10th Anniversary Trip!

I'm not sure how to do this without it being super long...

So for our 10th anniversary I had always envisioned us doing something exciting or exotic. A cruise, Disney World, Hawaii. You know, big anniversary celebration stuff. I figured by then we'd be established somewhere, and hopefully not have any tiny babies, and have extra money just laying around or something?  Not sure. Anyways, when 10 years rolled around, that isn't what happened. In good news, my fabulous, amazing sister, Emily, offered to keep our kids while we went somewhere for a few days. In other good news, gas was super cheap (like barely over $2.00 many places in the weeks beforehand). But anywhere we could drive to were places I had already been, and I wasn't really feeling much excitement at the thought. Then Jeremy found round trip tickets to San Francisco on a special Southwest sale. A really, really good sale. And we decided to go for it. Now I was excited. San Francisco is interesting, there's lots to do, it's by the ocean, and it was bound to be cooler than Phoenix. Plus, it's somewhere I'd never been! (Jeremy went once for a NUCCA conference several years ago).

So on our actual anniversary, May 13th - which fell on a Wednesday this year - came along, Emily and her three boys showed up. To watch my 4 kids 8-and-under. Fun times. My mom saw the scariness of this situation, apparently, and offered to come up and stay with them. I have amazing family members. (I'm really glad that she ended up coming that night, because apparently Jaina threw up and was sick for two days, and it was super helpful to have 2 adults, especially when two of the littles were 17 and 13 months. (Emily and our baby cutie pies.) I had never left Shawn overnight before, so I was a little unsure how things were going to go. But if there was anyone I could leave him with, and know they would try their best to stick to what he was used to, and give him tons of love, it was these two!

We flew out around 7 or 8 that evening it seems like. We grabbed some dinner (super tasty) in the airport at Sir Veza's and really enjoyed the whole experience. I think the last time I flew was when we came from Virginia to David and Nicole's wedding and back, and that was with several kids each way.

We got in pretty late, but the hotel we had booked for the first night had a hired driver that came and picked up up. We stayed at the Villa Montes, and really enjoyed it! It had a ton of character, and was really old-looking while still being clean and classy. It was so fun to stay in something that wasn't typical. And we really enjoyed their "soak room" that night. Isn't it cool?

Thursday morning we took an Uber (like a cab, but a normal person and their car). When we were looking for hotels in San Francisco, the prices were completely ridiculous for even scary little motel 6 type places. So we ended up staying in an AirBnB, which is usually a room or rooms in someone's private house. The one we stayed in was actually the whole top floor of someone's walk-up, less than an hour's walk from the Golden Gate Bridge (we could see it out the front window off to the side) and just a few blocks from Golden Gate State Park. Her name is Andrea, and she has a queen-bed room and a king-bed room that she rents out, with private bathrooms and shared living space. The kitchen had some food in it we could eat (plus fresh baked goods in the mornings) and it was very nice. And instead of several hundred dollars a night for a possibly-scary hotel room, it was less than $100/night and quite clean and homey.

The one thing I did forget to do as we walked out of the house the night before was change from my flip flops to my tennis shoes. You know, because they take a lot of space in luggage, and we were just doing carry-on. With a heavy-walking trip ahead of us, I wasn't sure what to do about that. (Though my flip flops were my Croc ones that are pretty comfortable). But we found a weird 2nd-story Ross within a mile or so of our first big walk and ended up buying some night bright little Reeboks. It was probably a good day for buying them (and switching back and forth between them and my Crocs) because we walked about 10 miles, according to my activity tracker!
On the agenda that day was the Walt Disney Family Museum, which was up in the historic Presidio. The walk there was a couple miles (I think) with one great big hill at the end. And we passed this cool giant Jewish synagogue (you can see it below just on the right - taken from the top of the hill).

