I. Hate. Macy's.

Explanation to come later. I want to finish the San Francisco Series first, but not tonight because I am tired and grouchy and I am obviously in a snit about Macy's.

I think I'm in love...

[Note: I was gonna post this earlier but I didn't want to interrupt my San Francisco Series. However, I'm just so excited that I'm pausing the series to share the happy news.]
A new boy has entered my life. I think I'm in love with him. He's possibly the cutest boy that I've ever met. He's only two days old but already he has won my heart. It's been a hectic week. My best friend went into labor on Tuesday evening and her son arrived on Wednesday morning so Lance and I have been at the hospital a few times this week. But yes, I love him. I came home from the hospital on Wednesday and realized that I didn't just think he was cute but that I loved him. I want to buy him stuff and knit him stuff and teach him stuff and provide him with lots of language opportunities. In fact, I plan to teach him to say, "No, mommy, I think Aunty Kat's right," as soon as possible.

San Francisco Series: Episode 4

On day 4 of our journey, we had another early start and another long drive. This time we drove down to Monterey so that we could go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.The town of Monterey was a pretty cool place, both literally and figuratively. Because it was by the water, it was freezing cold like San Francisco but I really liked the small town feel of it. I would've liked to have more time there to just walk around and explore but there was no time for that. We were able to check out a store or two by the aquarium and I bought a really cute magnetic dragonfly bookmark. What was neat about Monterey was that you could actually see sea animals without actually having to go the aquarium because these were just hanging out on a rock in the ocean:We also saw some kayakers out there who were just sitting and staring at parts of the ocean at either more seals or perhaps the sea otters that are supposed to be hanging out in the kelp in the bay. Anyway, we loved the aquarium! It was humangous and was by far the best aquarium that I've visited. Sea World in San Diego was awesome, too, but I do not consider that an aquarium. Anyway, so the Monterey Bay Aquarium was packed with awesome exhibits and fabulous water related creatures, including gorgeous jelly fish and fun penguins. I was particularly enthralled by:Really cute and fun otters! I love otters! I stayed and stared a long time at the otters. But it made me a little homesick because they reminded me of M*Bark. Admittedly I had M*Bark on the brain for a good portion of our trip and called my parents more than once a day to check on her. In my defense though, some of those times Lance was actually the one who suggested that we call. Anyway, this was one of the most disgusting exhibits:It's called a fat innkeeper worm and it's found in the mud of the wetlands. This picture looks yucky, but it didn't capture the true disgustingness of the animal. We should've taken a video of it moving because that made it even more icky. Anyway, doesn't it look like a certain male body part? And to add to the awesomeness of the aquarium, they also had a really yummy restaurant there. I had this:

and the best cup of clam chowder that I've ever had. If anyone is traveling to the Bay area, I'd definitely recommend that you visit this aquarium. Not only did they have the coolest exhibits, but they also had fabulous food. It was totally worth the two hour drive from San Francisco.

After the aquarium, we stopped by the Monterey Trader Joe's. I love Trader Joe's and it's definitely one of the places I'd frequent if I lived on the mainland. Too bad there's no plans (well, that I know of anyway) to have one in Hawaii. One of the workers said that he had heard that the owner had looked into opening one, but that it would cost too much money and be too much of a hassle since the closest warehouse is an ocean away.

After Monterey, we drove to Gilroy because the MIL wanted to visit the outlet mall there. The outlet mall was very large and then we picked up dinner from an In-N-Out Burger and ate it on the ride home. Lance and I ate our first In-N-Out burger when we were in Vegas and getting another one while we were in San Francisco was on his list of things to do. I love their burgers and Lance was a happy camper on our long ride back.

San Francisco Series: Episode 3b

So on the last episode, we ended with our travelers departing Sacramento and heading back to San Francisco. Two hours, one toll booth, and one bridge later, we returned to the hotel, dropped the MIL off, and changed into warmer clothes. Lance and I headed to Oakland to catch the Oakland A's play the Philadelphia Phillies. We were concerned about the traffic and it looked like we were gonna make it just in the nick of time but suddenly the traffic cleared and we were there! Lance actually clapped his hands, he was so excited. We had more than enough time to buy food, souvenirs, look around, and find our seats.We had pretty good seats for the game. We were behind home plate and were pretty close to the action. We were so close that we had that net/screen thing that stops foul balls from smacking you hard and so close that Lance felt it was necessary to tell me to duck if I saw people around me ducking.

