My Favorites...

I was just going through the pictures from camping last weekend at Burney, which I need to work on posting, and wanted to share my two favorites. Sometimes my day happily revolves around these two individuals. Sometimes all that I want is to make it home and spend time with these two loves of mine. Sometimes I just pinch myself that these two have chosen me to share life with. Aren't I a lucky gal?

More later!

Finally A Girls Night

On Thursday night the girls and I enjoyed a few hours together catching up...a little dinner mixed with some local culture and followed by a pitcher of beer and some much needed girl talk. Just what the doctor ordered for me. We started by visiting Darcy's new apartment and it was too adorable for words...I was smitten. Then we headed downtown and ended up grabbing a quick bite at Rubios before heading to the Sonoma County museum for a wine and dessert pairing from the Santa Rose Culinary School. I was expecting a little bit more of a formal evening, but it was still enjoyable. Plus, there is an Ansel Adams exhibit that I was enthralled with. I need to go back and spend a few hours taking in the photography before the exhibit ends. Then we walked to Ausiello's to share recent life happenings over a pitcher of beer. What a perfect Thursday evening.

I have one picture from each stage of the night. Morgan will kill me for posting this one, but it makes me laugh. Here is Miss Morgan at Rubio's taking part in some sort of promotion. You are supposed to post the picture to facebook or twitter to enter some contest. I told Morgan that I wouldn't do that to her, that posting on my blog would be torture enough!

Just one of the many inspiring black and white photographs...

And a picture with us girls on leg three of the evening...

Thanks for the nice evening girls!

Flashback: Nine Years Ago Today

We were the coveted class of 2000. The first of the "new millennium." We had our futures in front of us. We successfully completed four years of college prep classes. We broke hearts, we had our hearts broken. We made friends, we lost friends, we found life long friends. We promised to never wore white or blue polo shirts and khaki pants again in our lives. We were graduates of Ursuline High School nine years ago today.

Today is a date that is always with me...in fact, it is engraved in the inside of my diamond high school graduation ring from my parents that I wear on my right hand. "05-27-00 Love M&D." (Today is also Lisa F's birthday...happy birthday Lisa!) Those who are close to me know how much my high school days meant to me, they truly defined me. My father was the last person in the world who thought he was going to pay for both of his daughters to attend a Catholic school. Religion did not play a big part in my childhood, but education was always the forefront. My sister asked to be transferred from Healdsburg High School and attend Ursuline, she was accepted and transferred as a Sophomore. Three years later it was my turn. My parents let me make the decision all on my own. I could have been the second graduating class of the newly formed Windsor High School or I could join 100 girls from 20 different middle schools at Ursuline. It was a hard decision and one that I did not take lightly. It was one of the best decisions in my life. Personally, I feel that the sacrifices my parents made for me was worth more in terms of my education than the four years that followed at Chico or the three years of grad school at Sonoma.

The next value of Ursuline after the education, is the friends I made, and those friends that I kept. I feel blessed to look at the following picture and know that I have talked with each of the 6 girls within the last month. I am proud that we all "turned out okay" and really did make something with our lives nine years after pledging to make a difference and carry the legacy of the class of 2000.

Here is an update on the 7 girls, from left to right:

Lisa Figlietti: Living in San Francisco, recently engaged to Cardinal Newman alum Scott Shapiro and completing her last few weeks student teaching.

Brianna (Riolo) Anderson: Living in Scottsdale, married for 6 years with two adorable children and assisting little babies in the NICU department.

Dana (Whitfield) Quinn: Living in Coarsegold, married for 4 years to her college sweetheart and airline pilot, and doing what Dana does best, being a mother to little Lily and working as a sales rep.

Meredith Crotty: Living in Santa Rosa and living life to the fullest, enjoying time with her niece and embarking on a new career, outside of the wine industry, at Emotive, an experiential marketing firm based at Sears Point working with Nascar, Jim Russel Racing and the Audi experience. (I could not think of a better place for Meredith, and her own motorcycle, to work!)

Darcy Kunkel: Living in Santa Rosa (whooohooo, she just moved back from a stint in New York and Boston) with her beau Tom (a Boston transplant) and recently signed a job offer at Kaiser Santa Rosa working in the cardiac wing.

Me (yes, that is me with the tan skin and the highlighted hair...not sure what my parents were thinking letting their daughter work at a tanning/hair salon where services were free!)

Morgan (Beerbohm) Langlois: Living in Santa Rosa with her pilot husband of almost 2 years and just finishing up her 3 year teaching kindergarten in the Rincon Valley School District

I love how different, yet how similar we all look.

My absolute favorite candid picture from the various graduation ceremonies (I think we had two weeks worth of awards ceremonies, special lunches and tributes) is below. The day these pictures were taken were from the Senior awards ceremony.

If only I could remember what we were all saying to one another.

Thanks mom and dad for making all of the above possible and thank you my friends for being you. Looking forward to future memories together!

xoxo

Casen's Baseball Game

Two weeks ago, Damon and I joined the Straub's at Casen's weekly baseball game. This year he is on a real team, the Yankees, and he did really well. He has quite the arm and a good team spirit about it all. As he came up to me, I was taking his picture...

