Pomp and Circumstance

Cristina had just celebrated her 11th birthday when I started dating her big brother. Now?

Well, now, she's a high school graduate. She'll be heading off to college in August.

Excuse me while I go apply wrinkle cream and join AARP.

I kid, I kid. But it does make me feel old. I sat at her graduation ceremony and thought, "Holy crap, these kids look like 8th graders." And then I asked myself, quite a few times, "What the hell is that kid wearing?! How is that appropriate for a graduation?"

See? OLD.

Did I mention that she was valedictorian? Out of approximately 400 kids in her class, she had the best GPA. So, um, yeah. We're just a little bit proud of her, you see.

And I'm a wee bit scared of her, too.

But it's all good, folks. She's heading off to pharmacy school. In about six years time, she'll be able to hock us all kinds of prescription meds. Now there's someone you want to have in the family.

OK, I'm kidding again. Sort of.

But back to being serious.

I have enjoyed watching Cristina grow up. I may not have been there from the very beginning, but I'm proud to have been there for the real formative years. She's transformed from the cute kid to the snotty middle-schooler to the moody teenager. (Thankfully, none of that snot or mood was ever really directed at me! It was reserved for her parents, ha!)

Now, she is officially a young woman! I can't wait to see who she becomes next. (And the drugs. I look forward to the drugs.)

I was honored to be asked to help Cristina out with her graduation speech, and she did a great job with it--both writing and delivering it. Watching her up there, I'm not going to lie: I teared up a little. Mostly, it was pride. But I was also a little bit jealous of these kids.

It was an awesome feeling, graduating from high school, knowing the possibilities were endless and you had your whole life ahead of you. Not only your whole life, but YOUR COLLEGE YEARS. Hellooo! We're talking the best years of one's life! I miss those days, and probably always will.

At least I now have someone to live through vicariously, right?

I was able to get all these photos (and more) of her up on stage, even though our seats were less than ideal, thanks to the telephoto lens that we borrowed.

Speaking of which, I have to give a big WTF to her high school... if a kid goes through all the trouble of being awesome for four years and is named valedictorian, don't you think her family should get reserved seating to witness this blessed event?!

Yeah, me too. *shakes fist at the damn high school*

We have just two months left with her so close to home. She's only going to college about an hour away, but it definitely won't be the same! We still have her graduation PARTY to look forward to, though.

Congratulations, Cristina. We're so proud of you. And we wish you the brightest future possible.

<3

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Family & Baseball

We have been going nonstop since we returned from vacation. Now, I think we'll have a few days where we can finally breathe before we jump back into the chaos toward the end of the week and into the weekend. Such is life in the summertime, right?

On Wednesday, my dad got into town for a visit from Virginia. He hadn't met Hunter yet, so he came up to see his new grandson (and the rest of us, too). We hadn't seen him since our wedding last year, so it was definitely time! So, the last several days, I've been spending as much time as possible with my dad, which has also meant lots of extra time with a certain nephew that I am absolutely in love with.

My dad left to go back home around noon today, and I think he was especially sad to be leaving little Hunter. It's so hard to leave when there is a baby involved. It's heartbreaking when you know that the next time you see them, they'll have changed so much!

Yesterday, we had quite the fun family outing planned. The weather was gorgeous; we could not have asked for a more perfect Saturday.

We started off the afternoon at Trevor and Kara's house, just hanging out with my dad. Meanwhile, Hunter took a snooze:

Of course, we couldn't leave him lying in that bouncy seat for long. As his aunt, I just can't possibly pass up an opportunity for snuggling. Plus, we had pictures on the agenda.

He woke up a little bit, but was still pretty sleepy. Sweet, sweet boy.

Dad, Trevor, Hunter and me.

Dad with his grandson. Love Hunter's adorable little expression in this one.

Fathers and sons. Too bad my granddad lives so far away... we could have a photo with four generations!

Hunter's proud parents. Trevor, Kara, and the little guy.

After an hour or so, Kara's mom came to babysit Hunter while we all got out to enjoy the day. We started off by going out to dinner and enjoying a few beers, then ended up at a Triple A baseball game. We lucked out, because the weather could not have been more perfect for baseball.

