Fireworks and Stargazing!

My Dad came in to town over the 4th of July weekend and we all had fun playing games, watching shows and of course doing fireworks. These are the pictures from Saturday, the 3rd of July (we celebrated on Saturday here in Utah because Sunday the 4th is church day)

Ramin, Chris and me on the front porch holding our fun super sparklers :P

Ramin and Chris look on at their handiwork - we had a lot of little fireworks to blow up in the street

Setting up more for more explosions

Chris was proud of this one, I can't remember the name of it but it was weird - just look at how weird it looks!

Chris is helping Dad and me light our sparklers - my face is kinda crazy here!

Wooohooo we had success!  ...and lots of smoke

We used most of our sparklers to flush out the ever growing ant pile near the mouth of our garage

Chris and Ramin unpack more fireworks as Dad steadies his American Flag!

So that was our fun filled 3rd of July! For the actual 4th of July we all headed out to Skull Valley in the middle of nowhere near the Dugway Proving Grounds. This was a trip Chris and I had wanted to take for a long time as we remembered a similar trip Dad took us on when we were little. He packed us in the car along with his telescope, we picked up some KFC and headed to the middle of nowhere. This time, Chris had his own huge telescope and Dad would be guiding us from his memory on the trip (from almost 20 years ago!).

We packed up our truck with blankets, drinks and other supplies, including the telescope. We headed over to Tooele and ate some KFC of course. From there we drove across the mountains into Skull Valley. We looked for good places to pull off and found a perfect place! Next to a huge rock/cement creation.  We spent a good 3-4 hours out there until it got really dark and we observed all sorts of planets, stars and galaxies with the telescope. We had lots of fun and plan to do it again.

Don't mind that last picture, Chris and Ramin always so that silliness kind of thing :)

We had a great trip with Dad, I always love when he comes out. We may end up taking another trip to Phoenix around November but we're not sure just yet how things will turn out.

San Jose / San Francisco / Sonoma

Wow I can't believe it's been a full month since I posted anything! I'm so sorry about that. I'm working really hard to try and have some sort of a work/school and life balance. It's hard to do these days. I'm still constantly stressed out but I do see some light at the end of the tunnel and that makes things better.  Back in mid-June Ramin and I took a trip to San Jose as he had some business to attend at eBay headquarters. I decided to tag along so we could go to the Nascar race in Sonoma and also so we could do some sight seeing in San Francisco. Here are the highlights from the trip:

Golf

Ramin loves golfing. And I actually like it too. I didn't bring my clubs because we already had lots of luggage, but I did tag along with Ramin to two really nice courses. One was called Hiddenbrook and it was tucked away in the coolest neighborhood with a brook running through it of course. These pictures are of Ramin at the course - isn't it pretty? I'd totally love to live in a neighborhood like this!

This next course was in the coastal community of Pacific Grove. I loved THIS place even more than Hiddenbrook because of the small town/victorian feel of this place! The course overlooks the pacific ocean of course and it's set up like an old fashioned english golf course complete with a lighthouse! The weather wasn't so great that day but it added to the atmosphere of the entire place which was sort of old and spooky!

The Race

One of the major highlights and reasons for our trip was going to the Nascar race! We had already purchased tickets but when Ramin talked with his San Jose co-workers he found out that the company had already received SUITE tickets to the race - and I'm not talkin just any old suite - I'm talking about the Hendrick Motorsports suite!! This is the race team of Jimmie Johnson AND Jeff Gordon! By that time all of the main Sunday race tickets were taken, but we still were able to get suite tickets to the Friday activities. So on Friday we went up to the track and watched Practice and Qualifying. When Sunday came we made the hour long drive back to the track only to realize we'd left our tickets at the hotel!!!!  We also had purchased special tickets to have a Q&A session with Jeff Gordon (Ramin's favorite driver)...but we spent too much time finding parking and going to Will Call to have our tickets re-printed that we missed the session. But, all in all we did enjoy the Sunday race and we loved the track itself. BTW - my drive, Jimmie Johnson #48, ended up winning the race ;)

Winchester Mystery House

How convenient that one of the places I've always wanted to visit was literally a 10 minute drive from our hotel in San Jose!  If you don't know what the Winchester Mystery House is, just look it up online, they have a great informational website. Believe me when I say that I love, love, love walking around inside old Victorian houses and this was no exception. While it wasn't exactly what I had expected, it was cool and I think Ramin even enjoyed the tour as well.  We couldn't take pictures inside otherwise I'd have a lot more ;)

Alcatraz

The other must-do item for me on our trip was to visit Alcatraz. What an AWESOME experience. From the boat ride over to the cool audio-tour, this really was well worth the fee and time it took to visit! Seriously, if you're ever in San Francisco, you really have to visit Alcatraz and see what the history is all about. When you're on the island it's so weird to think that the island is just out there in the middle of the bay, it's so close yet it feels so isolated at the same time. By the way, it was insanely windy, which is evident by my crazy hair in all of the pictures!

San Francisco

So the day we toured Alcatraz was also the day we toured San Francisco. One of Ramin's friends from work recently moved to San Francisco and was kind enough to show us the major sites and drive us around. We visited all of the staples ;)

Diamond Heights, Chinatown, Lombard Street, Pier 39 and of course the Golden Gate Bridge