Happy Halloween!

This Halloween was my first official Halloween I went Trick or Treating with my kids! These past 7 years I have been home hosting a party and this was my first year not having to! Whew! It was always fun, but I was so excited to head out with the girls! We had all kinds of plans of course, going to Sweets and Treats at our friend's church, dropping by La Selva to see the old neighbors and going to the Kreefts and then going to Jen's party! Well, at 5pm Evie fell asleep on the floor in the living room and all of those plans went to pot! So we ate dinner and headed out in our new neighborhood with the Walls! We had so much fun and the girls got TONS of candy! There were so many awesome houses and lots and lots of kids. When we got home everyone passed out on the floor watching cartoons.

Just Cake

I have no pictures to share, but I can share with you some fun tid-bits from Marina. It all started last Friday...the beginning of a 10 cake weekend. She gets a call from Harpo Studios inviting her to participate in one of Oprah's upcoming shows. Here is what the weekend looked like and adding making a cake for Oprah seemed totally nutty!

Friday: 2 cakes to Livermoore
Saturday: 1 cake to Seascape
4 cakes to Carmel Valley
1 cake to Hollister
1 cake to San Francisco
Sunday: 1 cake to Half Moon Bay

Saturday night the fun began, Marina at my house sketching away during a baby shower and having ideas whirl through her brain. Sunday she was able to get good friend James Rosselle and fellow Cake designer to detour to Santa Cruz from Napa on his way back home to L.A. They spent Sunday shopping and experimenting and brain storming! Monday was for sure GO TIME! Marina had several people making sugar beads, running around picking up supplies and helping her at the kitchen. James headed home to re pack and be ready to meet Marina and Danielle in Chicago to put the cake together! So as you might imagine there were many sleepless nights and a lot of hard work happening between last Friday and yesterday.

Marina had to create the cake of a lifetime to present to Oprah and really the world! The show will probably air in a couple of weeks, but it is a show about Reality TV. They were focusing on shows like Project Runway, American Idol and cake shows. Marina was on with Duff of Ace of Cakes and Mary Maher of Cake girls (Chicago). It was an absolutely amazing experience for her and Oprah and her staff loved, loved, loved her creation! From what I understand it was breathe taking! But would you expect anything less from Marina!? She got to kick it with Duff and experience the Omni and is now spending the rest of the weekend being a tourist of Chicago! Well deserved! I will be sure to let you know when the show airs, but in the mean time if you have never gone to the website, you must check out www.justcake.com . Her work is like no other's and it was about time she got on Oprah! I think her angel in Heaven (Marge) had something to do with all of this!

Way to go Marina!

Ruby and Daisy

We are so sad to say that we had to put Ruby and Daisy up for adoption. Our land lord had a change of heart and asked for either the dogs to go or for us to go. They were causing no harm, but she just wasn't comfortable having them here. At this point in time it was the best decision to find another home for them. Thinking about having to move again and changing our wonderful layout for carpool, preschool and distance to work and the fact that we LOVE this house didn't make me feel good. But dropping them off at the Shelter broke my heart. I found Daisy back in the summer of 2000 in the parking lot of the Enterprise Rent A Car branch I worked at in South San Francisco. She resided at my parent's house until John and I were married and we had a back yard. In the meantime she mated with Finnegan and produced 5 little black pups, that were born in March of 2002. We kept Ruby, my dad has Tipp, Gabe and Michelle have Hank, Tony and Nancy have Black Jack and Eddie and Barbara have Dodger. Ruby was such a sweet heart and Daisy was such a scrappy little sheep dog. :) We miss them so much already and we have shed some big big tears over giving them up. But the women at the shelter were so sweet and told me they would do everything they could to get them adopted together. We miss you Ruby and Daisy. :(

Fall, Fair, Friends, Fireworks and Family

We have had a busy Fall so far. I still can't believe that it is October already, what happened to September? We have been busy with birthday parties, cross country meets for both of our teams, hitting up the Santa Cruz County Fair, honoring our beloved Marge during the Monte Fireworks, and having Auntie Lisa and Uncle Ryan for a visit. We have been having so much fun, well maybe too much fun, since the littles and I are home sick today, but that's okay! Sundays have been wonderful lately, going to mass and then spending the day in Down Town Santa Cruz strolling up and down the Pacific Garden Mall.
While Lisa and Ryan were here we went to the Pumpkin Patch, one of my favorite things to do! We plan on hosting the Fresno crowd this weekend for Lisa's baby shower, then goto the Big Fresno Fair the following weekend. I can see November coming already!

