Memorial Day Weekend Part I

Drum roll please……. It is time for the long awaited post (maybe not long awaited) anyway I want to start the post by acknowledging all the amazing people who have blogs that I read. I have often said that I wanted to be a little more creative with my posts and so in the name of creativity I am going to play with the font off an on through out this post and we will see how that goes.

So as promised here is what Greg and I did for Memorial Day Weekend! I guess I should start with the fact that my wonderful husband is insanely organized. So he had been planning for last weekend for a long time. Greg set up reservations for a campsite near Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks several months ago. We both had Friday and Monday off from school so we started out early on Friday morning. The drive there was fairly long about six hours. Greg is always looking for neat things to see along the way and on this fine day he decided that we should take the scenic rout there on highway 245…just a side note here, I hate math but I have a new equation to teach you: highway 245 = car sick. Yup this road was the most winding road in the world, sure the view was beautiful but you know that a road is bad when even the driver ends up car sick!

By the time we made it into the park it was about 2:00pm and we had to set up camp, this took a little bit longer than usual so we were unable to go on a hike that first day. You may remember in a previous post that Greg and I had Thai food while camping with some friends of ours; well this time Greg and I decided to give it a go ourselves, here is what we learned: Thai food while camping is amazing; but next time we will skip the addition of hot dogs to our Thai food. After dinner Greg and I set off to collect firewood (our camp was in the national forest so this was perfectly legal). Once we returned a ranger was giving a talk on native birds in the area; it was an awesome talk and she brought two different kinds of owls and a hawk with her! I should mention that prior to the talk Greg and I were walking around the campground and saw the ranger walking around in full costume (a black and white 1800’s style dress) Greg got excited and exclaimed “Look! The people in that camp have a nanny with a cane!” That still cracks me up… After the talk we started a camp fire and after about 20 minutes we decided that we were tired and put it out and went to bed…it was 8:30pm.

I am going to stop here and update with the rest of our adventures on Tuesday. I have decided that giving stories in bits and pieces makes people come back for more! Let me know what you think of the font!

Janet

Greg is all smiles on the way there!

Me being a dork!

Greg cooking our dinner...Thai food with hot dogs!

Anticipation?!

Next time on Life With The Mace’s….

Greg and Janet go camping….and…Greg and Janet debate whether or not Doogie Howser was the first blogger…

Unfortunately this week is very busy, and so I will update about our Memorial Day weekend after I get through this week! I promise!

Who gave Janet a book?!

As some of you may or may not know this semester I have been taking a Physiology class which is a pre-requisite to get into the nursing program at my school. Let me just say this the more I learn the more I am terrified at what people do to their bodies! I can’t even buy Goldfish® Crackers anymore because I am too busy thinking about what they are doing to my body! In fact I am shocked by what everyone does to their bodies…people don’t realize our bodies are ridiculously amazing and are very complex…don’t mess them up! I know this sounds very preachy but seriously we have receptors and enzymes and all kinds of amazing little cells in us and they are so sensitive, and we just take them for granted! This all comes about because right now while working on homework I am going over an ECG (electrocardiogram), I had done for class and I am looking at my calculations and wondering what the heck have I been doing to myself these last 24 years? That sounds a bit too serious…I am fine, I am not dying but I could definitely use some work… Even now there is a huge party down at The Pier and they have huge speakers blaring fun music and all I can think is I hope the people in the audience have ear plugs in…those poor microscopic hairs! Ah yes, Pandora’s Box has been opened and I have started the process of getting educated…unfortunately or fortunately that means I can never look at the world the same again. Till next time…WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!!!!!

Random...

Time for another random post… Over the weekend Greg and I went for a beautiful hike in Topanga Canyon with some people from his school. It was such a great time it was six miles round trip and the weather was perfect, although I must say it was all up hill…Once you are at the top on a clear day you are able to see up the coast to Malibu and down the coast to Long Beach…however, when we got to the top the fog had rolled in so we were unable to see anything, que sera, sera. Once we got home it was just a typical day we got some chores done and got ready for the week to start. It wasn’t until I woke up on Monday that I realized… I had sunburn, yup my face is bright read accept for the lovely raccoon mask around my eyes where my sunglasses were…lovely! I did not think that it was that bad until I went to class on Tuesday and my Psychology professor asked “what happened to you?” This question was repeated through out the day by various people. Which gets me to today, so far nothing too terribly exciting has happened, although Pico was fortunate enough to get a bath and the herb gardens I gave to Greg for his birthday have sprouted! I have included some pictures of all the random stories above…below. Enjoy!

Starting out...

A thistle on the side of the trail.

On the trail!

View from the top.

Almost done!

Both herb gardens with sprouts!

One of the herb gardens with sprouts!

Pico, in the big tub with menthol shampoo...he is begging me to rinse him off and get him out of there!

Pico, hanging out in the sun after his bath.

