Easter Weekend: Lollie and Pops visit!

Over Easter weekend, my family came out to visit.  It was the first time we'd seen Lollie and Pops since we left Texas, and we were excited to see them!  Aunt Abi also flew in from college to spend the weekend with us.

Showing off her tricycle skills in the backyard

Happy to see Lollie!

And happy to see Pops, too!

On Saturday, we headed up to the city to Fisherman's Wharf.  After lunch at In-n-Out Burger, we rode the Cable Cars up to Market Square before heading back home. 

Love that they gave her this hat... and that she wore it during lunch!

Posing with Aunt Abi

Waiting in line for the Cable Car near Ghiradelli Square and the Golden Gate Brige

It was a beautiful day, and we had great views of the bridge while we stood in line!

We tried to take a picture while riding the Cable Cars.  Took a few tries to get one that wasn't blurry!

On the streets of San Francisco 

Posing with Aunt Abi on the Cable Car

Easter morning, we got up and had a little egg hunt in the backyard.  Lindsay did it in her new princess nightgown and high heels... why not??

Seems the Easter Bunny had a little "Frozen" theme going on this year...

My sweet princess

"Mommy, this basket is VERY heavy!"

We were sad to see the weekend come to an end!  Hopefully they can come back and visit us again soon!

Uncle Dustin Visits San Francisco!

At the end of March, Uncle Dustin came down from Seattle to visit us.  We usually only get to see him at Christmas, so it was fun to spend some time with him outside of the holiday season!

We spent the weekend exploring San Francisco.  Our first stop was burgers in the city and fun at Golden Gate Park!

Hipster baby with Daddy and Uncle Dustin in downtown San Francisco

"Mommy!  What does this even say?!?  Are we at the park yet??"

Riding a pelican

Big girl on the big girl swing!

Cool kids on the swings

Gettin' crazy on the slide!

Going down a slide with a three year old in your lap is harder than it looks!

Golden Gate Park Carousel

During the ride

After our fun afternoon at the park, we headed out to the beach to see the Pacific Ocean before the sun set.  Man, the water here is FREEZING!  We put our feet in for about half a second before running back to the sand.

Daddy and Lindsay on their way to the ocean

She loved the sand!  Big change from our beach trip two summers ago!

We might have been making fun of Lindsay's camera poses here... :)

On Sunday, we headed back into the city to visit one of the coolest children's museums on the planet... The Exploratorium!!  The museum is a huge warehouse broken into different rooms by type of "science topic" (i.e., the light room, the listening room, the energy room), and the exhibits are all very simple hands-on science experiments to demonstrate that topic.  It really is a museum for kids of any age -- we had a blast!

Experimenting with a high-speed camera that dropped water into a jar.  You could adjust the shutter speed to get different sizes and shapes of splash. 

The light room, where you could see your shadow in different colors!

After The Exploratorium closed, we headed back to Pier 39 to see the sea lions and Alcatraz Island.

The Anglin brothers (but not THOSE Anglin brothers) with Alcatraz  Island

Of course we had to ride the Pier 39 carousel again... At this point, she is starting to believe every single place in California has a carousel.

Beautiful sunset behind Golden Gate Bridge on the bay

We had lots of fun with Uncle Dustin this weekend!  Hope he can come back and visit again soon!

San Francisco Fun: Pier 39

Back in March, we had our first official family outing to Pier 39 in San Francisco.  We live about 40 minutes outside of the city, so it was fun to be tourists for the day!  First stop was the Aquarium by the Bay for some fish, sharks, and starfish touching.

Lindsay's favorite thing about the aquarium was the awesome "crown" they gave us!

Shark Tunnels 

Lots and lots of little fish... she was mesmorized! 

"Gently" touching the starfish... poor things!

Next we headed further onto the pier, which was a lot bigger that I expected!  They had lots of San Francisco souvenir stores, places selling sweet treats (including the amazing Trish's Mini Donuts), and a handful of seafood restaurants.  They even had a really cool two-story carousel right in the middle!  We also found great views of Alcatraz, the famous sea lions, and even the Zoltar machine from the movie Big.  Part of me wanted to try it... but the grown-up part of me reminded me that I did not even want to CHANCE the possibility of going back to being 13 again!

Lindsay and Daddy riding the carousel.

Lindsay and Daddy with Alcatraz (really small over Daddy's arm)

Family picture by the Bay

Oh those loud, smelly sea lions.... Lindsay thought they were hilarious!

Don't get too close... I'm happy being a grown-up, thank you!

Lindsay and Daddy showing off one of those mini-donuts. 

Overall, we had a great time for our first official visit to San Francisco!  We will definitely be back to explore more of this fun city!

Moving Day!

After talking about it for months, it was finally time to pack up our house and head out to sunny CA!  I will admit, I HATE packing.  Love unpacking and organizing a new space, but I cannot stand packing boxes.  In college, I moved with laundry baskets and shopping bags from year to year... just to avoid the dreaded cardboard boxes.

This is exactly what my face looked like, too.

I don't even know how many boxes we ended up packing, but I think it was somewhere around a million.  At least that's how it felt!  The only upside is that my husband, always on the lookout for the latest and greatest, found these amazing boxes that don't need any packing tape.  Seriously.  They were awesome (and Amazon delivered them to our door)!

The first of many.... 

Playing in the stacks.

Even Elmo got in on the packing action.

Finally, it was time to load the truck!  It made me feel better that we didn't fill up the whole thing. :)

She was fascinated by the truck!

Unfortunately, the driver let us know that the original guy we talked with had his dates wrong and we wouldn't see our stuff again for 2 weeks (we were originally told 5 - 6 days).  Yeah, that didn't sit too well.... but there wasn't much we could do because our stuff was already loaded.  Future moving tip: always double-check the delivery estimate with the actual driver before they start packing up your house!

Our travel pro having a snack before our flight.

Paying it forward... hopefully the next guy that needs the airsickness bag will be comforted by all of the 101 Dalmatians  stickers on it!

California, here we come!  Here's to a year of new adventures and fun times exploring a great city!