Girl’s Weekend

My cousin Julie and her friend Ashley go on a girl’s trip every year. Last year they went to San Diego and this year they decided to come and visit me!! I was so excited. When I lived in Utah, I would go to dinner almost every Sunday at Julie’s house. I really miss her and her adorable kids.

Julie and Ashley got into town on Friday morning. We spent Friday walking around San Francisco. Our adventure started out by seeing a flash mob in Union Square. It was REALLY cool. We also did some shopping in Union Square and walked around Chinatown. We got pedicures and ate gelato in the park. We explored Telegraph Hill and Coit tower.

Flash Mob

Julie & Me

After our pedicures

Telegraph Hill- Ashley & Julie

My favorite thing we did on Friday  happened to be dinner. Yelp is huge in the Bay area. It is a website where people can go on and rate restaurants, businesses, etc. It’s usually pretty accurate. Dave and I have had a lot of luck finding new places to eat based on Yelp ratings. I found an Italian restaurant on Yelp for us to try out for dinner. It was quite the experience. It was a quaint little restaurant with an authentic Italian flare. The food was good, but the entertainment was the best part. There was a man named Vince at the restaurant. We think he was the owner, but he was quite the character. Within two minutes of sitting down, he came over, told us the daily specials, offered us free dessert, and did a magic trick. He would often get distracted by customers who walked that he knew and would leave our table. He would always come back a few minutes later with another magic trick- some of them were completely mind boggling. He had a very short attention span, but managed to do an excellent job entertaining every table at the restaurant. We figured out one of his numbers trick, but I am still stumped on all of his card tricks. We had planned on going to a chick flick after dinner, but we were at dinner for over 3 hours because Vince was so entertaining. The most ironic thing is that no one on Yelp had even mentioned Vince and his magic tricks, but it definitely made our dinner experience.

Vince- The magician, possible restaurant owner, waiter, etc.

Me trying one of his balancing tricks. He balanced the forks with a toothpick off the wine bottle, but I balanced them off of my ring.

Friday and Saturday were some of the warmest days in the past 7 months that we’ve lived here. They were perfect days to spend outside. The girls stayed in a hotel in San Francisco the whole weekend. Dave came up and joined us on Saturday. We had such a fun time and I’m glad he could make it.  We started out by going on a tour of Alcatraz. I have vague memories of visiting Alcatraz when I was about 14. It was neat to go back 10 years later because I had definitely forgotten a lot about the history of Alcatraz.

On the ferry

Alcatraz Island

Inside the prison- Listening to the audio tour

It was a bit spooky inside the cells.

The prisoners had a great view of the bay! This is probably what they were thinking too.

My favorite part of the weekend was our next adventure. We biked across the Golden Gate Bridge. This was incredible and so much fun! It was 16 miles round trip which sounds quite long, but it was enjoyable the entire time. We rented bikes on Fisherman’s Warf and got started. Here are some pictures along the way.

This is a bit crazy. The guy that’s posing (or whatever he’s doing) in the background of this picture tried to steal someone’s camera out of their pocket a few hours later when we were downtown. The guy who’s camera he tried to steal punched him pretty hard in the face so he didn’t get away with the camera, but thank goodness we didn’t have him take the picture. Who knows what would have happened.

So beautiful!!

The rest of the day was spent walking around Fisherman’s Warf, eating fish & chips and clam chowder in bread bowls- yummy!, shopping, and visiting Ghirardelli square 

On Sunday, we spent most of the afternoon walking around Golden Gate park and visiting the beach. The park is gigantic and there is a ton to see. It is somewhat like a mini Central park in NYC. It was pretty chilly so we took a bus tour which was a cool way to see the park. We didn’t really take any pictures on Sunday because it was too cold outside. Thanks for coming to visit Julie and Ashley! It was a great weekend!

Easter

Easter weekend was pretty fun. We had 2 other couples over to dye Easter eggs and play games. I love dying Easter eggs! Here’s our masterpieces.

I also had what I initially thought was a great idea to make Dave and I Easter baskets that I saw on Pinterest. (I think I was really trying to avoid writing my talk for Easter Sunday church, which it definitely helped me put it off for a couple hours). We have no extra room in our apartment to store holiday decorations, Easter baskets, or things of that sort, so I wanted to have baskets that I didn’t feel bad throwing away. This was the first and last time I will ever be making our baskets. It took forever and the Easter basket was only about 4”X4” so it was more of an Easter basket for a diabetic or someone on a diet.  I only made one basket because it took so long. It turned out cute, but was definitely not worth the effort. I decided to take a picture of the basket before I threw it away so I could look back and laugh at my silly idea.

