San Francisco

I'm still basking in the bliss of a fun kid free vacation in San Francisco.  Matt and I were blessed to be able to vacation together without the kids and attend the wedding of a longtime friend this past weekend.  It was so wonderful on many levels including but not limited to the sunshine and early spring type weather, no kids to feed, no dishes to do, and days of uninterrupted time with Matt.  Here's a summary of what we did.

Thursday: We left early Thursday morning to drive up to Matt's parents, have lunch and get the kids settled in for naps and their 5 days with Grandma and Grandpa.  Before I continue with what we did I'm happy to report the kids did wonderfully, I hardly spent any time worrying about them and I was truly able to enjoy this time away.  Leading up to the trip I was wondering if I would be ok leaving them and I really was.

After the kids were settled down for a nap Matt's dad drove us to the airport where we ate a quick dinner and caught an early evening flight to San Francisco.  Luckily we beat a snow storm out of the city by a few hours and landed only 10 minutes late in California.  Once we were in SF we got a rental car and headed to our hotel in Fisherman's Wharf.  By the time we got to our hotel (10 pm Pacific time) we were hungry so we went to the hotel restaurant for a second supper.

Friday:  Since we were still on Central time we managed to wake up at 6 am but it felt like sleeping in to us.  We got ready to go and headed out to walk around the city a little bit.  We walked to Pier 39 (a famous touristy spot), got some breakfast to go, and then walked to another Pier to hop on a boat to Alcatraz.  We bought tickets in advance for the earliest boat since we figured we'd easily be up and going by then.  We spent a couple of hours touring Alcatraz and it was really neat.  It was hard to believe people used to be prisoners there.

After our tour we headed back to Pier 39 for a seafood filled lunch and to see the sea lions.  Then we went back to our hotel to rest and enjoy the outdoor hottub.  They also had a pool outside that some kids were swimming in but at 60 degrees outside even the heated water was a little cool for us.

After naps we caught a bicycle taxi and headed to the main downtown area.  It was neat being driven uphill on a bike through Chinatown and downtown but once we got there we didn't last long.  The main attractions seemed to be shopping at expensive stores (think Michigan Avenue).  So we got a quick dinner and caught the historic cable car back to our part of the city.

The cable car was awesome! I wasn't sure if I even wanted to ride one but we figured we might as well and I will always remember it.  We sat on a bench facing out and other people were standing right in front of us hanging on.  As we passed other cable cars the driver had to warn us to keep our hands and feet in because the other cars were so close.

The cable car dropped us off in front of Ghiradelli Square so we had to stop in and get some chocolate and giant ice cream sundaes.  Believe it or not by this time is was only around 6 or 6:30 but we headed back to the hotel and were in bed by 8:)

Hanging out at Pier 39 by the sea lions

On Alcatraz Island looking at San Francisco

Cable Car

Saturday:  Saturday we slept in until 6 again and got up and hit the beach.  We found a cool place called Crissy Field that seems to be a popular running spot and walked along the beach with beautiful views of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Unfortunately the cafe that we planned on eating breakfast at didn't open until 9 so I was a little cranky but once we ate we were good to go.

After breakfast we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and up to Muir Woods.  I loved Muir Woods. We got to walk among redwood trees and marvel at them.  I can't believe how tall they are.  I was in awe.

After a couple of hours we left Muir Woods and stopped at a town called Sausalito for a late lunch.  The downtown was quaint and had beautiful views across the bay of the city.  I later read that it was a great place to visit so I'm glad we kind of happened upon it.  The lunch was good too.  I had a delicious spaghetti and crab dish.

Finally we headed back across the Golden Gate Bridge, through the city, and across another giant bridge called the Bay Bridge to our friend T.J.'s* house in Livermore.  Even though we weren't involved in the wedding he invited us to his rehearsal dinner.  It was just an informal meal of deep dish pizza and salad at his house.

Driving across the Golden Gate Bridge

Giant Redwood

Sunday:  Sunday morning we slept in until 6 again and got up and headed to breakfast at a cafe across the street from our hotel.  The cafe had several good reviews on Yelp so I was excited to try it.  I had my favorite meal of the weekend that morning.  It was a bagel with cream cheese, cheese, tomato  red onion, and salmon.  Otherwise known as a bagel with lox.  I'm still thinking about how I can get a similar meal someday in the near future.

After breakfast we walked uphill for a long time so that we could walk back down a portion of Lombard Street which is billed as the crookedest and steepest street in San Francisco (although I read that it actually isn't either of these things).  It was cool to see though.  Then we hung out by the water reading and people watching before heading back to our hotel to watch a basketball game on TV:)  After the game we went and had fish and chips and shrimp cocktail on Fisherman's Wharf and walked around a little bit more.

