We went with our good friends to go see the temple lights last night.  It was so beautiful seeing everything lit up!!  I think the highlight of the evening was seeing Sam’s reaction to Jesus Christ.  He couldn’t stop staring, pointing, and oohing over him–as it should be.  Of course I forgot my real camera, but luckily the iphone does a great job…

..however I am a bit disappointed Jesus got cut off, cause these pics are just beautiful.  He loved His hands.  He loved His feet.

I hope he learns early that he can always turn to Jesus Christ.  He is our rock, our constant, our best friend.  He will always be there for us.

And the instagram pic of the night…

The other night a few girls went over to my good friends’ house to help her set up Christmas.  Alma is a single mother fighting cancer right now.  Her courage, strength, and outlook are truly inspiring and contagious.  We arrived with cookies, hot coco, and Christmas music and were busy little elves trying to bring the Christmas spirit to their home!

We had a great weekend with the perfect amount of activities and relaxing.  Finding babysitters here in the city is a hard task; and when it’s December it’s even harder!  I was lucky to reserve one for Friday night.  I had this nice date planned with Mick and I, but some friends invited us to a show so we opted for that instead.  We had a lovely evening catching up with friends and laughing our heads off at the comedy show.

Saturday we had another party with a Santa encounter that went as expected.  I’m hoping next year Sam will be excited?! And later in the afternoon we relaxed with football watching and fort building.  Kind of perfect.

We’re back in San Francisco and getting all settled in from a long trip.  I wanted to get the tree up quickly since we’ll only be here a short bit before heading to Arizona.  I’ll admit, I was pretty reluctant putting up the tree: I didn’t think Sam would be into it, it takes up a lot of room in our little space, and I’m too cheap to buy a real tree for a short time–and aren’t real trees ten times better?  These stipulations usually don’t stop me every other year.  But this year, I just have too much going on to stress me out more.

Turns out I was wrong about everything.  Sam is way into the tree and lights, having a big-extra-thing in our house isn’t that bad, and real or not–Christmas trees are beautiful.

Isn’t Christmas awesome?  It’s a time we celebrate and focus more on Jesus Christ.  Songs are sung about peace on Earth.  People are giving, and loving, and cheerful.  It’s a time we’re with family and friends.  Here’s to Christmas!

We heart the discovery museum.  What turned out to be a torrential downpour (hence the museum day), turned out to be a gorgeous day!!  Woot! Woot!

More iphone pics…

My client introduced me to local artist Hillary Williams.  We’re looking at a few potential pieces for a wall…looking for a statement. :)

I think she does a great job combining textures, patterns, and colors.  Maybe I just have a sweet spot for San Francisco, but I LOVE her city pieces…

Its was a beautiful Saturday in the city.  Followed by a downpour of rain on Sunday.  We didn’t mind.  It was actually kind of nice having a relaxing weekend hanging around our neighborhood, overdosing on pasta and pizza (I’ll have you know we boxed up half of that meal and ate it for dinner), and working on updating my website.  Any spare time I have with Mick I put him to work–he’s such a good guy to put up with me.

I think that picture of Sam and his dad is my new favorite.  Not only because they look like two little hooligans about to get into trouble, but it’s just a great memory of the pleasant afternoon we had together.  The sun was shining, we had a nice stroll outside, and best of all, Mick was away from his phone for an entire 45 min!

I’m now offering tree cutting services.  If I could actually cut down what I want, then I have a feeling the business would be quite successful.  Unfortunately all that I accomplished was a day gardening in the sun, climbing fences, and getting into mischief with a girlfriend.  All while little Sam slept soundly.

Anybody know anything about banana trees?  My extensive internet research has left me empty handed.  For a year now that massive flower has grown from something beautiful, to something very daunting.  It keeps growing down and down.  And for some reason I thought it was supposed to do that!  My sweet friend from Mexico grew up with these in her back yard and kindly told me that’s not how it works.  So, off we go on an adventure trying to cut (hack away) at the base of the flower.  And believe me, that is one THICK flower.  To no avail.  Perhaps this should just be added to the honey-do list.

We try and take advantage of any free day we can.  Unlike our last visit to the museum, this particular museum trip was more for me.  Although Sam seemed to be really into his graham crackers…

We need a big art piece to fill a space.  I wonder how hard it is to splash some paint on a canvas?  I bet the process is fun, the colors are cool, and the overall image is interesting enough.  But for some reason it just doesn’t speak to me.  I’m on an art kick right now, and feel so strongly that art should speak to you and represent something about you.  Not something that just fills a space.  But who knows, I’ll probably end up going the more cost-effective way and try and make something.  Yikes.

There seemed to be a particular theme to what I was drawn to: mommies, boobies, and submissive dogs.

Love me a free day at the museum.

(Sam has taken a special liking to my friend Mariam)

Spotted.  A good looking 21 century dad hidden amongst the 1933 Coit Tower mural.

A few weeks ago we hiked the Coit Tower with some friends. And when I say hike, I really mean walked up a few stairs.  They have the most gorgeous views up there, and I love studying the mural.  I’ve been several times, but for some reason find it very fascinating and quite entertaining.  The scenes just have so many fun stories.  Clearly Mick and Sam didn’t think much of it though.

We’re dog people.  Even though Pixi is REALLY testing my patience, I love dogs and the unconditional love they give.  So when the Golden Gate Kennel Club hosted a dog show, naturally we went to go check it out.  People who compete in and attend dog shows are definitely a different breed.  Pun totally intended.  And I can say that, because I was one of those people attending.  I didn’t know that beer and nachos was what you consume while observing dogs compete, but hey, I guess it works.

