Mini Makeover

After so much traveling around and excitement, we've tried to relax a little and get a little housework done.  This weekend's big project was a paint job. Eventually the big house plans is to completely redo the whole entryway combined with an addition onto the house. That probably won't be for another year or so, so in the meantime, we had to pretty up what we've got. The plain wood door had been driving me crazy especially with the lovely dog claw marks on the inside. While we were doing that, we figured we'd continue the color down onto the stairs as well. Really the whole staircase needs to be replaced as it's on it's last legs, but hopefully it'll hold out till we can do out big addition. I love the new color now, it definitely gives the house a fresh new look!

The Old Doorway

Boring rundown stairs

Cleaning off the stairs (you can see how run down the old paint was)

New color!!!

Pretty front door!

Ben decided to test out the color before it dried...then proceeded to run around the house...awesome

Tara nicely stayed out of the way

Another entryway projects was new doormats. I went with these plain rubber mats and spray painted it bright pink to add a little more of a color punch at the front door. These should be pretty easy to clean too. Unfortunately they took a lot more paint than I was expecting, so I used a whole can of spray paint on the one and didn't get to do the second one for the back door. Even with a whole can of spray paint, it wasn't completely covered. I'll have to go back and touch that up later. I think it's pretty though!

Mats before

Bright Pink Mat!

I also really dislike that our front door is hidden in a little entry vestibule, but that will hopefully be remedied in our next big renovation. For now I hope the nice bright color makes our entrance a little more inviting!

Colors in SF!

driving up the coast

Yet another exciting weekend! This time it was in San Francisco with all of my siblings! Last week and all of this week I've been in Port Hueneme, CA for training for the Navy. Nothing exciting, just classroom work about government contracts. It is super exciting though that I get to wear super cute business casual outfits. I could definitely get used to wearing stilettos to work everyday! Since I was going to be in California for the weekend between my 2 weeks of training, I decided to scoot on up to San Francisco to visit the fam. It just so happens that Lauren had mentioned before that she had signed up for the Color Run that weekend, so as soon as I saw when my training was going to be, I signed up too, and so did Kimberly! Saturday morning we all drove into SF to Candlestick park for the run. There was actually a run at 8am and then the one at 1pm which we were signed up for. The night before Kimberly and I got a little nervous that it was going to be a bit chilly for the run so we went out and picked up some long sleeve white tops. Turns out those were very much so not needed! In fact it was so warm and sunny out that all of us got a little extra tan color on our skin. The idea of the run is that it is a 5k in which every kilometer you get sprayed with a different color. You're supposed to wear as much white as you can so it shows the color even more. There were A LOT of people there, so actual running was a bit of a challenge, but we managed to zig zag through the crowd to get as much running in as possible. 

Pre Color Run 

Lauren's Team from Amyris...yes their team name is 'For Science!!!!' 

Getting bombed with yellow!

Lauren and Kimberly running through the blue!

Lauren's face took a color beating!

Finished! Lauren wins for most color!

Twins/Big Sisters! 

Kimberly and Me in the Yellow!

Colored!

Kimberly is pretty excited!

Sisters!

Lance and Lauren at the big dance after party!

Lance, Lauren and Kimberly having their own dance party!

Done Coloring!

After the run we headed back to Lauren's apartment in Emeryville to attempt to clean off of the color. It worked for the most part, but I think all of us were left with a few lasting memories of the run for the next few days! I definitely still have a splash of pink on my ankle that just won't wash off! Saturday night we headed back into the city to the Mission District to the Southern Pacific Brewing Co. It's actually an awesome place for large groups (which we had). It ended up being Lauren, Lance, Kimberly, Jason (for a few minutes before he had to head to a show), Jordan, Kristen and several of Lauren's friends. So much fun to spend a night with all of my siblings! The place had great super cheap beer too! I was shocked to only be charged $4 for a pint of beer in the city! We stayed there all night before picking up Jason, dropping off Lauren and Lance and heading back to Walnut Creek.

Family!

