Ch-ch-ch-changes

Wow, a lot of people have stuff going on lately.

One of Dan's best friends just got engaged (and got a kitten)

Jess moved back to DC to start her job

Meghan found an apartment in Maine (and in the pictures, it looks lovely!)

Laura got an apartment in Alexandria

Dana's sister just had a baby (making her an aunt for the 7th time!)

My boss's partner is having a baby next January

Two of my co-workers are getting married this summer

Is this just what happens from here on out? Lots of life events, all happening concurrently? It's sort of overwhelming.

Exhibit A

of "Why I miss living on the same coast as everyone I know"

Scene: Facebook chat, last night

KK: Wow, you found that picture fast. A little creepy.

Ben: Don't be jealous of my facebook powerz.

KK: You're in the interwebz stealin their fotos.

Ben: I AM THE INTERWEBZ.

Fin.

Paint crew

Scene: Missy and Franklin have bought and moved into their first new place. Home improvement is needed, ugly yellow paint must be covered. Cue several nights of college crew painting parties. Apparently, we really like painting because we are positively giddy in these photos. It may have just been that several of us were in the same state at the same time.

Winner in above photo: Franklin with blue tape. Seriously, don't we all look disgustingly happy?

Rosa loves to paint! Especially over the previous owner's hideous paint job! (Seriously - I never thought I would mock anyone's paint, but wow.)

Cabinet doors anyone? Also - the living room you see here now has couches and chairs and such.

Ben sanding, freakish injury and all.

I focus on what's important.

See, you can have fun AND take the proper safety precautions. Good job Franklin!

Holiday favorite things

1. My aunt Janis being incredibly thrilled when she unwrapped a Hickory Farms summer sausage from Dan in her stocking (because, no lie, she loves encased meat)

2. Doing three puzzles at Missy and Franklin's while watching several Harry Potter movies

3. Talking with Josh on Skype and Ben on Gchat on New Years Eve, with their images on a huge TV, technology blowing everyone's minds

4. People loving the holiday gifts I chose for them (great feeling, for serious)

5. Josh Greenspan's mustache

6. Visiting our friends Chris and Holly (and their daughter Lily) and playing Catchphrase, finally looking at the clock and being shocked it's almost 4 AM, and we still have an hour drive home

7. Sneaking Dana out of her awful afternoon meeting

8. Visiting Dana and Larry's first home! It's pretty amazing. They're grown ups.

9. Making a fantastic, if not disfigured looking, chocolate mint 2 layer cake at 1:30 AM with Dana

10. Having our plane in Las Vegas (layover) smell like burning rubber right before we were supposed to leave the gate, all the flight attendants rushing to the front of the plane. (We got a new one)

Congratulations v.12

A bit of a belated welcome to Madeline Alayne Foster! She was born on October 17, weighed 5 lbs, 1 oz and was 18 inches long. She's home now with Meredith, Geoff, Chloe and Delilah. This is her Halloween look. Hopefully we'll get to meet her soon :)

Highlights of home

So after the Gorge trip, and working a couple of weeks, I headed back to the East Coast for a week. Dan didn't come with, because when we were making plans, we were unsure about his work stuffs. It ended up being a good thing - he got called for some interviews while I was away! Funny how it all works out.

Anyhow, my main reason for coming home was to celebrate my grandma's birthday, which the whole family came in for. We all stayed for a couple of nights, hung out at my aunt's house, watched some football, went to church and a very fancy dinner. I didn't even know they had fancy dinner spots in Johnstown, but they do! Where I ordered a prime rib side (like surf n' turf) and they brought me a prime rib the size of two people's heads. Seriously. AND, my cousin Megan's boyfriend, of two months, came to everything! Met the whole family (which as many of you know, is kind of overwhelming with my family), came to the fancy dinner AND brought my grandma flowers. It was so cute. He's a keeper.

But overall, my grandma had a great time and didn't have to make one single meal or do a bit of cleanup. Successful weekend.

Other exciting happenings:

I got to visit with Kelley, Laura and the boys for a few hours. They are SO BIG. Not in a "what are you feeding them?!?!" way, just in a "gosh, kids grow so fast!" way. We opened the door and they crawled (!) over to me, and I had to lay down. They are easily the cutest, most adorable, happiest, want to squeeze them babies ever.

Got down to Blacksburg to visit for a couple of days to do lots of buying Tech gear, driving around and exclaiming at new buildings, reading at the river and such. So relaxing. Blacksburg in the fall is wonderful. I stayed with Tony who has the best dog ever (second to Parker and Cosmo, obviously). Anddddddddd she sort of loves me.

