Beautiful Sacramento Day

We had a beautiful day here today. It did rain pretty heavily during the early morning hours and it was cool and cloudy when I got up. The sun soon came out, the temperature was probably in the low 80's.


We drove out to Chevy's on the River for lunch today. Surprisely we got seated right away. There were people waiting for tables on the back porch. The inside of the restaurant was pretty empty. I had the same thing I had the last time we were there...carnitas enchiladas with green tomatillo sauce. We also got the gucamole that they make tableside. We asked that it be made without any spices so I could eat it and it was really good.


After we left there we drove up the River Road for a ways. We had to turn off because there was road construction up ahead and the road was closed. Driving back east, there were huge thunder clouds towards the mountains. The paper this morning said there might be snow about 8000 feet; the clouds didn't look like snow clouds.


I have two card swaps that are due and so I've been working on them. They are both done now and I need to get them in the mail tomorrow. I haven't taken pictures yet, they'll be on my card blog tomorrow. Organizing the craft closet is finished. There are a few things I need to clean up in the dining room.


It seems impossible that September is here already. The days and weeks just fly by. Soon we'll be talking about Christmas.


Have a great week!!

Bacon & Tomato Pasta

I follow a food blog called "Eat At Home" http://eatathomecooks.com. The blogger has some really interesting recipes and they all look really easy. I decided to try one of her recipes tonight. It doesn't look very appetizing because I forgot to get a couple of items. Here's the recipe:
1 lb pasta (I used penne since that is what she used).
2T butter and 2T olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped. (I used a small one)
2 cloves garlic, minced. (I didn't have any)
1/2 c white wine. (I used white cooking wine)
1 1/2 c half & half
1 1/2 c parmesan cheese, shredded or grated
salt & pepper
bacon, cooked and diced. (I used about 5 strips that I sliced up first then cooked it. I set it aside while I started the sauce).
1 can diced tomatoes, drained
fresh basil leaves, chopped. (I forgot to get some)


Boil pasta.
Melt butter and olive oil together.
Add the onion & garlic. Cook until onion is tender
Add 1/2 c wine, cook a minute or two
Add half & half. Stir everything together briskly
Stir in cheese until melted
Season with salt & pepper
Toss in bacon and drained tomatoes

Drain pasta then mix it with sauce. I put the pasta back in the pot after I drained it and poured the sauce over the pasta. Serve with extra parmesan.


It would have been a lot tastier with the garlic and fresh basil leaves. I don't know if there is a difference between cooking wine and regular wine.


She has some other recipes on there I want to try. Oh, she usually takes a picture of the ingredients she is using in her meals. It is quite obvious she shops at WalMart. :)

Triple Digits

We have had a really nice summer with a mixture of high temps and low temps. Last Saturday I don't think it reached 80 degrees. It was cool, breezy and cloudy. The weather service said there was a high pressure pushing into the area and we'd be experiencing some triple digits. They also said Tuesday would probably be the hottest.


Well, probably won't know what the official temperature was for today until tomorrow. I left the house about 11am to go to WalMart and then Bel Air (the grocery store I shop at) and it was about 81 degrees according to the temp reading in the van. By the time I left Bel Air at about 12:20pm, it was up in the 90's. I had to make several trips into the house with my purchases and was about to "melt" by the time I got done...about 10 minutes to do it.


After I had been home for a while, I looked at the temperature gauge we have outside and it said "110". Oh, my goodness! That is totally unreal. The temperature gauge is on the side of our shed that is covered by the roof of the carport. It is out of the sun, however there is no way of knowing just how accurate the gauge is really.


I looked at it a little after 6 and it was 103 and then down to under 100 when I was cleaning up in the kitchen. This is suppose to be a short lived heat wave...its suppose to be cool again by the weekend. Usually August in the Sacramento Valley is unbearable, so we've been very fortunate with the weather we've had this summer.


