The Bare Necessities

Last weekend Bryan and I decided to take advantage of the three day weekend

and visit his parents in Sacramento. I had never been to Sacramento before and I was 

SUPER excited to see Bryan's house, since he's seen mine on several occasions

(mostly I was excited to see all of his embarrassing photos... mission accomplished!).

Since his parents don't get to see him very often, I thought this weekend 

would be the perfect opportunity to accomplish goal 

#088: Unplug for an entire weekend.

You see, having a blackberry is both a blessing and a curse. 

I am so addicted to being connected to everything whenever/wherever I am.

I am also permanently attached to my laptop... 

I use it for school, to save pictures, to read all of my food blogs (hehe), to 

stay connected with friends...Seriously, it is my lifeline.

I have also been obsessed with my iPod recently -- I cannot go to bed without it

and I literally cannot stand listening to the radio (and the commercials!) for more than 10 minutes. 

This was the perfect weekend to unplug because I did not want to subtract from my

visit with his parents and I also did not want to waste any of the precious time we had there.

But let me tell you, a weekend without   

personal electronics is harder than it sounds! 

First of all, HELLO! I bake like all the time! 

Before we left, I wanted to make a quiche for dinner and I had the most

perffeccttt mushroom-spinach-bacon quiche recipe saved on my computer

that I was not allowed to access! So of course I had Bryan print it out for me. 

Does that make me a cheater? Maybe...

And on Sunday morning I wanted to make breakfast for Bryan's parents to thank them

for being such great hosts. The plan: lemon-blueberry-ricotta pancakes. 

So of course I forced Bryan to search for recipes and find the best one. 

Hehe. Sorry Bryan. Thanks for being my slave

(role reversal?).

The pancakes turned out okayyy. It is just kinda weird eating pancakes 

that are not sweet. But I think I would definitely try them again sometime...

The blueberry syrup that we created at the last minute, however, was AMAZING!

Blueberries, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and maple syrup. Sauteé for 5-10 minutes. 

You can thank me later.

So on Saturday we hung out around the house, napped by the pool, ate breakfast on the patio,

took another nap (we had to wake up at 5:30 AM for our flight, okay!), and had a poker tournament

with Bryan's high school friends and their families. It was really cool to finally meet all of them, 

especially because they all already seemed to know about me!!

On Sunday (after our ricotta pancakes) we took a drive to the Capitol and strolled around the 

gorgeous rose gardens. Oh, and did I mention it was 89 degrees?? Yikes! 

We were suuuper hot walking around in the sun so we drove around the city

trying to find a nice shady place to cool off. We ended up at a duck pond, 

which was really cool! I have never seen so many ducks before! 

And there were baby ducks! BABY DUCKS!

It was really beautiful. 

The only thing was there were geese that made sooo much noise

and I am pretty sure I witnessed a duck gang-bang. 

The poor victim was limping later :(

We ended the night with some really great sushi and then drove over to get some 

ice cream from a place called Leatherby's, 

which literally sold sundaes the size of my head. 

Pretty awesome.

All in all, Sac was a lot of fun! 

But...

While I had plenty of distractions, I could not help but to feel slightly cut off from the 

rest of the world; my sisters in particular. I may not talk to those

 crazy girls every day but at least I get to Facebook stalk them (muahaha) ... Luckily, when I turned on 

my phone Monday morning, I had text messages from all of them <3

YAY FOR UNPLUGGING!

YAY FOR NEVER HAVING TO DO THAT AGAIN!

AND YAY FOR SACRAMENTO!