San Diego in 72 Hours

 It didn’t take me long to say yes to my friend Grace’s suggestion to tag along on a short getaway to see her daughter Jackie in San Diego.  I had only been there one other time, and a trip to perpetually sunny San Diego seemed like a nice diversion from the unpredictable weather of Chicago in May.  Although the trip was considered a 4 day getaway, after taking away travel time, we would have 72 hours to work with, so Jackie built an itinerary around as many must-sees and must-dos as we could possibly squeeze in - wine tasting, beach, sight-seeing and of course cuisine!

Immediately after arriving in San Diego, we were in the mood for authentic Mexican dishes, so we dined al fresco in Old Town at Fiesta de Reyes on rolled tacos, quesadillas, homemade tortilla chips, guacamole and delicious margaritas!  Fiesta de Reyes is surrounded by dozens of boutiques and historical sites so a little walking, shopping, and sightseeing helped burn off a late lunch.  

You can't go to San Diego without visiting the Gaslamp Quarter!  The Gaslamp Quarter in historic downtown is a 16 block walkable urban playground of restaurants, nightclubs, shops, boutique hotels and entertainment that’s definitely worth exploring.  To experience a great view of San Diego (especially at sunset) visit Altitude Sky Lounge.  Another rooftop destination with stylish surroundings and craft cocktails is Rustic Root.  If you like country and western music, Moonshine Flats has live music, line dancing, and an open-air extension with backyard style games, tailgate food and various bars.  (Don’t worry seniors - you see all ages!)  

How do you visit California without wine tasting?  About an hour north of San Diego is Temecula - a beautiful city known for it’s wineries (all 37).  It’s definitely worth the drive.  Select a few wineries to visit, take in the scenery, sit and taste wine and select your favorites to take home with you.  One great thing about the wineries in Temecula is that they are close together - basically one right after the other - you don’t have to drive far to get from one winery to the next.  We visited Wilson Creek and Ponte and loved both of them.  Briar Rose Boutique Winery looked enchanting enough to see on the next visit!  Tastings include a take-home wine glass so it’s kind of fun to collect wine glasses from the different wineries.  Dinner in Old Town Temecula at the rustic-chic 1909 was delicious and a relaxing way to end our day. 

We started our Sunday with strawberry/mango mimosas and out-of-this-world lobster bisque at World Famous and a stroll along Pacific Beach.  A trip to San Diego Zoo was a definite and we were not disappointed - so pretty.  My favorite had to be the adorable koala bears.  Your ticket includes a ride on the Skyfari aerial tram which takes you on a ride for a birds-eye view of the entire zoo.  I love walking, so the walk through the zoo was perfect!  Early evening, we took a journey to beautiful La Jolla Cove (loved watching the waves hit the rocks) to see the sea lions and seals sunbathe.  For dinner, Jackie suggested Herringbone for martinis and small plates in La Jolla - magical atmosphere and yummy fare!  

The last few hours of the trip were spent shopping at Seaport Village.   At Seaport Village, you can shop in dozens of specialty shops, eat, or just sit on the boardwalk and watch ships come into the harbor (or people watch).  We had such a great time in San Diego, we have already planned our next trip!   

Loving Packing Cubes for Vacay

Have you ever said to yourself, “Why didn’t I invent that?”  With two friends (who love to travel) retiring this year, I found myself reading travel blogs to get some gift ideas for my soon-to-be newly retired gal pals.  One common suggestion in many of the blogs was to use packing cubes.  Checking out reviews led me to words like, “long-lasting, practical, organization, compression, affordable” and sounded like the perfect gift for a new retiree.   

In case you are unfamiliar with packing cubes, they are zippered fabric containers used to organize the items inside your luggage.  Unlike compression bags, they can be used to organize all kinds of gear, not just clothing.  Twenty-something years ago, I created my own version of packing cubes that worked like a charm every time we traveled.  Packing individual outfits in Ziplocks for each day of vacation was an organizational lifesaver for our family.  The kids would each grab a Ziplock and change into their outfit for the day.  Easy Button.  So why not just use Ziplocks?  I decided to see for myself and give the packing cubes a try on a recent mini-trip to San Diego.  

After researching various brands using travel blogs and Amazon, I decided to order the Shacke Pak 5 Set for each of my retiring friends and a set for myself.  The Shacke Pak sets arrived from Amazon in 2 days (yay for free shipping).  My first impression was, “all of my stuff is going to fit in here?”  I began folding, rolling and organizing.  Soon I had a generous array of clothing, shoes and essentials neatly packed into the five cubes ready to be placed in a carry-on for a four day getaway to California.  There are various ways to organize the cubes - by clothing categories, weather, travel outfits - depending on your situation.  The obvious choice for me was to organize by clothing categories, so the five cubes were used for bottoms, tops, dresses, shoes and cosmetics/other.  A fan of carry-on only for mini vacays, my goal was to fill all five cubes, fit them into my carry-on luggage, and use my tote bag for wallet, laptop, book and phone only.  

My evaluation of the packing cubes?  Awesome!  I was able to organize more than enough clothing and essentials for my trip, and use all available space efficiently to allow for plenty of room.  Compared to the Ziplocks I used years ago, they are more durable, larger and makes packing so much easier.  The shape of the cube easily accommodates rolled clothing without wrinkling.  After taking my rolled clothes from the cubes - hardly a wrinkle!  

Check them out - you won’t be disappointed.

