Jamie & Karl

Fall

2011-10-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

I love fall. In Texas we would get all of three days of fall like weather and here it's fall weather 9 months of the year. But with the two gloomy, rainy days we had this week- I got in the fall mood! I uncovered all my fall home deco items, lit a few fall spiced candles, and dusted off my 'ol crockpot in preparation to try some new yummy stew recipes I found. And, of course as with every new season that rolls around I went on my quarterly Michael's extravaganza! I sort of lose it in that place. I mean like, stay for hours on a Sunday, slowly walking up and down every aisle staring, making friends along the way, lose it. I arrive armed with a Starbucks, grab a basket and case the place. This year I had a pretty specific agenda. I wanted to make a couple fall wreaths. If you know Michael's you know that the place is always busting at the seams with stuff for holidays coming up in the next 3-4 months. Fall & halloween stuff? forgettaboutit. So old news. Even though neither has really occurred. Anything fall themed, Halloween themed and evenly remotely non-Christmas is currently 50% off. Score! I'm pretty sure the place is getting ready for Easter right now.

So, in the end (read: as the lights were going out, the check out ladies were watching me, Karl calls and reminds me that he does indeed need to eat dinner and I had to finally check out) I got exactly what I wanted and was able to whip up these two puppies for...wait for it. A total of.......$20! Inspired by a few fall wreaths I had seen on various websites, catalogs, etc., I think they turned out pretty well. Our home sure is fall cozy now!

The cute wreath my Mom got me a few years ago for our hallway mirror. Love it!

And the vase my Dad got me for my birthday full of fall flowers :)

Lobster Fest

2011-09-21T22:31:00.000-07:00

The feast we look forward to all year. Lobster, butter, corn, potatoes, artichokes, and bottomless wine at Pine Ridge Winery in Napa. Amen.

IPad

2011-07-30T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm addicted. This is just one of the many ways I love to use it. Recipes at my stove, while I cook, with no printing involved. Sa-weeet! (Top fav: lying in bed, surfing the web, under a pile of Bit 'O Honey wrappers ;)

And a bonus shot of me channeling my inner June Cleaver in my new apron Riane & David gave me for my bday. Love it! (Karl says, Thanks Riane for encouraging my wife to spend more time in the kitchen ;) Ha!

AND, in case you were wondering what we whipped up this lovely evening, the best pork chops Karl has ever grilled with Pineapple Green Onion Salsa and a Vietnamese Noodle Salad on the side....yum- O!

Why the charcoal grill and not the gas onel? It was getting lonely. We thought we'd switch it up and it's right outside the kitchen so we fired it up while we chopped away inside. Best pork chops ever...still thinking about them. Good work babe!

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas!

2010-12-05T22:24:00.001-08:00

We're not going to talk about how it's been over a year since my last blog post..haha. Let's just say the last year has been a busy one. I was thrilled to finally decorate for Xmas this year in our new home for the first time! We we're officially in our new pad last Christmas but we left for Austria mid December so we didn't bother with a tree, deco, etc. So, this year- it was on!

Now that I have ALL of our stuff out here from our Austin home, I was able to unpack all my Xmas deco from over 4 years ago! It was like opening new presents all over again! So fun. I collect ornaments as we travel and unwrapping all of them and hanging them and finally hanging them was so fun! We tried to remember each place and where I picked them up along the way. I don't even know which one is my favorite--there are so many cool ones! My mom and I trade ornaments each year and Riane gave me some super cool ones all the way from London. This was the first time we've had them all on the tree!

I also started collecting village pieces to start a Xmas village and this was the first year I actually was able to set them up. I love my Irish pub and Gluhwein hut so far!

Happy holidays!

Double decker bus all the way from London from Riane- love it!

One of my all time favs from Tay in 2001 ;)

Making Zin in Sonoma!

2009-10-25T20:59:00.000-07:00

My friend invited us up to make wine with her and her family. Her dad and his friend make wine together. They live in Sonoma county, in Healdsburg. My friend grew up there her whole life and I think they are so lucky to live in the heart of the beautiful wine country! It is especially gorgeous up there this time of the year...when the trees and vineyards are all the color of fire. Tons of reds, oranges and yellows. Super cool. They sell most of their grapes to Napa wineries, Clos du Bois is the main buyer, but some of the grapes they save for themselves to make their own wine and bottle for themselves. Seriously, is that the best way to retire or what?

We, of course, couldn't turn down a trip to the wine country and a chance to see the magic! After testing the sugar content of the grapes, her dad confirmed Saturday was a go. They had a crew out to pick all the grapes off the vines and then they stuck them all through a de-stemer. It's this machine that takes the first pass at sifting through the grapes and removing the debris and stems. Then, they had put the grapes in this huge plastic container (like almost as tall as me and big) and added an enzyme to the tub to make the skins super soft and it also started to start the fermentation process. At the point we arrived the grapes were mush, with most of the skins dissolved. Alcohol was already present as the fermentation process had begun.

the men learning how the operate the press...it wasn't a "stomp" like I love Lucy =)

Our job was as follows: take buckets full of the grape mush to the wine press, fill to the top, crank the press down and out flows the juice! Fast! We were running all over the place. At that point, two of us manned the bottom of the press and using strainers, strained the juice as it flowed into the ice chest. The ice chest was hooked up to a pump that pumped the juice right into these huge stainless steel tanks. Here the juice will go through malactic acid fermenting and turn into yummy Zin! The bottling process happens next, after they have tasted and tested the wine over several months to get it just right. (That's the next project we'll get to help out on.)

Julie & me managing the straining process

We got our system down and were all running around making sure we captured every last drop of juice that was flowing out of the press. It comes out pretty fast as they really cranked the press down tight. We had to be quick on our toes and organized to make sure we strained everything going in the chest. The mush was a little extra "mushier" than they had planned and as we cranked down the press, sometimes, random chunks of grapes would come flying out of the top or side of the press.

all the debris leftover in the press...grape skins, stems, clumps of seeds, etc.

It ended up getting Julie & me pretty good one time. It got me right in the face and was all in my hair and eyes. I quickly ran off to rinse my face because even though purple stained hands might be ok for work on Monday, a purple streaked face wouldn't be so cool. I found chunks inside my ears! We were completely covered with purple chunks by the time we were done. Luckily, Julie told us to wear all black or something that could get stained. We sported our "bank robber" outfits and were fine.

Julie & me getting every last drip of wine pumped out of the ice chest into the tanks

Brian & Karl were working hard, lifting empty barrels and moving big things around. It was really fun seeing the magical process of turning grapes into wine. Definitely made me appreciate all the work and time that goes into it. Of course, the big vineyards have major equipment for this process and probably aren't using Bed, Bath and Beyond strainers to strain the juice, but our homeade version worked out well!

The Sinclair's beautiful ranch and vineyard. Just some of their vines pictured here.

Her parents and their friends rewarded us at the end of the 4 hour session with a bbq in the middle of the vineyard. We were surrounded by huge, full vines, mountains and Mike's garden of all kinds of crops, on an absolutely perfect fall day. We drank their award winning Sauvagnion Blanc that recently won a Gold medal for best of class, as chowed down on BBQ. It was a great day! Later, he let me pick golden delicious apples from his apple tree since they had so many they wouldn't even get to them all. He had all kinds of crops- cabbage, pears, beans, tomatoes, artichokes, squash and even pumpkins. I chose two to take home for the front porch.

Now, for the fun part--all the cleaning after we were done!

did you know this is what artichokes looked like after they pass the point of picking? So cool!

At the end of the day, after cleaning every piece of equipment, bucket and tool, Julie's dad was very generous and gave us a case of their Zin we had sampled at lunch. Heck yeah! We'll work for wine anytime! Ah, the wine country. A perfect place to retire some day I think. And visit often in the meantime ;)

Farewell, Oprah & Food Network!

2009-10-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

I am officially a working woman again! On Monday I start working at one of my favorite companies! I am so thrilled and looking forward to working with a few former co-workers from my other favorite company. It will be a definite change in my daily routine of watching The View from my couch while sipping Starbucks, running errands in the middle of the day, working out whenever I wanted, watching Oprah & the Food Network, and day time drinking with my other unemployed friends, etc. Ah, at least I can say I enjoyed it while I could. In reality, I could only take being a stay-at-home-housewife for so long! I mean let's face it- without other living projects such as a pet or child, it was pretty boring. It was starting to get sad when the only people I interacted with in person each day were Home Depot employees and the mail man. I wasn't off too long since we've been back from our trip, only 6 weeks or so, but I was still getting very depressed with this job market. I know there are tons of people out there that have been looking alot longer than me and I feel their pain.

In preparation for my working woman routine again, I've started pulling out all the quick and easy, week day supper recipes. (Did that just sound really southern? Supper?) Anyway, we had one rainy, dreary day here yesterday and I got all excited for all the warm, comfort food possibilities. I've been wanting to make chili for a while so I thought this would be the perfect chance. Needless to say, as I headed out for the grocery, it was not cold out at all. Oh well, my chili was still delisshhh. Cold outside or not- you got to try it. The recipe is from the one and only, Joy of Cooking. I just grabbed it randomly out of my stack of many. Among a few other things, I collect cookbooks of all kinds and love reading through them to get new recipe ideas. It's so funny because every time I look through the Joy of Cooking, I always think of Rombauer Vineyard now. We were wine tasting in Napa a while back and in the Rombauer tasting room were shelves full of the the Joy of Cooking and I was really confused. Turns out, Erma Rombauer, one of the authors, is part of the Rombauer winery family! As a side note, if you haven't tried their reds you must! They are the most velvety, berries & cream reds we've ever had.

Ok, on to the recipe. So, this is Chicken Chili Verde. (Think inside yumminess of green enchiladas) It turned out amazing and so flavorful which is always a good thing. The other thing that I loved about it was how easy and quick it was to throw all these ingredients together. The grocery had all items except the canned tomatillos. My trick is this: grab a jar of green salsa at the store and substitute a cup of that in. (Turns out, green salsa is almost ALL tomatillos.) I just baked four chicken breasts in the oven while I worked on the other ingredients. The recipe "as-is" is not very spicy at all so throw in some chopped jalapenos if you want. I threw in a drained and rinsed can of white beans too. Corn tortillas would be perfect on the side like the recipe recommends, but I always serve soups, stews, etc with Karl's favorite- Crescent rolls. They really are heaven. What's so crazy, is that without even thinking about it, this is a healthy dinner too! (although, it kind of depends on if you down 3 crescent rolls on the side like we did.) I was thinking if you HAD to add something on top when serving it you could do a spoonful of sour cream and a sprinkle of white cheese of some sort. Ours was great as-is! Enjoy!

Half Dome hike at Yosemite!

2009-10-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hello long lost blog! We're back from our trip around the world and I've been updating our trip blog lately with trip pictures, etc. so check it out! I've been adding our pictures on the right of the blog under "photo gallery".

In the meantime, we're back in the "real world" and getting settled in our new place. Karl has been pretty busy with school lately but has been getting to know some other couples that are new to the area. One of his new friends invited us to go to Yosemite this weekend and climb Half Dome with him & his girlfriend. Karl and I have lived here over three years and have yet to go to Yosemite so we were excited to finally go! Getting camping reservations for the park is extremely difficult and they open them up online each month and are completely booked in a matter of minutes. Our plan for the trip was to leave Friday after they got out of school around 2 and stay in a hotel in a town right outside of the park. The park's parking lot was an estimated 15 minute drive from the hotel and it would be about a 30 minute walk to the trail head from there.

Half Dome in all its glory. My first thought: How are we going to get up that!?

I started reading more about the hike and what we should bring, etc and learned it was one of the most intense hikes in the park and round trip usually takes about 12 hours with a total of 16 miles of hiking! I had heard of a couple of friends who have done the hike so I thought- we can do it! This is not to say I was a tad hesitant as we've definitely heard of people falling to their death on this hike. (I think overall there have been around 5 deaths and supposedly these were people doing really stupid things such as the hike in the rain, hiking outside the cables, etc.)

Snow on the ground!

The drive out of town on Friday afternoon was pretty stressful since Bay area traffic begins at about noon on Fridays. It took about 4 hours from our front door to the hotel. We stopped at this awesome hole in the wall diner for dinner and all pigged out in preparation for our calorie-scorching- 12 hour hike the next day. It was fun to have a guilt free dinner of burgers, fries and onion rings!

