Home, Part III -- San Francisco

As the kids and I discovered this summer, there's nothing like playing tourist to make you appreciate (and miss) your hometown.  And San Francisco is one of the best!

On one of our first days there, we drove all around the city and stopped to admire one of the beautiful bridges (San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge),

I did have to angle the camera carefully to cut out the homeless people smoking joints.  Ahh, San Francisco...

Then we took a roller-coaster ride down Lombard Street:

Image from here

And then had a wonderful lunch by the beach.  But since it was August in San Francisco, instead of being able to see the ocean, literally across the street, we saw this:

I didn't take this photo.  It's from here

So a few days later, hoping for warmer weather, we headed south and spent a wonderful afternoon at Gilroy Gardens with friends:

In case you can't tell, this is Kate's "mean" face

The next day, back up to S.F. to play with the fascinating exhibits at the Exploratorium:

Again, he won't kiss his mother but he'll drink out of a toilet.  Hmmph.

And then we strolled around the Palace of Fine Arts:

While in CA, we ate a TON of Mexican food...

And, yes, she ate the entire plate of super nachos.

...and enjoyed really healthy hotel breakfast buffets.

Remember his vegetarian phase?  Clearly over.

We also revisited some of our favorite parks and playgrounds in the Bay Area:

Magic Mountain in San Mateo

And spent a nearly fog-free day at the beach by Crissy Field:

That's Alcatraz there behind the seagull.

The kids even found and "reassembled" this poor little crab.

They couldn't understand why I refused to let him come home with us.

Kate took home half the beach in her swimsuit anyway, so there was no room for dismembered crustaceans.

This is the Dahlia Garden near the Flower Conservatory in Golden Gate Park:

It blooms every August - October.  One of my favorite places in S.F.!

Then we headed over to Children's Playground to test out the amazing concrete slides.  These have been there for at least 30 years, I think.

You sit on a piece of cardboard so you really fly!

We were also fortunate enough to attend the wedding of some very good friends while we were in California.  The kids had a blast, and the setting -- spectacular!!!

Kate, with the fog rolling over the hills behind her.

There were so many beautiful photo opportunities that the kids (read: Will) got a little tired of posing for me. 

Just outside our hotel.  Poor Will.  Being photographed AND hugged.  The horror!

But he felt better after I let him take the next photo up a tree.

Next up, from damp, freezing fog to the scorching heat of Texas...

Home, part II -- Family in CA

The best part of coming home?  While Trader Joe's, Target and good customer service rank at the top of my list, they certainly can't compare to spending time with family:

Will and Grandpa

And swimming in the warm California sunshine.  We did lots of swimming!

with cousins:

And second-cousins (?):

and a couple of dogs!

Taken two seconds before the dog jumped on Will and nearly drowned them both!

There were cannonball competitions:

And Slip-N-Slide marathons:

Fountain splashing:

Dining alfresco

And more quality time with cousins:

A once-a-year family photo op:

And even the chance to cuddle up to a sweet pet dove.

Don't ask me to explain how even Will, who has declared all kissing "disgusting," who only allows me to kiss him when he's asleep, had no problem puckering up to a bird:

So he doesn't look thrilled.  But he did it!  I'm slightly offended.

We also found time to reconnect with some very good friends.

Kate and Ryan plan to get married and have 10 kids.

Emily cuddling up to her favorite "Woo"

It was such a nice visit, but seeing all these wonderful people just once a year is not enough.  I hope to tempt at least a few of them to come visit us this year.  Seriously, what are you all waiting for??

Home...

Where we've been the last five weeks.

It was wonderful.


I'll be back soon with more pictures and updates!

I Love Luxembourg: Carless streets!

I know lots of European cities have these pedestrian-only zones in the city center, but it was new thing for me.  And I love it! Where else could my silly kids stand in the middle of the street without me having to worry about them getting run over?

 I would love to see some of these pedestrian only zones popping up in America someday soon!

I Love Luxembourg: Flowers

Yet another thing I love about living somewhere with real seasons:  Each month in spring and summer, a new flower blooms, if only for a few weeks.

In late winter, the first sign of spring, snowdrops:

March brings crocuses:

In April, the tulips come out:


May brings fields and fields of brilliant yellow flowers:


And in June, red poppies everywhere:

In late summer, the sunflowers appear:

And then it's time for fall with its gorgeous colors... but that's for another post.

Summer baking

I couldn't resist buying an enormous tub of cherries at the supermarket last week, more cherries than even my cherry-loving children could consume, so we decided to use up all those extras in a cobbler.

One problem:  a ton of cherries to pit and no pitter.  SO we used my best friend Google to figure out how remove those pesky stones sans pitter, and discovered this fantastic method:

Center cherry over (empty) beer bottle, poke hard plastic straw down, the pit falls into the bottle.  Easy!!

 This worked amazingly well, though the cherries have to be ripe and the straw hard plastic.  We did about 4 cups of cherries in maybe 10-15 minutes.  The kids thought it was really fun, and it minimized the mess since the cherry pits all fell right into the bottle.  Of course, environmental guilt forced me to painstakingly shake all the pits out of the bottle so it could still be recycled.  But if you skipped that step, then this method is really fast.  I love Google.

Here's the finished cobbler:

With ice cream on top, of course!

Warm cherry cobbler topped with vanilla ice cream?  It doesn't get any better than that!