Made more progress on the craft closet today so that's a good thing. Hope you were able to be cool in your "neck of the woods". :)

Lunch Saturday with Work Friends

Hi everyone! I know...I've been MIA again. :)


Yesterday I got together with some friends that I worked with at the Juvenile Courthouse. We had gotten together a few months ago. There was Sherri, Rhonda P. and Alena. They work in the Delinquency unit where I worked. Sherri brought her one and a half year old granddaughter she was babysitting. Little Sora was so good. We hardly knew she was there. Rhonda D is a court clerk and she just got reassigned a couple of months ago to the Dependency unit. So she's at a different courthouse now. Darlene, our former supervisor, now retired came; Winston worked in the file room, he's retired now also. Then Monica came. She left juvie a week before I retired and is now a correctional officer assigned to one of the prisons in Vacaville. It was good to see her. We were cubicle neighbors in our old building. I haven't seen her since she left so we are going to try and get together on one of her days off and catch up.


We met at The Elephant Bar restaurant. www.elephantbar.com. Gerry and I eat here often. There are two locations in Sacramento, we usually go to the one in Citrus Heights. We met at the one across from Arden Fair Mall. They have a nice variety of meals and everything is so good. Because Gerry and I are old folks we have a Safari card which gives us 20% off on our meals.


I, of course, forgot to take pictures. I was too busy yakking and completely forgot about it. I had my camera with me too. Oh well, maybe next time.


Also, weatherwise, yesterday was a gorgeous day. Cool, breezy and some clouds. Today (Sunday) was nice too. I did turn the AC on about 6pm for about an hour and a half. My craft room got pretty warm...soon as the sun went down, I turned it off. We drove out to Roseville today to eat lunch at Arigato's. Gerry had sushi and I had a bento box. I brought some of my food home and ate it for a snack a little bit ago. All the rolls are 50% off and they are ok, nothing special. The bento boxes are ok too. They have another restaurant in Sacramento, it was the first one then the Roseville store was opened about two years ago. Both places are always busy.


We've enjoyed some nice weather this summer...the weather people did say that this next week is going to be up close to the 100's. It has to happen some time, I guess.


I am still working on organizing my craft closet. Last week we emptied everything out of it and Gerry put together a wire shelving unit for me. I'm going through everything and trying to organize it all better, also getting rid of stuff I don't use or don't want. I have a tub started with "give-away" stuff. Some of my stuff like some of my Stampin' Up stamp sets I'm going to try and sell. Hopefully when I'm done, it will be easier to find things. At least that is the plan.

Fun Day on Saturday

I had a fun day yesterday, Saturday. My stamp group had a Shoebox Card Swap. There were 8 ladies, the regulars. We made some awesome cards. I need to take pictures and then will have them up on my card blog.


Instead of having the swap at someone's home with a potluck lunch, we met at a Round Table Pizza Parlour over in Fair Oaks. My oldest step-daughter has her girls' birthday parties there. They actually have 2 party sections...we were going to use the bigger of the two then decided since there were 8 of us, we'd use the smaller area. It was quite nice. We had lots of room to spread out. Some of us had lunch there too which is probably what Round Table would like to have people do if they are using their space for a function. The lady that was hosting had to leave to go to her niece's birthday party. She was going to come back so 4 of us sat around and gabbed until she came back. We had the area until 3pm and it was about 2:30pm when we left.


We are probably going to have our swaps there at that Round Table. Although one of the ladies suggested having one at a Round Table in Elk Grove then we could go shopping at Stampers Corner, a stamp store, afterwards. So we'll consider that. We'd like to keep our group small although we have about 30 or so ladies on our contact list. And we've had some inquiries about joining.


Gerry went to men's breakfast in the morning then after I left, he went out for a ride. After he got home and he rested for awhile, we drove down to the Food Festival at the Sacramento Buddist Church in Sacramento. They are holding their annual festival this weekend; they've been doing this for 64 years. We hadn't been for several years. One of my friends always works the festival and she mentioned it a week or so ago. So I wanted to go. I thought if we went in the early evening it wouldn't be too bad. Oh mercy, was I ever wrong. It was crowded, the food lines were so long and the parking was horrendous. It took us a few minutes to find seats and then Gerry went to stand in line. He got us some teriyaki beef sticks, chow mein, rice, sliced cucumbers and the chopped up cabbage. I can't think of what those are called...so bad. The line for tempura and teriyaki chicken were so long and he didn't want to stand in them. It was fine...we had plenty to eat. After we ate, we got some bottled water from the hot dog stand and left. I'm surprised at myself that I stayed that long, my claustrophia can really get the best of me sometimes. I just cannot stand crowds and feelings of being trapped. Gerry is claustrophic too, however he handles it better than me in some situations. Gerry told me there was a lady standing in front of him that passed out. The friends that were with her helped get her up and took her to first aid.