We were all putting off talking about the plan for the next morning and what time exactly this entailed us getting to the trail head. We finally decided to leave the hotel at 5 am and be at the trail head by 6am. We didn't want to be hiking back in the dark at all and sunset was around 7pm these days. We were guessing we could do the entire hike in under 12 hours and possibly even 10. We packed our back packs that night and made sure we had tons of water, some cliff bars, trail mix, sunscreen, etc. We dressed in layers we could peel off as we needed.

first view of the cables and tiny people climbing up

Saturday morning's wake up call at 4:45am wasn't too bad since we had all gone to bed close to 10pm. The guys were joking that was more sleep than they got on some school days after staying up reading all night. It was early. We drove into the park and had a 3/4 mile hike to the trail head- in the pitch dark. Karl was thrilled to use our head lamps to light the way!

The weather turned out to be absolutely perfect- highs in the mid 70's at the warmest and upper 30's at the coldest. I never took off my track pants. The hike was overall pretty intense. We gained a total of 4800 feet in elevation to the top of Half Dome which is 8800 feet. What this meant for the 5 or so hours up to the base of Half Dome was it was all up hill. The hike up to the base itself is a deterrent for most people. The trail was clean and very well kept up. There was a slight threat of bears along the way but there was so much commotion with hikers, etc I doubt they ever come close to the trail. There were two gorgeous waterfalls pouring down these cliffs ending in emerald colored pools of water. Spring is supposed to be incredible in the park with all the waterfalls at their peak and flowers filling all the meadows. The only thing I can compare the hike up to would be doing the stairmaster for close to 5 hours. INTENSE. We stopped to eat a granola bar once and were drinking out of our camelbacks the whole time. We made it to the base of Half Dome around 10:45am. The final climb up to the base was the most intense and hardest in my opinion. It is essentially sheets of granite rock at a pretty steep incline, with nothing to hold on to.

We did it! View from the top.

Approaching Half Dome was somewhat intimidating. It is literally a granite cliff wall with 2 steel cables hanging down from the top. Almost completely vertical. Karl's friend's girlfriend chickened out and didn't even come any closer to check out the cables. I decided to at least check it out a little closer up to see if I'd freak out. It still looked just a vertical up close but I decided to give it a shot. We had brought gloves to get a better grip on the cables. I figured this was pretty important, since we weren't harnessed in, and our grip was all we had. One slip and you're a goner. The cables are about 2-3 feet apart and anchored in by poles about every 5 feet up. There are tiny wooden planks placed every 5 feet as well. I was pretty nervous at first but got in my groove and just focused like crazy on the next plank I could put my feet on. Essentially, this climb is 100% upper body strength. You have to be able to pull yourself up the wall since it is almost completely vertical. While your legs obviously help some, it's mainly your arms pulling your entire body weight up . My shoes would barely be on the wooden plank, about 2 inches wide, for a 2 second rest and then it was time to go again. Karl was behind me and a guy who had done the hike a hundred times was in front. They both encouraged me the whole time and helped me focus and take it one step at a time. The granite in between the planks is obviously pretty worn and slippery from all the hikers that have made the trek. We had our hiking boots on and I was just praying the whole time they would grip and not slip. At this time of day (around 11am) there were other people on the cables but it wasn't completely packed. As if dangling from this cliff wall wasn't scary enough, there were people coming down at the same time! So, we would have to carefully tip toe over on our 2 inch wooden plank and hold on for DEAR life as they squished past us, sharing the plank as they descended. That part was nerve racking for me. You never look behind you or down, obviously. I just focused on the guys shoes in front of me and getting to the next plank. We finally made it to the top! It felt amazing to say I did it and my strength alone was what got me up there!

the guys out on the "diving board" at the top of Half Dome

The top is actually huge. Think a huge somewhat flat, rocky football field. The 360" view was absolutely incredible and I can say now- definitely worth the scary climb. Only the strongest survive and make it to this point so I felt accomplished for sure and was very proud of myself for not letting fear get in the way. We sat down and enjoyed some trail mix and lots of water as we took in the views. We had views of the park down below, tiny streams, meadows, streams of waterfalls coming down other cliffs,etc. Our photos almost don't do it justice. I tried to show perspective in my pictures of how enormous these granite mountains surrounding us were. Karl and his friend just had to go step out on the "diving board." It is essentially a thin rock plate dangling over the cliff. I guess they were pretty sure it wasn't going to tilt or shift as they posed for pictures. We spent an hour or so on top taking pictures, walking around and taking in all the views. Then, I started getting nervous thinking, I bet going DOWN is going to be even scarier! When we descend we stare out and down the whole time so I can't forget how high up we were and how vertical this cliff wall really is. EEEK!

What a view!

Slow and steady and again, just focusing on the little wooden planks on the way down, got us down. By this time the entire cables were jammed with people. I took it one plank at a time and got down. What a sense of accomplishment- I did it!

We took more photos before we started our descent. There was actually SNOW on the ground near the base of Half Dome. It snowed up there last Monday and was still there! The cables are seasonal and were coming down today- Sunday. We were very happy to have gotten up there and even happier we started the hike alot earlier than most people.

We did it!

We were physically exhausted by this point and still had about 4 hours of hiking out. Going down hill is almost more painful than climbing up! My shins started killing me and my knees were slowly giving out. By the end of the trek I was hobbling and my left knee just couldn't take another step. It was very interesting to see how our bodies held up after 10 1/2 hours of straight hiking. My hips and knees were the first to start hurting. We got back to the car in exactly 10 hours and 35 minutes from when we started. We were happy to have made it back in less than the recommended 12 hours! Whoo hoo! Go us! We peeled off our boots and socks and couldn't move. Recap: 10 hours and 35 minutes of straight hiking. 17.5 miles. 4800 feet elevation gained.

The drive home felt VERY long and I started having cramps right way. We were too tired to even eat dinner and passed out the second we hit our bed. Today, I can't walk and it feels like I've been in a major car wreck. My knees are barely working and my arms hurt just typing this. All that and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT! We can't to hop in our hot tub tonight.

(View all of our pictures of Yosemite here)

And we're off!

2009-05-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

Here's our trip blog we'll be updating for the next few months as we travel. Stay tuned!

www.jandktravel.blogspot.com

Flurry is in the news...twice!

2009-04-20T11:42:00.001-07:00

Flurry has been getting great press lately! Check out both of the recent articles regarding their analytics tool that's taking off. Go flurry!

In NY Times & Forbes!

News!

2009-04-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok I know it's been a while since I've updated the blog. BUT, this time I have a good excuse and I can finally reveal our news! Some of you have heard already, but Karl and I are taking off and traveling for 4 months beginning May 1st! We've been super busy planning, packing, booking flights, getting vaccines, etc, for the last few months and are getting very excited! I've also created a trip blog that we will be posting to and updating from the road to keep everyone updated on our adventures. Stay tuned!

After spending weekend after weekend at home plotting & planning for the trip we decided last weekend to take off and go skiing at Tahoe this weekend. It was a great break and we're really glad we went since most of the resorts closed after we left. We skiied Alpine Meadows & Squaw Valley. It was Karl's first time to Alpine and even though it was a pretty small mountain he found some hard runs. My report: The snow was slushly and picked up the "Sierra Cement" feeling in the afternoon. Karls' report: This phenomena appears to only effect Jamie's skiing and Karl says "just ski!" If only it were that easy. My skiis literally stick to the snow making turns a huge effort for me. Karl just shakes his head...Oh, I feel sorry for the thousands of California skiiers that have never experienced Rocky Mountain champgane powder where your skiis fly through the snow with no effort at all! Alas, after some hunting around we did find some soft, normal snow (as I call it) on each mountain. There was hardly anyone at either mountain, probably because it was Easter weekend, so we had no lines. It was SO warm on the mountains and apres on the deck was awesome. It was hotter on the mountain than SF when we got back! Unreal.

We got some great pictures from the mountains.....until next year Squaw!

Girl's weekend at Tahoe!

2009-03-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an awesome girl's ski weekend in Tahoe this past weekend with the ladies. We decided on Skiing at Alpine Meadows which is just one resort over from Squaw. Julie's parent's have the cutest ski cottage up in Tahoe-Donner and we stayed there. The drive up from SF took about 4 hours after we finally passed the traffic getting to the bay bridge. We picked up Julie's sister Noelle in Davis and then headed up to Tahoe. It wasn't snowing or raining so we made pretty good time. Julie's 4 wheel drive Rav 4 was perfect for the drive.

Lake Tahoe in the background

We got up early Saturday morning and drove about 15 minutes to Alpine Meadows. I had only skiied at Squaw so I was excited to try a new mountain. Alpine Meadows apparently has the most extreme skiing in the area and I did see lots of double blacks on the map. (not up close and personal =) We stuck to the blues and easy blacks and had a blast! The resort wasn't that crowded at all and all the cars behind us that morning all pulled off into Squaw's parking lot. It was a perfect sunny ski day! The snow was packed powder for the most part but in the afternoon the snow turned to a soft slush. We skiied well together and at the same pace which was nice. After lunch, I decided to go to the peak on a different lift by myself. The other girls didn't want to go up because they thought it would be too windy. I knew what wind and whiteout conditions were *really* like (think top of Whistler, Val d'sere and Squaw) so this wind I decided would be nothing. When I got off the lift at the top I was so glad I went up because the view was amazing! You could see Lake Tahoe and all the other neighboring ski resorts - it was so pretty! (See picture below) I skiied down the bowl from the top and it was great. I never felt the Sierra cement this time like I did at Squaw. What a fun ski weekend!

They also introduced me to sledding this weekend not believing I had never been! I have seen tubing on the resorts at night but have never tried it. We fired up a batch of margaritas and then head outside to the luge Julie's family dug on the side of their house in their yard. We used plastic sleds and hiked up one side and flew down the other. We dug out a few spots that ice had built up on and the finally got it perfect. We could start from the top (in their backyard) and make it all the way to their driveway. It was so fun! Of course it started snowing Sunday when we were leaving. We all agreed we had a great weekend!

Schnitzel?

2009-03-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

Am I spelling it right? Not sure, but anyway, we went to our friend Chuck's surprise birthday party at the Schnitzel House in SF this weekend. Known to be a great German restaurant good for groups and drinking lots of beer, we all huddled inside at the big table we had reserved and popped out and scared Chuck. He, of course, in true Chuck fashion was in full motorcycle gear and *very* surprised to say the least. We all ordered different beer and Chuck drank his out of the cowboy boot glass they served him. It looked more like a lady's UG boot...

I had never had true German food before like this. I ordered the "schnitzel" not even knowing what kind of meat it was or what it would look like and Karl tried some sausage of some sort. It was all very yummy! The German potatoe dumplings and sauerkraut on the side were my fav! About half way through the night the music changed from German jingles to full on Tejano/Mexican music and we all had a good laugh. Apparently, the owner of the restaurant, some old German dude, died recently and the Taqueria next door to Schnitzel House took over. Hence the entirely Hispanic wait staff talking about shots of tequila all night and the change of music half way through. Funny. Who knew we all loved German food so much!?

what was named that night as "Heart attack on a plate" but oh, so yummy...

Later that night Chuck unveiled his latest project in his backyard- a former Radio Flyer red wagon that he welded 3 legs to which became a fireplace for smores that night. We all enjoyed lots of smores topped off with some paint fumes from the wagon.
What fun! Happy Birthday Chuck!

Hola!

2009-03-05T22:31:00.000-08:00

It's been a while. Not much new to report here. Karl went skiing with "the guys" last weekend in Vail and they had awesome snow apparently. I'm excited for the "girls trip" to Tahoe next weekend! My friend's family has a house up in Truckee and we're making a weekend out of it. We're not sure what resort we're going to yet-Alpine Meadows, Kirkwood, Heavenly, Squaw, whew....so many to choose from! Squaw has received 6 feet of new snow in the last 3 days! yes, FEET!! I'm telling you- out here they get HUGE dumps when they do finally get snow. What that translates to in the city is usually many days of rain, rain & more rain. It has been coming down here lately. So, it looks like we'll hit it just right next weekend. Can't wait!

I've been thinking of other recipes I whip up during the week and I totally forgot my staple- Chicken Stir Fry. It's SO easy and healthy. I love how I say healthy and lately we've been chowing down on all the Girl Scout cookies my mom sent us...dangerous! Anyway, Karl just informed me that we are officially mailing in our taxes tomorrow. Hooray! (not that taxes are exciting but it's been eating up alot of evenings around here lately) After many late nights of working on them after work Karl has officially put the stamp on the envelope!

.......Good nite!

