Some Summertime Fun in July

 Cate will sometimes copy what we are doing.  Here we happened to catch it on camera, twice!

 Watching the 4th of July Parade with friends.

 Happy Independence Day smiles!  I am happy that Cate was able to wear her red, white, and blue tutu for the second year in a row.  Very cute.

 Cate with 2 of her friends.  She collected a lot of necklaces that people in the parade had thrown.

 Showing off their candy.  There wasn't much, but any candy is exciting!

 Bundled up to watch the fireworks.  It wasn't really that cold, but she wanted to be all wrapped up!

 Cate is very into drawing and painting these days.  She creates many masterpieces on her easel.  I love to watch her concentrating so hard.

Since she paints and draws on butcher paper, I decided to save her pictures to use as wrapping paper.  We wrapped a friends birthday present in one piece and it was very special.  At the rate Cate is creating we may never have to buy wrapping paper again!  :)

San Francisco Days 3-5

 I will attempt to show how steep some of the streets are in San Fran.  See this road above?  It looks like it just ends, that is how steep it is!  It was a little nerve wracking getting caught at a red light and feeling like you needed to put on the parking brake!

 Joe drove down Lombard street, the most crooked street in the country, I believe.  It is literally a zigzag.  And there are houses on each side all the way down!  Crazy!

 For a date our lovely friends watched Cate and Joe and I walked through Golden Gate park to the ocean.  We found this lovely windmill.  I can't remember now if it was built here or moved and rebuilt from somewhere else.  It was very tall.  The doors were locked, but if you look at the windows all the way up there must be/have been stairs to the top!

 We watched the sun set over the Pacific.  And ate dinner at a restaurant overlooking the ocean.  There was a live band playing music during dinner, it was a fun evening.

 Our final sight-seeing day we walked across part of the Golden Gate Bridge.  This was amazing, I loved it!  It was very crowed and windy (you can't tell by the picture though) but we made it 1/3 of the way I think?  It is a lot higher up and longer than I thought!

 Seeing the San Fran skyline from the bridge.  If you turned around you could also see Alcatraz and out to the ocean.  Incredible views!

 This year is the 75 anniversary of the bridge.  Pretty amazing.

 It's hard to tell but this row of houses is called the "painted ladies".  There is a park across the street and the houses are all painted lovely pastel colors.  Yes, one of them is the house from the open credits of "Full House"!  :)

 The coolest fountain ever.

 You can actually walk underneath it on a path.

 Cate did it about 4 times and had to dragged away.  It's pretty loud and a little wet so one of us had to go with her, but she loved it and so did I.  Just before this we ate at the most famous dim sum restaurant in the city, Yank Sing.  It was delicious.  And expensive.  But worth it for a special trip.  In case you don't know what dim sum is, it is Chinese food served in bite sized portions on small plates.  Servers walk around with these plates on carts and you pick and choose what you want to try.  It ranges from the traditional to the very exotic.  It is a fun experience and great with kids because you don't have to wait for the food to cook!

 Our last day we went to church with our friends and then headed up to this look out point before we drove home.  The weather that had been so unusually warm and sunny was back to the normal cold and foggy.  The fog is so thick you can barely see anything.  This was a  very high hill where we should have been able to see all of San Fran around us and the ocean.  Oh well, the fog was pretty neat.  :)

Another pretty picture of the fog near our friend's house.

And that is our trip!  We loved it.  San Fran is a fun place to visit, though I don't recommend driving around town, (that was a big headache) but there is lots of public transportation.  Hopefully we'll be back when Cate is older and we can utilize all of the trolleys and streetcars.   A HUGE thank you to our friends/hosts.  What a lovely trip!

San Francisco Day 2

On our second day in San Fran we visited Pier 39. I think this area is also called Fisherman's Wharf, but it was difficult to tell because there are so many piers (40) along the shore line for several miles.  We had the famous clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls for lunch from Boudin's bakery.  Boudin's history goes way back to the start of San Francisco itself.  Here is an excerpt from their website: "In 1849, the Boudin family struck culinary gold. Wild yeasts in the San Francisco air had imparted a unique tang to their traditional French bread, giving rise to “San Francisco sourdough French bread.” Today, the Boudin family's initial recipe lives on in the hands and hearts of our expert bakers, with a portion of the original mother dough still starting each and every sourdough loaf we make."
  