Conveniently, Michael and I borrowed a telephoto lens from one of his coworkers for the weekend. We had my sister-in-law's high school graduation to go to today (a post on that to come tomorrow), and since she was valedictorian, I really wanted to be able to get some decent photos of her. Our lenses weren't going to get the job done, so it was nice we had the opportunity to use the telephoto one. Anyway, we decided to bring it to the game so I could practice with it a little bit.

Here are some of my shots:

This was funny. A player from the opposing team had a "dance off" with the rhino.

And once the player "won" by performing a backflip (which the rhino clearly wasn't going to be able to "answer"), the rhino took matters into his own hands by tackling him. It was really cute.

After the game, we were treated to an awesome fireworks show. I got to experiment a little bit taking some pics. These were a couple of the "best" ones, so clearly I have to do some more practicing.

That just about sums up our Saturday.

As an aside, I am still working on catching up on blog posts from vacation. I don't know if anyone really even gives a crap at this point, but I figured I'd point it out in case some of you haven't seen them. I am done with Seattle, and working on San Francisco. I hope to be all caught up in the next day or two, including an anniversary post!

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MJ

I cannot even believe that Michael Jackson is dead.

I heard the news that he was hospitalized, in cardiac arrest, and critical condition. I didn't think any of that sounded good, but I don't know... I guess I still didn't think he would actually die.

Then Michael received a text message from a friend that said "RIP Michael Jackson." I turned on CNN, checked the CNN homepage, MSNBC, etc. and couldn't find anything that said he had actually died. I saw that The Drudge Report and TMZ were reporting it, but I was not going to believe it until it was reported by more reputable news sources.

I kept checking the news and Twitter on my BlackBerry as we drove to my in-laws' to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday, but found nothing new. Just tons of speculation. As we walked in the door at Michael's parents', they said that Michael Jackson's death had just been confirmed on the Nightly News.

So sad.

In a lot of ways, I feel like the "real" Michael Jackson, the one everyone loved, "died" many years ago when he became so weird. But it's still hard to believe. I'm kind of in shock!

You see, Michael Jackson is part of my earliest memories. I absolutely *loved* him and his music as a child. I have no idea how I was introduced to it all, but I was the definition of a crazed fan... at the tender age of two. TWO!!

My grandma brought me a Michael Jackson t-shirt when she came to visit, and I loved wearing it so much that I would cry when my mom would take it off of me to wash it. Even as a toddler, I knew how to put on the record player and put the needle on it to play his albums.

When "Thriller" came out, my dad bought me the Thriller disks for my Viewfinder. I looked through them, and apparently started crying and was totally freaked out about the pictures of him as a zombie/werewolf. HA! It was a little too much for my 2-year-old self. But instead of taking away the disks, my dad simply took an Xacto knife to them and cut out the scary images. After that, I happily cycled through them on my Viewfinder, every once in a while coming to an empty slide that I had to click past. :)

In the years that followed, we have countless home videos of my brothers and I dancing around like goofballs in the living room to "Beat It" and "Billy Jean" and all of the other hits.

As I got older, I still loved all of the music he released. His performance at the SuperBowl--loved it!

Now, of course, I still love all the classics. We had several of his songs played at our wedding. In fact, Michael and his friend (one of our groomsmen), Jason, did a short MJ impression. Jason is really good at it, he has even mastered the moonwalk.

I was saddened to learn about Farrah Fawcett's death, but was particularly bummed to hear about the King of Pop. His poor family.

RIP Michael Jackson. You were an amazing performer, and quite frankly, a legend.

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And I'm back! FINALLY!

OK, so that whole "blog through our vacation" thing didn't work out so well this time. Really, it was for a number of reasons:

1) Our internet access was somewhat limited. We had a few connectivity problems in Seattle, and then in San Francisco, the hotel wanted to charge us $12.95/day for internet access. And that sooo wasn't going to happen.

2) We were sooo busy. We really worked ourselves quite hard this vacation. Lots of places to go, things to see, etc. so when we were back at the house or hotel, I spent my time relaxing instead of blogging.

3) We forgot our camera cord, so we weren't even able to transfer photos. Whoops.

4) Quite frankly, I was lazy about it. I guess it was kind of nice to take a break from it in a lot of ways. Now, however, I'm sort of regretting it. SO MUCH TO CATCH UP ON!!

