Another way to stay connected

Hello everyone! A few of my coworkers have blogs and I realized this would be a great way to stay in touch through words and pictures. Hopefully, even for my technology impaired family members.

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season! So far we just did a 10 day trip to CA for Andrew's cousin's wedding and Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful trip, but much too quick. We put 1,400 miles on our rental car in less than 10 days! Our first couple days were spent in Del Mar for Shannon and Bryan's wedding, then we headed to Santa Maria for an evening. From there we spent the next night in Salinas, and traveled to Martinez the next day. On Tuesday we drove up to Sonoma to look at wedding venues and then met up with a great group of friends and family at my favorite, Chocolate Sushi in Sunnyvale for dinner. After dinner we were back in Salinas, and the next morning had 2 breakfasts, with 2 separate groups of friends. After that we headed back to Santa Maria where we stopped at my cousin Kara's and hung out with her and her kids for a short bit, then headed to the Vertrees where Andrew got a taste of Santa Maria BBQ (Vertree's style). Later that evening we eventually made it to sushi (notice a trend?) at Yanagi's in Santa Maria with some of my bestestess from that area. Thursday morning Andrew and I woke up and headed out to hang out with Dana and her new four legged man (Lane). The rest of the day was spent with family (thank goodness). On Friday we left Santa Maria at 6:30 a.m. for Disneyland! We spend Friday and Saturday at Disneyland, and then left Anaheim at 5:30 a.m on Sunday to head to San Diego to drop off our rental car and fly back to our cozy little apartment. After rushing to make it to San Diego in time for our early morning flight that flew to LAX, all flights were canceled and they ended up bussing us to LAX, where we had less than 30 minutes to check bags, go through security, and of course RUN all the way through the terminal to the very last and cornermost boarding gate. OH my! We made it, but not without a little bit of stress.

After returning back to VA, we had a few days of work and on Saturday morning I ran a 5k with one of my students. Girls on the run is an awesome organization. I wish it would have been around when I was a kid! After the morning jaunt in 20 degree freezing weather, Andrew and I headed down to Williamsburg for a couple of days with his family. On Sunday evening we watched a great fireworks display, had a fabulous dinner, and then drove home to start yet another week at the grind! Last weekend was our first weekend in Herndon in at least a month! We were both pretty wore out. I will update more as Christmas and New Years come along.