Recipe & stuff

2009-02-20T14:37:00.000-08:00

This is another good one that's easy and healthy- Honey Mustard Chicken. We both love asparagus and couscous so it has everything you need for the meal all in one. And, since I'm procrastinating going out and running errands at the moment, I've spent the time to publish it for everyone to click on to check out. Feel special. =)

On another note, I am completely beyond sore today after 3 consecutive days of Bar Method. Yow! I came home the other night and was showing Karl some of our "moves" and he couldn't even do half of them! According to our instructor, all the running I've done has actually made my hamstring tight and not flexible at all. I've been hoping that Bar class will help them become the lean, long muscles our instructor talks about in class every day. Although I'm still not at the point of doing splits (far from it actually) I am able to see a difference in flexibility in just a couple weeks. We'll see...

And, before I sign off I wanted to share a cute article Karl sent me today. It reminded me so much of the book/movie Marley & me. Warning - it can be a tearjerker but it's so cute. Stories like these continue to remind me how I didn't grow up in a home where I was ever that close to our family dog. I can't say I know completely how these people feel but I can imagine. Hopefully, some day we can have a pup in our family........some day. =)

Our project...

2009-02-17T11:44:00.001-08:00

If you've ever been over to our apartment you have seen the huge glass vase in our kitchen we've been collecting wine corks in for a while now. We brought some corks out from Texas that we had saved and we've added to those quite a collection from wine we've had here in California. Well, it started overflowing recently so we decided to create the framed corkboard we've been meaning to make. It was fun to dump them out, go through them one by one and try and remember where we drank the wine. There were only a handful that we could pinpoint exactly where we had it and for what occasion. It was also fun to see how much our taste had changed from the bottom of the vase to now! I guess frequent trips to Napa and exploring new wine at home with dinner helped with that! Not too long from now we'll probably have enough to make a second one! Here's the final product. It will now hang on our kitchen wall.

Valentine's Day!

2009-02-17T10:40:00.000-08:00

So my awesome husband continued his tradition of spoiling me AGAIN this Valentine's Day. The winery that we are members at, Pine Ridge, has two major events for their wine club members- Lobster Fest in the summer and Cave Dinners. We LOVE Lobster Fest so we decided to try the cave dinner on Valentine's Day. The "Sweetheart Ball" was hosted inside the wine caves at the winery. As we expected, it was awesome! The invitation let us know the theme was a Black, White & Red Sweetheart ball and to wear our finest in any of these colors. The caves were lit entirely by candles and they had a live band playing Big Band and Swing music all night. We enjoyed seared Scallops, Duck Confit and then a Filet Mignon steak. I had been craving a steak all week so I was thrilled to see Filet on the menu! The menu was paired with Pine Ridge wine, of course, and there were waitors walking around topping off our glass all through the night. Dancing was fun and we definitely made room for the Chocolate Cake filled with caramel & marshmallow at the end. Our favorite wine we had that night ended up being the Cab Franc. Everything was great and we were happy to have tried another one of their awesome events while we can. We learned that there will be another Cave Dinner in May so maybe we'll have some visitors in town we can treat ;) Any takers?

Here are some "not so great" pictures because of tough lighting and using my point & shoot camera but at least you get the idea.....

A movie weekend!

2009-02-08T21:17:00.001-08:00

It was due to be a rainy, cold SF weekend so we thought we'd catch up on some movies we've been wanting to see. Saturday we took a long walk around the neighborhood (as in the hilliest neighborhood in SF so I didn't feel so bad for not running because it was definitely a workout!) then we decided to go to breakfast at IHOP on Lombard. Yes, a total tourist trap but who cares. Yes, the most non-SF local brunch place in the city but sometimes we just want a cheap breakfast within 20 minutes of walking in, instead of waiting in long lines outside for the tiny local bruch spots in our hood. It was just what we wanted and we left stuffed. Yey for "Never ending pancakes!"

We then continued our walk around the neighborhood while we talked (compromised) about what movie we wanted to see. As we were approaching our street and starting our ascent up the steepest part of the hill, we see 8 cop cars parked haphazardly around the neighborhood and a fire truck attempting to make it's way up a hill so steep I think it's not going to roll straight backwards down the hill. Cops were walking all around one block and all staring up at one of the enormous 4 story Victorian houses on the street. I, of course, as a "concerned neighbor" have to ask a cop what's going on. Apparently, someone called in when they saw someone sneaking into one of the attic windows on the very top of the house. The police couldn't crawl up that high so the fire truck was in the process of sending out the ladder to the attic window. We had to stop and watch the entire procedure and "robbery in progress" as the cops called it. Just as the ladder almost reached the attic window it stopped and retracted. By this time, there was a group of us watching so I didnt' feel like the nosey neighbor. Other people were interested too. We waited and waited and nothing happened and then the family comes out of the house. A mom, a dad, who had just got home from a bike ride and about 4 boys about the age of 10. The family was home while the burglar was breaking in? Oh my gosh! Cops eventually started dissipating and no one was around to give us any answers. Well, after watching this long I had to get some answers! I called the neighborhood Police station and the dispatcher told me one of the family's sons likes to climb on the roof and is often seen going in and out of the attic window of that house. Karl called it when he saw the kids come out of the house. So, after basically causing mayhem in the neighborhood and shutting down 2 streets with about 8 cop cars and a fire truck, it ended up being a boy playing in his own house. Only in Pac Heights.

On with our day. We decided to see "Taken" since it was one of the only movies we agree on. (Side note- most of the time we never go to movies because we never really want to see the same thing and we agree to wait until we can Netflix it and then the same standoff occurs at home ;) This was actually a movie that looked interesting to both of us. Liam Neilsen played a great ex-Special Forces, protective dad but there were definitely some pretty disturbing scenes that I'm still trying to get out of my head. Overall though it was very intense and kept me awake so, good show. After the movie we went to dinner with friends at an "old school" favorite of ours that we used to eat at with the flurry team when we first moved out here, Brother's Korean BBQ. It's a fun, family style place and each table has a grill in the middle where you cook your own meat (Bul go gi) which is Korean marinated chicken and pork. Yum...It also comes with about 50 other small, Korean side dishes that are all pretty interesting. The meal is always topped off with individual bowls of cold, sweet rice water as a treat. Fun!

Sunday, we agreed, would be my day to choose the movie and I of course opted for "She's Just Not that into you" which came out Friday. All the small theaters around us had been sold out since Tuesday but I figured a Sunday matinee wouldn't be so bad. I was wrong. After meeting our friends at the theater we had to search other SF theaters for one that wasn't sold out. Good thing we had Karl's Iphone to look it up! haha. We raced to a theater downtime and bought tickets off Karl's Iphone on the way down there. Ok, ok, I'm starting to see how the Iphone is useful. (According to my husband, I still have to practice my two thumb texting skills and frustration that comes with it before I can buy one.) Fair enough. So, onto our movie rating......we're sticking with it was "just ok." It wasn't near as funny as the previews make it out to be. Sadly, the funniest moments of the movies are the ones you see in the previews. And, some parts of the movie are just sad and depressing. Think cheating, breaking up, divorcing....sorry if I ruined it for anyone but as you follow about 8 different couples, it's bound to happen, right? Overall, pretty good cast & I'm still glad we saw it.

It was fun end to a good weekend until we came home Sunday evening to find that I did indeed (sitting through the movie thinking I might have) leave the left burner of our gas stove on. I now have one, not happy, pretty cross husband :( I guess I can't even hack it as a housewife.........

Yow!

2009-02-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

I am feeling the BURN today! After an awesome outdoor lunch (pretty rare in SF, especially in the winter where it's normally raining & cold) Dara & I went to this new crab shack on Union and it turned out to be a treat! We shared this crab & artichoke dip that was heavenly and definitely NOT healthy but who cares when you're splurging. I had an awesome shrimp salad with avacados, grapefruit and the best beets I've ever had...who knew yellow beets would be my new favorite veggie? Are they a veggie? Anyway, paired with an awesome white wine it was definitely a meal appropriate for "lunching ladies" catching up. It is so fun to have a city friend to hang out with during the day now!

So during lunch Dara convinces me to try the "Bar Method" class which I've been hearing more and more about from friends in SF. Both studios are within walking distance of our apartments so I said I'd give it a shot. WOAH! Was I in for it. One intense hour of nothing but toning EVERY muscle in your body. Even the ones that you don't know exist until the next day. We use small weights but go for time and lots of reps and then use the bar to tone the lower body. I'm definitely NOT the ballerina or coordinated by any stretch of the imagination but it doesn't take much talent to do 5 minutes of straight squats holding on to the bar. I couldn't play dumb here. It reminded me alot of Pilates but without the machine. I loved it! Lots of abs, legs and of course the dreaded PLANK. ug. The hour flew by and I'm extremely sore today so I obviously did something right!
Well, our night didn't end there. Wednesday night is also the nights we hit up free Yoga at Lululemon. They rotate in new instructors from different studios each week and who could turn down free yoga? We arrived a little early to find out that free Yoga now includes free wine when it's over! Whoo hoo! Wine doesn't necessarily seem like the obvious end to Yoga but it was awesome and we were very relaxed after. Then, to top it off I had to hike up the Fillmore steps home...the never ending day of excercise!

Yummy Recipe Share!

2009-02-02T20:25:00.000-08:00

I'm always on the look out for new, healthy recipes for our family of two so I thought I'd share my latest concoction. (well, really, someone else's that I found in the Express News while I was in Texas) It's called Healthy Cajun Chicken Pasta. I'm all about high flavor & low fat and sometimes those types of recipes are hard to find even though you can Google just about any recipe these days. What we (it got Karl's stamp of approval too, even though we know how easy he is to please in the food department ;) loved about this recipe is that it did have a *ton* of flavor, not too spicy but a little bit. And, it has alot of veggies so it's a great all in one type meal!

Also, this post has inspired me to start a list of my favorite weeknight recipes on the sidebar to the right. We eat alot of chicken, so watch out. I'll start with a few of my staple meals for during the week. I try and stay quick, low fat & tasty! Enjoy!

(Back to that Spurs game now.....) Go Spurs Go!

Family Pic!

2009-01-22T13:23:00.000-08:00

I can finally post our family picture! I've been waiting for my Mom to get the card I sent her with this picture on front and didn't want to spoil the surprise.

Since we're all living in different cities now and it's so rare that my Mom has all five of us kids together, I thought we better get a family picture while we were all in town. We were racing sundown but were able to get a few good ones. Our cousin, Stephanie, was so great and patient with all of us. I was able to set up the shot and hand over the camera to her to snap away. They turned out great! Nothing has really changed since we were kids posing on the exact same bench at the McNay. One of us was always blinking, moving, sneezing, griping, etc. Ah, the joys of a big family! Here's my favorite from the session. I hope Mom likes it!

Winter Wineland 2009!

2009-01-19T21:12:00.001-08:00

We had so much fun this weekend in Sonoma Valley for the annual Winter Wineland. There was a group of 15 of us that all went in one van both days (so nicely driven by Brian, our Designated Driver for the weekend ;) We toured 7 different wineries each day! I think that was a record for Karl & me! When we're wine tasting on our own, alot of times we're on bikes and only make it to maybe three. The special deal with Winter Wineland is that they pair food with the wine they're tasting for the day. We had some yummy little apps and even desserts paired with some of the dessert wines and ports at the end. Yum! Julie's Dad is in the wine making business and took us to their warehouse where they make the wine and bottle it. It was super cool to see how tedious the whole process is. He sells his grapes to Clos Du Bois, a well know winery in the area and also served in alot of bars and restaurants. I can't say what my favorite wine of the weekend was but I feel like most of my favorites were Zins. Acorn winery was a surprise and actually had a great 2005 Zin but I could just be remembering that one because it was the last stop of the weekend. Some of the views from different winery grounds were amazing. The vines have no grapes and no leaves at this time of year. They are just bare vines neatly lined up row after row. It's pretty interesting watching the vines change all through the seasons. We got some great pics too....

Welcome Baby Jenna!

2009-01-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

And Congrats Steve & Amanda! I'm just now going through my pictures from my visit. Already 2 weeks old now, Jenna was born on December 30th. She came early just so I could see her before heading back to SF! Perfect timing little lady! I did manage to get a few good shots during my visit and below are my favorites. I love how she's all curled up and snuggly in these. I'm thinking she looks alot like her Mama. Enjoy!

On the Frio with the fam...