By this time we headed back to our hotel to change and get ready for T.J. and Katherine's wedding.  We hopped in our car and drove to the wedding which was in Berkley at a beautiful park.  The wedding was outside and the reception was 20 feet away inside.  It was beautiful and fun to celebrate with them.

Fisherman's Wharf

Sea lions and part of the city in the background

With the newly married couple

Monday:  Finally on Monday morning we got up at 5 am, headed to the airport and hopped a plane back to Chicago.  The flight was great and we even got in a few minutes early.  Matt's dad picked us up and we got to go see our kids.  Then after an early dinner we headed back home and went to bed by 9 after a long day of travel.

All in all we had a wonderful vacation.  I loved it!  I'm hoping we can take another kid free vacation in 4 years to celebrate our 10 year anniversary so until then I will be planning and scheming about what fun we can have next!

*I've known T.J. since Jr. High and we took many of classes together in Jr. High and High School.  In college T.J. became friends with Matt and post college we all lived in the same town for a few years.  Matt and T.J. were roommates and we all attended the same church for a while.  T.J. is a great friend of Matt's and stood up for him in our wedding.  So, we have many connections to T.J. and are so thankful that we were able to be at his wedding.

Dining Room Floor

Out with the old...

In with the new...

As you can see we changed our dining room floor.  No, it is not my dream of hardwood but it is NOT carpet and I love that.  We would love to put in hardwood throughout the whole downstairs but that is several thousand dollars and several years down the road.  And right now I'm totally ok with that because I'm not attached to my floors and the kids can mess them up as much as they want.  However, the impracticality of carpet in the dining room coupled with the idea of cheap laminate was all it took for us to rip it out (well actually have someone else rip it out).

I can't wait to break in the floor and eat dinner in the dining room tonight!

Field Trip Day

Today I got to have a super fun day with Grace.  Matt took the day off of work for various reasons and stayed home with Caleb while I took Grace out on the town.  I couldn't believe how wonderful it was to get in the car without wrestling one of my passengers into his carseat.  I look forward to the day Caleb is a little easier to take places.  But today I enjoyed taking Grace places.  We really don't go out that much during the winter so it was just a fun change of pace too.

We started off with going to the Orpheum which is the children's museum in town.  I've never been there before and have heard it's just ok.  I think I agree with that assessment.  I will say Grace enjoyed herself but I'd rather drive almost an hour to go to the museum a town over.

Grace spent half of the time at the museum playing in the sand

Climbing on blocks

In front of the turtles

After the museum I took Grace to the toy store to help pick out a couple of presents for friends and then gave in and bought her something too.  Then we headed over to McAllisters for a lunch date.  She said she just wanted to go somewhere that served macaroni and cheese and chocolate milk.  She definitely enjoyed her lunch and it was fun going out to eat with just her.

After returning home for some rest time I took her to the YMCA for an open gym.  They open up the gymnastics area for kids to play in for an hour but the time is a little too early to usually make it there because of Caleb's nap.  So it was nice Matt was home to supervise Caleb sleeping.

Sorry no pictures of the second half of our day.

Valentine's Day Craft

This morning I kept it simple because I had two extra kids joining us.  One little girl, D, hasn't really been to our house before so I wasn't sure how she'd do with crafts and didn't want to overwhelm her with a long drawn our activity.  She did great and really seemed to enjoy herself though!

Anyway, today we made heart valentines and decorations.  We talked about people we love and that was pretty much the extent of it.

Working on heart art

The finished projects

I hung Grace and Caleb's on the pantry door to decorate

Fun picture of Caleb, Grace and Livi I had to throw in

Lemons

On today's agenda for activity week we spent the morning talking about lemons.  The foundation for the day can be found here.  I think it was an extra fun time because I'm watching our friend Livi for a couple of days this week.  We started out by looking at lemons, cutting them in half, and even tasting them.  Here's a survey I took about how they tasted...

I was surprised the kids liked it so much

The next thing we did was sort of cook with lemons.  We made delicious fresh lemonade and lemon poppy seed muffins.  I went the super lazy way though and just got a box mix for the muffins.  That made it extra easy for the kids to help.  Everyone was a big fan of the food and drink!  The kids didn't even mind the pulp in the lemonade.

Mixing the batter

After tasting lemons and cooking with them we read some books from the library about lemons.  The one I liked the best is called "The Lemon Drop Jar" because its about how lemon drops can make long winter days brighter.

