A couple years ago we went up to Mendocino (about 3 hours north and west of us) for the 4th of July weekend.  We had such a great time, we thought we’d do it again this year! 

We stopped at Navarro vineyards on the way, and took some beautiful pictures.  Alex is loving his new “work” camera, and it is the reason for the incredible upgrade in our photos!

We got up to Medocino around dinner time.  The last time we went we took Milo, and there were a bunch of restaurants that we could sit on the patio and bring him with us.  Unfortunately we didn’t know that for many restaurants they had changed their policy.  So poor Milo spent more time in the car than we had hoped.   

This is our hotel.  We had a great room with a huge bed, couch, and jacuzzi tub.  Both Ella and Milo enjoyed the jacuzzi tub!

The view of the bay.

Ella with her “packpack”

Not sure what she’s waiting for, but love this pic.

On the 4th we took our new and never used beach tent, and set up camp down by the ocean.  Mama enjoyed the shade, and Ella enjoyed the water!

We also had some great dinners.  And although we didn’t take pics of the food (I know only some of you are disappointed), we did take lots of pics of us and mostly E in and around our meals.

Ella enjoyed the bacci as well…

We had a great time.  Ella refers to Mendocino as “the country.”  Swimming, walking, eating… a wonderful relaxing weekend.

Weekends are our favorite time. We usually don’t do much, and love it. Every Saturday morning we pack up and go to the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market then off to Rainbow Co-op to get our shopping done for the week. After lunch and a nap (sometimes for all of us!) we usually take Milo with us and walk down to the park. This weekend he found a frisbee that was left on the ground. He loved it, but it was a bit big for him to fetch.

But Sundays are a bit more free. Last week we took Milo with us and went to Stowe Lake to feed the ducks. Milo was not happy that he had to stay with the stroller, and not swim with the ducks.

Then walking back home.

This Sunday we took Ella to the carousel at Golden Gate Park. She loves, it but gets so serious, and will not smile or laugh while she’s on the horse.


Then off to Ebisu (newly remodeled – yeay!) for lunch. They gave Ella “training” chopsticks, which made her fork truly undesirable.



She loved the edamame and crab cakes. And started getting a little greedy with Mama’s salmon nigiri. Although she spit out the rice, so she’s a bit more of a sashimi girl.

Weekends are fun… just time for the three of us to hang out, play with Milo, eat great food and spend time together.

This was a super busy but fun weekend. We started off on Saturday morning with the Golden Gate Moms Group annual Easter egg hunt at the SF Zoo. When we got there, we saw TONS of people. I had no idea there were that many kids who lived in San Francisco! I wish we got a picture of the stroller parking, because it was at least three deep for an entire length of fencing. But it was fun. They had a bunch of stations, crafts, bouncy house, etc. We started out letting Ella color her Easter egg bag:

We then took her to the face painting station. I wasn’t sure how well she’d like it, or sit still at all – but she was great! She had a lovely pink/green butterfly to match her outfit.

Then it was time for the egg hunt. They had sections roped off by age. We headed to the 0-2 section and found this:

Wow. The “hunt” really lasted maybe 15 seconds. Ella found a container of bubbles on the ground, and was quite pleased.

We decided to skip the uber creepy bunny they had stationed for pictures. Instead we headed out to the Children’s Zoo where Ella fell in love with the goats.

And sheep:

Then she proceeded to make another child angry by getting on the tractor that he had mistakenly abandoned.

We didn’t have the heart to tell her that goat was on the menu for Sunday dinner! Oh well. We zipped around the rest of the zoo, then headed home for her afternoon nap. That evening we took Betsy (who was widowed by a snowboarding husband) and went for Dim Sum. Unfortunately the only highchair they had was “broken” or so they said. So, the food was fabulous – but the child wrangling a bit exhausting.

Sunday we headed to Golden Gate Fields in Berkeley for the First Annual Dachshund Derby. Milo was set for heat #2, and had his fetching blue ribbon designating him for box #3. We were hoping Milo’s dog walkers would be there to assist us, but they got tied up in traffic. So I took Milo to the starting box, and Alex/Ella stood at the finish line.

As soon as I put him in the box he jumped right out and tried to escape. As I tried to place him back in the box I was squished out by the man next to me, who was the girth of 3 men. I had to have the lady in charge help me move him so Milo could get in place! Finally they opened the gate… and Milo ran right around the starting box, back to me. At least 3 times… Alas, he did not win, or run the race, but made laps around the starting box. Style points, right? I was able to capture 1 picture of Milo, in race mode. Oh boy…

This is our post race picture.

They had the doggie heads from the now defunct Doggie Diner on display, so we grabbed a stranger and had them take our picture.

Alex’s grandfather, who recently passed, was a huge fan of the horse races. He actually used to raise and race horses in Utah. When Alex was working on “Trailer Park Blues” he visited the horse track a few times with Grandpa. So, in his honor, we placed one $4 bet on a horse called “Utahn.” And he won! We ended up with $5.20. Bonus.

Monday Alex and I took the day off work so we could clear out our storage unit and move all our junk into our garage. Which was a long time coming, but glad it’s done. And on Friday we are off to visit our good friend Wayne in Portland for the weekend! Always busy…

Okay – fair warning, this is going to be a photo heavy post. I was finally organized enough to get all of our photos uploaded last night, even if it took until midnight! But there are a lot of great ones. This holiday we stayed home. San Francisco is delightful at the holidays, mainly because it’s deserted. You can park anywhere! We seriously thought about driving around the city just to park. That must sound strange to anyone who doesn’t live in a big city and doesn’t understand how precious and rare parking is.