And then he noticed my new camera and asked me "did you put the camera in the sink to make it grow?" (He plays with the capsules that expand into shapes once submerged in water and just figured that my camera underwent the same transformation.) How funny is that? He is so observant and hillarious.

Michelle was in charge of snack that night and was a big hit with the kids with the oreo/nutter butter snack packs (the parents might not have been as excited!)

We went to Buns and Burgers in Larkfield afterwards; I had memories of high school begging my mom to let us go there after school for a milkshake while drooling at the upper classmen and their big pick-em' up trucks. Thankfully, the place has changed alot and we had a good dinner and lots of fun playing racing games with the boys in the parking lot.

I was happy that Damon and I finally made a game, our schedules have been so hectic lately that we keep on missing them. Hopefully we can make one more before the end of the season.

Happy Birthday Mama

Last Sunday was my mom's birthday...we spent it with a big family breakfast in Arizona, followed by two airplanes flights and ended with margaritas in Rohnert Park with another family group. She turned 55. She will probably kill me for putting that number out into the internet world...but I am proud of her and her accomplishments in the last 55 years. She is beautiful and I hope to retain the good looks of the Nelson women throughout my decades. She will also probably kill me for posting some of these photos, but, she doesn't check the blog all too often, so maybe she won't see this post for a few days. (Now Robin, please don't go running to tell her to check the blog while at work tomorrow! Heehee!)

This picture is one that I took in Arizona...

After dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant (actually, we just really really like the margaritas), we had an impromptu photo session in the parking lot. I am so glad that we did because I got quite a few photos with my grandpa (which is quite a rare feat!)

Again, my mom will probably kill me for posting these since it was a long weekend and a long travel day. But, what a great photo of grandpa! He is 84 and my grandma is 78, don't they look great?

Love this picture of my parents...true picture of true love.

Another great picture of grandpa...how exciting!

Alicia was sad not to attend the birthday celebration, so I thought I would include this picture that I took of her from the weekend!

Happy Birthday Mom...I hope that your birthday wish will come true!

Number 19: Completed

The trip to Arizona last week marked another one of my goals complete, number 19, "visit a cousin." When I made my 101 goals at the end of last year, we were not planning on attending Diana's graduation, so the timing worked out well for more reasons than one! Here are the final pictures from the trip, I do have a few videos that I might upload later.

The first two pictures are from lunch the first day at Gordon Biersch (sp?) right after getting into town before freshing up for the graduation festivities.

These pictures are from the dinner at the Pizza place...

I was so happy that I captured this moment between Alicia and Diana.

Not quite sure what the story was here, but it is a cute picture of Aunt Susan and Diana.

This is Diana and her adorable friend, Liz, who joined us for the celebrations. She was such a doll!

Thanks Diana for all of the fun and congrats on all of your hard work!

xoxo

Arizona Weekend Part Three

This is the second to last Arizona post...I still have pictures from my regular camera that I will upload sometime next week. On Sunday, which was also my mom's birthday, we all met for breakfast at Chompies, which was the perfect place for us to hang out one more time before traveling home. It was pretty good food too...although, we were a little sad that the Arizona state law is that you cannot serve alcohol before 10:00. So at 10:01 the champagne arrived. Diana also said that it is a state law not to have 5 or more girls all living together unless the house is registered as a dorm. Apparently is helps to prevent brothels....I guess that the Chico girls house on Normal Avenue would have been a brothel! Anyways, here are the pictures :)

Diana and her adorable friend Megan...

I LOVE how Will hugs...and this picture is so him with a big smile and a big dimple to match!

The final family photo of the trip...

For the record...I was in 5 of the photos in this post...that is pretty darn good for me!

Happy Birthday Mr. Man

Okay, this is kinda a weird and sad post...but today would have been Cyrus's 11th birthday. We miss him. Damon and I are going up the ranch to eat a cupcake for him after work. He loved those cupcakes. Here are the links to the last two birthdays that we shared with him:

10th Birthday

9th Birthday

It makes me happy to know that we always celebrate our doggies birthdays and make big deals out of the small milestones in life, you just never know when the last one might be.

Cy's last pictures are here and here.

Arizona Weekend Part Three

I don't have much time to write tonight, since I uploaded a million and one photos. But, on Saturday night we headed to the Chihuly glass exhibit at the desert botanic gardens. Some of us were a little skeptical of the evening, but it turned out great. At one point Will even said "that is cool." It was neat arriving late evening before the sunset and then watching night fall surrounded by the beautiful glass. Again, it was blazing hot, so hot that Alicia and I both had beers! I have heard of this exact exhibit through one of my other favorite photographers, Melissa Jill (yes, two of my top three favorite photographers are named Melissa, it is a sign), check out the wedding she shot here: http://www.melissajill.net/index.cfm?q=chihuly. Anyways, enjoy the photos!

I ADORE this photo of my Aunt Susan with Uncle Erik smiling in the background. It is SO them!

Loved the outdoor structure (not really a shade structure, but it was still cool)

I am so excited about this picture, I didn't even realize that there was a bird on top of the cactus.

Will...these pictures are for you! He saw this scooter and was so excited to have Diana sit in one and get her photo taken. We put her bag in the basket and it made it even sillier. Plus, Steven had to join in on the fun too!

Thanks for looking through all the photos...tomorrow will be the last Arizona weekend installment :)