Sunday morning we headed back downtown for a little Dim Sum brunch! Unfortunately Jordan got called into work so he couldn't make it out to that outing. Sunday also happened to be Dad's 61st birthday! After brunch we headed back to Lauren's apartment to have a little happy birthday skype date with mom and dad. I hate that we're all so far away for days like that, but love technology that lets us act like we're all in the same place. Happy Birthday Padre!

Sunday afternoon I headed back down the 101 for another fun filled week of training. I'm so glad I got to make it up to SF to visit my siblings. I always love seeing what they're up to. I am so proud of all of them and their spouses for all the great things they're doing and the awesome lives they're making for themselves and I love being a part of it! Yay J K L P!

And it keeps going...

As if 2 races in one weekend wasn't exciting enough, the excitement has continued!! A week and a half ago Thursday night we had a little double date night to go see Les Miserables again! I knew it was coming back into town for a few weeks and was thinking about going again but I was totally sold when I got a travelzoo email with the tickets at like 70% off! Some other friends of ours have been wanting to go for a long time too, so we all decided to go that night. Again, it was completely awesome!!! I will never get tired of that show!

Friday night we had another night of excitement! After meeting some friends for drinks, Ryan and I headed over to the Paramount Theater to see Aziz Ansari. He's the little Indian comedian best known for his role on Parks and Rec. He is HILARIOUS! We bought the tickets as soon as they went on sale a loooong time ago, so we had been waiting for this night for a long time! So glad we went to see him!

After all that mid week, Saturday was the start of our official vacation!!! We hopped a plane bright and early in the morning for Atlanta. This whole trip started when some college friends decided to get together at the beach for the 4th of July. Since we'd have to fly through Atlanta anyway, we figured we'd go a few days early to visit with Ryan's family too! We spent Saturday through Wednesday morning hanging out with the family in Columbus.

Wednesday afternoon we met up with Laura, Liz and Andrew who were driving down to the beach from Atlanta so they gave us a ride the rest of the way there! And the party had begun! It was sooo good to see everyone together again! It didn't hurt either that we were heading to the beach for some fun in the sun. We made it down there around supper time just in time for a delicious meal cooked up ready for us! After food and a few minor explosions at the house, we headed down to the beach for the big show and some sparklers. Such a happy 4th of July!!

Thursday we had an amazing beach day! My skin was begging for some sunshine (with some sunscreen). We spent nearly the whole day at the beach. After that we all headed down the street for a night out for some drinks and seafood. The best part of the place was actually probably the 2 hour wait for the table. There was a bar on a deck in the back of the place to wait in and it was right on the beach. We sat there waiting for a table on a beautiful night on the beach!

Friday morning we woke up to an amazing thunder storm!! It never thunders in Washington. Our 'rain' is just a light drizzle, not even a downpour, so sometimes I miss the huge dump of water combined with cracks of lightening and thunder that I was used to growing up. I definitely got my fix Friday morning! It was awesome!

view out our window of the storm

After the storm, it was a beautiful day and we spent the rest of it at the beach again! I could definitely handle being a beach bum, it's so lovely! Once our skin was saturated with sun we headed back to the house and had a ridiculously large amount of food being cooked for hours. Our house was on a little lagoon off the ocean, and it was beautiful just hanging out on the dock and watching the sunsets. 

Being with a bunch of college friends, how could we not resort back to some good ole college games, so we had an awesome few hours of flip cup followed by a raving dance party at the house for the night. I love my friends! Always such a great time with them!!

Saturday was our last day at the beach, so we took full advantage of the yet again beautiful weather and soaked in some sun! We also managed a few intense games of beach bocce ball until it got to dark out to see anything anymore. We stayed up for a while hanging out with everyone one last night before we turned in to try to get a couple of hours of sleep. We had to get up bright and early at 330am to make it to the airport. Liz and Evelyn were gracious enough to drive out butts out to Pensacola to catch our flight. The reason we had to leave so early was so that I could make it back to Seattle in time to pack a new bag and head down to California for 2 weeks of training. More non-stop excitement and sunshine!

Such a great week of family and friends fun! I can't wait till we get to do it again, hopefully sooner than later!!! Thanks to Evelyn and Nathan for putting beach week together!!!