May is a time for play

I just can't seem to ever catch up despite my best efforts...

May

Mushrooms
It's like I can't make it a month or two without a random mushroom hunting trip. Found a few, it was exciting. I really need to look into more recipes to start using our stock pile of dried mushrooms.

Lighthouse
Did you know there was a "SUPER MOON" the first weekend of May? We did, and we took full advantage of it by going on a moonlit tour of the Point Sur lighthouse. It was pretty cool. I think lighthouses in general are pretty neat especially the history surrounding the structures and the keepers that lived there. I would highly recommend the lighthouse tour to anyone in the area, it's worth it.

Mother's Day
We went to my parent's house and spent the weekend with my Mom. We saw The Avengers and went out to dinner. Had a good time just talking and hanging out. We also got a whole family picture which hasn't happened in quite some time. It's not the best picture, but maybe we'll get another opportunity soon.

Garden
We haven't really been doing the garden thing as much as we did last year. But we have had a few things sprout this year. Our strawberry plants came back on their own as well as our garlic. AND, back a few months we had planted a few potatoes which had started sprouting and they actually grew into plants and produced new potatoes. Yum!

Goodbye Erica
One of my very best friends, who also happens to be a coworker is leaving Monterey for a job in Washington D.C.! Doesn't she know how FAR that is from here??? Needless to say I was/am distraught over her decision to leave and be closer to her family. Yes, it's selfish of me, but she's my family now too, she's practically been adopted into my family at holidays and random gatherings through the year. We will ALL miss her! We had a going away party at her apartment and at work.

Road Trip
One good thing (if I can be so bold to say there's a good thing) about Erica leaving, was we got to go on one awesome cross-country road trip! We covered 15 states in 9 days! I have never spent so much time in a car in my life! We didn't stop much but we certainly saw a lot. We both visited family along the way which was fun to see/meet relatives we haven't seen in a long time. We hit a few snow storms, went to a hot spring, saw Mount Rushmore, visited Notre Dame and a myriad of other places. The whole trip there were only three major casualties, my sunglasses snapped in half a couple days into it, I hit a bird while driving somewhere across Wyoming or Minnesota one of those states we just drove through and didn't really stop, and when we finally made it to Pennsylvania we were on the hunt for Amish when a construction truck decided to release some cargo and put a nice big chip in the windshield. I tried my first tri-tater in PA, it was good, pretty much a large triangular tater-tot. We took quite a few pictures, far too many to put here, but here's a smattering of my favorites.

In one of the grandest and sweetest/romantic gestures Brad has made during our marriage he flew across the country to meet me in DC and spent a couple days exploring the City. I'll leave those picture for the next post since that was technically June by then.