Met Lily, Chris and Holly's daughter. She is also a ridiculously happy baby. Except in the car seat, but whatever, no one's perfect. Most of the time, she giggles and smiles at everyone and has smooshable cheeks. It's pretty great.

The time Phish crashed our friend's wedding

Holler, I'm finally getting around to posting (Franklin's) pictures from Ben and Jess's wedding, which was now about 5 weeks ago. The entire weekend was pretty gorgeous.

Dan and I took the red eye to Albany on Thursday evening. I literally left the unit after training my RA staff since 10 AM, and went directly to the airport. We took an enormous plane to Chicago, where we switched to a teeny tiny jet, which made me uncomfortable. Jess's brother picked us up, and went to Jess's parents' house, where they very kindly let us nap and take showers before we all headed over to the Mansion. (fyi - "The Mansion" should be said with a heavy accent)

Most folks arrived on Friday evening, so we ordered dinner in and drank a lot of wine, while people arrived all night. It was a rockin good time for everyone to stay in one place, so that we were all together most of the time, and didn't have to worry about going anywhere else. Saturday, we went to the rehearsal, and then got all dressed up and went to the Saratoga racetrack to watch the horse races, which is what people DO there. People were into it, let me tell you. Jess's family went to the track at 6 AM to reserve tables for us to sit at later that day, and then people had to hang out there all morning and afternoon to keep saving them, it was crazy. Saturday also included a BBQ dinner back at the Mansion for anyone coming to the wedding, followed by wine, dancing and ridiculous photos.

Sunday, of course, was the wedding, which Phish was invited to. The amphitheater they were playing in was literally right next door to the wedding hall. However, we didn't hear a damn thing once the (awesome!) band started playing at the wedding. Because it was pouring rain, we did see a lot of scantily clad Phish fans right up against the doors of the hall trying to get some cover from the weather.

The wedding was gorgeous. And Ben and Jess are both very pretty people. All in all, it was very aesthetically pleasing.

The Mansion Inn, site of wedding good times

At the races, blending right in with our hats

BBQ before dark

BBQ after dark. We love wine.

The Hall of Springs, wedding site

Fancy groomsmen

Josh and I walking down the aisle before the ceremony. Afterwards, our smiles are more forced because Josh was sweaty and my feet were numb.

Ceremony, all personal and emotional and stuff.

College crew with the newest bride and groom.

City Walk: Eureka Valley

We really have been in the Bay Area for selected parts of the summer, I promise. During part of that, Deborah was staying with us (before she abandoned us to move to Australia I mean) and one of the things she really wanted to do was go on a city walk with us. So to the city we went. Deborah chose our walk - Eureka Valley. The area sits on a hill, beneath Twin Peaks and right above the Castro. The walk was pretty long with some of the longest hills we've encountered yet, and easily the windiest day we've done a walk. This turned out to be unfortunate, because Deborah is in way better shape than Dan or I. There's no real history or fun facts I can give you about this area, because our book mostly talks about the Castro, and also Harvey Milk. I won't go on about Milk here except to say that if you have no idea who I'm talking about, I need you to go rent the movie "Milk" that came out last year. SO GOOD.

This is an alley between two homes, and is super cute, leading to a little neighborhood park. It's actually called Acme Alley, and used to be a path used for taking cattle across the city to pasture.

These are the Seward park slides, which were waiting for us at the end of that stairway. They are AWESOME slides. All the neighborhood kids have left stacks of cardboard for anyone to use, and the slides are super fast. We regressed a few years to play here for awhile.

Clearly, playing here is for serious.

Some of the hills here are so steep that stairs are built into the sidewalks. Not as a separate set, but carved right there into the concrete so that you don't have to lean into the hill like a crazy person while you head uphill. This is one example. Probably one of the longest hills we've done. My calves are burning thinking about it.

This is ONE house. It was built for $100,00 in 1872 and has 5 stories, 45 rooms, 52 closets, 10 fireplaces and 272 windows. It's now 15 one bedroom apartments.

You can't really tell, but the city is pretty much laid out behind us. Good walk team!

(Walk stats: 2.02 miles per Google Earth, 2 hours)

Up next: Saratoga Springs, NY. Weddings and horse races.

Wedding pictures for Uncle Mike

The culmination of the Deep South Roadtrip was Brian and Christy's wedding in Houston. Honestly, pretty much everyone who reads this blog was there but I thought Uncle Mike might enjoy seeing some fabulous photos. Plus, the roadtrip series needed a finale entry, don't you think? I had the BEST time with you all in Houston. Hugs. The groomsmens' tuxes were very fancy, as displayed here by Franklin and Josh.

