San Francisco

It's so fun when we know people that live other places because that means all we need is a plane ticket and money for food b/c house-crashing is free :). One of Michael's friends from engineering school is working on his PhD at University of California at Berkeley, so since memorial day gave us a long weekend, we decided to visit. The rest of the group of guys from the college friend group came with us. As you will see from the pictures, they are all Asian, and in that group, we are the only white people (no I'm not racist, its just a fact).

Berkeley is about 15 min outside of San Francisco (in case you didn't know- I didn't until I went there). An interesting fact about Berkeley is that its very hippy and people there are very against chain restaurants and stores. We did find one or 2 chain restaurants, but no chain stores at all; everything is mom and pop type places. Also, the architecture of the buildings and houses was very old and nothing looked the same. I forgot to take pictures, but I really liked the feel of the place. It kinda reminded me of the hyde park area of Austin.

Hanging out with that group is fun and interesting since they all went to college together and since they all have the same engineering brain. They are a fun group of guys to be around and are constantly joking. I'm pretty sure there were at least 5 experiments about random things we encountered planned and discussed throughout the weekend. Not kidding. One of them was centered around the fact that I didn't want to drink water out of a bottle they had from the car b/c it tasted like plastic to me. This prompted a tasting from everyone at the table as well as a glass bottle being obtained to compare the water. Also, during the ride back to Berkeley from surfing, I fell asleep from listening to Michael and Rehan have what they deem as an interesting conversation about math. Good. Times.

We got there very late on Friday night, so after everyone slept in, we went to a really popular pizza place there in Berkeley where they  make and serve only one type of pizza everyday. Its always vegetarian, and Rehan (the one who lives there) says its a communist business (I'm only kinda joking?) b/c there are no employees; everyone who works there is an equal partner. Also they make so much money from tuesday-saturday that they are closed every sunday and monday. It was very good pizza.

After pizza, we went on a hike b/c the weather was gorgeous and Berkeley has some great hills with hiking trails.

the group minus Liang

After hiking, the guys wanted to play football (they seem to think this is a fun thing to do every time they get together), so I sat and read while eating the fresh fruit we bought from a local produce stand on the side of the road :). 

We spent the rest of the day walking and eating seafood from pier 39 in San Francisco and eating a lot of ice cream from Ghirardelli square.  

the clam chowder was amazing

the closest we got to alcatraz b/c we forgot to buy tickets before we left and they were sold out :(

sea lions sun bathing

  

L-R: Lina, me, Michael, Michael Wan, Liang, Alex, Rehan, and Rehan's  friend from school Anthony joined us for the day

fountain in Ghirardelli Square

SO YUMMY

Sunday was of course the coldest day we were there since it was the day of surfing lessons. Thankfully we had wetsuits, but my fingers were literally blue when we were done. It was so fun and probably my favorite part of the trip. I felt like it was a successful adventure b/c I was able to get up on the board and actually surf a few times!

the surfers, Michael didn't want to go so he got to be the camera man

I think Liang is the one who is standing

Liang is on the left, I'm in the middle, Alex is in the back on the right, and the person standing on the right is some other random person from the class

So its kinda hard to see since its from so far away, but if you watch the middle of the screen, you see someone get up, surf for a little bit, then fall. That's me!! 

After surfing, we were cold and worn out, so we went to a fun seafood restaurant in half moon bay. After that, we drove back to Berkeley (the surfing place was about 45 min away), showered, and just kinda hung out around Rehan's place for the rest of the evening. We did go watch fireworks for a little bit that were going on in celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th anniversary. Pretty cool. 

On Monday we slept late (something that we did everyday), then went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge. Then to kill time until we had to go to the airport, we ate dim sum (chinese food) and got ice cream. We actually ate ice cream several times during the trip and there was much debate over which place had the best ice cream. I was just happy that I got to eat chocolate ice cream so many times :). 