We kicked off the holiday season by attending the Kessler’s annual cookie party. Ella has a recent love of dogs, or “dados,” as she calls them. This night she got to meet Tatanka.

In this picture Shawn is holding Tatanka back. Because we found out quickly, he is much stronger than Milo, and kept knocking Ellie over. At one time he jumped up, knocked her through Alex’s legs (he was standing behind her to prevent such an occurrence) and the throw was so powerful it took out a barrette and a shoe!

Last year we splurged for a family membership to the California Academy of Sciences. What a great buy. It’s only a few blocks away, so we can just pop down and check out a few things and head home whenever Ella has had enough. It opened in late September, and the crowds have been unbelievable. But Sundays from 10-11am it’s members only hour. This usually means lighter crowds, but still pretty heavy. The Sunday before Christmas – empty! It was fantastic. We roamed around checking out all the sites we never had time for before. We even caught the planetarium show (although Ella didn’t appreciate it, and finally fell asleep). Here are some photos from that delightful crowd free hour (don’t worry, at 11 the floodgates opened and people poured in).

I took of the 24th and 26th so we could have a nice long weekend together. We started things off right on Christmas Eve by having breakfast at Tartine, arguably the best bakery ever. Ever.

We haven’t let Ella watch television hardly at all. But this year we decided to let her watch one of Alex’s holiday favorites “Christmas Eve on Sesame Street.” She loved it!

That night I made a big Christmas dinner. I made a rack of goat (delicious, like lamb but not so fatty), roast carrots, green beans, and potato/broccoli mash.

Then a family picture before we sent Ellie off to bed.

Christmas morning we woke up late! 9am!!! Delightful. We took Ella out to see this:

She walked up, looked at the tree and gifts, then grabbed a book and brought it to Daddy.

Maybe next year she’ll be more excited! But she enjoyed opening her gifts.

After presents we had our traditional breakfast of crepes with bananas and nutella. Delicious!!

After a morning nap we took the whole family for a walk.

The rest of the day we mainly just hung out together. Ella and Milo are such good friends.

Somehow he found his way into her toy box. Crazy dog.

One of Ella’s presents this year was more swimming lessons, and a new swimsuit. We put them both to the test on Sunday at La Petite Baleen.

Well, there you have it. Holidays at our house, in nutshell – a large nushell, but jus the same…. Whew, I’m exausted.

I am so very behind on my blogging!  So there may be a few posts today as I attempt to catch up.

We took the whole family (including Milo) to Mendocino for the 4th of July weekend. We had a blast. It was nice and warm, beautiful views, and amazing food.

This was SF when we left on Friday. Cold and foggy…


But beautiful and warm up north.



This is the main house of the B&B we stayed at.


Beautiful views everywhere you looked.


Here are the playpen “inmates”


Here’s Alex with his new backpack.


Me and my girl:


B&B’s aren’t really set up for babies… but we made due


We went to a couple really nice dinners. We had to sit outside, as Milo was with us. And we’d get Ella in her highchair, set up her placemat and cover it with cheddar bunnies. We sure know how to class up a joint.



Here’s Daddy and Ella


Here’s our family shot:


When we got home, Ella was still dressed for summer… we don’t seem to have summer in SF!


All in all it was a great weekend. And someone came home…. exausted.

Here’s a little (long) video of Ella crawling around and playing with Milo.

Here’s a quick video of Ella and Milo playing ball.

Today is Milo’s 2nd birthday! Happy birthday Milo-bug.

I’m finding that we’re only posting about our weekends. But, to be fair, nothing really happens during the week. So you’re not missing anything. Friday night I was listening to NPR on the way back home from picking up Ella. There was a story on about military returning home from the war. They were interviewing some folks from Alabama who were putting on a church dinner. The quote went something like this “We’re Baptist — so there’s fried chicken!” To which I thought, “Hummm, I’ve never made fried chicken.” So, we’re not Baptist, but we too had fried chicken, collard greens, and French fries. It came out fabulous, to my delight.



Saturday we lazed around the house. Milo loves to lie in the sun. Ella has been wanting to hang out on her own more, so here’s the kids …






Alex has decided to move his office from the Mission to the Richmond. Not only is it closer to our house, it’s right aboveGreen Apple, his favorite bookstore! Hopefully he’ll be able to move in next weekend.




After a walk to the video store, here was the fabulous view by our house. This is why they call it the Sunset!





Sunday morning was Easter. Seems like the bunny paid a visit to a very good little girl…



Here she is getting dressed…





I was ambitious enough to make her Easter dress. This may be a one time deal — don’t look too closely! We took the family toGlide for Easter services. It is very loud — great gospel music, clapping, a roaring good time. Ella slept. I can’t believe it, but she did.

The film is almost done (yeay!). And we took some time on Saturday to check out the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. It’s a free concert that happens every year in Golden Gate Park on the first weekend in October. Which just happens to correspond with Alex’s birthday. And every year Steve Earle plays, who is one of Alex’s favorite musicians.

You know it’s San Francisco when there are more bikes than cars! We actually walked… so we could bring Milo along.

Since it’s a free concert, there are a lot of people who attend.

It got a little cold and dark, so after a while we headed home. But it was a good time, and  Milo made many friends.