It was a good game for us to go to since Hawaii boys (I almost said "local boys" and then realized that I wasn't cool enough to say "local boys") Kurt Suzuki and Shane Victorino were both playing. I always try to pay attention to Lance's interests and I can watch a lot of his sports now and I enjoy them. I admit, though, paying attention to baseball takes more effort though I admit that going to a major league game is way more interesting and fun than watching it at home. In any case, I was amused by many things during this game, none of which actually had to do with the game (though I was also pleased because this game moved along at a nice pace). Perhaps the most amusing was:

The mess of vendors moving up and down the aisles! They were selling peanuts, churros, pizza, ice cream, soda, candy, and souvenirs. They even had vendors walking around with huge hot chocolate and Starbucks coffee canisters on their back that had a hose connected to it. It was super freezing so I ended up buying a Starbucks coffee from one of them near the end of the game. He got his little hose, pumped the coffee into a cup, gave me cream and sugar, and continued on his merry way. There were a lot of vendors where we were sitting and they all moved super fast. I had a lot of fun watching these vendors but I really was paying attention to the game though my view was blocked a bit at times:

I was also amused but also irritated at times by these obnoxious girls sitting next to me. They drank a lot during the game and got louder and louder as the game progressed. I think one of them may have come in drunk already, though, because she was obnoxious from the beginning and her friends were laughing that she was an alcoholic. They were alternating between cheering on the A's, dissing our section for not being spirited enough, and screaming crap at the Phillies and anyone who might be fans of them. Their highest point was either when they repeatedly screamed "douche bag" at the opposing team or when they yelled at a little eight year old boy who was cheering for the Phillies.The funny thing about this picture was not that a picture of a group of strangers who were obviously sitting right next to me was taken. The funny thing is that Lance was the one who took the picture. After one of the girls' more obnoxious comments, I asked Lance to hand me the camera so that I could take a picture of them. Instead, he told me to wait, scrolled through the pictures already taken, said "Is this what you want?", and handed me the camera with the already taken picture. Ha, ha, I couldn't stop laughing. He knows me so well. All in all, it was a fun evening at the ballpark.

San Francisco Series: Episode 3a

[Note: We did so much on Day 3 that I've broken it up into two parts. The night of our third day will be Episode 3b.]
On day 3 of our San Francisco adventure, we started out our day with a drive out to Fairfield. We were led by Mandy, who assisted me with my navigational responsibilities for the entire trip. She's also helped me out quite a bit here at home, but she's a lot easier to use when someone else is helping her navigate.

To get to Fairfield, we had to cross the Oakland Bay Bridge, which I thought was pretty cool. There's two levels to the bridge and you exit San Francisco on the bottom level and return from the top. We also passed our first toll booth, which amused me to no end. Granted I wasn't as amused by the toll booths as our trip wore on as they can become costly.

