Since I have been home, a lot has happened.
September: I came home just before my birthday on September 20th because it was time. My Au Pair gig in Barcelona was up, my grandmother was having her kidney removed / serious surgery for an 80 year old, and after 5 months in Europe I was ready to come back to my bed.
I said goodbye to my little Spanish girls and was on my way...
So I had a nice lunch at Plutos in Palo Alto with my dad on my Bday and he told me stories of my mom which was nice, then a family dinner...and let me tell you 22 is not that exciting. September and October seemed like a lot of commuting from Los Altos Hills to the hospital and my grandparents house. After a little longer than we expected my Grandmother Mary to be in the hospital, I drove her home with my grandfather in the back seat and she was on her way to recovery.
Here I am with my grandfather.
She is a very tough woman, very inspiring. She was out of commission for about three months and is now back to her board meetings at the Committee for Green Foothills and the Mid Peninsula Regional Open Space District saving our land!
October: Starting to get cold from a very warm summer in Europe and on the Mediterranean, I flew to Pittsburg, PA for my friend Katie Warner's wedding.
It was a very nice quiet and nontraditional beautiful ceremony at a little Inn downtown. She is a year or two older than me and met her husband Tim in College. Katie and I actually met working in the same town as interns for the Foundation for Sustainable Development in Nicaragua. 
We stayed in touch and I was honored to be at her wedding. I got to help her put the veil on and everything, it was great! The first wedding really of many to come for my good friends. There were great stories of sister-in-laws crying while drunk and ex-boyfriends saying now I quote "it should have been me" during the vows, oh and girlfriends of the ex-boyfriend drinking a little too much as well....and passing out....I should have taken more pictures. Katie is from Michigan and it was nice to meet people from that area and learn about their lives.
Halloween: I flew to Kansas for my cousin Samantha's Halloween party that she has every year at her appropriately scary and cobb webby lake house near Lawrence, Kansas (Where Kansas University is). That was definitely fun, since the last time I was out there was the 4th of July. My cousin is a grade school teacher and a lot of her friends were there, one lady being from Asia, she brought about 10 of her cute little international teaching students who just made the party. They had definitely never celebrated Halloween this way before, perhaps maybe not at all.
November: The 12th John turned 25...he was in the Ukraine (where he lives in Odessa with his gorgeous Ukranian girlfriend) and HE LOST HIS TRAVELING BENEFITS.
So now we know for sure that at 25 I will not be able to fly on United anymore, that is when out benefits from our mom expire. So I need to get every last trip in that I can.
Then the 26th was MJ's birthday and we celebrated Thanksgiving with my whole family at my Aunt's house in Redwood City. Here I am with Kit!
Earlier this month, I went with my aunt and Uncle to pick out a "Bailey look alike."
Bailey, my family's terrier mix was sadly hit by a car in ,front of our house August 18th while I was in Spain. :(
My aunt and uncle would always dog sit for us and really loved Bailey, so they wanted another one like him. So we went up to Sacramento to an Irish Terrier breeder and picked out a little boy and named him Darby. So Darby had his fist Thanksgiving with us. My friend Steph, from Jacksonhole, Wyoming, and who I have known since Freshman year at USF, did not have a place to go to Thanksgiving so I invited her to be with us and she fit right in!
December: Mary Ellen Middleton, MJ's mom, came to visit us the week before Christmas and it was a blast.
Mary Ellen and Callan are in Ireland here last summer.
I took her to the city for a shopping day (and also played Santa's helper and delivered presents since all my friends lives in the city) and we got our nails done, ate at Crepevine on Fillmore, shopped on Union street and really enjoyed ourselves...she spoils me, that's all I can say. Then we took a family trip to Yosemite for three days and stayed in little cabins and skiied at Badger Pass. It was very fun and cold! Yosemite is really beautiful and Callan is getting to be a good skiier! I tried snow shoeing for the first time with Mary Ellen and boy does she keep up! I hope to be as active as her when I am a little older!
Christmas was great with Callan, he gets so excited. I was excited too opening presents, especially since the night before I had a dream my parents bought me a new prius hybrid- my dream car! Though that did not happen...I don't have a care currently so sharing with my parents has been pretty hard but it won't be forever! MJ made a delectable breakfast for us Christmas morning, she made brown sugar french toast with so much butter and yummyness it was great.
New years was good too, but not like last year.
(Here is Deborah, Noemie, Me and our other good french friend Juliette)
Last year I flew to France and spent it with my good french friend Noemie, who I studied in DC with, and Cecily my good friend from USF who was studying in Egypt came and met us. So I was with two great friends drinking Champagne in Paris! This year we had game night with the Ferandos our neighbors and I was dog sitting at the time so it was low key.
January: Happy New Year! Crazy we are in 2010~
So I had 15 days to finish my grad school applications and by the 15th I was exhausted of writing and applying so....what would you do in this situation?
I flew to Hawaii! My good friend Jason from High School-
who was my first boyfriend in middle school and one of my oldest friends, well his mom and I have always been close and she recently moved to Hawaii and I went to visit her.
She lives in Waimanalo just East of Honolulu on the south side of the island and I had a fabulous time! We went snorkeling, swimming, sun bathing, eating, drinking, driving, shopping, reading...anwyays all the great things we did. Jane Burks is really an amazing woman and she is so young and beautiful at heart! So I stayed for four days and would go back in a heart beat!
February: For just about every President's day week we go skiing in Park City. It has been a tradition since we bought our Marriot time share and since John was in high school out here in 2003. So we are in snowy Park City wacthing the Olympics and having a blast. Skiing, sledding, snow showing, shopping, staying warm, and seeing everything we can see is on the agenda.
I also hope to see our food family friend, Lena. She and my brother moved out here after they graduated college, and she actually went to Germany to be an Au pair but ended up back here...yah Lena, you rock!
That's the long short of it....
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