2008-12-31T16:47:00.000-08:00

We had a great time at the Frio with my family this Christmas. Like always, there was a ton of eating, drinking, playing cards & dominoes and singing by the campfire. We lucked out and had great weather too! Here is a link to all the pictures I took and a few of my favorites are posted below. We miss everyone!

Bigger & Better!

2008-12-30T20:43:00.000-08:00

Can you tell? I'm working on a method to post bigger photos. I'm such a visual person anyway, I think the bigger the better! Here are some of my favorites from our Christmas ski trip to Jackson Hole. We had never skiied in such deep powder! The snow was up to our waist one day! While we were there the resort had record snowfall- 31" in 24 hours. It made for great skiing until the last day where they couldn't even open the lifts it had snowed so much overnight! We were finally able to go out that afternoon after they worked all morning to avalanche and plow. What a fun trip! We were exhausted after 6 straight days of skiing!

Congratulations Karl!

2008-12-14T21:21:00.000-08:00

You made it! After a long, stressful semester you're finally finished and have your Master's degree! I am so proud of you and so happy to see you sitting on the couch right now relaxing, watching basketball. It's been a LONG time since I've seen you do that. You continue to amaze me every day....Hook 'em Horns!

(Thanks for posing in front of the UT Tower lit up in 2008 just for you. Yes, you have a crazy wife who is obsessed with perfect photo opps.)

Happy 30th Birthday Christine!

2008-12-14T11:52:00.000-08:00

The first one of our gang to turn the big 3-0! And, we're all still partying like we're 18!

A White Thanksgiving!

2008-12-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

I am just now getting to my Thanksgiving pictures and post...get ready for a big share since I took alot of pictures during our visit to see my dad in New Mexico. Taylor, Casey and I flew out to visit my dad and Todd in Los Alamos for a week. It was a perfect trip but we really missed having Karl and Riane there with us! =(

Casey, Dad, & me on the balcony night of Turkey Day

We had a white Thanksgiving which was a first for all of us! We woke up and it was raining a little and then all of a sudden in the late morning it started snowing....and snowing. It turned everything instantly white and we had a blast taking pictures and walking around outside. Dad worked on his famous deep fried turkey (true Southern style) and us girls worked on all the sides for the Thanksgiving feast. It was very cozy eating Thanksgiving dinner and watching the snow fall outside. We all pigged out and munched on all the leftovers the rest of the week- turkey sandwiches with gravy...mmmmm.

Casey, Taylor and me

The feast! Missing Casey in this one but she's taking the pic

The next day Taylor and I decided to go to Taos since I had read online they opened on Thanksgiving day (early for them) and since they had enough snow and were able to make enough snow, they opened a lift and a couple of runs. I was so pumped since Taos is one of our favorite places on the planet to ski and how fun to ski the day after Thanksgiving?! We bundled up and headed out for the hour and half drive. Once we arrived, we quickly got fitted for boots and skis and took off up the mountain. The snow was so soft and fluffy- just the snow I remember loving at Taos. It never lets us down! Taylor was such a trooper skiing along and even tackled some moguls with me for her first time. She was such a good sport even when she fell and tumbled a couple of times. Go Tay!

tay & I riding up lift 1 at Taos

Tay about to ski for the first time in a few years!

Skiing in my windpants from High School since I didn't bring my ski pants to Thanksgiving =)

We spent the week touring around Los Alamos, shopping around Santa Fe plaza and Dad took us on a drive to their local ski hill and some of the National Parks in the area. It was beautiful. One day we lucked out with a perfectly clear ski and the views from my Dad's balcony were stunning.

The view from my dad's balcony. Amazing.

View from the balcony again. You can see the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the background with snow caps.

Overall, I think we gained 10 pounds each after eating such yummy food all week, but it was worth it! It's pretty rare that at least 4 out of 5 of us are all together these days with work and school schedules and it was a treat to all be together. We miss you Dad and hope to see you again soon!

Long lost blog....

2008-11-17T12:17:00.001-08:00

I am back...after almost a month from my last post. wow. We just had a fun weekend celebrating Reagan's 30th birthday?! I can remember celebrating her 11th birthday with her and we've been friends for almost 20 years now...unbelievable! We had an awesome steak dinner at Sullivan's with 15 of our friends and then went to explore the new bars downtown. So many new ones have popped up since we've been gone. The new ones we went to are similar to Vegas clubs, which is different than the 6th street we know and love, but they were still fun. We had a great time and helped Reagan mourn the end of her 20's appropriately :)

Hope you had a great birthday weekend Rae and I'm glad we have 6 months to recover before we party like that for mine....

Sigh...

2008-10-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

We skiied for possibly the last time this season at the lake this weekend. The lake level is at an all time low and Karl was able to stand in the ski cove we normally ski in. It was very strange.

Finally!

2008-10-05T15:28:00.000-07:00

My Ireland pictures are all uploaded and ready to view! I widdled them down as much as I could (from 1600!) to 970 total in the slideshow. So...grab a glass of wine and get ready for a show ;) I'm still labeling them and having fun reliving the trip as I go. What an amazing trip.

I have also uploaded all my London pictures some of which Riane will most likely be annoyed I'm posting of her but they were too cute to leave out and that's what big sisters are for right? :) I miss you Ri Ri and had so much fun exploring London with you!

For your listening pleasure...

2008-10-04T22:08:00.000-07:00

Haha. I have added some new songs to our playlist below. After hearing so many different bands at ACL it inspired me to update it...a little. Now, rest assured, there will always be the random 70's and 80's songs, (You can call me Al, etc.) but in between I will add some newer favs. I am on a Neko Case kick recently...can you tell? Also, in case you want to do other things on your computer but still listen to my playlist, you can click the "pop out" feature so you can play it on your desktop. Ok, back to working on pics. Thanks for visiting and give us a holler!

ACL Festival

2008-10-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

It was go go go the second I got back into the states since ACL festival started the next day. (Austin City Limits music fest) Taylor and some of her friends came up and we went all three days....whew...still recovering. The heat wasn't near as bad as the first year we went when it was 108 degrees out (end of Sept?!) But, it was still hot during the day. The lineup was great this year and the 3 day pass was worth it to me just to see my favorite- Neko Case. In case you can't tell by all the songs of hers I have playing below on the website, she is one of my all time favorites :) Our other favorites were John Fogherty, who actually played some old CCR songs. Band of Horses, CSS, Tegan & Sara (another recent fav), G. Love, Mates of State, Robert Plant, The Raconteurs, Robert Earl Keen, Blues Traveler, Slightly Stoopid...sooo many good bands!

And, no, I didn't take this aerial shot from my private helicopter. I just found this pic online and thought it was cool to show how awesome Zilker Park is with the Austin skyline in the background. It was way more packed than this on Saturday and Sunday.

I went into hibernation mode Monday after being at the festival all weekend and still recovering from jet lag. But, I'm back to normal now and in the process of uploading all my trip pictures to post....stay tuned!

MIA

2008-09-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a while since I've been a away for a few weeks. I just got back from biking through Ireland for 2 weeks and then went to visit Riane in London for a week. Ireland was absolutely gorgeous and very green! The biking part wasn't too tough but wasn't that easy either. We did about 30 miles a day with stops to sight see and lunch along the way. I was a little nervous since I haven't really biked since my triathlon a couple years ago but we all did great and tackled the hills just fine.

We biked in the pouring rain a couple of days which was actually pretty fun because we weren't cold and we dressed for it. We lucked out towards the end of the tour with some sunny, gorgeous days. We learned two things: Ireland is NOT flat and the wind can be killer, especially when you're biking in it! We even had to abort one afternoon ride one day due to gale force winds that were knocking us over as we rode along the coast. Craziness! It was an amazing trip. Our bike tour company planned awesome routes and chose amazing bed & breakfasts to stay at each night. The Irish people were so welcoming and very friendly. Thanks to our bike tour guide who was from Ireland, we had a truly Irish experience while we were there. We also toured around on our own via car for about 5 days and saw almost the entire west coast of Ireland by the time we left. We're ready for the Italy bike trip next...uh, I think.

Riane and I had so much fun in London! She did a great job of showing me around. We walked alot and I got to see where she hangs out and meet all her friends. We saw two plays and had a blast together just walking around the city. I was so happy to be there for her 20th birthday! We went to this awesome little restaurant for her birthday lunch called Archipelago and we ate crocodile and kangaroo! Both were actually really good. We decided to pass on the locust salad and the chocolate scorpion though. I miss you Ri!

I had a chance to play around with my camera alot on this trip and came home to realize I took a total of 1600 pictures! I am in the process of uploading them and will post a link to view soo...so stay tuned!

One picture while you wait :)

Dingle Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland

We're back!

2008-08-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

And we miss Greece! After an awesome trip to Athens, Santorini and Crete we are back and still recovering from the 10 hour time difference and almost 24 hours of travel on the way home. Needless to say, it was an amazing trip and we had a great time with Ben and Meredith! Greece is truly an amazing country and each city we visited was beautiful and unique in it's own way. Here is a sneak peak of some of our pictures. We're still compiling all of them from all the cameras but here are some of my shares. We swam at a black beach, red beach, white beach and pink beach! Yes, it really was pink..see pic below. We ate wonderful Greek food, drank local wine and ouzo (yum!) We went sightseeing, walked around ruins and saw some of the most amazing sunsets I've ever seen.

More pics here!

Parthenon, Athens

beautiful Oia village, Santorini

Oia, Santorini

Red beach, Santorini

"Pink Beach", Elafonissi Beach, Crete

Sunset in Paleochora, Crete

Christine Visits!

2008-07-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

Christine & I had so much fun this weekend touring around SF & Napa! She got to experience a San Francisco summer for the first time when we attempted to walk across the Golden Gate bridge today in the freezing cold & fog.

Fun in the Texas Sun!

2008-07-22T21:17:00.000-07:00

We made a last-minute, surprise trip to Texas for Uncle Doug's 50th Bday party. We took a red-eye out of SF and drove from Austin to Corpus to meet my family at the beach for the weekend. Luckily, we went the weekend before the hurricane hit the coast. We had such a great time and were really happy to visit with everyone before we see them next over the holidays. Happy belated Uncle Doug!

More Pictures Here

....watching the full moon rise

Slideshow!

2008-07-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

My mom & I made a slideshow for my Uncle Doug's 50th Birthday party. She spent the many, many hours scanning in all the old pictures we didn't have as digital files. I put it all together with the music and put it on a DVD. This is the second one I created (first one was for Reagan's wedding.) I just learned how to upload videos on Blogger to show it off! I think I might start a business creating picture slideshows for birthdays, weddings, etc. So, if you know anyone who needs a DVD slideshow, let me know.

You might have to scroll down to the bottom of this page and press Pause on the music playing below to hear the music on the slideshow. Enjoy!

Album Fetcher

2008-07-21T19:34:00.000-07:00

As most of you know by now I use SmugMug to organize and share our photos. I've been really happy so far with their service and recently was able to see some prints and they look great! Smug Mug is much better than printing at starts with a "Wal..." I recommend printing in a matte or lustre finish.

One of the main features I have wished for is a bulk download option for my friends and family who want to save more than one photo to their computer. Well, FINALLY a SmugMug user has created an application just this purpose-- AlbumFetcher and it works great! It is very simple to use and in just a few steps you can download an entire album from my SmugMug page to your computer. It's also pretty cool because it will embed those files with my captions too ;)

I have created a step by step tutorial here. ............Cheers!

It's Summer!

2008-07-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

We went to the Russian River Valley this weekend and camped on the river. This was our first time camping in this area. Normally, we go to Napa or Sonoma and camp and bike around those wineries. The vineyards in Russian River valley look dramatically different as they are surrounded by hundreds of huge trees. The landscape was gorgeous.

As members of La Crema winery (home to some of our favorite Chardonnays and Pinots), we were invited to a members only lunch at the winery in Windsor, CA in the valley. The actual winery isn't open to the public for tastings (only the tasting room in Healdsburg does tastings) so this was a treat to be able to see the winery and tour around it. The grounds were pretty and they had the inside of the production room decorated and set up for the lunch. We had their awesome wines paired with different courses and everything was wonderful! It is obvious being inside the warehouse this winery produces a ton of wine! There were rows and rows of barrels stacked all the way to the ceiling.

Our campsite was just a few miles away and it was a perfect summer day and hot out so we jumped in the river as soon as we got back. Our campsite had a good beach and the water felt great. Karl & I jumped off huge rocks with the kids into the swimming hole. The scenery was awesome and there were huge homes hanging from the cliff side over the water.

