Birthday Date!

What an awesome birthday I've had this year!  Corey and I hired a sitter for 8 straight hours last Saturday and went to San Francisco for the day.  It was awesome.  We hardly ever hire a sitter and never for 8 straight hours, so it was such a treat.  We spent the afternoon wandering and window shopping around Russian Hill and Union Street.  Then we had dinner at a Spanish restaurant, Zarzuela, we discovered on our honeymoon 10 years ago and have never stopped talking about.  It was that good then and still is.  We actually planned our whole day around this restaurant...where we parked, what time we needed to be waiting outside when they opened to avoid the long line that forms outside, and how hungry we wanted to be when we got there!  The sangria, tapas and paella were all amazing!  Oh, and they made us a special dessert 10 years ago that wasn't on the menu and now it is.  So, we consider ourselves partly responsible for their continued success!!

It was a great day.  It's heavenly for me to be living a quick 45 minute drive from my favorite city!

 Saints Peter and Paul Church near Washington Square

 A bad picture of Coit Tower

 Gee, can you tell this is a self portrait in a dark room with an i phone?

The Pinnacle Building

(or I guess it's called the Transamerica Building

but I've always called it the Pinnacle Building)

 

We didn't spend much time taking pictures but these are the few that I have. 

Such a great day!  Have I mentioned that?

Parade

Natalie marched with her Girl Scout Daisy troop in the Walnut Festival Twilight Parade last weekend.  It's a little ironic that we live in Walnut Creek, a town that honors the walnut with a week long festival, and our girl is deathly allergic to the celebrated nut.  But she marched with a smile anyway.  Corey was home recovering from a major deadline that's left him weekend-less since mid May so I took Audrey with me.  I thought we'd watch from the sidelines and slowly follow the parade down to the end.  Well, the troop leader asked if I'd walk behind the marching Daisies to be an extra set of eyes.  I agreed even though I knew it would be a challenge to keep Audrey happy in the stroller the length of the parade. 

I was right.  The parade was 45 minutes late starting so I had used up all my Audrey bribes before it even began.  By the time we started moving forward down Main St. she'd had a sucker, a snack pack of goldfish and a mint.  She was in full force and wanted out of the stroller...and basically screamed at the top of her lungs until I released her.  During the parade, she proceeded to run circles around the stroller, in the wrong direction toward the marching band behind us and at full speed into the cheering cheerleaders ahead of us.  We were more of a spectacle than the spectators I'd planned on being.  But she kept the crowd laughing.  The only one not laughing, actually, was me.

When Corey picked us up at Target at the end of the parade, I was frazzled beyond belief.  Natalie was glowing...not just from the pride of completing her first parade but from the glow-in-the-dark liquid inside her glow stick bracelet that had exploded all over her after Audrey bent it and cracked it open.  Oh, mercy.  What a night.  But our Daisy had fun.  And thank goodness no little Daisies wandered from the flock because I was of no help as an extra set of eyes!

Parks galore!

The entire time we lived in Phoenix I always commented on how well they did allocating space for parks throughout the city. It seemed like there was a great park every couple of miles and I'd never lived in a place with so many playgrounds and public open space. Until we moved here. This place has the best parks we've ever seen. They're clean, they're shady (as in lots of trees, not lots of creepers), most of them have clean bathrooms and they're located all over the towns around here! We already have a few favorites that we've visited more than once.

A few pics from one of the parks where we meet Corey for lunch occassionally...

Natalie with her kindergarten class teddy bear, Honey Bear, that spent a weekend with us recently.

More tree hugging. 

She's just a hugger, what can we say?

Oh, and a few of the parks we love have these charming gazebos.

Our kids love to run around like crazy children in them and listen to their echos. 

Making sand angels. 

So much fun.

Not quite as much fun as snow angels but a lot warmer!



Audrey

 

The second born does not get as many posts just about her as the first born did.  Not by half.  But it means she's no less full of charming and challenging loveliness.  It just means there's less time to write about it.  Audrey is delightful these days.  She has her I'm-very-much-a-two-year-old moments, don't get me wrong.  But, for the most part, she's a very sensitive, polite, happy and inquisitive kid. 

 She loves walking Natalie to school every day and often wants to carry her own backpack around the house during the day.  She calls it "Nahlie's cool!" and "Nahlie's lassroom". Back at home, sans big sister, it's not uncommon for me to find her in Natalie's bed, playing with Natalie's toys and finishing Natalie's bedside water from the night before! And every afternoon when we're picking Natalie up, she greets her with a huge hug when she comes through the gate with the other kindergartners. 

It's very sweet.

 

 She notices every truck and school bus on the road.  She loves it when we drive up or down hills.  Every time we drive past Natalie's gymnastics studio, she says, "look Mommy, Nahlie nastics!" She very much dislikes having to be in the stroller AT ALL and when we're in the car going somewhere, when she knows the stroller has been loaded in the back, she'll say, "No stroller mo, Mommy.  I walk."  This child, like her big sis, misses NOTHING.

   

Our mini tree hugger.  We train them young!

In fact, she's so charming when we're out and about that the other day at Noah's bagels an employee thought she was so sweet and polite (she heard Audrey thank me for cleaning up some water on the table that she'd spilled) that she brought her a free smoothie. 
Look out world, this one will charm your socks off!

Ash and Paul

We were so excited to have Ashley and Paul visit a few weekends ago.  The girls went screaming and squealing out the front door and into the driveway as they pulled in just like they used to do each time Auntie Ashley joined us for dinner in Phoenix.  It was so sweet...but it also made me sad because we don't have the luxury of those regular, weekly visits anymore.  We love living here.  It's a far better fit for us than Phoenix was.  But we miss Ash (and Paul) like crazy.

Thanks for coming to visit, guys. 

We miss you!