At the top of the hill, before we dropped down into the Presidio, we stopped at Inspiration Point. The view was beautiful, and the nice breeze was great after our hiking expedition. (That is Alcatraz out there, and the tiny dome is the Palace of Fine Arts we walked to later in the day)

The Disney Family Museum was really cool, and we enjoyed our visit there a lot. Really well done, and so many things to see. We had only been there about an hour when it was lunchtime though, and rather than walking somewhere else, we decided to try their cafe. Oh. My. We both go the quinoa salad with chicken, and it was amazing. This was Jeremy's portion (below). Mine was a half, and he could only eat half of his! (We carried the rest around until he got hungry again) So tasty. The middle picture is from one of the benches at the park where Walt dreamed up the idea of Disneyland, and then there is the awesome scale model of Disneyland that we probably looked at for 30 minutes.

When we were done at the museum we walked over to the Palace of Fine Arts. Which is really cool-looking, and you feel like you're in ancient Greece or Rome or something. After some history lessons, I found out it is a leftover from a giant set of buildings they built the Panama-Pacific Expo of 1915. The rest of the buildings (only meant to be temporary) but this part was left up, and then rebuilt (more sturdily) in about 1960, I think. We walked around there (and the expo building next to it with exhibits and history) for an hour or two.

By now it was 3 or 4 in the afternoon, I think, and we were exhausted. We took either an Uber or  Lyft (same idea) over to Ghirardelli Square. We walked from there along Fisherman's Wharf down to Pier 39, where I got to laugh at the silly sea lions for like 30 minutes. They were being really funny.

We ate dinner at a place just off of FIsherman's Wharf. It was the most elaborate baked potato place I had ever seen. I didn't know so many options existed. And it was gluten-free, so that was helpful!

(Just so you know, I have pictures of most of our food, too. I really did try to cut the pictures way down for this mega post)

After that we couldn't decide what to do, but finally ended up walking from the bottom of Fisherman's Wharf to the top of Lombard Street. This was after -several- miles of walking already that day. It was a little trippy walking at that much of an angle. I felt like I wanted to hold onto something to keep me from falling backwards. (the pic is just the walk up -to- the twisty part of Lombard St. It was still ahead of us.)

And our walking wasn't over. We walked across and up a little more, but some old tennis courts and saw a pretty sunset, then walked another mile or two looking for a Whole Foods to get some breakfast items for Jeremy. After that we were exhausted (and a little far from "home" and caught a Lyft/Uber back to our beds. 28534 steps (10.5 miles) that day. And our feet were feeling it! We slept pretty hard that night, I think.

Friday and Saturday were both more low-key, partially because we had done so much already and partially because we wore ourselves out that first day! Friday morning we got a bit of a slow start, but dragged ourselves downstairs where our friend Allen (the other associate doctor Jeremy had worked with in Virginia) picked us up. Our first stop was actually for his NUCCA appointment in downtown San Francisco. The tiny-ness of the office there was entertaining. Such an interesting, packed-in area.

After that Allen drove us across the Golden Gate Bridge and we stopped on the other side to take some pictures. The next time we go, I think I would like to walk all the way across the bridge. It was a pretty windy day, though, and our feet were tired from the day before.

We drove up to a point above the bridge (at what used to be Fort Barry) and got some more good views (and a lot of wind!) and checked out the ruins of the Fort. It was pretty cool. And really cold.

We tried to hike out to another point for a good view all around at a lighthouse, but apparently it is only open to the public certain days. :-p We couldn't get through the tunnel-through-the-hill to even look at it!
After that we were starving, so we drove over to a restaurant in Sausalito that Jeremy had read about. Avatars markets itself as an Asian fusion restaurant, and the owner said it is culturally confused. So it was Indian and Thai and I don't know what else. Whatever it was was HOT. I'm the first to admit I'm a spice wimp, but I thought I'd be pretty safe ordering the chicken jerk salad. Not. It was tasty, but after the first bite or two it was hard to tell. My mouth was on fire, but I was so hungry that I just ate as fast as I could to try to finish it off so the burning could stop. I could have used some sour cream. Enough to pour all over it, preferably. Haha. Jeremy's was hot too, but he said it was really good. I didn't have any tastebuds left by then to be able to tell. The owner was really funny though, and he was super helpful with Jeremy's food restrictions. "You tell me what you want, I make it." He was supremely confident in his ability to create something for him that was safe (gluten- and soy-free) and also tasty, which was fun. It seemed like a challenge for him instead of something to have to deal with. (Here is my fire-salad)