I ask you to bear with me this week, as I'm going to attempt to go back and recap our vacation day by day. You'll (hopefully) see lots of back-dated posts from me over the next few days. So, if you read through a reader of some sort, the posts should pop up for you as normal. But if you read right here on my blog, you'll want to scroll down past this post for the next few days to see my vacation updates. I'm going to do my best to get caught up as soon as possible, but my dad gets into town for a visit tomorrow, so I'm not sure how much time I'm going to have. We'll see how it goes!

To give you a very short overview, we had a wonderful time, but we found that it was more of a "go-go-go" vacation instead of a truly relaxing one. Of course, we enjoyed not having to cook, or clean, or do any of the daily grind things--so in a lot of ways, it WAS relaxing--but I'll admit that the last couple of days in San Francisco? Completely exhausting. We sort of hit a wall.

We took the red-eye home this morning, and needless to say, we didn't get a lot of sleep. Today, we are zombies. We're hoping this helps us avoid any kind of West-to-East-Coast jetlag, because it's back to work tomorrow.

Anyway, did ya miss me?! ;)

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Anniversary Day

We knew from the get-go that today was going to be a busy day. We got out of bed at an early (but not insane) hour to get a jumpstart on it all.

But before leaving the hotel, we had to take care of business. That is, we had to get our celebratory anniversary champagne (purchased at Mumm the other day) on ice. No fridge? No cooler? No problem!

From there, we rode a trolley down to the bottom of Powell, then caught a bus to go check out the Painted Ladies. We got off the bus at Steiner Street and had to walk a few more blocks to get to Alamo Square. We thought that once we arrived, the Painted Ladies would be pretty easy to spot.

We were wrong.

I'd be lying if I said we didn't walk around the entire park without spotting the Painted Ladies. Finally, after some Googling on my BlackBerry, I was able to get the actual addresses, and we were able to find the famous ladies.

Is it wrong if I say we weren't entirely impressed? Still, we took pictures, because it was kind of a pain in the ass to get there. After all that effort, we weren't going to walk away without at least some photos.

They're pretty and all, but we wouldn't really say they were worth the trouble of getting there. That's just our $0.02.

From there, we rode a few more buses to get us to Crissy Field in Presidio Park. Our concierge had told us that this was her favorite place to view the Golden Gate Bridge.

And for good reason. It was beautiful.

We had pretty perfect San Francisco weather today. It was sunny, clear, and for the most part, comfortable.

Except right down by the water. There, it was kinda freezing. I was shocked to see people swimming in the bay. Meanwhile, I had to put on my fleece, and wished I had brought gloves. (Kidding. Sorta.)

Before hitting the beach (fully clothed, of course), we stopped at a little nearby cafe to grab a little something to eat. We shared a sandwich, and a muffin for something sweet.

We spent quite a bit of time down on the beach, just enjoying the scenery and taking photos. There were a ton of dogs running down there, so we did some dog and people watching.

Eventually, we decided we should start to make our way back toward our hotel, since we wanted to stop in there to rest up for a little while to refresh ourselves for the evening ahead.

We walked down the beach for a bit, then made our way back to the streets and out of Presidio Park. We eventually made our way back to a bus route and caught a bus back to Fisherman's Wharf before riding a trolley back up to our hotel.

After several days of so.much.walking, and especially on all these hills, we are not ashamed to admit that we are pretty tired! My legs are starting to scream at me. We rested for a while in our hotel room before making our way back down to Fisherman's Wharf and over to Pier 39.

On our agenda for our anniversary evening? A sunset cruise, then dinner.

We booked our sunset cruise through Adventure Cat. They offer both daytime and sunset cruises. We opted to pay a little more for the sunset cruise, and in the end, we were glad we did. It was pretty romantic, and the scenery was even more beautiful under the gorgeous orange glow of the sunset. Plus, we got to enjoy a couple of drinks (two apiece), and some light snacks while we sailed the San Francisco Bay.

Here are some photos from our cruise:

Since Adventure Cat is located right down on Pier 39, we were right next to the famous "Pier 39 Sea Lions." When we walked down the dock to board our boat, we saw this guy taking a snooze. Apparently, he needed some quiet time away from all his buddies, because he was all alone over there.

