Our too-quick Weekend

Although we have absolutely no pictures to show for our relaxing but rather ordinary weekend, here’s how it went down:

Friday after work we went to dinner at The Elephant Bar. Brad and I have never been there before, and it was really good! Brad decided on a shrimp dish (after inconspicuously scoping it out at the table next to us). I actually tried a bite, but didn’t ask for seconds.

After dinner we finally picked up an external hard drive for our computer. We have wanted to get one for about a year now… ever since our computer up and crashed last October and we lost everything. Well, 11 months later, we got one! With everything being digital now- including pictures- you lose all of your memories when your hard drive crashes. I’m so relieved to know that if the computer were to crash again, our pictures and everything else is still safe.

We started out Saturday with a trip to the gym… followed by a stop at the donut shop for Brad. He immediately negated all calories he had burnt at the gym, but didn’t seem to mind one bit.

In the afternoon we explored Lafayette, a small town about 10 minutes southwest of Walnut Creek. We drove through the city and it was so beautiful! All of the streets are so green, covered with trees and bushes, and the country-style houses are just incredible. We drove up a street called “Happy Valley” (no joke!) and ended up right next to the reservoir Brad wanted to find. He has already planned his trip out there to try the fishing.

Sunday was another great day! Brad taught his lesson and I bribed the kids to like me better by bringing Peanut Butter Kiss cookies. (I think my plan worked.) Afterwards our home teacher came over and he and Brad talked about fishing. Apparently this Saturday is “Free Fishing” day… no license or fees of any kind. According to Brad, “I’m going fishing- NO MATTER WHAT!” I’m excited that he has found another fishing buddy, because he’s been pretty lonely without Kyle and Brian since we moved. Hopefully they have a successful trip on Saturday!

That evening we had our next-door neighbors, the Andrews, over for some Korean food. They are in our ward and have an adorable little 2-year old named Emmy. We have really enjoyed getting to know them! Brad was so excited to cook the meal that he would hardly let me help! We had spicy soup, “beef and leaf”, and mandu… with kimchi, rice, and pork on the side. All in all- the meal was delicious! Good job Brad!!

Today Brad started his newest project with Protiviti. He will be working on it for at least the next two months, and guess what? It’s only 3 miles from our house, about 3 miles from my work, and he doesn’t have to work until 9 am each day… just like me! We are so excited for the 3 miles commute, instead of his usual 45 miles.

I’m already planning early morning gym excursions… and Brad is planning noontime lunch dates. It will be great!

Utah here we come...

Brad and I bought our tickets to Utah for Christmas!

December 24-January 1

We can hardly wait for our white Christmas with the Hardcastles! :)

Tough as Nails

I just wanted to give a little shout out to my younger brother Ross. He is 15 and has already been through a lot of trials in his life, the largest of which was being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease a year and a half ago. Crohn’s disease pretty much sucks. Your entire digestive tract attacks itself. It causes intense pain, cramping, weight loss, and some other symptoms that are not appropriate for such a public posting, but you get the idea.

Well, Ross is constantly in a battle with his body. I have been so impressed with how he has handled all of the changes that this disease has brought into his life: restricted diet, physical activity, etc. Last summer Brad and I were visiting my family and he pulled out his $25 dollar gift card to Jamba Juice and handed it to Brad. Jamba Juice was Ross’s favorite place to go. He had gotten the gift card for Christmas but was in the hospital only 2 weeks later beginning his battle with Crohn’s. He hadn’t even gotten to use the card, and now couldn’t because he wasn’t allowed to eat seeds or fruit. I decided this would be equivalent to me being diagnosed with a chocolate allergy and being given an entire bag of Snickers bars… and just giving them to someone else. Yeah… that wouldn't have happened. This has been Ross's entire attitude to the whole diagnosis: go with the flow and stay optimistic.

Anyways… Ross decided he wanted to run Cross Country when he entered high school. Bryant did the same thing- running for all 4 years he was at San Pasqual. (I don’t know where these brothers of mine get this desire to run… it must come from the male side of the family because it definitely skipped me!) Last year’s running season went well, but this years hasn’t gone as smoothly. Ross has been really frustrated with himself because he is missing practice a lot due to Crohn’s complications (called “flare ups”) and foot problems. He is obviously not doing well in the races either… in his own words “Even the fat kid is beating me.”