The weather had turned cool so that was a good thing. It would have been worse during the day, I think.

A Dozen Red Roses & A PGR Event

On Tuesdays Gerry works at Carmichael Cycles. Evidently it was very slow so he left at noon and came home. He surprised me with this lovely bouquet of red roses, my favorite flower. I had forgotten and was reminded when I read posts that he had put on Facebook of a special day for us.
On Sunday, August 10, 1980, a lady at Arden Nazarene Church introduced me to Gerry. So today was that 30 year anniversary. We had a very short courtship...we were engaged on September 1st and married on November 1st.


The roses are beautiful...the camera made them look orangey.


PGR EVENT ON SATURDAY, August 7th.
Two organizations, Honor The Fallen Foundation and Never Forget Our Fallen with help from the Davis Rotary Club had a PGR Appreciation BBQ "to recognize the outstanding service and dedication of the Patriot Guard Riders for their support of military families of fallen heroes." It was quite an event. Also invited were Gold Star Mothers, Blue Star Mothers and others. The PGR came from all over. The lineup of motorcycles was awesome and it was looking at a sea of leather. Here are just a few pictures that I took:

Gerry is in this group.

There was a Marine Corp Honor Guard there.

Gerry is the 4th one from the right.

They had tri-tip sandwiches, tossed green salad and beans for lunch. The lunch was free to the PGR...there was a small fee for everyone else there. The event was held in the parking lot between a winery and flower shop just off of the I-80 freeway.

Bernice Kealoha Hulihe'e Chung-Hoon

My mother, Bernice Kealoha Hulihe'e Chung-Hoon, was born on August 8, 1914 in Eleele, Kauai. She was the eldest of six children. Her siblings all preceeded her in death. One brother, Edwin is the last surviving brother. She was the mother of six children, Edwin Ernest, Puanani Rowena, Violet-Elizabeth, Ernestine Kealoha, Agnes Naomi Piilani and Samuel. She was also step-mother to six children, Ernest, Marie, Viola, Harriet, Ethelwynne and Edmund-Paul. She enjoyed 15 grandchildren, step-grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.


Besides raising her children, she worked as a seamstress. She and a cousin (Auntie Lou) had a dressmaking shop in Waikiki for several years; she and her sister, Elizabeth (Eli) had a shop in the International Market Place in Waikiki making caftans out of beautiful fabrics. She also had many customers who would visit Hawaii in the winter time and would contact her to make items of clothing for them. She made a lot of our clothing as we grew up. I have fond memories of the many outfits she made for me, including my wedding dress when I married the first time and a beautiful ensemble she made that I wore on the plane coming to California in 1962. It was a beautiful powder blue light wool dress, completely lined with a matching coat that was also completely lined. I still have my wedding dress, for no other reason than the fact my mother made it for me. When I decided to start sewing, I would call her with numerous questions, including how to sew a zipper on a velvet skirt I was making. She told me to use tissue paper and it worked.


This picture of she and I was taken at a hotel in Waikiki in August 1994. I had gone home to surprise her and join in the celebration of her 80th birthday. She was an active member of the local Christian Women's Fellowship and this was at their monthly luncheon. Someone had given her the double ginger lei and she gave it to me to wear. The fragrance of the lei was so beautiful! As you can see, my mother was short at 4' 8". I, at 4' 11" towered over her. :) My mother made all her dresses and dressed very well. Over the years, people who knew my mother have said to me that I look like her. I probably do look like her in some ways. I definitely have many of her personality traits...some good...some not so good. :)


My mother loved the Lord. Her Bible was her constant companion. I have her first Bible and it is a treasure trove of her thoughts as she read the scriptures. Our first Nazarene pastor told me she was like a sponge just wanting to soak it all in. She was a Sunday School teacher and Missionary President for many years in her local Nazarene church. Nazarenes on the Hawaii District knew who "Mrs. Chung-Hoon" was...she made many friends.


She died on April 20, 2002 at 87 years of age and today would have celebrated her 96th birthday. I think of her often. Happy Birthday, Momma!!