The 4th...

2008-07-07T17:40:00.000-07:00

This is how we dress to watch fireworks on the 4th in San Fran
......just to see clouds glow red through the fog.

Not the typical 4th of July weather we're used to.

Happy Birthday Julie! The Dodgers won but we still had fun!

4 year anniversary!

2008-06-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's been four year's since our wedding day because it seems like just yesterday we were there celebrating with our friends and family. At the same time it feels like so much longer since I can't remember when it wasn't us.

Hot in San Francisco?!

2008-06-22T14:27:00.000-07:00

Thought we's never experience this! It was almost 90 degrees in SF this Friday and Saturday! We were so gitty to be outside in shorts and no jackets! The city was going crazy with tons of people out and about, the parks were packed and all the restaurant and bar patios were packed. We sat outside at one of our local restaurant patios and had a glass of wine and were actually warm! We walked down the Fillmore steps to get some shots of the sunset over the bridge. It was Summer Solstice the next day and the sunset was amazing.

Our apartment was still 86 degrees inside at 8:30pm Friday night! (No a/c either so this was HOT!) Saturday was another warm day hitting 87 degrees and we decided to go on a hike around Land's End on the Coastal trail. The views were awesome and it was so clear out we could see all the way to the Farralon's.

After our hike we went to the beach and it was packed, of course. Even the breeze that is normally cold was warm- it was bizarre. We laid out and then walked into the water. I made it up to my waist and Karl actually made it all the way in and swam around- crazy! The water was still bitter cold. Sure enough, later that afternoon, normal SF weather started rolling back in and it started to get chilly and the wind turned cold again....glad we enjoyed it while we could!

Congratulations Elizabeth & Will!

2008-06-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

We had such a great time celebrating Elizabeth & Will at their amazing island wedding on Guana Island, BVI. It was so much fun catching up with the family and seeing everyone!
Pictures here!

Congrats Tim & Pam!

2008-06-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

Our wedding circuit began in Long Island for Tim & Pam's wedding. We had a blast seeing Darmouth friends and partying over the weekend with everyone!
Pictures here!

Wives club!

my 29th...

2008-06-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

Yow...last year in my 20's! We went camping for the weekend at Clear Lake and went on a kayaking adventure...

and of course my wonderful husband to me to a restaurant of my choice...and you know in SF that is one tough decision! I decided on Blue Plate, highly recommended by my friend Carrie. It was amazing and my first steak in SF was perfect!

I think I look like the runaway bride that was on Tv that took off from her wedding ceremony and had those big brown bug eyes...haha. I *really* like my steak.

2 years ago tonight...

2008-06-03T22:34:00.001-07:00

.......we arrived in SF in our Honda full of a couple of suitcases of clothes, a couple of pots and pans and a lamp! Random. I had no idea what I was getting into quitting my job and going to live in a city I'd never even visited before, but what a fun adventure it's been! We thought we'd only be staying three months.....and here were are 2 years later!

Belize Trip!

2008-05-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

We're finally getting settled from being gone so long on vacation but we had an amazing time in Belize!

The diving was incredible and the island we stayed on was perfect. There is tons of animal life in the water and we saw different things every dive. The dive operators say you can never get bored with the diving there because you'll always see something, which we found to be very true! The Barrier Reef is the largest in the Western Hemisphere second to only the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. We started out with a dive the second day we got there. We haven't been since our honeymoon almost 4 years ago! Hol Chan Marine Reserve is a famous site with is a protected underwater park that you can dive and snorkel in. The animal life was amazing there and it was a perfect shallow (50 feet) refresher dive for us. We saw sharks, turtles, rays, spotted eagle ray, eels, lobster, barracuda, huge grouper, crab. The next stop was Shark Ray Alley where there are tons of Nurse sharks and sting rays in this one area. It was fun to watch our dive master wrestle huge Nurse sharks for us to "pet" underwater. Crazy.

The third day we did a 2 tank dive outside the Barrier Reef on the wall. It was just us with a dive master this trip and the current was pretty strong on these dives because we didn't go too deep. They were both great dives and we saw alot. Our dive master really liked harassing the eels and we had several actually come out of the wall and start swimming towards us showing us his teeth! We had to go to the Blue Hole since we were there. And was that day an adventure! We were picked up at our pier at 5:30 AM by the dive operators. It was 3 hour boat ride (not one bit of it was calm either) and we were prepared for an all day- 3 tank dive. It was a rough ride as we were making our way outside of the reef to the huge swells with our boat pounding up and down for hours. I was thinking- this better be worth it. No one got sea sick luckily and the boat had a bathroom (although you couldn't get up to use it or you'd fly off the boat). We made it to the Blue Hole and it was pretty cool to see. There were several live aboard dive boats parked there with divers and snorkelers but it was never crowded. The dive was planned for 130 feet. This freaked me out given the depth and how quickly we had to get down to 130' because of the dive time of only 20 minutes at that depth. (Bottom time of only 8 minutes with the majority of the dive being the ascent) The Blue Hole was created when it filled with water after the cave's roof collapsed. There is absolutely nothing to see when you are descending down into the dark until you hit 130'. And even then all there is to see are stalactites and cave like formations. It is very true you see way more animal life snorkeling. There were sharks immediately circling the boat when we stopped the engine as they are use to getting fed by people. As you descend into the Hole it gets very dark, black and spooky. People are known to lose their orientation because its so deep and dark. We tried to face the reef as we went down. As we ascended and swam back to the boat the sharks became interested in us again and started circling around us as we took off our gear and climbed on to the ladder. Cool.

The next stop was another dive site outside of the Blue Hole called Half Moon Caye wall. Belize is known for wall diving and I was excited because this was my first wall dive! It was a 65' dive and the visibility was great and the animal life abundant. It was awesome. We saw eels, tons of cool fish, barracuda cruise by and turtles. We then stopped for lunch at Half Moon Caye where our dive masters cooked lunch and we toured around the bird sanctuary. The last dive of the day was called Aquarium. We remembered one of our favorite dives in Bora Bora was called Aquarium too so I was excited, hoping it would be similar. Sure enough, it was. It was a 50 foot dive hovering over the reef and we saw tons and tons of cool fish, eels, turtles, etc. We dove through different coral formations and tunnels which was fun. Our dive master brought a coke bottle down full of rice and beans from lunch and periodically squirted some out. We'd instantly be surrounded by tons of fish fluttering around- it was so cool. After the last dive, we climbed into the boat and all had a cold beer before our 3 hour boat ride back! What a day!

The other days we rented a golf cart and went all around the island to check out other beaches, hotels, etc. It was overall a very chill. relaxed island with not too many tourists and where we stayed still had great restaurants on the water. The small town of San Pedro was right behind our hotel. We cruised up north to some resorts and found some pretty secluded resorts & beaches. Overall, we liked how quiet Ambergris Caye was and how nice the beaches were to walk into. We are already talking about our next trip out because we loved it so much. How can you beat amazing diving and perfect water and beaches!?

View our pictures!

Congrats Mr & Mrs Pachiano!

2008-05-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

We had so much fun celebrating Nicole & Marco at their wedding in Antigua!

(Pictures here)

We miss Belize!

2008-05-22T23:09:00.001-07:00

Pictures and blog coming soon!!

And we're off!

2008-05-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

We're headed out to Belize to scuba dive & Guatemala for Nicole and Marco's wedding!
Stay tuned for pictures!

Welcome Baby Maren!

2008-04-29T19:29:00.001-07:00

And, finally! A baby girl to go with all these little boys born lately!
Maren Eleanor was born yesterday to Karl's cousin & his wife. Congrats Jeb & Jenny!

Missing my ladies!

2008-04-27T22:41:00.000-07:00

I was so sad I couldn't be at Nicole and Marco's Casino Shower with everyone this weekend in Texas :( Looking at all the pics of my ladies makes me miss them even more! After almost 20 years of being friends everyone still looks great and I still see us dorky 5th graders walking down the halls at Woodridge! I can't wait to party with everyone in Guatemala for Nicole & Marco's wedding in just 4 weeks!! Love and miss yall!

Babies!

2008-04-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

We welcome to the world our new baby friends! March & April have been fun months with all the new babies born! 3 for 3 on boys...wow! Still waiting on the 4th...Karl's cousin is due any day now and we don't know what it is yet. The hardest part of seeing all these babies is that I can't hold them being so far away! Hopefully, we'll get to meet Mac & Jack this summer in New York!

Welcome Oliver!
Parents: Ian & Carolyn
(Austin friends)

Welcome Jack!
Parents: Matt & Amy
(AXA '00 baby!)

Welcome Mac!

Parents: Nate & Gina
(AXA '00 Baby!)

Austin City Limits

2008-04-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

We just bought our 3 day tickets to ACL and we're so excited! The line-up looks awesome and I think the entire weekend is worth it just so I can see Neko Case- my all time favorite! I've missed her in Austin and San Francisco both times she's played so I can't wait to see her live. (If you listen to our music on the blog you've heard my favorite song by here.) All the bands look awesome and we're going to brave standing the Austin heat for 3 days straight once again!

The pictures are up!

2008-04-21T19:19:00.001-07:00

Ok, it only took 3 full days to upload over 850 pictures my mom & I took over Reagan & Serg's wedding weekend but... here they are! So many good ones and of course, such a gorgeous bride and handsome groom to photograph! Congrats you two!

Rehearsal & Rehearsal Dinner

Wedding Reception

Congrats Mr & Mrs Sergio Resendez!

2008-04-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

It was sure hard to leave Austin after such a fun weekend celebrating Reagan & Serg and such perfect weather! I couldn't resist getting a couple pictures up on the blog for now but rest assured all 900 my mom & I took will be up this weekend after I edit them all.

We had such a great time and everything went off perfectly. I remember Reagan telling me at the end of the night that this was the night she had dreamed about for so long she couldn't have asked for a more perfect wedding dancing with her friends and family. I miss you Rae- but I know you & Serg are soaking up the sun and finally relaxing!!

Hey, that's not Karl! (Matron of Honor and Best Man shot with the newlyweds.) One of my favorites! This is the only shot Reagan wanted, in front of the UT Tower,
and I know she'll be happy to see how great it turned out!

Ready for Austin!

2008-04-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

I leave tomorrow to go back to the promised land!! Haha! I'm headed "home" to Austin for Reagan's wedding and can't wait to dig out my shorts and flops and eat lots of Mexican food while I can! I report in for MOH duty at 5pm Thursday when my plane lands. We will kick off the weekend with margaritas and massages...we can't WAIT! I'm also counting on a direct flight from SFO to ATX to write me Maid of honor speech...yes, I have waited until the last minute to put the final draft together. I am not too worried though as Rae and I have many, many crazy stories I can draw from after being friends for 19 years!! I can't believe it. I tell her it's so strange to think I've know her longer than one of my own sisters who was born when we were in 7th grade!

I've spent the last two weeks creating a DVD slideshow to music of her growing up and a section for Serg and the last section of them together. After the wedding I might ask them if I can create a link to a web version of it to show it off. I'm very proud of how it turned out! Reagan said she wanted it to make people cry and I promise they will ;)

I'm planning on taking my new camera and hopefully getting some cute shots of all of us girls getting ready in the suite before the wedding. I had my photographer in the room for my wedding and some of the shots were so candid and turned out great. And, it will give me practice shooting with my new toy.

Texas here I come...I'm procrastinating on the packing, can you tell. 11pm and I'm writing this. Next time I write the new Resendez' will be away in Mexico laying on the beach. I'm so jealous!
Love ya'll!

Mystery Wine Flight

2008-03-30T22:30:00.000-07:00

Karl guessed 2 out of 4 correctly
Jamie- 3 out of 4 correctly
Enough said.

More fun with visitors!

2008-03-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

Karl's Dad & Juanita came to visit us at the end of their Spring Break. We had such a great time touring SF and Napa.

We had the best picnic lunch EVER with some of the best cheeses I've ever had from Cowgirl Creamery (my favorite!) and lots of different deli meats and olives (Karl's favorite!)
We explored some new wineries in the Stag's Leap district which is where we normally go.

They also treated us to a wonderful sunset celebration at Auberge du Soleil which was one of the coolest places we've been to, especially for sunset. On the huge wrap-around deck perched up on a hill we had a sweeping view of the valley. It is an amazing place. Below is a picture of me from our table with the view in the background. I got some great pictures with my new camera and had fun playing with different settings in the neat lighting during sunset.

