A New Day

Today marks 13 years of married life to my sweet hubby, Jeff. *Gush*. His parents blessed us by watching all 3 of our kiddos so we could have together time in the fun city of San Francisco!

Here’s a journal of our time together…

June 20

We wave goodbye to our offspring and their elders, jump in the Kia and gleefully drive towards our destination.

Stop at Starbucks on the way. Order a Mint Mocha Frappaccino (with CHOCOLATE whipped topping). Oh. My. THE best Starbucks Frap I have ever had. You haven’t lived until you’ve had this. Go get one. Now.

We arrive in San Fran about an hour and a half later, park and get out of the car.

We pick ourselves up off the hot pavement. It was supposed to be 68*, but we brought the heat with us, which makes it 97*.

You’re welcome, San Francisco.

We take a self guided (and very short) walking tour of the homes in Pacific Heights.

Here’s one now:

And here’s where Jeff thinks they filmed the basketball court scene in The Princess Diaries:

What do you think?

Here’s a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the west side of the city where the Presidio is:

And this is the Palace of the Legion of Honor:

We drive around some more and see gorgeomongous homes that look like they’re straight out of a Beverly Hills neighborhood. We try not to covet too much.

4pm. Gotta head to our newest and only favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant place to eat in San Fran, House of Nanking. The service does not come with a smile, so if you ever go, don’t expect “friendliness” to accompany your dining experience, but do expect the food to be incredible.

While enjoying our meal, we get to listen to the owner yell at another employee in Chinese. Gotta love San Francisco. Oh, and FTR, I didn’t take this photo. Google gave it to me.

We sat right in front of that window to the left of the doorway.

Here are some tourists. Technically, we are not tourists. To be a “tourist” one must have to live more than an hour and a half away from San Francisco. That’s what I say, anyway.

A few blocks away from Nanking is the financial district.

Name that building:

We arrive at the Embassy Suites in South San Fran. Very nice, we’ve stayed there before. My parents, sisters and brother in law gave us some very neat hotel gift certificates last Christmas so a good chunk of our stay was on them. Thanks Mom, Dad, Heather, Brian and Jenny!

We enjoy the Manager’s Hour complimentary margaritas and chips & salsa. Yum.

How nice to take a late afternoon nap!

We watch Survivorman, jet to McDs for late night McFlurries and fries and retire with full tummies.

June 21

Wake up late and scuttle down to eat breakfast at 9:30am. The staff are having a bad morning. There are no clean forks to be found, syrup is everywhere, the grumpy omelette chef appears to be in rationing mode, and I think 98% of the hotel guests came down to eat at 9am, thus, explaining why there were no clean forks, the chef’s disposition, and why 98% of hotel guests are sitting at the tables. I realize this doesn’t explain the syrup, but I can’t be expected to solve every mystery.

Jeff wants to go see the hang gliders at some beach cliff place. We find it but the gliders are no where to be seen.

We enjoy the views and decide to head over to the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

Beautiful museum with wonderful art pieces. Get to see Monet’s Water Lillies and many of Rodin’s works.

This is just me trying to be artistic. Or something.

Up next on the itinerary - Sausalito, just a few miles ahead, past the glorious Golden Gate Bridge.

Sausalito has lots and lots of people. Tourists. Us non tourists eat at a sidewalk cafe and watch the tourists go by.

One of those tourists offers to take our photo after we try to take it ourselves.

Roughly two thirds of the people who walk by us eating have Lappert’s Ice Cream cones. Not wanting to be left out, we promptly head over to get ours after finishing our meal.

There are no lines at this ice cream shoppe. You just push foward at the mass of people trying to get their ice cream. They even have a TV screen mounted on the wall with the directions, “No lines. Come forward to order.” This ice cream is not for the faint of heart. You work for your share, chump.

I eat chocolate chip cookie dough. Jeff eats blueberry cheesecake.

This photo- Google gave it to me again. I am too busy eating my ice cream to take a photo of it. Clearly this person was not a Serious Ice Cream Eater.

So then we drive around the bay to see more of the city. We take lots of pictures. Here’s one right now.

And we get a videocam of a very long tunnel because we have a 3 year old boy.

I would post the videocam, but I have dial up. It would take me 9.7 hours.

We drive back to the hotel, watch a movie and konk out.

June 22

Eat breakfast at 10am. Forks are available and clean. We sit and eat. We watch a family pass the most adorable baby around to be held by each member for 14.8 seconds each. I am seriously contemplating asking if I can have a turn. “Hi Ma’am. I’m a hotel patron. I’m married to that hunk over there and have 3 children with him. I was just wondering if I could hold your baby for just a short wee bit. My youngest is 3. When yours is 3, you’ll understand, trust me. Babyhood is fleeting. I promise I’ll stay right here and hold her. I’m not sick - I won’t cough on her, I promise. I even use Wet Wipes and Purell. All. The. Time. I’m totally sanitized. I won’t even breathe on her if you don’t want me to. I just need a baby fix. Please?”

Jeff dosen’t think she’d be too keen on it, and I have to admit, as a mom myself, I think he’s right. It’s the rational in me.

It’s good to know I still have some rational left, know what I mean?

So we check out of our nice hotel room.