Well… long story short (okay, not so short) Ross went to get an x-ray of his foot today because its been 3 weeks and it isn’t feeling better. The x-rays came back and the verdict was…………..



.........



.........


TWO BROKEN bones in his left foot. (Not to mention an extremely tight Achilles tendon in his right foot which will require physical therapy!)




Brad says its okay that the fat kid beat you in the race.

BYU vs UCLA 59-0

Just wanted to give a shout out to our BYU Cougars... we wish we could have been there in person to witness this momentous win! Watching it on TV was almost just as good!

Max, Austin, Harvey, Dennis, Michael, and Bronco: you bring joy to our September-December. Thanks for the great performance!

Monterey, Pebble Beach, and Santa Cruz

For Labor Day weekend, and for a joint birthday getaway, Brad and I drove down Highway 1 to visit Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Pebble Beach. We left Saturday morning and took our time driving down beautiful Highway 1. We stopped at beaches and lighthouses along the way. In Santa Cruz we enjoyed the beautiful weather and boardwalk. We didn't ride any of the boardwalk rides, but just enjoyed watching other people :) We went to a Sacrament in Watsonville on Sunday morning, and enjoyed the unique dynamic of the friendly ward. Sunday afternoon was spent driving the 17-mile-drive through Pebble Beach, walking the streets of Carmel by the Sea, and visiting Cannery Row & Downtown Monterey. Obviously, we could have spent a couple days in each of these places, but the quick visit was still really nice. Everything was so amazing and I loved watching the beautiful sunsets over the water. Monday morning we went down to Sunset State Beach and just read and relaxed before we headed back to reality...

All in all, it was a fabulous weekend! Here are some pictures of the scenery:

One of the beaches on Highway 1


Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the back


On our late night candy run Brad discovered his long lost favorite candy of all-time: Shockers. We could have gone home at that moment and the trip would have been a success to him.


A beach on the 17-mile drive


Pretty scenery!


Still on the 17-mile drive


The Pebble Beach Golf Course... this was as close as we could get as there was a tournament that day. Darn!


The most sea lions I've ever seen! They were everywhere we looked!



It was a great weekend, that went way too fast! We are looking forward to visiting Monterey & Carmel again!

I will be getting a lot more of this now:

Sleep... glorious sleep!!!

Well... I got the call last night. After three days of teaching seminary, they decided... drumroll please... that my class was unnecessary. Yes, with only two (yes, two!) students in the class, they have decided to have them attend the earlier class that has twelve kids.

What does that mean for me? I am officially the shortest lived seminary teacher in the history of the world. A whopping three days is all I lasted. And to be honest, I have no idea how people can do much more than that!!

Brad and I spent Labor Day weekend in Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Pebble Beach. A new post and pictures for that will come tonight.

As for now, you can all stop feeling sorry for me, because my "term" is over!

Heaven Help Me...

This picture can only describe how I am feeling to an extent...

You know something is up when the 1st counselor in the Stake Presidency calls to meet you at your home on a Monday night...

As of next Wednesday I will no longer stay up past 10 pm

As of next Wednesday I will be up every morning by 5:30 am

As of next Wednesday I will be an early morning Seminary teacher

Like I said before... heaven help me!

Catch Up

We have been post-less for about three weeks now... with not much excitement to show for it. Here are the updates from the Hardcastle's:

1. Lauren went down to Escondido from the 7th-14th to help her mom recovery from shoulder surgery. While there she enjoyed many late nights watching the Olympic swimmers and gymnasts, and swimming with, playing with, and chauffeuring her siblings.

2. While Lauren was gone, Brad worked a lot. He also went to an Oakland A's game with his friend Bret and was asked to chaperone his first stake dance. Woohoo! When asked if he enjoyed himself at the dance, his response was: "I spent the whole night making sure people knew I was a chaperone and not one of the kids".

3. From the 5th-19th we did some house sitting for our Bishop. They have a beautiful pool in their backyard that has a picturesque view of the valley below. We spent a few evenings swimming, watching the sunset, and pretending we might someday live in such a lovely house.

4. Lauren started her job at the Law office on Wednesday the 20. So far so good... but it's only her 4th day. She is quickly learning the ropes and processes of preparing files for signing, sending deeds to the county recorder, acting as a witness to will signings, and mastering that darn 4-line phone.