47th Annual Soria Family Reunion

We just spent Labor Day Weekend in Fresno and Merced to celebrate the Soria Family Reunion. My Grandmother Eleanor Soria Olivarez' Family started this tradition 47 years ago. We have had it just about every year out at Lake Yosemite in Merced. Every year there is a theme, for instance, this year was Hawian. Along with everyone dressing to the theme of the year there is always a parade and performances. I will be updating the Blog with the performances later! My mom's cousins, the Contrares' brothers and their sister are famous for their wacky performances and my mom's uncles who are getting close to 90! are usually in the act.
We all had a great time, the weather was nice, we ate too much and got to spend time with my aunt and uncle from Montana and cousin Jason and his wife Lindsay from Arizona. And we were all enchanted with little Nathan, my cousin Patricia's little boy. He is the first boy in the great grand child generation!


The original 9 Soria siblings

Big Sur 09

In August we took a trip down to Big Sur to visit New Camaldoli Monastery. Cyprian was giving a retreat while we were there so John was able to sit in on his talks in between beach time, meal time and prayer time. We took a little trip down to Sand Dollar Beach for part of the afternoon and also went up the mountian to visit Jack, who is a friend of the community's. It was REALLY HOT while we were there, but we still managed to have a good time. We celebrated Luci's birthday with Cyprian and some of the Monks and enjoyed the beautiful views.

View of Big Sur from Jack's house

Fun times at Sand Dollar Beach!






Girls with Uncle/Nino/Cyprian :)

My new favorite picture...

Evie passed out before we even got back down to Hwy 1!

Evie's new hiding place

Evie has a special hiding place here at our new house! She found a little cabinet door that is just her size and she fits inside perfectly! When Lisa was visiting last week she would go inside and hide and then scare Lisa! I think Uncle Ryan called her and told her to scare Auntie Lisa! Ha!

My Birthday (yes i know, it was last month)

Yes I know my birthday was last month, but I found this picture on my camera and remembered I wanted to post it. The week leading up to my birthday I thought a lot about Marge and how much I would miss her this birthday, it being the first one since she passed away and all. She always, always timed her cards just right so they arrived right on your birthday, even if she was going to see you in person that day. She always created a little pocket in the card in which she tucked some fun money. :) I kept thinking that she wouldn't be there on my birthday, but to my surprise I found her. After digging through a bag of office type stuff Marina had cleaned out and passed on the the girls, I opened one up that day to give to Evie and found a name tag with Marge's name on it. It was in that one of a kind Marge Chiesa hand writing, no one on this earth writes like she did. It made me happy to know that Marge found her way to me on my birthday. I love you Marge and miss you so much. I will never doubt that you will be right here with me...

The parents to be!

Here are some pics of Lisa and Ryan at about 12 weeks! She is due November 22nd! We can't wait! Ryan is looking really good and is putting on all the weight for lisa! ha!

Chap and Rep

My Uncle Marty just emailed me some old pictures he found and I couldn't pass up posting this one. I am not sure if this is in mexico or at a mexican resturant. But seeing my grandma with a "King of Beers" in her had was priceless!!!! My grandpa passed away 7 years ago March 4th, I can't beleive it has been that long...But GG (as the girls call her) is going strong! She has beat stomache cancer and breast cancer and living life to the fullest at "the home" in Merced! Love you GG!

Oh Evie!

Spring has definitely sprung and the girls have been in the back yard playing with the sand and water table and picking flowers and putting sand on the dogs. I looked out yesterday to check on Evie and did not see her, so I went out to take a closer look and found her with a bucket of sand under the covered bench! she was perfectly content playing there, so i snapped a few shots and let her go about her business!

Luci, meet the toilet

So, today our good friend Gabe and his daughter Makenna came by for a visit and then offered to watch our girls so we could goto the bike race. All was well, they had pizza, made a fort and then luci decides to go potty and slips on the step stool and racks her chin on the toilet! We came home to a calm household and luci fast asleep in Gabe's arms. What a great dad/kid sitter he is! I had to take luci to urgent care and she got 3 stitches in her chin. The little cutie never even shed a tear or acted scared while she was there! The doctor and nurse were so impressed with her! Way to go Luci and she will have a scar to tell the story about for years to come! :)