Cruisin'...

Mid-January, Robert and I took off for Miami for a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. We had a blast! We arrived in Florida early the morning of the 13th and spent the day tooling around Miami and took a taxi down to South Beach for lunch. South Beach looked like an upscale version of Venice Beach - lots of street vendors and performers with a TON of upscale shops and restaurants. We boarded the Carnival Valor the next morning and headed out. We arrived the next morning in Nassau, Bahamas where we went on (and actually piloted!) one of the Americas Cup racing boats. That was SO much fun! Our next stop was in St. Thomas. We took a ferry over to St. John and spent the day at the beach. The sand there is so incredibly soft (like walking in talcum powder!) and the water is a gorgeous turquoise color. After a day at sea, we went to our final stop in St. Martin, where we went scuba diving. The water was warm and clear. We did a 40 foot dive to a shipwreck where we saw lots of sea life and artifacts. We then had two days at sea as we headed back to Miami. They had two "formal" nights for dinner (the food on the ship was amazing!) so we got dressed up and had our picture taken. Not that we do a great deal of hanging around petal-strewn pianos with Robert drinking martinis and me smelling roses but... what the heck... we got the picture anyway!
We arrived the morning of the 21st, rented a car and drove to Hollywood, Florida to have lunch with some new friends we had met on the cruise and then went to Ft. Lauderdale where we took a water taxi past the most incredible mansions on the waterway and went into the shopping district. Then it was back to the airport to head home. :-(

Another One Bites the Dust

Well, here we are at the end of another year. Tough to believe!! Fortunately this has been a year of good happenings with good friends.

To recap...we started out last January celebrating Robert’s big 5-0 birthday with a bash at the 94^th Aero Squadron restaurant in Van Nuys. It was quite the shin-dig! He had friends there whom he has known since kindergarten!

In March, we got away for a little bit of local skiing with my sister, Toni; nieces, Kathleen and Kimberly; and friends Genine and Bill and their daughters, Breana and Serena. The younger ones really showed up all of us old folks! Darn them and that lower center of gravity (at least that is the story we were sticking with!). We also got away for a weekend down in Mexico to visit our friends Robert and Irene, who are real estate developers for an incredible housing project right on the ocean in Ensenada. Were we ever surprised how Ensenada has changed now that Mexico has changed its regulations regarding American-owned property! Quite gorgeous and extremely affordable.

In April we caught a Billy Joel concert with friends Beth and Tim at the Staples Center. Thanks to Beth’s cousin, Peter, who works with various concert venues, we were able to score some incredible seats down on the floor for the show. GREAT concert!! Also this month we took a Ballroom Dance class. We had more fun – and learned rumba, waltz, swing, and salsa. Of course can we remember all the steps now?? Time for a refresher! I also got to visit with friends Michael and Stephanie and their twins, Harper and Caden, when they were out here from North Carolina. It was so great to see them again.

May found us taking another long weekend and heading back to Mexico with Robert and Irene for a bit of furniture shopping as they decorated the home they are renting down there – and also feasting on fish and steak tacos. We loved the looks the four of us got strolling through Mexico because, guaranteed, we were the four tallest people in town. At “only” 5’11”, I was the short one of the group!

For the last several years, Toni and I have participated in the Revlon Run/Walk, a fundraiser for cures for Women’s Cancers. Every year we are fortunate enough to be joined by various friends and family members. This year, we were joined not only by a few two-legged supporters, but also by our four-legged family members. Toni, Kathleen and Kimberly brought their two Labradors, Kovu and Angus, and Robert and I brought Robert’s two Labs, Magic and Milo (who have adopted me as their “mom”). We dubbed ourselves “Team Lab” and away we went. Between the bathroom pit stops for all the dogs and the time outs for most of the other attendees to pet our gaggle of canines, the walk took quite a while to complete but we had a great time and were glad to be able to contribute to such a worthy cause.

At the beginning of summer, we took another long weekend away – this time to Laughlin, Nevada with Robert’s daughter, Jennifer, and her husband, Scott. We ventured out to see the London Bridge at Lake Havasu and then, as the temperature rose up to 118 degrees, we cooled off by renting jet skis and riding up and down the lake.

I had another weekend get away with Jennifer the next month as the two of us took off to a scrapbooking event Oxnard. Jenni and I are both into making creative photo albums and we really loved having so much time to get lots of pages done. (That was when we weren’t sitting in the hotel’s hospitality suite, eating munchies and working out all the world’s problems!) Also in July, I had my birthday (the 25th anniversary of my 21st birthday!) and Robert took me out for a lovely dinner at the Magic Castle (for the few of you who may not know, Robert is a 29-year magician member of the Castle and loves to perform there).

I began the Fall with coordinating a wedding at the Almonsor Court in Alhambra. My wedding coordination company, Perfect Beginnings (which I originally started with my friend Beth), hit its 20 year anniversary in September! So, if you know anyone getting married, have them give me a call…

Speaking of anniversaries, I began my 17^th year at USC in October. Also in October, Robert and I joined Toni, Kathleen, Kimberly and their dog, Angus, bright and early one morning to do a fundraising walk at Disneyland for the Children’s Hospital of Orange County. We walked with the Guide Dogs of America group (Toni and her family are puppy raisers for the GDA). Then I rounded out the month by taking a Latin Dance class with my niece, Kathleen. We now meringue, cha-cha, cumbia and salsa with the best of them! For the last class, we went to this great Latin dance club in Studio City called Mama Juana’s and just danced like crazy!

To wrap up the year, Robert and I bought a Christmas tree... at 11pm on Christmas Eve! There had just been so much going on in December that suddenly we found ourselves in the week before Christmas with no tree. We looked around but everything we found was either quite dead or outrageously expensive so, sadly, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we were going to be tree-less this year. But then, as we we driving home from my aunt and uncle's house on Christmas Eve, we saw it! Off the freeway, like a beacon in the night, was a lone tree lot still open at 11pm. We pulled into the lot and made our way - in an evening gown and tuxedo, mind you - through the lot. And there was our tree! So after a bit of maneuvering, we managed to get a good portion of the tree into the trunk, tied it down and took it home. We had a grand time decorating it Christmas Day and then left it up until the end of January!

And, as is tradition, we spent New Year's Eve at Toni's house with various friends and family eating, drinking and playing great board games and lots of Poker!! Now off we go into 2007! See you all there!