. It's warm enough to wear shorts but the water's too cold for swimming so no bikinis in sight (except for a few hardcore Europeans not exactly built like models. egads.)

2. What was your first summer job? Hmm...did I have one? I was probably babysitting. I was always babysitting...mostly my many siblings!

3. If you could go anywhere this summer [winter], where would you go? I desperately want to go camping in the redwoods in No. Calif like we used to when I was growing up. I loved camping! However, Brian has never been camping (I cannot imagine my mother in law going anywhere where you couldn't call down to the front desk for something!) So I'm slowly talking Brian into the idea. Next year he gets an extra week of vacation so I'm hoping we can do it!

4. What was your worst vacation ever? One doesn't come to mind...perhaps when I was a kid I used to get car sick on curvy roads. Even today I can't read in the car or move around while its moving. If Bella is really fussing in the backseat Brian needs to let me drive and he sit back there with her. I get a headache reading the map and he could write a novel in the car without the slightest bother. Go figure.

5. What was your best vacation ever?I would say the time my whole family (all 11 of us) went camping across country with nothing more than a 11 passenger van and a huge 3 bedroom tent that slept 12. It was hilarious. Man, I really should write all these memories down before they fade away! Now I am looking forward to making new vacation memories with Brian and Bella!