Adventures with Lisa & Kevin

Our good friend David (whose wife Erin I met while studying abroad in Nicaragua and she was one of my bridesmaids) came for a weekend visit from Rockford, Illinois and it was so great to see him! He flew into SFO late Friday night so we picked him up and spent some time catching up before hittin' the hay.

On Saturday we dropped him off at the SF Conservatory of Music...David is a trumpet player and is going to start a Master's program in the fall and one of the schools he's applying to is the SF Conservatory; graduate applicants are given the opportunity for one free lesson with a professor so he took advantage of it and was able to visit us at the same time! :) David was at the school pretty much all day so Kevin and I just hung out around the house and then late afternoon we headed over to our friend Maya's apartment for some holiday cheer. We made holiday cookies (chocolate chip, gingerbread and peanut butter/chocolate cookies) and watched "The Santa Claus". David joined us later for some Serrano's pizza and to watch "Sleepaway Camp", a horror movie (great holiday film, eh? haha)

On Sunday we did some sightseeing...the "poor man's Lombard Street" , Potrero Hill's Community Garden, Golden Gate Park, Haight/Ashbury, the Castro, the Presidio, and Golden Gate Bridge (Kevin and I are becoming pros at sightseeing! :) ) We had lunch at Jay's Cheesesteak in the Mission which has great sandwiches and a ton of vegetarian meat options. Then that evening we went to Cafe Divine in North Beach (delicious mochas!!) to see the SF Conservatory professor that David met with on Saturday perform with his jazz quartet, The Mario Guarneri Jazz Quartet. It was a fantastic show and I think David's inspired us to become monthly regulars.

We're keeping our fingers crossed that all goes well with David's regional auditions in January and that everything falls into place so that they can move out here to the Bay Area! :)

Thursday 12/3

One of my friends from Redlands came up to visit! Megan was my roommate freshman and senior year and is now going to grad school in Kansas City, Missouri. She made a trip up here to visit her friend Cori and they made a day trip to SF so met me after work. We made our way to the Mission to eat at the Pi Bar (Megan was a Math major so when I found out they opened up that bar I sent her an e-mail about it so we planned to go there together when she came to visit. They're known for their authentic NY-style pizza and although I'm not an expert I have to say that it was damn good! Just be forewarned...the large pizza is a laaaaaarge pizza! ;) We then decided to make a stop at Anthony's Cookies across the street for some delicious homemade cookies. The minute the door opens we were overcome with the smell of snicker doodles...delish! The cookies were warm and gooey and definitely hit the spot. Megan & Cori had to hit the road to make the long drive back to Cori's place near Stanislaus so we said our farewell at the BART station. Their visit was definitely a great mid-week break!


Friday 12/4

The Student Government Association at the university I work for hosted a holiday party for students, staff and faculty so my co-worker Maya talked me into going and I'm glad I did! Kevin went as well as Maya's friend Katie and we thoroughly enjoyed the free food and two free drinks at the 330 Ritch bar (don't be fooled by the name, the bar is located at 360 Ritch Street...don't ask). Maya and I were some of the only staff there so we enjoyed blending in with the PhD students. :)

Saturday 12/5

Jessie and I set up a play date for Saturday morning since she had to work (she's a nanny to four adorable boys) so me and Lola met them at Dolores Park for some play time. The boys were smitten with Lola and spent almost the whole time playing with her. I think we all won that morning--the boys got to play with a doggy, Jess got a bit of a break with work, and I got my "kid fix"! :)

After we dropped the boys off at their house me and Jess went to pick up Kevin and then we went to the SF SPCA to look for a kitty for Jess! She wasn't really expecting to take one home that night but she fell in love with a little cutie so filled out the paperwork and within a few hours was the proud new mommy of a kitty! He's a six month old bundle of joy and the name they gave him was Mars and I helped extend the name a bit to Marzipan (so Jess named Lola and I helped name her kitty!) He is a total cutie and has already brought a lot of happiness to Jessie's life. :)

This year, Thanksgiving was filled with a few "firsts" for us--first time we haven't spent Thanksgiving in Long Beach, first time hosting the gathering, first time talking with family via video chat...but although it was filled with very new experiences, we had a really great time.

Growing up, my family was extremely close with the Julian family (Diane, Dave, Matt & Brandon), so they decided to come to San Francisco and spend the holiday with us. Brandon arrived from Humboldt (where he's earning his degree in Early Childhood Education, should be done this winter!) earlier than the rest of the gang so he stayed with us Tuesday night. Then on Wed., Dave, Diane and Matt arrived after the long drive from LA around 11:30 so we decided to get a bite to eat. Matt had seen Cali Pho Nia which I've blogged about previously and was craving Vietnamese so we all enjoyed a great lunch together. That afternoon we watched a family video of us kids (the two Julian boys and the three Delmar kids) putting on skits, showing off our Halloween candy loot, and dancing the Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show...awesome! The video definitely gave us some laughs, watching ourselves dancing away in our 80's and 90's clothes, haha.