5. Yesterday was Lauren's birthday and it was a great birthday weekend. It started off a little crumby, with her waking up on Friday to pink eye. Nevertheless, with eyedrops as her constant companion, she and Brad still had a wonderful evening. They went to dinner at a fun little Italian restaurant in downtwon Walnut Creek called Tomatina. Afterwards, they walked around downtown and finished the night with some frozen yogurt from The Yogurt Park. It was delicious! Saturday, they started off the day by walking precincts for Proposition 8. Afterwards, they went to the gym (woohoo!) and then had the missionaries over for dinner. Brad surprised Lauren with beautiful flowers and an electric massager for the foot and back massages that she so adores. They finished the night off with a movie and some Olympics.

Yesterday (Sunday) Lauren enjoyed many phone calls, texts, and well wishes for her birthday. Thank you to all who helped make it special. Brad’s birthday is on Friday, so to celebrate they are making the most of our three-day weekend and heading down south to Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Carmel. It should be lovely!

Well… not too exciting but that’s the update from here!

Rock City... and our city

Today Brad and I went to Mt Diablo State Park. The north entrance for the park is only about 5 minutes from our apt, so the short drive was nice! We drove to the summit and were able to see amazing views of our city (Concord) as well as Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill, Pleasanton, Danville, Antioch, Martinez, etc. Basically the entire Easy Bay! And supposedly a clear day you can see parts of Downtown and the Golden Gate Bridge... but unfortunately because of the fires, the air wasn't clear enough today. On our way out of the park, we drove to Rock City. This is this little area of rock formations that have grinding holes in them, originally made by Indian tribes. Those were neat to look at, but we had a lot more fun climbing the rocks! We took a lot of pictures because we climbed a lot of rocks, but when we looked at them after- they all looked the same! Oh well, we had a lot of fun there! Thanks Bret and Whitney for the tips!

Also, our weekend began on Friday with dinner and a temple session at the Oakland Temple with Bret and Whitney. The food was delicious, the company was great, and the temple, as always, was amazing. Here's us outside the beautiful Oakland temple:

A wedding and a mission

So since I have some time on my hands this afternoon, because I'm not frantically applying for jobs or running to temp agencies (Thank you new job!) I decided to play catch up. There were some big events in both the Hardcastle and Urry families in July. We had a wedding, a move, a mission... well that's it but those are pretty BIG!!

Thursday July 11 Chris and Angela were sealed in the Bountiful LDS temple. The next night was their reception and everything turned out beautiful. I can't think of anything that went wrong and everyone had a great time. We are so proud of them and excited for us to do married sibling things now... well except for that whole 12 hour difference. Oh well- I guess we'll just have to wait until Christmas! The only thing I wish we would have done was get more pictures, but we were busy running around the ENTIRE reception. I had 4 blisters to prove it! The ones we got turned out good though. Here's a couple:


Coming out of the temple


All of us before the reception... Angela is wearing a traditional Korean celebration dress. It's called a Ham-bok (guaranteed I spelt that wrong!)


Brad and Spenc


Us

Like I said, we didn't get many pictures but it was a great wedding!

The next day (Saturday the 12) was the second big event of the month: our move to California... but we've already blogged about that one ;)

Finally, the mission. My brother Bryant entered the MTC yesterday as he begins his mission to serve in the Columbia, South Carolina Spanish Speaking mission. He was so ready and excited to serve. My entire family (sans Brad and I) accompanied him to the MTC yesterday and I get word that it was a very special day. Brad and I went down to Escondido almost 2 weeks ago for his farewell and to spend time with the family. Here are a few pictures from that adventure:


All of us after our temple trip. Ross did Baptisms and the rest of us did a session.


Us at the temple


Saturday evening Brad and I ventured to the Wild Animal Park with the three little ones! It was all fun, but of course everyone's favorite part: the bubble show!!


It was sooo hot, so we let Luke and Taryn play in this water area... let's just say Taryn had no problem getting wet. In fact, when I told her it was time to leave, she stuck her shirt OVER a spicket and then stuck her head in it. Now she was twice as wet as 10 seconds before, but was ready to go!


Feeding the birds

Bryant gave a wonderful talk and we had a great time with all the family that came over afterwards. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures! Not even of the missionary! Oh well- these will have to suffice:




This was three years ago, but he basically looks the same ;) Okay not really...


Good luck Elder Urry- we love you!!!