It was actually really delicious.  I am not usually a clam chowder eater, but that was excellent too.  The Wharf is a very touristy area and if you go you pretty much have to surrender to the tourist stuff.  We also got some fresh baked mini-donuts, rode the two story carousel, watching the sea lions sleeping on the floating docks, went through a mirror maze, and toured the Aquarium of the Bay.  All around us was sunshine (unusually for San Fran) and gorgeous views of the bay, Alcatraz, and the Golden Gate Bridge.  What a fun day!

 Sea lions.  In the winter they cover all of the floating docks, but in the spring there weren't as many.  They were mostly sleeping, but once in a while one would jump out of the water and climb over all the others to find a place to sleep.

 The infamous Alcatraz prison!  I didn't realize how close it is to the shore.  It is just right there in the bay, not out in the ocean like I'd thought.  I don't believe there were every any surviving escapees though.

More sea lions.

Golden Gate Bridge!  The weather was just fantastic this weekend, we were really lucky.

Cate loves carousels of all kinds.  She was so excited that this one was open and working!  After the disappointment of the closed one the day before, this was extra special.  It was a beautiful carousel too.  Cate still  remembers that it was playing music from the Little Mermaid Disney movie.

We had free tickets to the aquarium, thanks to our friends, and it was a fun little place.  The coolest part was the tunnels through the largest tank, so it was like you were walking under the water with the fish all around you.  

Lots of sailboats to look at.  We pack a lot into one morning, but it was worth it. By the time we left it was starting to get really crowded, so it was good timing. After a nap for Cate, our awesome friends babysat Cate while Joe and I went on a date.  We ate dinner in a restaurant on the ocean and watched the sun set.  The restaurant happened to have a live band that night which was extra special.  It was a lovely way to end the day.

San Francisco Day 1

We had the awesome opportunity to visit San Francisco and stay with some good friends of ours for a few days.  San Fran is a very interesting place.  There is a lot to see and do, but it's also very crowded and difficult to get around.  We managed to see a lot, I think, especially given the fact that we have an almost 3 year old and our friends have an almost 2 year old!  Here are some pictures from our fun trip "up north".  :)

Japanese Tea Gardens
Very pretty and very peaceful.  Cate liked climbing all the stairs, seeing the koi fish in the ponds and walking on the trails.  Everything was so perfectly manicured, it was lovely!

This was part of our day in Golden Gate Park.  A enormous park (similar to Central Park in NYC) with a lot going on.  We also played at the playground, tried out the swings, walked on some paths, and got ice cream from a food truck.  Yum!  We were all very disappointed that the carousel near the playground was closed. Luckily, we made it up to Cate the next day at Pier 39.  More pictures to come!

Easter Activities

 Here are some pictures of Cate this spring.  I caught her looking out the window like this and was able to get a quick picture.

Here she is at a friend's house.  She loves playing with her friends.

Easter egg hunt.

 Planting seedlings for our garden.

Coloring Easter eggs.  She can be a very serious artist.

 Picture with the Easter Bunny at the park during a city sponsored egg hunt.  She totally cut in line and went right up the bunny herself.  It was a little embarrassing, but they said since she was already there I should take a picture, haha.

 More egg hunting.  It was a gorgeous Easter weekend!

 Playing at the park.

 First look at her Easter basket.

So on Easter Sunday before church Cate disappeared for a while.  She was being too quiet so we went to check on her and look what we found!  Yes, that is a whole box of cadbury cream eggs from the Easter basket!  Luckily she had only gotten halfway through one when we caught her, or I'm sure she would have eaten them all.  Made for a cute picture!  Although Cate, if I were you, next time you need to hide in a more secretive spot.  haha  :)

 We are trying to teach Cate the true meaning of Easter so we put this picture of Jesus in her basket.

 Easter dinner at the cousin's house!  Cate adores her 10 year old cousin, they are such good friends despite the age gap!

So that's what we've been up to lately.  Happy Easter, Happy Spring!