After about an hour, we arrived at Fairfield and at one of the most exciting places of the trip for me. Yup, we went to the Jelly Belly factory! Jelly Bellies are my most favorite candy and going to the factory was on my "San Francisco Must Do" list. The tour was really cool but we weren't allowed to take pictures during the tour. They were doing maintenance this day so we didn't get to see them make candy, but we were able to see them build the layers of the bean and see them package them. At the end of the tour, we also got a fairly decent size bag of Jelly Belly beans. The factory also had a store with lots of merchandise and of course their entire line of candy. They even had a sampling bar where you could taste individual flavors. We purchased a lot here for omiyage and bought four pounds of Belly Flops, which were the reject beans that didn't meet the high quality standards of Jelly Belly. They taste the same, but they are either misshapen, too small, too large, or stuck together. Oh, and they also had these really neat Jelly Belly art all over the place that were actually made out of Jelly Bellies. There were a lot of Ronald Reagan pieces, since his love of the Jelly Belly bean helped with their success. His favorite flavor was licorice.After Jelly Belly, we did a geocache (which I found, yea me) and then drove another hour out to Citrus Heights (outside of Sacramento) to visit one of Lance's former colleagues that moved to California after he retired. We got to see their house, which I enjoyed a lot because I like seeing the non-touristy areas of the places we visit. The best part of their house that I was super jealous of was their apple tree. The tree fruits in the fall so there weren't any apples on it, but they said they get a lot of apples when it does fruit. Having an apple tree would definitely be a reason why I'd want to move to the mainland. How cool would it be to be able to pick your own apples and make all the goodness that comes from the apple? Applesauce, apple pie, jam and jellies? Fantastic. They took us to eat lunch at this really fantastic but casual restaurant, Booyah. I had a fabulous portobello mushroom sandwich which I'm going to try and make before I have to return to school. We had to leave to return to the hotel relatively early in the afternoon so that we could make the two hour drive back to drop off the MIL before Lance and I headed out again to the Oakland-Phillies game. We didn't have time to visit a yarn store in Sacramento but that was okay as I was still on a high from the bento excursion the day before.

San Francisco Series: Episode 2

On the second day (and first day that we could really do anything), we woke up bright and early, ate breakfast (our motel provided a complimentary continental breakfast), and headed down to Pier 39 of Fisherman's Wharf. The parking rates here were pretty steep, but we discovered that most parking rates in San Francisco were pretty steep and a lot of the stores didn't have a free parking lot. Anyway, Pier 39 had some pretty cool touristy stores, including The Candy Baron, which was a fantastic candy store that had tons of taffy and some cool old fashioned candy.Pier 39 also some pretty good food (I loved all the fantastic seafood available in San Francisco) and some good views. There was also an area were a bunch of sea lions were just hanging out and that was really cool to see.After a few hours there, we left Pier 39 and went to Japantown. Japantown was one of the places that I was super excited to visit because 1) I like Japanese stuff, and 2) I wanted to buy lots of bento stuff and I had read that Ichiban Kan had a lot of cool, inexpensive stuff. Japantown did not disappoint. There were cool Japanese sculptures, cute signs, and a pagoda:

I ended up purchasing a set of three flower vegetable cutters, which is good because I wanted a smaller set than the one I currently have. I also bought a lot of bento gear from Ichiban Kan, which was as fantastic as I had envisioned. I purchased a couple of bento boxes, some cute chopsticks, chopstick holders, bento straps, food picks, food dividers, sauce bottles, and a tamagoyaki pan. Oh, and facial cleanser to replace the one that I had to mail home. After Japantown, we drove to Daly City to look for a Target because the MIL really wanted to find The Spiderwick Chronicles and it was being released on DVD this day. She decided that it was too expensive and that it would be cheaper to have someone purchase it at home, but I didn't mind the extra drive because Target was right next to Daiso, a Japanese dollar store (well, more like $1.50 store. We went to one when we were in Vancouver and it was humangous and amazing but it was closing right when we got there. I was disappointed then so I was thrilled to discover that there was a Daiso nearby. The Daly City Daiso was no where near as thrilling as the Vancouver one and I was disappointed with the craft selection but I bought more bento stuff here. All in all it was a good day and I was happy because getting some cool bento gear was on my list of things that I really wanted to do while on my trip. And good grief, did I get bento gear:

San Francisco Series: Episode 1

Before our trip, I was all stressed because we had so many things to do before we could even think about packing. As a result, no packing actually occurred until the day before our departure and we were up till the wee hours of the morning the morning of. Our trip began when my dad picked up me, Lance, and M*Bark and took us to his house. We dropped M*Bark and all of her stuff off at my parents house. It was the first time that we've been away since we got her and the house so our anxiety level was a little higher than it usually is before a trip. We then picked up the MIL and went to the airport. Right before we checked our luggage in, I noticed that the MIL had a bottle of water sticking out of her carry on. I told her that she to either throw it away or pack it in her luggage and then we checked the rest of her bag to make sure she didn't have any more forbidden items. Feeling proud of myself for catching the liquid in her bag, we moved quickly through the check in and then went to the security line. We moved through in the security line but were told to wait for someone to come and checkmy backpack. No biggie, my carry on frequently gets checked because of my knitting needles. And so we waited. And waited. And waited. I started to get grouchy. I mean, geez, they were just knitting needles. Finally someone came by to check my bag and as he unzipped my backpack he asked if I had any liquid in it. I answered no because I had been careful when I had packed and I managed to catch the MIL's mistake so obviously I didn't have any liquid myself. Yeah, he found liquid in my bag. I had mistakenly packed my facial cleanser in my carry on. Luckily there was an area next to the security line to mail packages so I was able to mail my cleanser home since it was a brand new bottle of Arbonne. The plane ride was uneventful and it was almost enjoyable. Lance and I watched Juno on my ipod, played 2-player Meteos on our DSes, and I read a bit. I wanted to knit the sock I was working on, but I had dropped a needle early in the flight. The man behind me was nice about picking it up but I didn't want to risk dropping it again. We arrived around 9 pm San Francisco time, used the really cool airport Air Tram to the car rental place, and picked up our car.Lance and I have had really good experiences staying at small motels. The motels generally aren't spectacular and you definitely wouldn't stay at them for the ambiance but we always get really good service and plus they have the added advantage of being relatively inexpensive. So we picked another small motel and we weren't disappointed. The MIL forgot her toothbrush (though she actually did find it later) and the front desk actually provided one for her free of charge. The front desk guy also took the time to provide us with possible food options and recommended us with one that had free delivery and amazing food. Since it was kinda late, we decided to just order food in and settled in. We needed our rest for the rest of our trip. But first, Lance decided to entertain himself a bit:

The Return of the Blog

I know I haven't been very consistent with this blog, with recent blogging 3-4 times a month. But still, even for me, a month and a half between blogs is long. My apologies and I am pleased to announce The Return of the Blog. Well, that is my intention anyway. I'll try, as I really do enjoy blogging. Anyway, here's a brief recap of the past month:

1) Sick. I had a nasty bout of bronchitis in mid-late May that really knocked me down for a bit. I missed a lot of fun stuff during this time, as well as a day and a half of work. Yes, I should've missed more work but the end of the school year is not the best time to miss work. I was lucky, though. My communication aide was with me for one of my sick days at work and she really helped me out by doing some of my therapy for me while I did paperwork. Oh, and I did manage to laugh a bit during this time. I was so sick one day that I lay on the floor in between kids. While I was lying down, my kid walked in, saw me, and exclaimed, "Mrs. XXX, what happened?!?"

2) Parties. We're finally enjoying our house and sharing it with others. For awhile we were having people over every week and it was getting a little tiring. Lance is getting really good at giving the tour, though. And more than once, we were told that our house should be the new party house for the family/department/group.

3) Bentos. I had a lot of fun making bentos near the end of the school year and I'm starting to get some fun bento gear. This bento has fried rice, chinese style chicken, a strawberry, and an egg. Where's the egg, you ask? Ha, ha, the car is the egg. I also have a bottle of salt tucked in for the egg.

4) Hats, hats, and more hats. For some reason, I've been knitting a bunch of hats. It all started with this watermelon hat that I knit for my cousin's baby's first birthday. And then my friend wanted a (regular) hat for her birthday. And then my MIL wanted a hat for our San Francisco trip. And then came the really cool frog hat for Joy's future baby.

5) Vacay. The best part that happened in the last month and a half? The school year ended and I'm on summer vacation. Aww yeah. I still need to go in for meetings and to evaluate kids but that's not very much. Sorry, there's no picture for this one, but I figured there's enough pictures in this post to keep y'all happy.

6) M*Bark's 2nd birthday. M*Bark turned 2 in June. She was sleepy when I took this picture and I just realized how weird she looks in it. Anyway, she plucked the hat off the coffee table the following day and ripped it to shreds.

7) Weddings. We went to two weddings, including the one that Lance was in the party for. Sadly we forgot to take pictures with the happy couples.

8) San Francisco. We went to San Francisco with the MIL and just came home earlier this week. There's no picture for this one because we did so much there and we have so many pictures to share. I'll share our trip in future posts and will begin the "San Francisco Series" within the next few days.