First official weekend in Cali

It's been so nice to have the sun always shining and my nose not running from the dreaded seasonal allergies when I wake up in the morning! This past weekend was awesome to say the least. Friday I went to my first Marine "Dine-In" with Bryan. It was held for his current 169 unit that will be deploying in late October. It's a formal event so as I mentioned before I got to get all dressed up :) Unfortunately, as my luck would have it, when I went to try my dress on that morning before we left for San Diego to make sure everything would look good together one last time...MY DRESS DIDN'T FIT!!! It fell straight to the floor (even with my extra padded push-up!) I was completely horrified. I had nothing else with me to wear that wasn't short or knee length. For the next couple hours I ran around the city of Fallbrook looking for a long, black, formal dress. Luckily I found one before noon and then had to go straight to my hair appointment.

We left home at 3 and with California traffic, we made it to San Diego (which is only 45 min away) a little after 5! The cocktail hour started at 6 so we didn't have much time to check in to our hotel, change, add final touches, then taxi over to the other hotel where it was held. Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to remember to bring with me a smaller purse to hold me camera and cellphone so I wasn't able to take any pictures at the event, but I did get a few before we left. I can't begin to explain to you how intimidating it was walking into a room filled with 350-400+ Marines all dressed in their blues. They ranked all the way from Privates to the head haunchos. I ended up talking to more than a couple of the Commanding Officers and Captains throughout the night and they were all surprisingly pretty laid back and very casual. I made a few new friends quickly at my table so that I had someone else to talk to during the night. It was definitely a night filled with laughs, tears, tradition, and drinking.....lots and lots of drinking!

The next day we left San Diego and came home to do some errands around town. It was a good day to just chill and relax. I got a little bit of homework done and did some planning for our upcoming "re-wedding". Sunday we had some friends over for dinner and I left the cooking up to one of Bryan's friend, John. He made us all amazing chicken curry cutlet with rice and french bread with melted cheese on the top and insides. It was so good I had to take a picture or two :P

So far the rest of this week has been pretty casual. Lots of homework and going to the beach and cooking. I'm really starting to come into my own with it (or so I hope). I will post more later on since this weekend we're going to the boat races in San Diego with some of Bryan's friends. That'll be interesting. I miss everyone from back home sooo much. Keep in touch!