We got back late on Monday night and were worn out from a busy weekend and a time change, but I'm so glad we got to go! Hopefully we will make it up there again before he finishes school :)

Kristen's Graduation

My baby sister graduated from high school on Friday. I cannot believe that she is about to go to college! I remember when she was born, and being so excited to finally have a sister. *tear*
All nostalgia aside, we had a ton of fun being home this weekend. We met up with Michael's old college roommate Bobby who just got back from a deployment in Kuwait. He is a chaplain in the army. His wife Kristin had a baby girl about 9 months ago who is stinking adorable. She was so pudgy and had the sweetest personality.

baby Belle

Friday night was the graduation, and since her class had only 41 people in it (joys of private school), it was short and sweet. Other than local family, my aunt Nina (dad's sister) was there and brought my Memaw with her.

me and Kristen with Aunt Nina

sibs

all ready to graduate!

all my family (plus hannah) at graduation :)

My parents hosted a graduation party up at their house Saturday afternoon. My dad grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and my mom had lots of fruits and veggies to go with it. Lots of family was there, and even Michael's sisters and parents came over for the party. It was really windy up on the hill where they live, but the weather was beautiful.

Jacob playing fetch with Gaius

all the cousins with Grandma (Jacob was not excited about taking pictures)

Michael and his sisters and nieces

awww

Saturday night we had a birthday dinner for all the Grysen May birthdays (Michael, his dad, and bro-in-law Ryan) up at Katie's house. Ryan grilled amazing steaks and there was more cake :).

Gaius hoping someone will drop some food

Pretty fun weekend!

Titus

Yesterday was a heartbreaking day for us. We had to put our sweet Titus puppy down. It seemed so sudden that he would be this sick when he is only 2 years old, but sometimes terrible things happen.

About a month or so ago, he had congestion and coughing for 4-5 days, so we finally took him into the vet and they diagnosed him with a sinus infection and gave him an antibiotic shot. After 3 days his fever actually went up instead of down, and that was a Friday night. The next morning, he started peeing blood so that freaked us out a little bit and we took him to the 24 hour vet (that I nicknamed the doggy hospital). They  kept him all weekend and did blood tests and an x-ray and couldn't really find much except for pneumonia and they decided that he probably had several small infections all throughout and sent him home with oral antibiotics and anti-fungals for several days. He was doing great after that weekend, he finished all his antibiotics, and we thought he was all better.

Then, around May 1st or second, he started having the congestion stuff again and was looking a little puny. We wanted to stay ahead of it this time and so we took him right in to the vet and they started antibiotics again. By Monday, we were a little worried because he wasn't getting better, but they said to give it another day or 2 then they could try another antibiotic. At this point, he had stopped eating food on Friday, and just wanted to lay around. He was running a fever, and we figured that he just felt terrible and that his body was trying to fight the infection until the antibiotics kicked in. So this just kept going on, so they switched him to another antibiotic on Tuesday afternoon (may 8). He was feeling really bad and just wanted to sleep all the time. He didn't want people food, treats, or any type of dog food. We were having to force him to take the antibiotic pills and that was not very much fun. We kept thinking that the antibiotic would kick in any day. Our vet told us that he probably needed to see a specialist to find out what was going on because they did not know why the antibiotics were not working. They thought he needed a few other tests. We called to make an appointment, but the next available was a week away. By this past Friday night, he still was running a fever (going on a week now) and still was refusing food, and was getting pretty weak. We decided to take him in to our vet Saturday morning for fluids and to see if they could give him some nutrition. We told them that the specialist couldn't see him for another week. They advised us to take him back to the doggy hospital for closer monitoring over the weekend (they noticed that his breathing wasn't normal),and said the hospital could run some tests and if he was there, the specialist would see him first thing Monday morning. That sounded like a good plan to us so we took him in. They gave him fluids and ran some blood and urine tests. His liver functions were elevated and they didn't know what that meant, but would let the specialist see it on Monday. Then Sunday morning, he started getting worse, his breathing was shallow and labored. They did a doppler and found a lot of free fluid in his abdomen and tested it. There were a lot of white blood cells in the fluid which led them to believe that there might be an abcess somewhere in his abdomen that ruptured. They called the specialist in to do an ultrasound to see if he could figure out what was going on. At this point, we thought they would be able to do surgery, fix him and then all would be good. But unfortunately, that was not the case. They found a lot of very swollen lymph nodes as well as a swollen and abnormal liver. It was one of 2 things: lymphoma or a systemic fungal infection. If it was lymphoma (cancer), the only option was chemo, and if it was the fungal infection, the only option was a 2-4 week hospital stay with pretty harsh anti-fungal treatment that only gave him a 30% chance of surviving. The only way to confirm either diagnosis would be to send a biopsy off and get results in 3-5 days.