Fun lemon books

Finally after reading the books the kids painted with lemon drop paint and yellow finger paint using paint brushes.  The lemon drop paint consisted of lemon drops and a little warm water.  That paint was very pale so it didn't really make much of a mark but it smelled yummy:)

Livi painting

Grace painting

Beautiful artwork

The best part of the whole morning was while drinking her lemonade Livi looked at me and said, "We learned about lemons today....maybe next time we can learn about chocolate and have chocolate milk."

Chinese New Year

Activity Week Day #2: Since Sunday was Chinese New Year I decided to spend a morning doing activities focused around that event.  My sister-in-law is Chinese and in turn Grace and Caleb's cousins are half Chinese so I think it is especially important to learn about that country.  I also was able to spend six weeks in China during one of my college summers so I feel an affinity towards China.

Today we started off by reading several books about China, Chinese New Year, and other Chinese holidays.  Because I decided to do this at the last minute I got some of the "lame" books from the library but next year I'll try to go sooner so I can get some good books.  Either way the kids still seemed to enjoy looking at the books.  Then we watched a few videos online of lion dances and dragon dances.  Caleb especially loved those and at one point brought me my computer asking for more dragons.

The next thing we did was make a dragon craft that was in one of the books we got from the library.  They turned out super cool.  And then later after lunch Grace and I made spiral snakes since this is the year of the snake.  I think Grace was pretty confused by the animals assigned to each year and even more disappointed that the year she was born was the year of the ox (an animal she really knows nothing about).  She loved the snakes though:)

The other fun thing we did was order Chinese food for lunch.  That was a special treat for the kids and me!

We had a great morning celebrating, doing crafts, learning about another culture, and chowing on some delicious food.  Gung hay fat choy!

Making dragons

Grace and her dragon

Eating orange chicken, low mein and fried rice

Grace showing off her snake

Slithering snakes.  Guess which snake is mine and which is Grace's.

Personal Pizza Day

It's February and I'm starting to get the winter blues.  AKA I want to take daily walks and go to the park!  So, this morning I declared this week activity week.  I have some fun things planned and hopefully it gets us out of the winter rut.

I whipped up a new pizza crust and pizza sauce recipe this morning.  I think after a year of the same crust and sauce weekly I wanted to try something a little different and they both were yummy.  I wasn't sure how the pizza crust would be with all whole wheat flour so this time I did half white whole wheat and half white.  Next time I'm going to try more or all whole wheat and hopefully it will be just as good.

Anyway our friends came over to play and eat lunch with us today and the girls had a blast making personal pizzas for themselves, their brothers and their moms.  I started by showing them what the risen dough looked like and had them punch it down.  Then I divided it into sixths and they got to roll their own dough out.  Then they put sauce, (onions, peppers, mushrooms, olives - these ingredients only made it to the moms' pizzas), pepperoni and cheese on the pizza.

And then we all chowed down....

Silly Kids

Caleb loves to wear Grace's sunglasses.  We are going
to get him some of his own for his birthday!

I found Grace licking the syrup* bottle for a sugar fix?

*I love pure maple syrup and Matt loves the maple flavored thick liquid that Grace is licking off the bottle.  I try to only give the kids pure maple syrup and for a while Matt even gave into my desires and ate that for himself too.  But once he started buying "his" syrup again, Grace quickly realized how sweet and addictive it is and when she's left alone with it on the counter she licks it.

New Kitchen Sink

One of my house update dreams since we moved in was to replace the kitchen sink.  So, this past week we got to do it.  I am so in love with my new sink.  There were a few kinks to getting it installed (10 seemingly unnecessary hours of labor, parts not fitting, and finally 2 days later water gushing out of my cabinet because a drain pipe fell off).  So, we're talking to the installers and hoping to get compensated for our troubles and what appeared to be some incompetencies.  We didn't hire a professional to do as poorly as we could have done:) Needless to say, I still love my sink!

Old sink.  Stats: 6" deep, double basin, low faucet.

New sink.  Stats: 9" deep, single basin, very high faucet.

New sink also came with a couple of basins that can
be inserted if you desire a more traditional double basin.  

Oops, drainpipe fell off while I was doing dishes.
I took a picture before starting clean-up:)

Tablecloth Organization

My mother-in-law has a great way to store tablecloths so I copied her idea.  HANG THEM!  My tablecloths aren't wrinkled and they're easy to find now.  Here's a picture...

We have great closet space in our entry hall that is unused.  For the record I don't think it is unused because we have tons of storage (no attic and no basement) but because I am quick to purge and slow to keep things when I'm done using them.

By the way, does anyone need a steam mop?  I've moved on for various reasons.  Ours works well but I have too much to mop and the cord isn't long enough and if I added an extension cord I'd have too much cord.  I know it's a first world problem but I'm just letting you know the mop is yours if you comment to claim it.