Jun. 10, 2008 - Our whirlwind weekend trip!

Nikki entered the Letters from Literature contest (remember that from way back?) and she got in the top ten from California. The award ceremony was in San Jose and we thought about making it a family trip and stay up there a couple days, but she is still in school AND Dad had to work so we changed it to just us and Nikki driving up for one night and coming back the next day. The boys spent the night with Grandma Shelly.

We left at 10am on Saturday. On the way up we stopped for gas and lunch outside of Bakersfield. The place was called "Golden Bull Burgers" and it was so good! Nikki and I had pastrami sandwiches! And they had homemade baklava and it was delicious!

We stopped to stretch our legs and check out the California Aquaduct. Then Nikki had to go to the bathroom so we stopped at Casa De Fruta! That was awesome. We need to go back there for sure.

We spent the night in Morgan Hill outside of San Jose and had dinner at a BBQ place there. That was the best BBQ ever! And then Dan fell asleep in his clothes at 7:30 in the evening. He had been up all night the night before, working.

On Sunday we got dressed and headed to San Jose. We had breakfast at Flames next door to the Winchester Mystery House. We went over there and checked out the gardens. We wanted to save the inside tour for when the boys were with us. They would have freaked if we saw it without them!

Then we headed to the library where the cermony was to be held. It is the grandest public library I have ever seen! The ceremony was only about 45 minutes long. There were about 50 people there. Nikki didn't get first place, but I think top 10 is pretty awesome! She got a nice award to take home and a booklet with the winners and top ten's for each catagory in it. It was fun to be there. Dan was so proud of her.

After that, we headed right for home. It was 4pm when we got on the free way. We stopped for dinner along the way and got home at 10pm. Wow! What a drive!

The whole weekend was pretty much great. We got to spend "quality time" with Nikki and I think she enjoyed it too. Lots of talking between all of us and we didn't have to chase the boys or listen to them sing all their favorite songs over and over again. I think they would have been fine on the drive up, but the drive back would have had to been delayed if we had them with us. There needs to be sufficient time between drives when those two are in the car!