San Francisco

Ian works a lot in San Francisco so I flew up to meet him for the weekend.  We love San Francisco, but especially during the holidays.  We started out meeting Ian's Aunt Helen and her three daughters for a performance of the Nutcracker at the San Francisco War Memorial Performing Arts Center.  This was where the Nutcracker premiered in the United States.  The theatre itself was amazing and the performance was second to none.

 

We stayed at the St. Francis hotel in Union Square.  This nice gingerbread castle was in the lobby.

We tried to do some new things in the city that we don't normally do.  One of those bucket list items was to visit the cable car museum.  It was very interesting to learn about how the cable cars work.

Luckily, Ian has an incredible sense of direction.  He was able to find the fortune cookie factory.  Or, more like a really small room off of some random ally.  The cookies were sure good though.

We both have our favorite foods in San Francisco that we must get every time we visit.  For me, I can't pass up the clam chowder and sour dough bread bowl at Boudins.  

For Ian, it is the pork sandwich at the Farmer's Market on Saturday mornings.  We woke up early and stood in line for a while to make sure he got one because they sell out so quickly.

The weather was perfect during our weekend stay.  

We always like to try new restaurants when we travel.  This trip a vegetarian restaurant was recommended so we decided to give it a try despite the fact that neither of us are vegetarian.  As you can see from the pictures, we still don't really know what we ate there.  It was pretty good, but we may stay away from strictly vegetarian restaurants in the future:)

Because Ian is in school most weekends, this trip was a rare free break that we considered our "Babymoon".  

Napa Valley Ragnar Relay

Ian enjoyed running the Napa Valley Ragnar Relay with family and friends this year.  We have run the last four Ragnars together, but being pregnant, I decided to opt out this year.  This is a picture of this year's team at the start.

The Ragnar race is a team relay where teammates run around the clock running a total distance of about 200 miles.  There are two cars of six teammates each that trade off running.  This was Ian's van with his brother James, James' brother and sister-in-law, cousin Jeannie and friend Brian.

Ian loved being the runner that got to run across the Golden Gate Bridge.  

This is the fifth year running for the Big Kahunas.  We started this funny tradition the first year of having each runner pass on the team mascot Nemo to the next runner.  The crowd waiting always seems to enjoy watching.  

I Heart San Francisco

I was able to take a quick trip out to San Francisco yesterday for half a day.  There I said goodbye to my sister Jennie and my three nieces headed back to China.  As luck would have it, Ian was working in San Francisco this week so we got to have date night on a Wednesday night (which never happens!).  While walking along the Embarcadero just as the sun was setting we saw this little guy swimming around.  

 The sunset was gorgeous.  

The view on the other side was this big moon and the harbor.

 I am sorry I didn't get pictures, but we had dinner with Ian's cousins Erin and Jeannie.  They were nice to eat clam chowder and sour dough bread bowls at Boudin with us.  It's always on my to do list to go to Boudin at least once every time I visit San Francisco.  

San Francisco!

Ian has been traveling to Oakland, California every week for work so this last week I decided to tag along on the Southwest Airlines companion pass.  On Monday and Tuesday, I traveled over the Bay Bridge to San Francisco to visit my sister Jennie, brother-in-law Scott, and their two little girls.  They were visiting in San Francisco for a few days before moving to Beijing China.  We had a great time visiting all our favorite places in San Francisco!  First stop was to Fisherman's Wharf to enjoy some clam chowder in sour dough bread bowls.  Stop number two was Ghiradelli Square for some ice cream and chocolate.  Afterwards, we thought we would walk some of the calories off by walking down Lombard Street (the curviest street in the world).  We enjoyed seeing them before they flew to China!   

On Thursday, we drove North for some summer fun in Roseville!  We had a delicious picnic with Aunt Helen and two cousins, Erin and Allison, at Folsom Lake.  We enjoyed the short, but great visit!