Thanksgiving morning Diane woke up not feeling so hot :( but she was a real trooper and came to our apartment early anyways to help cook! We popped open a bottle (or two) of champagne to help us get through the hours of cooking and enjoyed some amazing appetizers that Diane and Jessie provided...

Mid-morning Kevin and I had a nice time chatting with his family via his and his brother's PlayStation 3 gaming systems (I guess they are good for something! haha) We've done it a few times before but it was really special doing it on a holiday when we weren't able to be with them in person.


Early in the afternoon my mom and Kevin surprised us with another video chat session, this time with my mom, my Aunt Tina, my Uncle Joey and Luke the family dog! :) We had a great time talking with them with the video streaming, it felt like they were right in our living room with us!




So what was on the menu, you ask? Well, let me show you!



And to finish off the meal...plenty of desserts! Kevin and I were in charge of the desserts and Jessie's friend Kimberly brought the berry pie for us to share as well. We made two pumpkin pies, capirotada (Mexican bread pudding) and a tiramisu trifle dessert...delicious!

The day after Thanksgiving, instead of spending our time standing in lines with the rest of the world, we spent a quiet morning at home and then met up with the Julians at the SF Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) which Kevin and I hadn't made it to yet. We went specifically to see the Richard Avedon photography exhibit but enjoyed the other exhibits as well.






Now onto the main exhibit!

He had tons of amazing portraits of both famous and not-so-famous characters. Here are my favorites...

After spending a couple of hours in the museum we made our way to Union Square to get a bite to eat at a small Italian cafe before heading out to see the Christmas tree lighting. After 30 minutes of holiday songs by the boy's choir, one of the American Idol losers, and some church chorus group they finally lit the tree to everyone's enjoyment! Then the streets flooded with people wanting to get home and I've never seen it so packed. Even though I joke about the annoying show they put on before they lit the tree, it was a great way to get in the holiday spirit!




The Julians' last night in the city we decided to introduce them to the wonderful world of Goood Frickin Chicken which Kevin and I frequent. As expected, the Julians loved the food there and we had a great last night together hanging out like old times.

We had a really great weekend spending time with family friends and now that we've got a taste for the holidays, the countdown to Christmas in Long Beach has officially started! We'll be driving down either the 18th or 19th and can't wait! :)

Howdy folks!

I just had the best surprise a few minutes ago and that prompted me to get my butt on here and write another post...a few weeks ago I added a map to my blog to show where people are logging into our blog (you can see it on the right column) and lo and behold we've had quite a few hits from all over the world! Of course, Southern California has the most hits but I believe I can make a shout out to a few people outside of CA that I think have been visiting: Erin in Illinois, Sneha in NYC and our farthest visitor ever...Shige in Japan!! It's so amazing to know that people are actually interested in what we're up to and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for continuing to read our blog! Also, there's someone who logged in from it looks to be Nebraska or Kansas though I'm not sure who it is...so post a comment if it's you so we'll know who you are and can thank you properly! :)

I'll update about Thanksgiving in another post later this week but a few things that we've been up to since my last post...

Lola's been acting up a lot lately and it started to really get to me and put a damper on things. Kevin leaves for school between 2-3pm every afternoon and I get home between 5-6pm so Lola is left outside for a few hours a day. Each night when I'd get home, I could expect to be greeted by an excited Lola but also a nice pile of crap that she tore up while she was alone. I've come home to a bag of charcoal torn up and strewn across the yard, the hose pulled off the stand with a few holes added to it, her water and food bowls torn up to shreds, and the best yet...her doggy bed torn up and the stuffing all over the yard. It was getting extremely difficult being happy with her in the evenings after having to clean up her crap and knowing that money was just being chewed up and spit out each day.

So one night last week when I came home to a bag of wood chips torn up I decided to Google the issue and see if I could find any solutions. Come to find out...she has anxiety problems! (Go figure...) Each time we would leave her, she'd get separation anxiety and would act out as a result. The most eye-opening part of my research was that us humans were the ones causing the problem in the first place. Something I found extremely interesting and also quite sad is that separation anxiety is the #2 reason why dogs are put up for adoption and euthanized...the dogs seem unruly and just plain ol' "bad" and so are given up...but in reality the humans are the ones that need to be trained to fix this behavior. I found two great articles on this topic (links here and here) and Kevin and I have been working really hard this past week to help Lola with her anxiety problems. It really seems to be working...she's getting more used to being by herself even when we're home (so that when we do leave it's not such a shock to her) and she's starting to calm down before and after we leave so that our leaving is not such a big deal anymore. Tonight we were actually gone from 1-7:30pm and when we got home not a thing was torn up! :) So far, so good!

Last weekend on Saturday we decided to take a trip to Golden Gate Park and have a picnic lunch. We went to a part of the park that's pretty quiet and off-the-beaten-path (on this map, we were near number 25 in the key) and spent a great few hours in the sunshine, enjoying our sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies, and playing fetch with Lola. We're trying to take advantage of the sunny days because we won't see many of those for a while come December!