After lunch Allen drove us back over the bridge and dropped us off in downtown San Francisco. There was a really cool (structurally) mall we checked out, then we found an Apple store because Jeremy's iPad mini was acting up, and they gave him a new one. We of course had to check out the Disney store, then we walked around Union Square and a big, cool hotel there. And took this picture.

I had been debating (the cost of) taking the Trolley all day, and I'm really glad we finally decided to do it, because I enjoyed it a lot! (moreso once we moved to hanging off the outside edge instead of sitting down inside of it). We took one from Union Square down to Fisherman's Wharf.

After such an adventurous (and expensive) lunch, we were happy to grab some In N Out for dinner. It was absolutely freezing that evening though, and we ended up eating outside, since the inside was pretty full. I was in the middle of a big health challenge (one of the goals was only one sugary item a week) so I had been trying to figure out what my treat was going to be while we were on our vacation. I finally settled on something Ghiradelli-ish and we walked back that direction. I got a chocolate-dipped waffle cone with a scoop of butter pecan and milk chocolate hot fudge on it. Oh. My. Amazing. I am still dreaming about it. It was so very, very good. Totally worth it.

As was freezing our tails off to watch the sunset, so we could get a few fun shots like this:

We were very happy to call an Uber to take us back to our AirBnB and get some much-needed rest!

Saturday we got a slow start. All the walking was wearing at least one of us out. :) We had purposefully scheduled this as a calmer day, and walked the few blocks over to Golden Gate State Park. Jeremy's must-see was the observation deck on the top of the de Jong Museum there. We were early, and had to wait a few minutes for the museum to open, but the grounds between it and the California Academy of Sciences was so cool, so we weren't at all bored. The observation deck (free) was so so neat, especially since we had walked all over the city (it seemed) already. It was really interesting to see it all laid out before us and try to trace our routes.

We walked around a little bit before deciding what to spend our last few hours (and money, haha) on, but decided to rent bikes and ride down through the Park to the ocean. (a round trip of 7.5 miles) I hadn't been on a bike more than a few times in the last few years, and pretty much never in traffic, so that was an adventure. It was beautiful though, and I'm glad we did it! We rode to the coast and up to the "Cliff House" which is a restaurant built in the same spot as several predecessors with the same name. Quite the view. We could have happily spent some time at the beach, but we needed to head back to turn our bikes back in, and meet Allen (he and his wife had offered to take us to the airport).

Thankfully, there was a little time for relaxing first. So worn out!

Our tired feet. Our flight was a bit delayed (about 30 minutes) which was stressful, because I was really really hoping to get back in time for Jaina's one-and-only dance recital of the year. Somehow I hadn't gotten it on our calendar before we booked our flight, and didn't realize it was that night. If we got back right on time, and didn't have any traffic delays, I was hoping to make most of it. (Way over on Power and Main). The delay seemed to veto that idea. :( I was pretty sad. We had planned for that possibility, and she had two grandmas, a sister, and an aunt/cousin planning to attend, but I still really wanted to make it.

Amazingly enough, our pilot must have wanted to get there on time, too, because he made up the delay and we landed right on time. At which point we high-tailed it across Tempe/Mesa and I managed to walk in halfway through her first dance number. I was so happy we made it! Jaina was pretty excited too when the lights came up at the end and she saw us in the audience!