Every Day is Mother's Day

Mother’s Day - the one day a year when Moms everywhere get to hang up their capes, at least for a while.  We have two new Moms (already becoming Supermoms) in our family who will be celebrating their first Mother’s Day.  The girls are already becoming pros at juggling work with taking care of their babies and are off to a pretty good start at finding a balance of marriage/baby/career/everything else!  It’s no wonder they have easily slid into these superhero roles since their Moms were both Supermoms.  (Shout out to Supermom club member Vicki.)  Think about it - those of us who enjoyed some hard-won equality battles and became strong, independent power women of the 80s now have daughters whom we have empowered with the same boldness.  And they have hit the ground running.  These new parents are having their year of firsts with their babies - first smile, first rollover, first giggle, and now first Mother’s Day.  So what is it about this day that makes it so precious?  

Mothers give their children gifts every day of the year.  A Mother’s love is one of the most powerful gifts we can give our children.  A Mother’s unconditional love creates gifts to our children that are intangible and touch their hearts with a value greater than any treasure. Faith, security, confidence, intelligence, good health, affection, patience, forgiveness, generosity, imagination, determination, resilience, discipline, and hope are just a few of my favorite gifts to my children.  My beautiful Mother gave me all of these gifts, I gave them to my children and now they will give them to theirs.  

Although many will say that being a Mom is a thankless job, I have never believed that being a Mother was ever a job and I never needed to be thanked for it.  For me, it was a privilege granted to me by God.  Raising two amazing little humans, watching them grow into happy and independent adults contributing to the good of society, now with families of their own, was enough thanks for me.  Although I do enjoy the occasional “Mom we’re taking you out” or thoughtful gifts from my kids, I know how much I am appreciated by my children.  That’s part of being in the Mom Club.  We just know.  To the two new Mommies in our family - every time your baby smiles at you, stares at your face or immediately turns his head when he hears your voice, he is saying he loves and appreciates everything you do for him. He is telling you how thankful he is that God picked you to be his Mommy.  Your children tell you "Happy Mother's Day" every day.  When they grow up to be teenagers and tell you things (you may not especially want to hear), or ask you for a "few bucks," they are telling you that they know you will understand and guide them in the right direction.  

So one day a year, all of the members of the Mom Club get to officially have our day.  There is no recipe as to what this day should look like.  For some, it might involve taking the family to the beach, others may want to cook for the clan, and some Moms may want to take the day to indulge in spa treatments.  My friend Grace goes to the baseball game with her daughters each year.  However Mother’s Day is spent, it is our official day to spend it how we want.

Kristina and Brittany - "A Mother's love is true north always guiding the way home."  Happy 1st Mother’s Day to you and all other Mommies out there.  

New Beginnings

May is like Oscar season for teachers:  retirement parties, Teacher of the Year dinners, honor luncheons, etc…  It’s so much fun to send off our teachers every year and to see all of the ones who retired before us.  Our teacher retirement parties are more or less a retired teacher reunion.  I will be attending two parties this year as two very close friends of mine find themselves where I was last year - in the final month of what seems like a lifetime educating children and ready to start a new life as a retired teacher.  At least, we hope we are ready.  Although I never doubted that it was the right time for me to retire, leaving the workforce after being there for most of my life created a combination of excitement and anxiety.  A year later, although I still consider myself a Rookie Retiree muddling through my new life, I am definitely starting to get my sea legs.  

As the guests mingled at the party reminiscing about old times, taking silly pictures and talking about their current lives it was easy to see that “retirement party day” is one of the happiest days of the year.  On the morning of her party, I told my friend that the party will make it real for her - that she will actually start to feel retired.  For us teachers, retirement is like “finally graduating.”  Now that I am an official veteran retiree, I would like to share my list of the best things about retirement (in no certain order):

• Travel  We can more or less do this whenever we want.  As teachers, we could only travel during the on-season times - summers and holidays - so we paid top dollar.  This severely limited the amount of travel we could do.  And who wants to do leaf peeping in New England in the summer?  I love reading travel blogs and searching for great travel deals.  We can visit all of our friends whom we have been telling for years, “I’ll come visit.”
• Interests  We actually get to have some.  Gardening?  Photography?  Cooking?  Wine Tasting?  Whatever interests we have always wanted to pursue can come to fruition.  
• Family  Although we have always been there for them, we can now really Be There for them.  Whether we are helping take care of the precious grandbabies, or just lending a hand when they are overwhelmed with their busy lives, we can be there for them without having to juggle our work schedules.  My out-of-state son and his family?  No more worries about whether or not I get to see them.  
• Health  Ever wonder why so many retirees look so healthy?  We have time to focus on our fitness and nutrition.  No more squeezing in a workout on the way home from work after we are already exhausted.   We can now put a 20 mile bike ride on our day’s agenda or take a 2:00 Yoga class with our favorite instructor.  We can take time and cook healthy meals.
• Friends  How many times have we been trying to schedule an outing with our friends only to open the calendar on our phones and find it filled with meetings and trainings?  (I used to hate all of those dots on my calendar - and it was never anything I wanted to do.)  Our calendars become more friendly and accessible.  Can’t do dinner Friday night?  How about lunch on Tuesday or $5 martinis at 4:00 on Thursday?  
• Flexibility  One of the things I love the most about retirement is the flexibility.  I always found it interesting that as working mothers we had to be flexible, but also as working mothers we had very little flexibility in our schedules.  Now, if today doesn't work out, tomorrow will.  It’s a great feeling.  
• Pace When I was working, I had one pace - super speed.  When we retire, we can slow down the pace a little and stop and smell the roses.  It’s amazing how much we missed all of those years that we were consumed by our careers.  

For my friends Patti and Carole, and all new retirees out there - you are going to love your new beginning!