We went in to see him after getting this news and he looked awful. The vet told us that she had seen a pretty quick decline over the afternoon, and that she didn't think he would make it for more than a couple of days even if we wanted to try to confirm a diagnosis and start treatment. He couldn't move at all and his breathing was very very labored. We felt like the only good option was to end his obvious suffering and put him down. They gave us some time to spend with him privately to say goodbye. It felt like the hardest thing I have ever had to do. We loved on him and cried a lot, then decided it was time to let him go. We didn't want our last memory of him to be after he was gone, so we didn't stay in the room while they put him down. A very sweet tech stayed in there with the doctor so he would have someone with him when it happened.

Needless to say, we are heartbroken. We loved that little puppy so so much, and miss him terribly. He was such a sweet dog and was so happy all the time. We always said he was "my" dog because he loved to cuddle with us. He knew exactly when we needed extra cuddles, and would just crawl up on the couch or bed and snuggle :).  He never was needy or forced his way in, just sat there looking at you with big puppy eyes that begged for a belly scratch; and when you did give him attention, you were rewarded with a wiggly butt and so much excitement. His face was so expressive, and when Gaius was trampling him during car rides he would give us this "look" of total annoyance that was so cute and we couldn't help but let him come sit in my lap up in the front seat. He loved going to the park and would just run and run and chase Gaius around everywhere. It was so adorable when he found a ball before Gaius did because he was so proud of himself and would carry it around just to tease him. I will always remember what he looked like when we called him to come back home from the park and he would just run over to us as fast as he could with his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging as fast as it could go.

There will be many more tears to shed and many more days to grieve, but we will heal over time. We don't know why this happened, but we do know that we will get through it and that God has a plan. We don't always understand why sad things happen, but we do trust that God loves us and will never give us more than we can handle.

Baby Shower- Palooza

I have soooo many friends who are pregnant right now! I am excited about all the babies, but I'm gonna need people to spread their due dates out a little bit please and thank you :).
This past month, I have helped out with and attended 4 baby showers! All these gifts and decorations have given me tons of great opportunities to practice my skills with my sewing machine. I also feel like I may have missed my calling as a quilter. I have had so much fun making baby quilts!
First up was Michelle's shower. I didn't get any good pictures from that shower, but I did make her a cool gift. I  bought 2 packages of baby washcloths from Target and made them sturdier by sewing fabric to the back of them. They came out super cute.

Next was Rachel's shower that I hosted here at my house. I made her some burpies by sewing thick fabric strips and ribbon to some old-fashioned cloth diapers. (At her other shower a few weeks ago I made her a baby quilt which you can see HERE). I forgot to take pictures of them, but I used some of the same fun fabric that I used to make the washcloths above. For the shower, I helped with decor and made a banner out of the giraffe fabric she used for her crib bumpers. I think it turned out pretty great. It was a little time consuming, but the process was easy. 

close up of the banner

SIDENOTE: I have come to the realization that sewing projects can be very time consuming. In my mind I think that a project is going to be a breeze and take like 2 hours, which in actuality turns into 2 days. Oh well, back to the shower...

So here's some more pictures of all the fun stuff from the shower:

Name banner that Rachel made for the nursery

Emily, me, Rachel, and Bonnie

The last shower of the season (ha!) was Emily's shower. I helped out with that shower as well and was in charge of making a diaper cake. I may have gone a little overboard with it (I made the baby shoes!), but I was really pleased with how it turned out. 

baby boy shoes, they have little blue airplane buttons on the sides :)

Since I had so much fun making a quilt for Rachel's baby, I wanted to make one for Emily as well. This one was a little bit harder since she is having a little boy. I think I went to the fabric store every day for almost a week trying to decide which fabrics would go together and be appropriate for a boy, but still be cute for a baby. I knew I had a winner when I found the baseball and puppy paws fabric (her husband is a huge red sox fan and they have a dog that they adore). 

Front of the quilt

Back of the quilt

close up of the edging- puppy paws!

Here's a few more from Emily's shower:

Bernoulli, the shower mascot :)

me with Julie, the proud aunt-to-be!

Whew! I am showered out! Can't wait to meet all these sweet babies!