What a crazy whirlwind couple of days. So much fun, though, and such an adventurous celebration of our 10 years of marriage. It was so hard to come back to real life, but nice to be able to focus on our relationship and our enjoyment of being together for a few days, and see and experience some new things in the process. :)

early May

May was a beautiful month, with "cool" temperatures for Arizona. The kids spent so much time outside in May, whether we were at splash pads, or just playing outside with all their little neighborhood friends. I have a little weight loss group I'm part of, and we usually meet at different parks across the valley that I would never go to otherwise, so that has been fun.

Reilly and Jaina actually had their school "end of the year" concert very early in May, which was nice to get done before the rest of the month got pretty crazy. It was also nice because the 1st and 2nd grade sang all their songs together, so we got to see them both perform at once. They did a really nice job. They really like their music teacher, Mr. Burr. He does a great job with the kids and has so much enthusiasm. They still sometimes sing a few of their two-part songs here and there.

One of Jeremy's friends and part of his study group at Palmer was named Maureen. She was about our mom's age, and managed to get her doctorate before she turned 50. She is actually the one who watched Reilly and Jaina overnight for us when we had Katy in Iowa. Anyway, she lives and practices in Ireland now, and she came back to the U.S. in May and married Brendan, who is Irish. When they told us they were coming through AZ as part of their little honeymoon before they headed back, (she has a grandbaby in this area) we were excited to go see them. They invited us to their nice resort to swim in the pool. Of course this ended up being one of the very "mild" days, and it wasn't really all that hot outside when we finally got there (about a 40 minute drive) around 4 pm. And guess what we forgot in Mesa. The bag with all our swimming stuff, including all the kids' suits. Seriously? Our community pool still hadn't opened at this point, so they were very eager to swim, and I knew their little hearts would be broken if they didn't get to. So I drove very quickly over to a JCPenney (because we had a coupon, but a Wal-mart would have been a better idea in retrospect) and found semi-reasonable suits for them. You know, to add to the 3 other suits they each already had. Sigh. But they enjoyed two different pools that evening, though they were slightly freezing. The second one we went to was especially exciting, with fun splash areas and a couple of water slides that Reilly tried and Jaina couldn't get enough of (as long as I went down just before her to catch her at the bottom).

We were starving by the time we left, and it was almost bedtime. We had snacks, but we knew there would be way less complaining or sadness on the way home if we filled their little tummies, so we stopped at In-N-Out and everyone got some burger and fries. Shawn even got his own little tray to hold with hamburger bites and french fries. He was happy the whole way home, even though we headed home about 7, which is when he usually goes to bed.

One funny-ish thing that happened in early May is that Jaina went in to clean off the bathroom counters, she suddenly called me to come in there. I went in and saw Jeremy's portable USB speaker with water standing inside it. Not good. I immediately knew that Katy was responsible. When I asked her why she did it (while she was holding a blow dryer on the inner part of the speaker) she said, "I was trying to wash it!" "Why would you do that?" "Because it looked dirty." Sigh.

It actually did work again just fine, which was nice, since one listing for it said it was waterproof, but everyone said it was actually just "splash-proof," which definitely doesn't mean it can survive a few hours with water sitting inside it...

The other noteworthy thing that happened early that month was that after much last-minute scurrying, Reilly managed to fulfill all the requirements for his Wolf in Cub Scouting. The program was changing after the end of May, and since he was so close, we made a few things happen and got in under the wire. Much thanks to his scout leaders, the Shoemakers, because there really wasn't that much that we had to finish up with him. They have been amazing! He had to "wolf" down strawberries and whipped cream, which wasn't really his style, but at least he said it was yummy. :) (extra picture of Reilly and his Lego obsession because I don't get many pictures of him for some reason.)

Oh, and the other thing that happened is that I finally got my hair cut after cutting it myself for like a full year. Which was fine, except I didn't really have the option of straightening it during that time, since you would have been able to tell that -I- had cut it. It wasn't amazing timing since it's almost too hot to straighten it for a few months now, but I have really missed straight hair, at least sometimes.