July Diary

This post has no recipe, it’s just a diary about our 4th of July weekend at Big Bear, right before the flooding last week, and my unexpected trip to Oceanside.

But before that, here is our new pet. Temporary pet. Tweety. Somebody found him/her (how could you tell?, I have to look for that) on Sunday at church and gave it to my daughter, so we decided to take care of him/her until is bigger and stronger so he/she can fly and find food. It is so cute, nice and shy, but not scared anymore, it loves to be held and takes its chances to fly a little bit in the house. And it tweets softly, not annoying at all, or at least yet, and it sleeps quietly throughout the night.

The weekend at the cabin in Big Bear was as wonderful and perfect as possible, and well beyond our dreams. And here is the link to Kathy and Tim's cabin listing, which we loooooooooved. First, we did not plan anything until the last minute because ....(way too may explanations would go here). Then in the last 7 days everything came together and the 10 of us, 8 adults and 2 kids made a big happy family. We made a list with what we need so we can cook and BBQ at the cabin, just to misplace it and lose it within half an hour. What can you say, we were watching the European soccer finale. But thank God our memory kind of serves us well, so we put the list together again. The hard part was to wait now for the 5 days to go by faster and then the 3 days at Big Bear to be longer than usual. We were so excited, we were talking on the phone every single day, then suddenly was Thursday night and my husband and my friend Lili were talking about how we should get up at 4 am to leave the house by 5 so we could beat the traffic. Yeap, right, my long weekend and you make me wake up at 4, even if it is because we are going to Big Bear this is not "kosher", how my Gabriel says. Although the alarm was set for 5, because we were chatting until 12 midnight and decided an hour doesn’t make too much of a difference, we actually got up at almost 6 and left the house after 7:30. And funny thing, there was noooo traffic whatsoever. Really none, which made it even more difficult to have Gabriel drive slower than 90miles/h. And, with the stop for gas and another one due to my childish stomach sickness, nausea and all, we made it to the top in less than two hours, which never happened before. (It was during that stop when I realized that I forgot to move from our car to Lili’s car the bag that held the knives and spices, especially the ones for the Romanian sausage/burgers or how you call Mititei in English, plates, BBQ sauce and ten other things which I was supposed to bring and none of the others had.) So everybody got to the cabin early, and we couldn’t wait to be 12 to go in. And when we went, what a beautiful surprise. Not that the pictures from Kathy did not show us how beautiful the cabin is, but it really was more than the pictures show. And the best surprise, the kitchen had everything we forgot, including a spice rack with what we needed, and everything else that we needed but didn't even think of.
So, we enjoyed ourselves for two days, cooked together, cleaned together, laughed together, watched the fireworks at the lake, loved the jacuzzi, the kids loved the swing and our neighbors' golden retrievers, played sharades, and the weekend came to an end too soon. Two photos only, as the rest were taken for my mom - I mean the three of us in about 30 different settings.

Then, last week, my dearest daughter, went with her friend, Tasha, and her grandmother, our friend, to Oceanside, to stay in a wonderful condo right at the beach. And I mean right at the beach, as there is only the bike lane between the house and the sand. We were supposed to go there before, but something came up every time, so this was Clara’s first time there and she couldn't wait. She had no problems before with going away without us and stay over night, especially with her friend Tasha, but this time turned out different. She left on Wednesday after lunch, and at 6 o’clock, my friend called really scared and ready to call 911 because Clara fainted, she was dizzy, rolling her eyes in her head and white as the wall. So, try not to freak out about 100 miles away, and help. And this was supposed to be a nice mini-vacation for her and for us. It turns out she got dizzy after being in the jacuzzi for about 10 minutes, but drinking some cold orange juice and taking a rest helped a lot. We were on stand by the whole evening to go pick her up, but she felt better and didn’t want to come back home. Next evening however, without feeling sick, she was home-sick and missed us sooooo much that she called asking for us to come and pick her up. So, what can you do, but get in the car at 8:30 pm and drive there. That's when my husband came with this wonderful idea - why not pack some things and stay with them there, and that’s what I did. He had to come back and rehearse for his Sunday audition, but I stayed and had a wonderful time until Saturday when we came back. And this worked for the best, because Tasha was crying badly that if Clara leaves she wants to go, too, and then I kept my friend company and had a very nice time together. I had a wonderful lobster corn chowder at Rockin' Baja Lobster in the Harbor, and a very nice Itallian dinner at Jay’s in Carlsbad. We shopped at the little stores in the Harbor and played at the beach, the girls went in the freezing cold water, we watched the surfers and ate ice cream, how could we not fall in love with the place? So, we’ll be going again in about a month. Maybe then I’ll take more or better pictures. Until then, here are some, including the ones with the gray pelicans.