Weekend Update

Today’s update is brought to you by procrastination! I am the worlds most amazing procrastinator…having said that let me catch you up to speed on this weekends highlights. On Saturday Greg and I took the two buses up to get the car and were delighted to see our bill of $0.00! We then drove home and took a long nap and waited for Greg’s cousin Rae to get in to town. Rae got here around 8:30pm and we went to dinner and walked the Promenade. After we got back we spent hours catching up which was a lot of fun! The next morning we woke up and went for a wonderful bike ride, Greg and I didn’t make it too far since we weren’t feeling all that well but Rae got in a really good ride. Once she got back from her ride we went to lunch, and then Rae was kind enough to trim my hair for me! Unfortunately after her short trip it was time for Rae to go but we had such a great time visiting with her. Pico especially loved the visit since Rae was nice enough to share her air bed with him. Well I better get back to work…

Greg took pictures of me getting a hair cut...so I decided to post at least one of them!

What a week...

Monday was Greg’s birthday and to tell you the truth I think that I may have been more excited then he was. You see I am 7 months older than Greg and the only time he let’s me forget it is when he catches up to me in April. So on this glorious day I woke up knowing that I had 5 months ahead of me where I wouldn’t be hearing about how I robbed the cradle. Mind you he is the one who bribed me with poetry and ice cream. So after getting some chores done around the house I head out to the gym. As I am driving along all of a sudden the car stops…and I mean stops dead in its tracks, I cannot get the clutch or the break in and am currently in the middle of the intersection. Thank goodness for adrenal glands. My adrenalin kicks in and with the upmost of speed I grind the car into neutral jump out and push the car into an open parking spot on the side of the road! I then call Greg and let him know that for his birthday I am pretty sure I will be getting him a new clutch. After hanging up with him I call the insurance company to get a tow truck, the customer service person informs me that they only cover 11 miles of towing and that the nearest dealership is about 20 miles away… meaning that I will have to pay for everything over my 11 miles. No problem…what else am I going to do I am in this enormous city and we only have one car! . So there I am on the side of the road in sweats in 87 degree weather telling myself how dumb it was that I didn’t bring a water bottle and how grateful I was that I had at least put on a little makeup, and playing solitaire on my phone for at least and hour…

Once the tow truck guy gets there he informs me that it is not just 20 miles away that it is 31 miles away and that my total will be $163 and some change. I paid the bill and walked home, by now I had just enough time to get home and do the dishes and catch a bus up to UCLA for Greg’s birthday dinner. As I am getting ready I realize that my knee is swollen and bruised vary badly and I remember my knees going into the dash when the car stopped. However it is too hot to wear my beloved jeans so I put on some sparkly grapefruit lotion and a pair of shorts and hope that no one notices this hideous bruise on my knee. Once I get to Greg’s office he notices right away. Needless to say after all of this Greg and I both get sick and spend several days in bed. Now that we are both feeling better we are going to pick the car up tomorrow. Turns out it was a warranty issue and our clutch did not go out! The bad news is that I talked myself up saying that I was going to make them come pick us up and ask them to pay for the tow. However their shuttle only does a five mile loop, so we will be taking 2 buses to get to the car dealership… I know I should have pushed that one a little more. I have not asked about the towing bill but I know that they are also expecting $98 for figuring out what was wrong with our car…I will post later as to what happens on our journey tomorrow until then thank you for letting me vent! Oh and here are some recent pictures of Pico and some flowers I bought at the farmers market!

Apparently we have never taken a full photo of the car on our digital camera...although thanks to Greg's grandma we have several on film...but it is late and I didn't feel like scanning them in!


Precious!!!!!!!!


They smelled fantastic!


What an amazing life! Food, sleep and playtime...plus I am pretty sure he loves his feather bed!

How did this happen?

It has recently come to my attention that I am old…and not just me but also my husband. Some how over night 24 years old is old! While sitting in one of my classes I overheard a girl saying how excited she was to turn 18 and then she proceeds to let me know that I have laugh lines. So while Greg and I were home this weekend we started thinking about it…here are some of the things we discovered:

1) We like 8 hours of sleep.

2) We are in bed by 10 every night.

3) If we go to Burger King we know exactly what we want…without looking at a menu, here is a conversation we had at Burger King a few days ago. Keep in mind that this is 10:30am and we hadn’t had breakfast. Also only the breakfast menu is up at the drive through.

~ “Hello welcome to Burger King may I take your order?”

~”Hi are you serving lunch?”

~”We are serving breakfast and lunch.”

~ “We would like two number 6’s off of the lunch menu, both with diet coke and both without mayonnaise.”

~ “Off the lunch menu?”

~ (Greg didn’t understand her so I yell across the car) “Ya off of the lunch menu!”

~ We then get to the window and ask for 3 different kinds of sauces.

4) I have started clipping coupons… in fact I am rather obsessed with this new hobby.

5) We use denture cleaner…it is to clean our night guards but still we buy and use denture cleaner!

6) Greg is going bald…or at least his hair is not quite as thick as it once was.

7) We don’t know any of the songs on the music countdowns.

8) Our backs hurt…and my hip hurts…and any given moment something else might hurt.

This is just eight of the many examples we came up with. Wait one more last night before bed the last thing that we talked about was writing our wills and what to do with our remains…yup that about covers it. We are officially old!

The old couple...