I was sad to find out after our visit with them, I didn't get one picture of the four of us on either camera! Oh well, maybe next visit ;) Thanks to them for all the wonderful dinners and goodies during their visit! We had a blast!

Aunt Peggy & Uncle Ron Visit SF!

2008-03-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

We had such a great time with Peg & Ron during their stay with us in SF! They saw alot of California during their 5 day stay and we had fun taking them to see all our favorite spots!
Miss yall!

{Link to see all pictures}

Upcoming Visits!

2008-03-01T23:33:00.000-08:00

We’re so excited to have my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Ronnie coming out to visit us in SF! They’ll be here 6 full days and I’m working on their California Adventures Itinerary as we speak. They’re going to have a blast! The weather has been amazing lately so I hope it stays that way for their trip. I have Spring Fever big time! I’m sooo ready for warm weather and flip flops and the sun! I sure miss having ritas on the patio with my ladies in ATX! Anyway, back to the weekend plans. I think I will make a brief itinerary for them so they maximize their time here and are able to hit all the top spots. There are so many! The Golden Gate Bridge, Sausalito, Monterey and Carmel, Alcatraz, Lombard Street….just to name a few. Karl and I were thinking this weekend we could drive them out to Napa to see all the vineyards and tiny grapes that are budding now. (Secretly, I want to go just for the heat! I miss it so much.) The rest of the week I’m planning on giving them a map of California, a bus map and some points of interest and they’re off on their own! Planning their time here reminds me how much there is to do in this area and how many awesome places there are to visit. Then, the same day they leave we have Karl’s Dad and Stepmom coming to visit us too! We’re so excited for our first visitors to our new apartment. I feel like we’re in such a good area now and close to so many cool restaurants and shops. There are several good bus lines right on our street that can get you to Union Square and downtown in just 15 minutes. Pictures to come soon!….

Look at those baby blues..

2008-02-20T22:46:00.000-08:00

Saturday was such great weather and being outside all day I had so much fun playing around with my new camera. Karl was very patient and let me take lots of different shots of him in different lighting. Here, I took a somewhat well exposed picture of my honey and tweaked it in Photoshop using a new action I learned. Sometimes Blogger doesn't do the color justice but I think this shows the differences pretty well. And, nope I didn't add any color to this photo.

The best husband ever!

2008-02-16T23:55:00.000-08:00

Mine. Karl told me he had Valentine's Day weekend all planned out and it was going to be a surprise for me. Wow. After the great dinner he made for us I still have a surprise trip ahead of me? I was feeling lucky already! I, of course, had to ask my usual 20 questions in the several days leading up to Saturday so eventually Karl had to start messing with me. He would say things like, oh, yeah, we need to go by REI to get some new sub zero sleeping bags before we head out Saturday. I was like, no way. You know I hate being cold and there's no way we're camping this time of year!! People are skiing at Tahoe this weekend! So, I figured out we weren't camping (amen.)

Saturday morning he tells me what to pack and wear that day. I'm trying to stay cool and not ask too many questions. Then, I see him pack his SUIT...yow! I started fretting because my cute dresses were still in the dry cleaning pile from Vegas so I dug and dug into the dark corner of my closet and found a nice dress to wear for wherever we were headed. We loaded up the Ipod and hit the road. The weather was awesome and sunny and we drove across the bridge heading Northbound on 101. Hmmm..this road did lead to one of our favorite places ever- the wine country!! We exited Healdsburg and sure enough we were in Dry Creek Valley! An area we've been wanting to try, this is a less visited, quieter version of the Napa/Sonoma wineries and home to one of our favorite wines- Zins! So now I'm thinking..hmm...where are we staying tonight? We've only camped in this region in the spring and summer so I was not familiar with anywhere nearby to stay the night. Rest assured, Karl was a man with a plan. We pulled up to this amazing old mansion that was a bed & breakfast! We've never stayed at a B&B before and I have said before it would be fun to do that somewhere in the wine country and sure enough it was amazing.

We spent the day wine tasting on the quiet windy roads right near our B&B and hit up some great new wineries with awesome Zins and Pinot Noirs. 2 of our absolute favs. We enjoyed the less expensive tasting fees and the lack of crowds at each place. The views at some were awesome (Pictures below) and it was nice to be outside with such perfect weather. We had our usual picnic lunch at one of the wineries with an amazing view of the valley. We just can't get enough of this place.

The dinner that night was at the main house of the "manor" and was apparently noted as one of the best restaurants in the wine country in all the areas combined so we were eager to see if it lived up to our expectations. This was a fancy, 7 course meal and was New Californian cuisine. We chose the tasting menu with wine pairing and the entire experience was simply the best we've had in California or anywhere we've ever dined. We've come a long way from our first date at Taco Cabana ;) Each course was unique and delish and the portions were big. The wine pairings worked perfectly and the dessert just ended the entire meal with a single, perfect moment.

If anyone knows me they know my biggest weakness is ice cream and the only other thing that I like more is homeade ice cream. So, the restaurant's dessert speciality, get this- homeade ice cream made on a cart in front of your table!! I was mezmerized. Our waiter looked like Professor Snape with all his fancy bottles and potions and the dry ice just added to the dramatic effect. In a huge copper bowl he whipped up the most perfect homeade ice creamin minutes. It was the creamiest, to die for vanilla ice cream sundae I could imagine. My eyes were wide open just staring as he poured hot chocolate on top and plopped a cherry right in the middle. We agreed, this is one dining experience we will never forget. What a perfect weekend.
I'm the luckiest wife there is.

The Manor we stayed in

Vineyard filled with little yellow flowers

If we ever wanted to renew our vows somewhere?

Perfect picnic spot

Valentine's Day!

2008-02-14T17:25:00.000-08:00

This has to be one of the best Valentine's Days of my entire life. Karl told me that he was going to cook dinner for me on Valentine's Day! He said I didn't have to worry about a single thing and he would even be grocery shopping for everything he needed and had the menu all picked out. Last year we were somewhat disappointed after making restaurant reservations and eating a set menu of just so-so food after waiting and waiting. This year we decided it would be much more fun to stay home together and cook. Little did I know Karl could make the BEST Veal Saltimboca I've EVER had!! I was very impressed how the dinner turned out and there was even a side dish- asparagus and tomatoes salad. Everything was delish! I also got a beautiful dozen roses delivered to me at work so Karl did great and made me feel like a very special wife! Here are some pictures of the cooking King and his delectable meal!

The Chef hard at work!

YUM!!

Vegas!

2008-02-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

8 of us girls went to Vegas this past weekend for Reagan's Bachelorette party and had a blast! We partied hard for 2 nights and all agreed that 2 nights in Vegas is plenty! We went to Tryst at the Wynn one night and then Tao and Moon the other night. We all agreed this needs to be a once a year trip since we are were overdo for an all girls weekend. Congratulations Rae! We can't wait for the wedding to be here and had so much fun partying with you this weekend! Love, j

The Joy of Photoshop

2008-02-05T20:21:00.001-08:00

The more I learn from my awesome photographer friends whose work inspires me to learn everything I can about photography, the more I've learned how Photoshop can do wonders on any digital image post- production. So, now, on top of learning all I can about exposure, metering, light, etc, Photoshop is on my list of projects. What a program! It is very high-tech and even though it is used by all professional photographers there are some pretty basic actions I'm learning that can make a huge difference in any photo. I took this digital picture we took while diving in Akumal several years ago and chose it since it had so many great colors. We really love our underwater case for taking shots while diving. With just a few simple actions and tweaking I was able to make the picture even better and the colors more vibrant. Looking at these pictures gets me excited for our diving trip we have planned to Belize in May.

before editing

after

Thanks Riane!

2008-02-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

...for my own little piece of Ireland right in my kitchen! Haha. My sister, Riane, got back from touring around Ireland and brought me back authentic Shamrock seeds! These are sure to make my 2008 lucky, right? What does it mean if they never bloom because I kill them? hmm... As of now they are incubating in my little herb garden just waiting to sprout good luck. I miss my garden in Texas so this little three pot wonder will have to do for now. I'll document the progress so stay tuned................yes, this is how exciting my life is.

...Riane, here's proof I finally planted them!

My new toy!

2008-02-05T19:19:00.000-08:00

After getting settled into our new place and now being able to easily find things in our apartment without tripping over boxes and falling I have had some time to play around with my new toy! Santa Karl got me a Digital SLR for Xmas! There is so much to learn with this new piece of equipment it's overwhelming sometimes but I figure the best way to learn is to practice alot and learn by trial and error. Unlike my others friends who are into photography as well, I don't have a cute little kiddo to be my test subject but I do have a cute husband that makes just as many interesting faces :) Stay tuned for new pics as I learn!

Happy 2008!

2008-01-25T21:25:00.000-08:00

Wheew...it's been a while. I'm just now getting around to blogging and posting all of our holiday pics up after a crazy month we've had so far. We moved right after Christmas to a new place in Pacific Heights right on Fillmore St. The neighborhood is made up of lots of old, restored Victorian mansions and it's fun to walk around and look at all of them on our walks. We love our new place so far but are still getting unpacked and settled so I just recently found my camera buried in a box. Karl was a sweet husband and drove a Uhaul across the country from Texas to SF with all of our own furniture and stuff. It feels alot more like home in here now with our favorite couches and furniture and all my kitchen stuff back! It's been 3 weeks of unpacking and organizing but we're getting there. We have had a chance to check out a few restaurants on our street and so far so good! We are right in the middle of all the action on Fillmore and love it! We can't wait for the annual Fillmore Jazz Fest in the summer that takes place right on our street. It's a very convenient location considering I can walk directly across the street to get coffee and there's a market right next door to grab any last minute dinner items we need. Hopefully, we'll stay put for a little while....but you never know what's next these days :) Come visit and stay in touch in 2008!

Wine Winterland!

2008-01-21T21:06:00.000-08:00

One of our top favorite things about living in California- wine!! We went to the annual Wine Winterland in the Russian River Valley with some friends. For $40 a person you get to attend any of the wineries participating (most of them) and do a tasting with a food pairing. It was awesome! We got there early and were able to hit up 7 wineries! All the ones we visited were ones Karl and I had never been before so it was fun to try all new wine. The weather was perfect and we had a blast. There was every kind of cheese you could imagine, bbq, soups, chocolate truffles, etc. at each winery. Our favorite was Talty who did a Zinfindel tasting. Most of the wineries in the Russian River Valley specialize in Pinot Noirs (YUM..my favorite) since its further North than Napa or Sonoma. And also, these wineries had more Zins (our other fav). So, there's your wine lesson of the day! ....yey for wine!

Mema's 80th Birthday!

2008-01-01T14:48:00.000-08:00

What a party we had for Mema's 80th birthday! Lots of friends & family where there to celebrate Mema's big day. Fireworks, BBQ, beer, champagne, fun times!

Love you Mema!

**Click here for all the pics!**

Christmas in Whistler!

2007-12-29T20:32:00.000-08:00

We had a great time in Whistler skiing over Christmas. It snowed almost every day and we had a White Christmas! We skied at Blackcomb & Whistler and loved the tree skiing!

Click here for all our pics

Karl's bro, Mark, me and Karl

Happy Holidays!

2007-12-22T01:38:00.000-08:00

We're officially on vacation!! WOO HOO!! We're headed to Whistler tomorrow to ski for a week with Karl's family. We've been watching the snow report and we're due for a White Christmas so I can't wait! There's nothing like being on the slopes and skiing in the groves of trees at Christmas! We're all packed...4 bags...160 lbs worth of stuff ready to go. We'll be in SA the week after Xmas for Mema's 80th birthday bash and to see all my family. I can't wait! I feel like I haven't seen Riane, the new, crazy Brit, in forever!

We were so busy with work, etc, this year that I didn't send out Christmas cards this year (slacker, I know.) I hope everyone has a great holiday and rings in 2008 with lots of laughter and fun (and a drink in their hand ;) See ya in 2008!

Nutcracker!

2007-12-22T01:33:00.000-08:00

This year was our second time to see the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker. We have so much fun just hopping on the bus and shooting down to the opera house where everyone is walking up the big steps. It's so fun to get all dressed up and go watch my favorite- The Nutcracker! The show is always awesome and I love the music. I was able to see the clarinet section from my seat! Haha. (I wonder if I could still play mine?) Another great performance this year!

Oh the crazy holidays...