We walked around where all the show dogs waited when they weren’t competing.

While this might look like your ordinary ridiculously-looking poodle, it gets better:

May I present to you Poodle Gaga.

In honor of my family dog Freckles (may she rest in peace) and Penny (May you live a lot healthier life than Freckles.  No table scraps for you.) I had to take a pic of the Brittanies getting ready to compete.

And of course little Sammy dressing the part.  In all honesty, he was the show stopper.

You go for a family run along the embarcadero…

and take little detours to visit the farmer’s market…

and try and figure out why there is a giant bow and arrow sticking out of the ground…{it’s cool though, I like it}

and take more pictures of beautiful bridges… {I’ve got a thing for bridges}

and make the cutest little donuts that you ever did see.  A must have for any super bowl viewing.

I had way too much fun with my family this past week.  Already miss them like crazy.  I FINALLY got some good QT with my cute little niece Claire.  She and Sam hit it off SO WELL! It was so fun to see them interact and play together.  Sam would play with a toy, Claire would take it, and promptly give it back (even though he’d already move onto something else).

Sam and Claire just chillin at Alamo Square.

They thought they’d see the Tanner Family, but were too busy chatting away to look.

Taking a bath together.  I don’t know what it is, but cousins bathing together is just too cute.

I’ll be sure to embarrass the both of them with this pic once they’re older.

(sam is such a modest little fella, isn’t he?! momma taught him well.)

I think I’m the only one not too excited about fall.  Yes, I love the boots, scarves, beautiful changing leaves, and crisp air.  And I LOVE the holidays and spending time with family.  But in all honesty I think  it all comes down to me liking a change in seasonal wardrobe.  The thought of a long, cold, stay-inside-for-weeks-at-a-time winter looms over my head for the nice two weeks of fall.  Making it hard for be super thrilled about it.  I love summer. I love the pool. And I like being warm.

Buuuuut, don’t think I’m a Debbie Downer all season.  We had a perfect weekend. Perfect amount of activity, relaxing, and chores.  There’s nothing like curling up in your thick duvet while listening to the rainstorm outside.  I did that twice.  You know what else we did?  We went to the pumpkin patch.  Yep, that’s right!  Everything is so much more fun with little kids.  Sam is still way too young to appreciate any of it, but we had a blast tromping through mulch and pumpkins.  I’d like to say we spent an hour searching for that perfect pumpkin to take home and carve.  But when it came down to it, we decided Whole Foods has them for less… and it wouldn’t be worth it since we’re all leaving town (again) at the end of the week.

This might be a little mean, but I’m a little confused with the role of the owner of the pumpkin patch/haunted hay ride.  Is he part of the cast?!

The Urban Mom.  Yes, it’s fun living in such a hip city.  But trust me–sometimes it’s difficult getting around.

We live in a very hilly part of the city.  So hilly that when I’m pushing our stroller up the hills I’m at 45 degrees panting all the way up.  Needless to say my runs are quite difficult and pretty short.  After not seriously running for two months I’ve been itching to go out and just run.  I thought the Embarcadero was a flat enough terrain with no lights that I can just run my little heart out.  I’ve been wanting to do this for weeks now, but have been turned off from the thought of the stress of it.  So what do I do when I want to try something new?  I recruit a friend.  Smart move on my part because I don’t think I could have done this on my own.  At least not the first time.

I won’t go into the details of our adventure, but I’m sure glad we did it.  While I only went about half as far as I wanted to (I keep telling myself: “I’m a new mom, I’m a new mom”),  it was so nice to get my lungs working (burning) and legs moving (dragging like a ton of bricks).

Lessons learned:

While the Embarcadero is flat with no stop lights, there are a lot of people; and trying to maneuver with a skittish dog and a running stroller is quite difficult.  Although, my sweet friend took one or the other most of the time.  I was prideful sometimes and wanted to see if I could do it myself.

Pixi is cute when she is either very tamed on my leash or being held.  Otherwise she’s a nuisance when there’s so much going on.

Sometimes there are breakdowns while driving: the baby is screaming and the dog is whining and scratching -trying to get out of her carrying case.  But like my mom says, “If they’re fed and changed, there’s nothing you can do.  Stay calm.”  That’s a lot easier said than done.  It is, however, easier to take your mind off the situation when you have a friend to discuss last night’s Bachelor with.

All in all it was a fun afternoon.  It was a good run, and we even stopped by the farmer’s market to finish our adventure.  There’s nothing like a sweet, fresh peach after a sweaty run.

Hipsters, street performers, fresh produce, amazing sausage breakfast sandwiches.  Love me a farmer’s market down by the ferry building.  While Brother Ben and his wife Kati were in town we thought we’d get fresh produce for our BBQ later that day.  Let it me known the San Francisco farmer’s market is not cheap.  Not cheap at all.  We’ve made it a Saturday morning  adventure in the past; but only to get breakfast. Leave it to us to get sausage sandwiches over fresh, locally grown produce.  But my brother is quite the salsa maker and we thought it’d be fun to get some fresh ingredients.  After looking at the prices, our efforts made it as far as fresh greens for our summer salad.  We left the market with stomachs full of breakfast food, samples from vendors, crisp salad greens, and a bunch of lavender for my bedside table.  And then went to Safeway for our tomatoes.

When ended up having a very pleasant afternoon christening our grill, cooking in the kitchen, and watching the USA vs Gana game in the World Cup.

High of the day: spending the day with family.  Low of the day: USA loosing.  Which, really, isn’t that big of low when you have good company.  I love family.