Clearly enjoying ourselves at the reception. We figured we wouldn't be able to get a photo with Brian and Christy until later, so we worked with what we had.

Cutting the cake.

Shiny and happy married couple :)

Um, this is why we love you so much.

B. Drake.

On the way out from the reception.

At the bar after the reception. Christy brought her bouquet and wore her tiara, and kept yelling "I just got married!" at random strangers. It was amazing.

Deep South Roadtrip: Savannah

Stop One on the roadtrip was Savannah for Ben and Jess's surprise bachelor/bachelorette party. As I mentioned in the last post, Carrie and Brian had planned most of it - we rented a vacation house for the weekend, and basically partied it up.

The house was supposed to sleep 7 people, and we had...18. And a dog. It was awesome. Head count: Ben, Jess, 5 of us from Reston, Ben's sister Gen, her boyfriend, and three of her friends, 4 RPI folks and one of their friends, and Ben's cousin. Ben and Jess's dog Puck, who is the best dog I've ever met, also hung out most of the weekend.

Dan and I flew into Jacksonville, which is about two hours south of Savannah, and landed at about 11 PM. Then we had to get our luggage, pick up our rental car, and you know, drive there, which put us at the rental place at about 1:30 AM.

Apparently, though, it all worked out to plan, as Ben and Jess thought the surprise arrivals had ended a few hours earlier with Ben's cousin Charlie, who came in after dinner. When we pulled up and walked up the steps, it was probably the best Ben face I have ever seen. Totally, completely flabbergasted. And you know, Ben is pretty expressive, so it was great. He ran inside and up the stairs to get Jess, who was getting ready for bed at this point. She was also pretty excited. (See below).

Laura, Franklin and Josh (who had been driving straight since leaving Philadelphia!!! that morning) arrived at about 3 AM, which made for another round of great surprised faces, especially since they came bearing fantastic gifts from South of the Border (which included funny hats, an enormous fly swatter, and sparklers, which Franklin promptly burned himself with). So that night, before all was said and done, we probably got to bed about 6 AM.

Saturday we woke up not nearly as late as you think, and headed to the beach on Tybee Island. Carrie had packed us all some food, we had games to play, and books to read, it was a great day. It's super fun going to the beach with that many people because when everyone gets in the water, it looks like you brought quite a posse with you (which I guess we did). There was always

enough people for bocce ball, and soccer. The weather was perfect, it was just a really good day. Around 6, a wedding started on the beach behind us, so we stuck around to watch, and tried to avoid being in their professional wedding pictures. (Aw, honey look, it's our first kiss! Who is that in the bathing suit behind us?!?)

We had a fantastic BBQ dinner, and then we separated by gender to do the official bachelor and bachelorette party business.

Here we illustrate the differences between "good times" for men and women. The men, after pouring lots of straight liquor into a coke bottle to share, headed to Forsyth Park, and proceeded to get drunk and have a huge water gun fight (serious PVC pipe water guns) and then head to the nearest pool hall. The women got dressed up, went to the local swanky lounge, sat in VIP and drank lots of wine. The contrast provided for lots of entertainment. I should note that Jess was being a fantastic trooper at this point, because she had the death flu that we all had later on, and

was still smiling and even willing to go out.

Anyway, we all eventually met up at the pool hall, shut it down at 3, poured into cabs, got back to the house...and kept drinking. I know for sure we saw the sunrise around 7. I think we all thought we were 18 again.

Sunday morning, a lot of folks had to leave after brunch, but those of us who stayed had a pretty quiet day. Many of us were by now feeling the early symptoms of Jess's illness, and also had only gotten a couple hours of sleep over the past two nights. How Josh drove all the way back to Philly on Sunday morning is beyond my comprehension. Anyway, Ben us showed around Savannah, we rented a movie (Bolt...because we're all under 10), and we had dinner and a movie night. It was very relaxed, as by now, we all felt like great friends even though many of us had just met. But...we had been through quite a bit of drinking, and the aftermath, together. I hope it was entertaining for Ben and Jess to see their worlds colliding together at high speeds.

Coming up: Macon, Montgomery and Mobile. All places I don't need to go again.