Ryan & Kerali’s Wedding

Dave and I were able to go to Newport Beach, CA for Dave’s good friend Ryan’s wedding. Ryan and Kerali are such a great couple and we were thrilled we could join in the celebration on their big day. We could not be happier for them! They were married in the Newport Beach temple and had a reception that evening in Kerali’s parents’ backyard. It was a charming reception. The burlap and lace decorations were absolutely adorable. The food was delicious. There was even cheesecake- my favorite.

At the temple

Dave, Shawn, Ryan, John & Ryan

Pictures from the reception. The quality is pretty poor because they were taken with an iPhone without the flash. Oops.

Most of Dave’s best friends from college were in attendance which made the weekend even better. It was like old times for Dave hanging out with his buddies.  We spent Saturday afternoon at Fashion Island with his friends and their wives. We even made it to CPK and Pinkberry… the weekend just kept getting better. It might have gotten even better for Dave if we bought him the Tesla he tried out.

We attempted to go to the beach on Sunday, but it was pouring rain and freezing so the beach idea lasted just long enough to take this picture and then we ran back to the car. Thank goodness this bad weather didn’t come until Sunday. No one wants it to rain on their wedding day. 

Tahoe Trip

One of the audit teams that Dave is on at work celebrated their year end by going on a weekend trip to Lake Tahoe. They were very nice and let spouses/ significant others come along. We left Friday afternoon. One of the other first years and her boyfriend (who came in town from Hawaii) rode with us which made the drive even better. We arrived at the cabin around 7pm. We were the first ones there which was nice because we got first dibs on where to sleep- sort of. There were (I think) 27 of us total and they had divided the beds up beforehand according to where the employee falls in the ranking system. The higher up you were in the company, the better the bed you got. Dave and I were assigned a convertible bed which meant either a futon or couch bed.  Dave and I choose the room off of the main family room which we thought was a great option. We had dinner once most everyone arrived and watched a movie. I went to bed around midnight because I was exhausted from working Thursday night. Dave joined me in bed around 2am. Quite a few people arrived after we went to bed, and the party sure did start once everyone got there. Most everyone was up til 4:30 or so. They were all hanging out in the family room outside Dave and I’s bedroom. It turns out the drunker everyone got, the louder they became. Needless to say, we were very happy when they decided to call it a night. Call me old and boring, but I have come to really appreciate the couple times a week where I can sleep at night.

We got up around 7:30 in the morning. I was honestly surprised at how awake and chipper everyone was for only sleeping for 3 hours. We then headed for the Heavenly Resort. Dave and I started out on the bunny hill. Dave had not been skiing since High School and I hadn’t skied since I was very young because I switched over to snowboarding about 10 years ago (even though I was not very good at it).  We went down the bunny hill a couple of times and then moved on to the green runs. We had a ton of fun. It was a beautiful day with temperatures in the 50’s. I had dressed in 9 layers of clothes that morning because I didn’t want to get cold. After I had gotten dressed to leave, Dave told me I looked soft and ready. Oh Dave, always making me the laugh. After an hour or so of skiing, Dave and I both had to get rid of a few layers of clothing because we were so hot. It could not have been a more perfect day for skiing!

The soft and ready Liz

Dave is a lot better than me at skiing, actually anything athletic in general, so he went on a couple of advanced runs without me. He went all the way to the top of the mountain and got some really cool pictures of the view overlooking Lake Tahoe.

Heavenly Resort is set up quite interestingly. The runs right above the lodge are double black diamond runs. Because of this, you have to take a ski lift over these advanced runs to a higher point on the mountain to get to the green, blue or other black runs. Ski lifts scare me to death.  I am usually not afraid of heights, but ski lifts are a definite exception. I was ok on the way up, but taking the lift on the way down was SO SCARY! The mountain was very steep and with the lift being pretty high up it was a recipe for sheer terror. My heart was beating so fast. I was holding on for dear life while closing my eyes. Dave had to keep reminding me to breathe. There was one point where the lift stopped so the chair starting swinging and I think I almost peed my pants. I have never been so excited to have my feet back on the ground. When I looked back up at the lift after getting off, I asked Dave how that did not scare him. He told me he was scared, but that he didn’t think it would help the situation if he told me. Smart move Dave. Two of us freaking out for 249 seconds… (yes I counted to try and distract myself) would have been a bad combo.

Saturday night, Chris (the partner over the team/ account) took us out for a delicious dinner. That night we also realized how sunburned our faces were. Dave’s definitely more so than mine. Lesson learned- we will never forget to put on sunscreen before skiing again.  This was such a great weekend vacation and it was nice to get to know some of Dave’s coworkers. He works with so many fun and entertaining people.