May I present...Amber Mitchell, C.P.A

Hello Everyone -

Our big news of the past few weeks has been Amber's official licensure as a Certified Public Accountant in the State of California. This process has involved 4 seperate exams that had to be passed (an almost year-long endeaver), an ethics exam, official state forms, applications, thumbprints, 2 yrs. of public accounting experience, a background check, letters of recommendation and of course, since we live in California, there were numerous fees that had to be paid to the state.

With all that behind us, we were ready to celebrate. The first picture shows us at our favorite Sushi Restaurant near the University of the Pacific. It was Friday night and the mood was right.

On Saturday morning (after a brisk run before 6 a.m. - the only time you can run when the weather's forecasted to be 101 degrees in the Central Valley!) we departed for Mendocino, California. It's a quaint town about 150 miles north of San Francisco on the coast. "Murder She Wrote" was filmed in Mendocino - probably it's biggest claim to fame.

To get there, we drove through a Redwood forest which you can see on our second picture. These trees are truly unbelievable...and definitely confuse one's sense of proportion. For a second, I wondered if Rick Moranis was involved, but I reconsidered, and we continued on our weekend of fun.

After having lunch and an afternoon of window shopping in Mendocino (the town's view of the water is picture 3), we continued to our cabin near Manchester State Park. Our campsight was walking distance from the coast, about 30 miles south of Mendocino (pic 4). Because the ocean currents run north-to-south along the west coast, we were able to enjoy temps. that were 40 degrees cooler than back home. We took the shoes off and enjoyed a nice walk along the water.

Sunday we packed up and headed back home in time to see the Bengal victory against the Steelers - capping off one of the better weekends in quite some time. Except for the fact that Amber happens to be a Steelers fan.

With Love,

Ryan and Amber