Deep South Roadtrip 2009: Introduction

So, the roadtrip evolved out of two separate events that happened to be one week apart in very different areas of the country, and also about as far as possible from where we live. Carrie, the maid of honor in Ben and Jess's wedding, and Brian Baum, the best man, who many of us have gotten to know over the years, planned a secret bachelor/bachelorette party for the bride and groom down in Savannah, where they live. They basically invited anyone and everyone, on the condition that no one spill the beans beforehand. Dan and I were invited, and since I felt bad about not being able to attend the bridal shower, I sort of hunkered down and tried to figure out how we could get there without spending enormous amounts of money. The problem was that Brian and Christy's wedding was in Houston the following weekend - actually, we were scheduled to fly in on Thursday. There was no way that we were going to go to Savannah, fly back to California and then go back to Texas four days later. No thanks. We toyed with the idea of heading up to DC for a few days, and then I started looking around at other options. Recently, I've decided that I want to visit all 50 states - and I realized that I'd never been to Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana. And then one day I found a SUPER cheap deal on a one way rental car, to use all the way from Savannah to Houston, and just sort of booked it without having any other plans...good thing Dan is flexible, and that we usually fly on Southwest, who doesn't charge you extra to change your flights (which is really awesome, if you think about how much you pay for that crap on other airlines) As we talked about what we wanted to do, and where we wanted to go, we decided to: ~Fly into Jacksonville Friday night and drive up to Savannah (2 hours of driving) for surprise party, stay through the weekend ~Leave Savannah on Monday, drive to Mobile AL to spend the night (8 hours of driving), stopping in Macon and Montgomery for some tourism-lite en route ~Visit the USS Alabama in Mobile on Tuesday morning, and drive to New Orleans (2 hours of driving), stay until Thursday morning ~Leave New Orleans, drive to Baton Rouge, do a drive through tour, and head on to Houston (about 6 hours of driving) ~Hang out in Houston, attend wedding, have various good times and fly back to Cali on Sunday (I know that our plans totally just made my mom have convulsions) Honestly? It was rad. The whole thing. We didn't even kill each other about directions, parking, whatever have you - because usually when Dan and I fight, it's in the car. But yes, it was totally worth the time, money and hours in the car. 3 new states off the list!* Tomorrow's post: Savannah, with Franklin's pictures. Because Dan and I get lazy whenever Franklin pulls out his camera, as his photos will inevitably be better than ours. *States count as visited if you obviously stop there OR drive through them. Layovers at an airport in that state do not count. I have 24 left to go. How many states have you visited?

Congratulations v.11

Please say hello to Lillian Elizabeth, born on June 13, 2009 weighing 9 lbs 9 ozs and 22 inches long!

Holly, Chris and Lily are all doing well.

Can you believe that hair?!?!

Congratulations v. 10

So, Meredith confirmed some of our suspicions and announced today that she and Geoff are expecting their first preshus baby this November!

CONGRATULATIONS!

Congratulations v.9

Introducing...Thomas Emery Watts III :)

He arrived Friday, April 17th weighing in at 8 lbs, 6 oz! Kristen and Tommy are, obviously, enamored. See below.

Trip East: Part One

The trip we just took home was the longest amount of time we've been away from California since we moved out here. So, in our minds, it was a super long time, which meant that we had plenty of time to see everyone we had ever met in our entire lives. Turns out, that means a lot of time spent driving from place to place and days packed full of things to do and little sleep...but it was so worth it. I needed a good healthy dose of friends, family and home. Trip summary: Places visited: 4 (DC area [including DC, Reston and Arlington], Eastern Shore, Richmond, Johnstown) Different beds slept in: 5 (Mom's house, Dad's house, hotel in Johnstown, Dan's parents in Richmond, Matt's beach house on the shore) Miles put on rental car: 1300 Trip East Part One: Jet lag and babies So, we got in really late, went straight to mom's and "crashed." Dan crashed. I was wide awake until something like 4 AM. So, much of the next day was spent lying around, Dan doing laundry (he flew to DC after 10 days in Texas working South by Southwest), and getting the rental car. We had dinner with mom...Ledo's pizza. (food #1 I was excited about that I can't get in California) And then, we went over to Laura's who had prepared quite the Mexican feast for Missy, Franklin, Sarah, Mike, Kelley and the babies. Of course, Frank and Blue were also there, and were attempting to covertly sneak Ryan or Jack away when Kelley wasn't looking. (alright, let's be honest, it was mostly Blue). We spent a lot of time watching the babies, talking about what the babies were doing, saying what we thought the babies would say if they could talk, feeding the babies, you get the idea. After the babies left, we looked at each other blankly for awhile, and then Missy, Laura and I tried to name all the cast members of all the Real World seasons ever (can you believe they're on season 23?!?!) We did pretty well, up until I'd say the last 5 seasons when we kind of lost interest. You want baby photos? Excellent. Ryan, close up of his cheeks. They demand pinching. He was only taking a power nap in this photo. He was completely, totally cashed out and then woke up ready for more play about 20 minutes later. Ryan, clearly having an awesome time with me and Laura. The next day, Laura, Dan and I went over to Kelley's to hang out, have lunch, and "lend a hand" (which roughly translates to hold the babies as much as possible). Mission accomplished. We hung out through lunch, two feedings, lots of spit ups - mostly on me, although Jack got Kelley really good when he shot formula out of his nose...twice, doggie excitement, and more laughing. Nighttime found us home with mom for dinner, and then over to Missy and Franklin's for a night of Wii playing. Good lord do we love the Wii. More baby photos? You are insatiable. Jack and his big eyes. Jack and Dan both actually asleep. You can't really tell in this photo, but Jack's pacifier says "Chicks dig me" which is you know, adorable. And true.