2007-12-20T01:28:00.000-08:00

This week has been completely crazy with holiday events, parties, happy hours, wrapping, packing, etc! Weeks like this I wish there were more hours in a day. I feel like I just can't get everything done that I need to and enjoy the holidays at the same time! My group at work decided to have our Christmas party the same day as the flurry party so that was a bummer I had to miss theirs but alas...something has to give. At work we had parties all week! Lunches, eggnog parties, sushi dinners, secret santa parties, Christmas tree decorating parties, etc. We don't hold back when it comes to celebrating. Karl and I are both exhausted and ready for the holidays and vacation to begin..and we can sleep and sleep and sleep. Lovely.

Cirque du Soleil!

2007-12-19T01:13:00.000-08:00

The BEST show we've EVER seen. Hands down. Karl & I walked away from this show completely amazed at what we just saw. We didn't know what to expect going to the show other than all our friends who had been to a show highly recommended it. We went to Kooza which is playing in San Fran right now. Their shows normally only play in bigger cities so we thought this would be the perfect chance to go check it out. We went in completely open-minded and didn't know what to expect. It was AMAZING. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might go see it but here's a little glimpse...

This was probably one of our favorite acts. The contortionists in this show will do things that you never thought humanly possible. All perfectly choreographed to cool music too. I seriously thoughts these little person's spines were going to snap. At the end of this act, as our mouths were permanently dropped open, the girl basically lays down on her stomach and flips her entire body over itself and walks around her head on the ground..unreal. Very cool but we were thinking "OW!" the whole time.

The "wheel of death" was another one of our favorites. These dudes were just crazy and the main thing to point out on this act is there is no net to catch them if they were to fall...which one guy almost did. We were so glad to have taken advantage of Cirque being in town to experience our first show. We're now hooked and already looking up other Cirque shows to go see!

Karl's 30th!

2007-12-10T18:37:00.000-08:00

The old man hit 30 today! (which is very weird to think about considering we've been together since we were 17!) I wanted to take him somewhere to celebrate the big 3-0! We decided San Diego would be the most fun for the cheapest plane ticket, least amount of time off work to get there and we have some of our best college friends living there so it was a perfect spot! It was an easy 1.5 hour flight from San Fran so we took advantage of cheap Southwest fares there and back. Friday night Mark & Marina, James and us went to eat our favorite food- Mexican!

The restaurant was very San Antonio Market Square like with a big patio, yummy food and ritas. We braved the very chilly weather and sat outside on the patio huddled next to a space heater and ordered our favorite- cheese enchiladas! It was a really cold weekend and even rained some...not the San Diego weather we were used to but we had a blast despite the weather. Saturday we decided to do something mature and non-drinking related and went to the Animal Wildlife Safari. We had fun walking around, harassing random animals.
... not the petting zoo, mind you

Karl & Mark of course, walked around the park memorizing the names of every random species of animal there. (Both Animal Planet junkies) Karl told me that he liked going to the park with Mark because Mark could identify all the weird animals and Karl knew their behavior. Dorks. Anyway, the park was really cool and we even *splurged* and did the tram safari ride through the wild serengeti to get up close and personal with these animals. Excitement.

...baby giraffes

...notice the baby monkey hanging on for dear life

...does life get any better than this?!

It was a freezing cold ride but pretty cool. Saturday night we went to eat at this cool restaurant near the Culyba's house right on the ocean, which had a really cool view. We had drinks and yummy seafood. After dinner, and Karl and James wrapping up an intense Wii tennis match, we obviously had to refresh our beer pong abilities to see if we could still hang...Harris' v. Culybas and we won! We bundled up and played in the garage and eventually had to go inside since since we were frozen and one game of shrub and one game of two cup, couples style is all our husbands' old bones could take.

...old man & bank robber

If anyone knows Karl they know his fascination with weather & temperatures. He was inspired by Mark's refusal to turn on the heat in their house despite it being in the 40s outside. So, fun game- Karl decided to see how cold it could actually get in the house at night. For us, this included sleeping next to a turkey thermometer probe by our pillows to get the lowest overnight reading. Turns out- one morning it got as low as 52 inside! Fascinating.

December Already?!

2007-12-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

Karl & I had a pretty relaxing weekend this weekend. I can't believe this will be our second Christmas in SF already. Time really flies. We decided since we'd be gone for almost two weeks over Christmas and New Year's we should get our Christmas tree this weekend so we could enjoy it! (a real tree, of course) We walked down to Polk Street to the neighborhood hardware store and had all of 4 trees to choose from. Being in the middle of the city they could only display what they could fit on a tiny piece sidewalk in front of their store. Anyway, we found the perfect sized tree! It's about 4 feet tall and with the new star topper I found, about four and half. Karl lugged it all the way up our big hill up to our apartment and it's perfect!

We set it up right in front of our big window in the living room so you can see it from the street, which seems to be what everyone does here. It's pretty cool driving around the city to see all different sized trees all lit up in windows. We had fun getting into the Christmas spirit decorating our tree with lights and ornaments we've collected in California over the past year and a half. I actually have a Christmas box started here, which surprised Karl. I don't why since this is my FAVORITE holiday :) We have a whopping 8 ornaments some of which are almost as big as the tree! We have a couple from our trips to Disneyland, a couple from Napa and of course a Nutcracker from when we went to the SF Ballet we went to last year. The decorating wouldn't be complete without my cowboy boot stockings my mom sent us last year which I love!

While I was decorating around the apartment Karl was completely content with his cup of eggnog watching the Harry Potter marathon that's been on all weekend. I had to run to the store to get eggnog and as I was pulling out of our garage, I confirmed if you looked up at our apt from the street you can see our tree in the window. Yey! I LOVE Christmas time and even though we miss putting up lights on our home and a big tree with our collection of ornaments, we love Christmas time in the city!

First Invitation!

2007-11-29T10:59:00.000-08:00

I wanted to show off my first official invitations I designed for Mema's 80th birthday party! Mom & I worked so hard getting everything just right and the final printed invite turned out awesome. We never knew there were so many different types of paper to choose from to print it on but Mom ran to several different stores before choosing the perfect one. I was so happy her sweet sixteen picture turned out just right (this was Papaw's favorite picture of her) All those hours I spent learning Photoshop while I was on my break paid off! I had so much fun designing them and would love to take on some other projects so let me know if anyone ever needs invitations, cards or announcements custom designed by Jamie ;) Here is the final invite....

Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

We made our annual family trip down to the Frio this year for Thanksgiving with all of our cousins and aunts and uncles. What a time we have together under one roof- all 25 of us! We missed Riane & Ronnie so much this year! Dominoes just wasn't the same without Uncle Ron! We played tons of card games, board games and of course dominoes. Then, usually we get in a game or two of poker. My $5 usually doesn't last too long but I try and stick around as long as I can before my cousins take my money ;) Despite the freezing cold weather we had this year- in the 40s and wet, we continued our volleyball tradition and played every day, all bundled up.

I have to say I am getting better and slowly learning the advantage of actually trying to hit the ball rather than running and trying to dodge it. I was voted MVP by my team when I scored the winning point! (Much to me and my team's surprise). We even had one dry night where we all sang around the campfire to Uncle Doug's guitar songs! We sang new ones I had requested before the trip that he had practiced! One of the highlights of our trip is definitely all the awesome food we eat over the course of 4 days. This year Sallye made her new famous drink- "Cable Car Martinis!" We even drank them out of fancy martini glasses rimmed with cinammon sugar..Mmmm...hearing from her that this was her favorite treat during their trip to San Francisco I decided I should try one and yow were they strong!

Let's just say after all the ladies had a couple while cooking Thanksgiving, it was a miracle we had Thanksgiving dinner at all! Even Mema got up there with them and sang and danced away with them in the kitchen. Luckily, there were enough microphones to go around (spoons and basting brushes) so everyone could sing! We all were cracking up so hard and thankfully, Karl had the turkey under control and grabbed in just in time!

He and Mom tried a new recipe for the turkey this year which involved turning the turkey upside down to let the juices get to the breast meat and man did it work! We had the juiciest turkey ever so something worked! We sure missed Riane this year- she couldn't make the trip all the way from London but she and her friends made their own T-day feast in London! (thanks to grocery shopping at the Americanized Whole Foods in London!)

And as if that wasn't enough food to last us a week, we couldn't wait for "Mexican night!" We chowed down on the infamous bean rolls and chalupas and definitely got our fix before heading back to California. Topped off by Sallye's famous margaritas and we were set!

During the day in the morning after breakfast we all went walking around the neighborhood and down to the ricer. We even took Riley the "Crazy Dog" out for a walk and she once again decided it would be more fun to walk me so I was basically holding on for dear life the entire time. I let her off the leash ONCE and she thought she could out run an entire family of deer- nice try Riley! She got her exercise, that's for sure.

Karl and the guys kept the fires burning in both living rooms and we were cozy playing games all night long....into the wee hours. I was so happy to see my family and glad we keep our once a year tradition of getting together. Friends and family is what life is all about!

*click here to see all pics*

I'm thankful for...

2007-11-21T23:56:00.000-08:00

I feel like I have so many things to be thankful for and think about how lucky I am every day. So here it goes….my top 10 in no particular order.

1. My awesome, big, fun family that is more and more fun to hang out with every time we’re all together. Having 4 siblings and friends for life is one life’s greatest gifts. I wonder if my mom knows they are the coolest things she’s ever given me.

2. All my crazy cousins, aunts and uncles and Grandma that provide so many fun memories for years to come. Funny how we don’t need anything fancy to have fun- just cards, a game or two and we’re all laughing and having a blast!

3. My best friend and husband, Karl, who continues to make me laugh every day 12 years later. Thank you for making my dreams come true. I love you babe.

4. My job at one of the world’s greatest companies. Every day I wake up to and go to a job I actually love.

5. All my friends- old and new. One & a half years later after pulling into a brand new city not knowing a soul, I have made many new friends in the city and we have a blast hanging out. And as always, I am thankful for my 6 best friends, whom I've been friends with for almost 20 years. Wow.

6. A warm home and husband to come home to every night.

7. My cowboy boot slippers that everyone makes fun of but until they wear them they can’t imagine how cozy there are.

8. Babies- the sweetest things on this planet which I can’t WAIT to have some day.

9. My health and my family and friend’s health.

10. Good Decisions and a little luck along the way.

Obama visits us at work

2007-11-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

Another star studded day at work. Obama and his entourage came and spoke to all employees and even took questions from the audience. Here's a clip from his visit that was posted on You Tube.

** Click here to watch! **

Ben & Mere Visit

2007-11-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

We were so happy to have Ben & Mere come visit us this weekend! We had perfect WARM weather and it's already November! It has been warm and sunny all weekend. Daylight savings hit last night and now it gets pitch dark at about 5pm in SF which is kind of sad. It's always weird to me in the winter here to be at work at 5 and have it dark out before I even leave for home. Makes the days seem like they just fly by. Guess this means I can't run around the hood after work so I'll have to run in the morning or at work around campus....

Here are some picts from this weekend. I was really sad to learn I forgot to swap out the un-charged battery for the one plugged in at home so we didn't get too many pics Saturday but here are a few.

Thanks B & Mere for coming to visit! We had fun and hope you did too! (Maybe the next time we all get together to party we'll be celebrating you oldies turning 30! :) scary....

.....the ladies and our favorite wine

...nice wine teeth :)

Earthquake!

2007-10-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

Last night Karl and I had just sat down to eat dinner and we were sitting in the living room eating on the couch and I felt a slight rumble but I always think it's someone in the apartment above us like jumping around so didn't really think anything of it. But, then it got alot stronger and I heard all the dishes and glasses in our kitchen rattle around in the cabinet...Karl and I both just looked at each other like what do we do? We really should look up what to do in case of a major one but we just sat there looking around until it was over. It was reported to be a 5.6 so definitely one of the bigger ones since we've been in SF. Karl would like me to mention this is the biggest quake that's hit SF since the big one in 1989. I've only felt a few smaller ones and but once this summer Karl woke up in the middle of the night and felt the biggest one yet where our entire building (15 floor high rise) was swaying back and forth. Let's just say I'm glad I was in Texas visiting my family and didn't get to experience that one..I would have freaked out! Anyway, we're safe...just a little entertainment on a Tuesday night in SF.

My new project....

2007-10-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

Check out our new website! I decided, after seeing so many of my friends use Blogger, that I would check it out. Turns out it rocks! It is SO much easier to use, as with all Google products, and it was alot easier than Wordpress to do simple formatting, posting, etc. So...here we are!

Keep checking back for updates!

Sonoma Camping Farewell...