Michael on the boat, ready to get the show on the road.

As we were pulling away from the dock, I was able to take a few photos of all the sea lions.

With the city behind me.

Our captain, Hans. Our crew was pretty awesome, too. Since it's a relatively small boat, there were only two crew members, but we really liked them. They were great multi-taskers, helping out the captain when needed, and also serving drinks and talking to all of the passengers. Unfortunately, I've already forgotten her name, but one of the crew members even offered to give us a bunch of restaurant recommendations. We told her what kind of food we liked, and she spent some time putting together a list for us while we concentrated on enjoying the view.

From Pier 39, we set sail straight out toward Alcatraz, and sailed right around it. It was interesting to get to see it up close. After hearing a few opinions, we've decided we're not going to tour Alcatraz while we're out here. We just don't think we want to devote 4+ hours of time to tour an old prison! So it was nice to just be able to see a little more of it.

More Alcatraz.

From there, we started sailing out toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Everything was gorgeous. The water was sparkling, and we just could not have asked for a better evening.

If you do decide to do a cruise like this, I recommend wearing layers, and bringing warmer clothes than you might think you need. At first, I was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt with a short-sleeve t-shirt over it, and a thin fleece with pants and sneakers. You'll want to be wearing shoes with rubber soles, because it can be challenging to walk across the deck when the boat is in motion.

Once the sun really started to go down, it immediately felt 10x cooler than before, so I was glad that I had brought yet another layer, which was a thick, cozy hoodie sweatshirt. Ultimately, I was happy to have so many layers!

While I was standing up at the front of the boat here, we had a minute or two of rough water. At one point, we heard shrieks from over to our left, and when I turned to look, I saw that two girls, who were standing where Michael and I had been standing not long before, had gotten absolutely soaked! I guess we had hit a wave just the right way and it had sent water shooting up over the side of the boat. Whoops! I felt sorry for them, as it was cold to be walking around with wet pants, but they seemed to be good sports about it.

As we got closer and closer to the bridge, the view was more and more spectacular. Plus, the setting sun was making the bridge's color stand out even more than usual.

We sailed right underneath the bridge, which was a unique way to get a good look at it. Pretty cool.

And then we popped out on the other side so we could see the bridge from yet another angle. Shortly after going under the bridge, we turned around to start heading back to Pier 39.

At one point, I looked back behind us to see this. It was simply breathtaking.

Back at Pier 39, the sea lions were still hanging out. Some snoozing, some making lots of noise.

Remember our friend that was napping on the dock before we left? He was still there, and still out like a light.

Once we got off the boat, we decided to walk over to the area of the pier that is best for viewing the sea lions. We couldn't help but watch them for a while. It's so funny to see them all.

This guy was particularly vocal, and rowdy, too. He jumped off the dock to take a swim for a little bit, and kept popping his head above water to continue to make noise. Eventually, he jumped back up on the dock, which was cool to watch. It's amazing how easily they can jump right up out of the water, even though they are so huge.

At this point, it was 9:00 p.m. and we still hadn't eaten our anniversary dinner. We decided to stick close by, and walked around Pier 39. We settled on going to Pier Market. Michael enjoyed some seafood, and I enjoyed some chicken. We were in particularly good spirits after our awesome sunset cruise, so we took the opportunity to relax, eat slowly, and just enjoy each other's company.

Then, we did something we hardly ever do at restaurants. We ordered dessert!

After some debate between the chocolate lava cake and the apple crisp, we went for the apple crisp. The warm apples, crusty oatmeal topping, the ice cream, the whipped cream! Who can resist?! And lord, let me tell you... so. amazing. Four enthusiastic thumbs up on this one.

Soon, we wandered out of the restaurant and easily caught a trolley back up to the hotel.

Our champagne was waiting. Normally, when I open champagne, I keep the flying cork under control by holding it in my hand and simply working it out of the bottle, or by covering it with a towel so it can't go far. This is usually to avoid injury or breaking anything in our house.

This time, since we are in a hotel room, I decided to let it fly. That thing came off with a lot of force. It was quite funny. But thankfully, even though nothing belonged to us, we still managed not to break anything.

Now, we are sitting back and enjoying our champagne, after a long but wonderful anniversary day.

Happy 1st Anniversary to my husband! <3

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