Random updates

So, it's been awhile, and recently the blog has kind of seemed broken on occasion? As in, you come to the URL and there is nothing there? This has happened to me a few times, not sure if that's why no one has been leaving us any comment love, but I will push on! Writing about things no one cares about! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I'm completely ripping this format from Amalah's last post. Seriously. Click on the link and you will see how unoriginal I am. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lots has happened in the few weeks since I last posted cute pictures of Jean's puppy. That same day we visited, Dan and I went to the Jelly Belly factory which was fun because you have to wear a paper hat in the factory even though you get NOWHERE near the jellybeans in the process of being made. Also, the day we were there they were making cotton candy and raspberry flavors and wow, headache. But, you get to try a lot of flavors you don't see a lot of places (jalapeno anyone?) and new flavors (pomegranate is yummy) and be around too many kids on a sugar high. Exciting. Unfortunately, you can't take pictures inside the factory, but outside where they have jelly belly motorcycles, a jelly belly car, a jelly belly RV and a huge blow up jelly bean, you feel free to take pictures to your heart's content! But, it was a factory tour, which completely fascinate me, and free, so hooray! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan is in Austin again for South by Southwest working really long days, and I'm still in Berkeley, sleeping in too late. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Um, this won't be exciting to anyone else, but I'm going to see Dave Matthews in September. This is exciting because I requested my tickets through their fan club system (of course I'm in the fan club) for a venue that I've never been to before but have always wanted to go to where they always do amazing multi-night performances. The trick is, the venue is the Gorge, about 2 hours east of Seattle. So this year, they're spending Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend there, and I requested tickets for all three nights to hedge my bets and I got ALL of them! Honestly, when I found out I danced around the apartment ala Dana's dance of joy from Sportsnight. No words. Too excited. Yes, I will be making the pilgrimage for a weekend o' dave. Dan is, well, not as excited. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I also have no words to describe how excited I am about this summer (before the concerts). Dana and Larry are coming out to visit in June, and she already has quite the itinerary planned out :) July means Houston craziness with the CC, followed less than a month later by CC craziness is New York. These are good times my friends :) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Finished my second RAD class today! We had 12 students which is a new record for us - woot! Seriously, teaching this is basically the highlight of my job. It's awesome seeing women who don't think they have any strength go through simulation at the end. *smile* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On Friday, I went to the campus production of the Vagina Monologues and it was SO good. The cast did an AMAZING job, I laughed and cried, and cried some more. They also include monologues here that Cal women have written, and the original pieces were really powerful. What was NOT as amazing was the guy who came with his girlfriend sitting next to me who, no lie, brought a bottle of Jack in his jacket and, throughout the show, pulled it out to pour into his Coke and drink. And dropped it on the floor a couple of times. And smelled like I was in a bar, at last call. Then, he would pull his girlfriend over to him at completely inappropriate times and make out. NOT OK. All I could think about was that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry makes out with his girlfriend at Schindler's List. I mean, women are on stage talking about being raped, and you're getting drunk and sloppy. You, my friend, are pure class. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I will be on the East Coast in 9 days! We're going to be doing a bit of a whirlwind visit - up to Johnstown, over the bridge to Maryland, back to DC for a conference, down to Richmond for a night and back to DC. Whew! Dan will be flying directly from Austin to meet me in DC, and he isn't coming back to Berkeley until we fly back together on April 6th. He'll be away from home for about 3.5 weeks, which is sad, because I think Lily misses him already. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Spring Break starts in 5 days! THANK HEAVENS. Time for a break. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fin.

Iorek!

Iorek is three months old now and IS SO CUTE. From our recent trip to Fairfield for dinner with Jean (Lee was on a mission)...