A Day as a Tourist

So these are our tourist pictures. The first few are from the Golden Gate Overlook, but the rest are from our trip as tourist's through San Francisco on a Double Decker Bus. Holly loved this, she had such a great time sitting next to Mommy and looking out of the Big Windows. The only problem was that it was raining. The weather was actually pretty terrible the entire time my Mom was visiting so we took a risk and went on the day we thought the weather would be the best. It was mostly just a drizzle. We started at the Wharf and ended up eating at Boudin Sour Dough factory. Marilyn had Dungeness Crab which is in season, I mean you know it is vacation so of course time to splurge. We then did a tour of the bread factory which was super cool. Later we had ice Cream at Ghiradelli square,We saw Grace Cathedral, the Transamerica Pyramid, North Beach, Castro, China Town, Union Square. We even drove down Lombard street in my car after our bus tour. It was a great overview of San Francisco and a lot of fun.

Theo's Art Show

This is the leopard Theo made for the show

Here is the cool ceramic studio where the kids work, I think I will take holly for a preview class

This is the show, there were lots of great pieces. Yummy snacks too

The kids were fascinated with the rocks and played with them all afternoon!

Open Houses

So on another day in Berkeley we decided to go to some Open Houses. Marilyn recently purchased a place in Georgia and my mom loves to look and well with the way the housing market is here in the San Francisco Bay Area they really wanted to know what a Million Dollar house looked like. We started the day however going to Brunch at another of Kat's favorite places, called the Vault. Then we dropped Joel off at home to work and we had about 3-4 hours to drive around and look. I focused the day up in the Berkeley hills. We saw a few places that were about 8-900K a 1.2 and a 1.6m It was interesting as the 800k house was a steal for the price based on the view and the size, but it was pretty run down. The others were really not worth the Money. Because a lot are built on the side's of mountains they all had some form of stairs either to get in or once in to get to the rest of the house. one was even 3 stories internally and then a forth flight down outside to a small in-law unit. But the 1.6 well it was actually worth the Money, that house was beautiful, completely redone with gorgeous wood work, the bottom floor had two kids room and a nanny room, Laundry room and play room, then there was another floor with the master bedroom and another with the kitchen living room. Full wall's of Window's or porches at every turn. The views were breath taking. For the most part I would never spend the money on these houses as you are paying for location but that last one we looked at I think was 5 bedroom 4 bath, 3700 Square feet and gorgeous. Now if only Joel's iPhone App Empire could take off, or someone wants to spend 200 million on his game and we have it made. Holly loved looking around she had the routine down pat, looking from room to room, floor to floor then announcing, Next House and heading back to the car. She had fun causing trouble, playing piano's jumping on beds, exploring kid's rooms. it was a lot of fun. Joel was happy to not be with us.

A Day in Berkeley

Here are some of the pictures from a day we spent showing Auntie Marilyn around berkeley. It was actually their last day in town and after a busy week of site seeing we wanted to take it easy. First we picked Holly up from school and headed to Tanta Kat's favorite Mexican place for lunch. We had yummy quesadilla. Then we took Marilyn to the garden store. She is really into gardening and plants so it was fun for her to see all the kids of plants that are local to northern California, the vegetation being pretty different from Florida and Georgia.

Next we headed over to Cordonices park, I wanted to show the family the Rose Garden but there was nothing in Bloom. So instead we played in the park. Holly was really into the Concrete slide but I was too scared to let her do it alone. She convinced me to go down with her which I did twice. later I let her go down on her own from about half way up the slope. Even Marilyn gave it a try. My mom was so cute, Holly about gave her a heart attack climbing up the long ladder of the regular slide she was so worried about her each time and that slide she did about 50 times. Finally everyone took a turn on the swings. Holly loved that Auntie Marilyn swung with her.

At the end of the day we met with Joel and Kat for dinner and Desert before taking them home and heading to the airport. It was a lovely day and a great way to end a super trip.