2007-10-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

We decided to go camping in Sonoma this weekend since the weather was great for camping and probably the last weekend before it gets too cold to camp. This is my favorite time of year to camp in Napa since the vineyards are blankets of bright red, and orange & yellow up & down the hills.

We did our usual bike ride to about 4 wineries along our route and took pictures as we went. It ended up being perfect weather- upper 70s during the day and it was in the upper 40s that night-brrr..but it was cozy so we bundled up and sat by the fire.

It's funny because back at the campsite Karl used his nifty little head lamp he bought for his guys camping weekend in Catalina Island and it turned out to be super handy while we were roasting hot dogs and making s'mores. Yum! I had to take a picture of him with it on because it was cracking me up! We're going to miss camping and bike riding up in Sonoma but we'll be back!

Taylor visits!

2007-10-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

I was so happy this weekend when Tay came to stay with us for 3 nights and even got to play hooky from school on Friday so we could hang out in SF! We ate lunch at Google and we pigged out! Tay had steak and pork and mashed potatoes and then we had lots of little yummy desserts ;) Friday night we found a really good Dim Sum restaurant and we pigged out again on lots of little dumplings and eggrolls. (yes, all we do is eat here in SF..hence the running at least 45 minutes a day!) Saturday, we had so much fun running across the Golden Gate bridge. We ran the whole way across and back- 3.6 miles! We had awesome clear weather so the views were awesome. We shopped all day Saturday and had yummy calamari in North Beach for lunch. Then, we hung out down in Union Square and went into all the big, huge stores that in a normal city are one floor and in Union Square they are like 4-5 levels. We were worn out! Then, Karl took us out to North Beach for YUMMY veal picatta that we love! The waiter must have thought Tay was alot older than she is because he even poured her a glass of wine! (which of course Karl and I helped her drink instead ;) Sunday we took a walk down to Crissy Field and took lots of pictures of the bridge and us on the beach. There were sooo many dogs chasing balls and playing in the water, it was fun to watch. We even spotted two sea lions playing around near the shore that we thought were dogs! It was a short but sweet trip
...I miss you & love ya lots Tay Tay!

I could get use to this!

2007-10-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

....click picture for bigger view

During my break I have had so much fun visiting my friends' new babies! These 3 kiddos were born all within 4 weeks of each other and are so so sweet! My friend Sophie from work had Baby Katlynn, Leah from work had Christian and Sara, my friend in SF, had baby Olivia. They have been my lunch buddies and we've had so much fun visiting. I could definitely hold these little people all day long!

Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Fest

2007-10-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

The sun never came out and it was chilly as we walked around Half Moon Bay's Pumpkin Fest this year with some friends, but we bundled up and had fun. The pumpkin winner this year weighed in at 1384 lbs! Since they guard this veggie dearly and block all views from photographers (hoping you'll pay the $12 to pose in the tent with it) we weren't able to take a picture but I did get a picture of the 2nd place winner and an artist carved a huge face on it which was cool! We are still having nice and sunny weather in SF so this weekend we tried to enjoy while we can. Saturday morning Karl & I ran from our apt. to the Embarcadero, past the Ferry Building, to right underneath the Bay Bridge- 3 1/2 miles! Then, ran back to the Ferry Building for some lunch along the water @ Mijita taco stand. While the tacos definitely aren't Las Palapas they are good & cheap!

Pine Ridge Winery Lobster Fest!

2007-10-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

We had so much fun at our first Pine Ridge Winery Lobster Fest! Our winery does its famous Lobster Fest once a year for members only, so we had to experience this first hand. What a feast! We each got an apron, which came in very handy during the feast. We arrived to appetizers being served all around in the gardens and patio with wine pairings. We had grilled lamb and hanger steak skewers, prosciutto wrapped figs stuffed with blue cheese and oysters from an oyster bar with special sauces. We were then escorted to the long tables where the lobster feast was to be served.

We stood back and the cooks ran down the tables and poured out buckets of yummy food! Lobster, shrimp, potatoes, garlic, onions, artichokes...yum! We dug in with our hands! Everything was amazing! Lots of butter and garlic...yum! We were then taken to the patio again for dessert- tiramisu paired with the new release of Malbec wine- first in 10 years. Yum!! We were very happy to have experienced the famous Lobster Fest just a drive away from our home in San Francisco.

...very serious work!

Class of '97 Reunion

2007-10-04T14:08:00.000-07:00

We had a blast in SA for our 10 yr high school reunion....fun times!

..me & my girls...friends for almost 16 years now!

Julie's Wedding in Sonoma

2007-09-09T14:57:00.000-07:00

We went to Julie's wedding this weekend in Santa Rose, wine country north of Napa. It was soo pretty outside on a golf course at the Country Club. They couldn't have asked for better weather.

Oren Wedding in LA

2007-09-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

Congrats Melissa & Ben! A gorgeous black tie wedding at Walt Disney Concert Hall. We had a blast partying with all the AXAs...

Culyba Wedding in La Jolla

2007-08-18T15:07:00.000-07:00

Weddings! Weddings! It's our hobby! La Jolla was gorgeous and the Culyba wedding was set overlooking La Jolla Cove- beautiful!

Costa Rica!

2007-07-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

I miss Costa Rica! Riane & I had soo much fun with our tour group...10 days of adventure!!

Here's a funny video of me being a spaz as I drop from a platform on the "Jungle Swing" It was actually really fun but the initial feeling of dropping from that high up is creepy...thus the need to scream as loud as possible ;)

**Click to see more of our pictures**

Cabo Wabo!

2007-07-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

We had a very relaxing time in Cabo. We stayed on one of the nicest swimming beaches there- Medano Beach, which is on the Sea of Cortez side. From our hotel we could look out to the famous El Arco and rock formations which mark the very tip of Baja. This is where the Pacific side meets the Sea of Cortez. During our sunset cruise we went around the tip into the Pacific side and the air temperature was instantly cooler and the waves were way rougher crashing into the rocks and beach. It was crazy how you could just feel how much colder it was!

sunset cruise

You can't get in the water on the Pacific side because it's way too rough. Alot of celebrities have homes perched on the cliffs on the Pacific side. Even on our nice beach the surf was pretty strong and the undertoe was pretty significant but it was definitely swimmable once we swam past the waves. The water was chilly but felt great after laying out and getting hot. We went on a Sunset Cruise to the famous El Arco (See Pictures) and one day we decided to try diving. I was really nervous that it was going to be too cold for me but the dive master said we'd be fine in long wetsuits, which they rented us. Karl originally thought the water temp was about 75 or so and the dive master quickly assured us that is was mid to low 60s!!! I suited up and got all ready, dropped into the water and instantly froze! The water was so cold my face and hands hurt! I just couldn't do it and there was no way I was up 45 minutes of it getting even colder once we reached 50 or so feet during the dive. Karl continued on and did two dives. I stayed on the boat and the driver let me snorkel around a little but I was pretty cold doing that! There were a ton of fish but no coral.

famous El Arco

They dove near El Arco and the rock formations and underwater it got pretty deep pretty quick. They saw an eel, Amberjack fish, and a Rock Fish which they warned us about. It definitely wasn't Bora Bora diving but Karl was glad he checked it out. By the end of the second dive he was wiped out and admitted he was pretty cold. I've decided to stick to the warmer water for diving. We ate dinner at little restaurants on the beach and the surf was so high one night the waves were rolling under our chairs and table! We saw an awesome moon rise one night too which was pretty cool. We ate lots of yummy seafood and found an awesome sushi restaurant serving all the local fish they catch. We loved laying out on the beach and reading and relaxing!

....our beach

20 Miles on a flat tire?!

2007-06-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

We set out for a bike ride with my friend from work and her friends. There were about 8 of us and the plan was to bike from SF, over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, and then to Tiburon. It's a pretty popular ride over to Sausalito but we wanted to make it Tiburon because one of our favorite cafes on the water is there. We planned to take the ferry back to SF. We were told the ride was pretty flat by the people at the bike shop and that there was only one short steep climb but we'd be fine. Turns out we were in for a much harder, longer ride than expected! We biked over the bridge and then climbed into Sausalito. The road into Sausalito was pretty hairy because the road didn't have a shoulder or bike lane coming into town. Then after going through Sausalito on our way to Tiburon and just as we were leaving town I realized I had a flat tire..ug! I am at this point using Karl's 8th grade Mountain Bike because my good road bike is in storage in Austin.

..pretending everything is ok on GG bridge

This was about 8 miles into the ride and luckily we brought our pump with us. We then had to pump up the tire every 2 miles the rest of the ride. Ug. We encountered much harder climbs and more of them than we expected and it turned out to be a pretty long ride. The constant stopping made it a little longer too. Overall, it was a very pretty ride all along the bay. At the end, we looked at my bike computer and it said 20 miles! Yow! And, it took us 3 hours! We were very relieved when we finally got to the restaurant and sat down and had a beer! Luckily, we didn't have to bike the whole way back! The ferry was PACKED with other bikers and we barely made it on. The weather this weekend was awesome and everyone else had the same idea as us! It was cool to us that just a short ferry ride across the bay and we were sitting at a restaurant patio on the water and it was HOT! The second the ferry pulled up to SF we felt the cooler breeze. We had a great time and we proud of ourselves being able to do that long of a ride without having ridden in so long. Sausalito and Tiburon are really cute little beach towns right on the water with awesome views, especially looking across the bay to the SF city skyline.

Camping at Lake Tahoe

2007-06-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

Karl and I went camping this past weekend at Lake Tahoe. We stayed at Emerald Bay State Park which is on a really pretty bay of Lake Tahoe. It took us about 4 hours to drive there Friday night after work and we were able to set up the tent in the dark no problem. Our site was pretty cool because we didn't have anyone to our left and the campers to our right were up a little hill. The weather was great- upper 80s during the day and mid 40s at night.

View of Emerald Bay from our hike

We planned a hike on Saturday that was about 6-7 miles around Emerald Bay. We had great views of the bay/lake as we hiked and it went all along the water. We passed through Emerald Bay Beach which is really nice and lots of boats were beached there and people were swimming, etc. The water was cold- we think upper 50s but we got in! We got hot enough laying out on the beach and eating lunch that the water actually felt refreshing to get in! The water is perfectly clear and they have these great sandy beaches you can just walk right into the water from. After our hike we drove to another beach a little more south and it was a happening place We saw some wakeboarders in shortie wetsuits and some kids being pulled on tubes. They had a swimming area buoyed off for swimmers and kayakers. We were overall very impressed with how nice Lake Tahoe was and how pretty the scenery is. We weren't too afraid to cook dinner that night and stored our trash in the bear locker. It's pretty cool to us that you can pick up and camp in the middle of the summer out here compared to Texas where we have about a 4 week window of decent weather. In only 3-4 hours you can be in complete wilderness away from the city. Lake Tahoe is gorgeous and the perfect year round vacation home spot since you can ski all winter at any of the ski resorts there and you have the lake during the summer ;)

Europe!

2007-06-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

We had a blast in Europe for Sebasatian's and Antje's wedding! We flew into Amsterdam and took a short train ride into the city of Utrecht where the wedding festivities took place. We stayed there two nights and had a blast seeing all of our Dartmouth friends. The wedding reception took place in a castle in the countryside, with a moat and all! The guests had to cross a small drwabridge to get into the castle. It was so beautiful! Sunday we left for Amsterdam for 2 days and one night. We enjoyed the Anne Frank house, the Van Gough muesuem, and the canals of Amsterdam. They had a floating flower market with all the recently cut tulips that was neat. The next day we left in the evening for Paris. We took a 4 hour train ride and arrived at midnight. After some stumbling around on cobblestone paths and pulling our luggage around we finally found out hotel. We stayed in the cool Latin Quarter area of town and loved it! There were tons of outdoor cafes, restaurants and bars all around. It was a very busseling part of town and we were glad to have chosen that area. Mark met us in Paris for our last two days there and we all had a great time walking around the city, sightseeing.

We visited the Louvre, Luxembourg Gardens, the underground catacombs, Notre Dame, Arc de Triumph, and the famous Champs de Elysee and of course the Eiffel Tower. We all agreed one of our favorites was sitting at a sidewalk cafe drinking wine under a tent while it rained out. The Eiffel Tower was pretty spectacular as well especially when it was lit up at night. We loved Paris and it's one of our favorite cities in Europe!

...more pictures in our Photo Gallery

Moms Visit SF!

2007-04-03T13:43:00.000-07:00

We had so much fun with the Moms in SF! We miss you!

More pictures here...