We drive to North Beach, a funky Italian area of San Francisco, not far from Fisherman’s Wharf. After 45 minutes trying to find a parking spot, we park and walk down to the famous Cafe Trieste and have a capp.

I’ve never had a cappuccino. It’s sort of like a ton of spit on top of coffee. Sorry - it is. The spit didn’t even have any taste to it…I’m really not sure what the appeal is. If you like spit coffee, why? I really want to know.

After Cafe Trieste, we drive to the tourist trap, Fisherman’s Wharf. It was busier than I’ve ever seen it, but I was determined to have my clam chowder in a bread bowl experience, so after parking, we hoofed it over to Boudin Bakery (by the way, have you noticed that this trip seems to be all about food? Because it really wasn’t. We didn’t even eat all that much. We didn’t. It all just looks different on a blog, that’s all.)

Next, we drive over to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

Perty.

Time to go home now.

Getting home was one of the best parts! What a joyful time of hugs, laughter and more hugs! Home is the best place.

Happy Anniversary Jeff!

I love you more than last year, and the year before that, and that, that, that, and that. All of the years before. Both combined and condensed. And doubled.

The problems are fixed and Jeff’s now working on getting the sink all hooked up.

I cannot WAIT until I can turn on my shiny new faucet and wash dishes in my luxury liner farm sink! WAHOOO!!!

The cabinet doors, baseboards, paint and a few other things need to be finished up too - hopefully by middle of next week.

I’ll post the before and after pics when it’s done!

for my former whiney entry.

And for not deleting it.

Thank you.

After almost 2 weeks without kitchen countertops and sink, they are finally installed.

YIPPEEE!!!!!!!!

After the initial oohing and aahing and “Goodbye, thank you”-ing, the problems are found.

There are no pre-drilled holes in the granite for our mounted microwave, as promised.

The sink is bowing.

Four clamps instead of eight will do that.

Jeff is not happy.

Ian whines.

The drill holes in the granite backsplash for the outlets are both too small and not centered properly. The former making the later a moot point, but the added incompetency just enhances the drama, don’t you agree?

The granite company closes at 4:30pm for the day.

It is 5pm.

No sink for another day, minimum.

I almost cry.

Ian, for the fourth time, is discovered to have put large wads of toilet paper into the toilet again.

After fishing them out, I flush it.

Oops.

It overflows all over the floor.

I’m pretty sure I whine.

Several urine scented throw rugs and towels go into the washing machine.

Which predictably throws off the spin cycle in our washer, which is already broken and has been broken for years.

Jeff grunts.

One child informs us that they were hit by another child, and it’s not the child who whines a lot.

Which never happens in this house (by unwhining children).

Which is quickly confirmed to be untrue.

Ian whines again.

I pull something together for the kids to eat.

They go to bed.

I inhale a Chipotle burrito with added salt because I cannot stop punishing myself for every concerted effort I make towards weight loss.

We go to bed.

I wake up at 4:43am.

I stay awake.

I pray.

Ian wakes up at 6:17am whining for applesauce, which has never happened (waking up begging for applesauce, not whining).

He persists.

I almost cry.

On tap for the next 24 hours: Call Kaiser over a fee I am not supposed to be charged as per their plan policy, wait to see if the granite company will come out TODAY to fix their really inexcusable shoddy workmanship, try to be a good up to par non screaming mom, not lock myself in the closet or eat a whole bag of chocolate chip cookies.

Help.

are evil, vile, useless contraptions.

The only thing they suck up is the cash you spent on buying it.

There are a whole lot more enjoyable ways to waste time, energy and money.

~ Just a friendly public service whine announcement.

Postscript: Using a Dustbuster while PMSing is a very, very bad idea.

We’re not trying to do “School at Home.” We’re trying to do homeschool. These are two entirely different propositions. We’re not trying to replicate the time, style or content of the classroom. Rather we’re trying to cultivate a lifestyle of learning in which learning takes place from morning until bedtime 7 days each week. The “formal” portion of each teaching day is just the tip of the iceberg. Steve and Jane Lambert

It happened while I was scooping ice cream.

While I was thankful the flying debris didn’t knock me unconscious, I was left temporarily dazed and confused.

Thankfully, I recovered within a short time and still possessed enough brain cells left from the day to remember our old, trusty spade sitting idly in the recesses of our utensil drawer.

Of course it was only 2:34pm (but don’t tell anyone OK?).

I now plan to invest in a super duper, top chef quality scooper.

One should not underestimate the necessity of such a tool for serious ice cream eaters.

We’re down to 2 sunflower sprouts now. Frankly, I’m not holding out a lot of hope for them.

Do you see why I feel compelled to eat large quantities of ice cream on a daily basis?

Recently decared by my very concerned 7 year old (who we are quite certain does really know about airports but had a temporary loss of conciousness memory),”I don’t understand where we’re going to land when we get to grandma and grandpa’s house. They don’t have enough room for the airplane!”

Um….

During the sermon at church last Sunday, my restless son stood in front of me with his head on my stomach as it rumbled and let out a nice long gurgle.

“TOOTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” he yells, loud enough for the entire congregation to hear.

It was one time I was extremely thankful for his habit of leaving the pronouns out of his sentences.