Category Archive: San Francisco

Last days in the Bay Area…

Posted by Lisa On February 8th, 2013

Words cannot quite describe what the Bay Area has meant to Kevin and me. Our relationship with each other grew deeply being on our own, fending for ourselves and making new friends, exploring an amazing group of communities, growing our family with adopting Lola and having Sirena…the list goes on and on. The decision to move back to Long Beach was one of the hardest things we’ve had to do. To be honest, if it weren’t for having Sirena, wanting her to know her family really well, and having the promise of HELP close at hand we probably would not have moved back at least so soon. There was still so much for us to do and experience up there! But reality won out and in the end we were very happy and at peace with our decision. It was just such a hard thing to decide on and work through until it was said and done.

We enjoyed one last “hurrah” with my sister Jessie–a day trip to Albany Bulb for a little hike and cuddles (Jessie and Sirena of course) on a blanket overlooking the bay.

Some final photos of our apartment before we completely tore it apart with packing for the big move!

Family photos on our air-mattress-turned-couch after we sold our couch a couple of weeks before the move. 😉

Kevin’s family (Dorothy, Judith, and Joshua) made the drive up to help us watch Sirena, pack the van, and caravan back down to Long Beach. What an amazing group of people!! Unfortunately I didn’t get one photo of them!

The joint all packed up…

Just looking at this photo makes me shudder!

All of our furniture lined up down the hallway of our apartment building.

Just before we drove off in the moving truck we took some photos of Auntie Jessie with her favorite girls: Sirena and Lola. The relationship that our girls have with Jessie is indescribable and irreplaceable.

Our last visitors: B+B’s visit to Oakland

Posted by Lisa On January 15th, 2013

Before our big move back down to Long Beach we were able to host one final set of friends, Brian and Brianne. It was bittersweet but it was so nice to be able to share our second home, the Bay Area, with our closest friends one last time.

We spent the majority of their short visit across the bridge in our favorite city, San Francisco. We visited one of our most favorite spots in the city: Strawberry Hill and Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park.

And we made another day trip back across the bridge to do the most touristy thing ever but something none of us had ever done: Alcatraz!

Of course they had to get lunch at Boudin…having worked across from Pier 39 for 3.5 years it was definitely not on my bucket list before we left the Bay Area, haha.

Sirena and Auntie Bri

Nerd alert!

Family photo (minus Lola) with our favorite city in the background

It got freaking chilly after the sun went down on our side of the island and we had to wait for the darn ferry. Glad we came prepared!

Goodbye, San Francisco and the amazing Bay Area. We love you and we’re so grateful for all of our adventures!!

A week of firsts

Posted by Lisa On August 14th, 2012

Even though it seems that every one of the blog posts recently have been about “Sirena’s first [insert something cool here]”, we had one full week of pretty exciting “firsts” that deserves its own post…

First trip to the zoo

I’m sure the words “Oakland” and “Zoo” together don’t conjure up visions of really cool animals but, surprisingly, the Oakland Zoo is quite the zoo! We met up with my co-worker Debra and her 18 month old son Cruz for a visit to the park and we’re so glad we went!

Getting ready for her first safari

The gang ready to see some animals!

Sirena and Cruz, the little buddies

Happy mama, daddy and baby

Kevin, Debra and the kiddos walking through the park

We saw so many cool animals! Like a mama and baby giraffe…

Me and my baby with the mama and baby giraffes in the background (awww…)

And a lion! Apparently this guy never comes out into the open and we happened to be there in the 2 minutes he left his little enclosure…lucky us!

That zebra musta been real scared

Pumba was there

And so was this handsome fella

And this crazy monkey who was putting on a good show for us

We visited the fruit bat enclosure and got up-close-and-personal with some kinda cute/kinda creepy creatures.

Sirena wasn’t too impressed with the bats as you can see here

After all of the animals it was time for a break!

Is he not the cutest thing ever?

A tired and very full baby getting burped by daddy

Family photo outside of the flamingo enclosure

The Oakland Zoo is a gem in the middle of this big city and we would highly recommend it!

First college campus tour

We took Sirena on her very first college campus tour at UC Berkeley (it’s never too early to start, right??) I have been wanting to go for a long walk on Cal’s campus since before my maternity leave started and I was so glad we finally did it. Too bad the weather wasn’t spectacular that particular day but that didn’t keep us from having a good time.

It was chilly that day so we put on her going-home-from-the-hospital beanie and it made her look like a brand-speankin’-new baby again

Lola didn’t have to wear any sort of hat with that gorgeous fur coat of hers

Lola going for a stroll with good ol’ “Pappy” (Kevin and I are weird, what can we say?)

This face can only mean one thing…dirty diaper!

And what better place to change a dirty diaper? On the bench in front of some old building on the campus, of course!

I couldn’t resist taking this picture, it looks like the Invisible Baby or something (I know, I’m a dork)

One of my favorite things about this campus is The Campanile

Sirena with The Campanile in the background (if she ends up going to Cal I think it would be awesome to take a similar picture of her standing in this spot on her first day there. Gah, I’m such a mom.)

First concert

We made it back to Stern Grove for one of the free summer concerts and once again it did not disappoint! Jess and I went to a Stern Grove concert my first weekend living in San Francisco in 2009 (see post here) and Kevin, Lola and I went with some friends last year (see post here) and I had been looking forward to taking Sirena to see the band Ozomatli before she was born. We met up with Jessie who snagged a great spot right in front and hung out with some of her friends that afternoon.

As new parents we naively brought S to the concert without having thought through how to protect her tiny little ears and we were prepared to sit away from Jess and her group to keep S far from the speakers but luckily the Red Cross booth had ear plugs that we could use and they seemed to do the trick!

Happy baby getting ready for the concert to start!

Ma and Pa enjoying a baby-free moment while Aunt Jessie was dancing with S

Mama dancing with Sirena

Here are two short videos of Sirena dancing with me and dancing with Aunt Jessie (notice how deep asleep she is in both videos even with all the ruckus going on)!

City life + swingin’ in the trees

Posted by Lisa On March 12th, 2012

This past weekend Kevin, Lola and I had a completely free schedule so we took full advantage of it. We drove into the city on Saturday to enjoy what we thought was going to be a super sunny, warm day…

View of the Ferry Building from the Bay Bridge…it was such a clear day, you rarely see this view with such clarity going over the bridge!

Lola anxious to get to our destination

View of the Ferry Building from Embarcadero

Our first destination was North Beach–I still have a SF library card (shh, don’t tell them we moved to Oakland) and so I reserved some pregnancy/childbirth books to pick up at the North Beach branch since it’s so close to work and they were ready for pick up so we figured we’d stop there first to check ’em out. Then we decided to take full advantage of our location to enjoy some yummy Italian food for lunch.

Kevin enjoying some major sunshine at Caffe Delucchi

Some graffiti art around North Beach

We then decided to treat Lola to a visit to our old stomping grounds…Golden Gate Park! To our surprise, though, by the time we got to that part of the city the weather had completely changed. It went from sunny and warm to cold, foggy, and rainy! Even though we lived in the city for 2 years and experienced this on a number of occasions we still couldn’t get over the fact that a 15 minute drive could get us to what seemed like a completely different part of the country. We tried to make the best of it though to get Lola some much-needed and well-deserved exercise!

The tip top of the dome of the Conservatory of Flowers

Thar she blows! Not too shabby of a background for our rendezvous in the park.

Lola’s newest obsession? Frisbee! We love the Kong frisbee, it is the absolute best for a sharp-toothed dog like Lola.

Kevin getting a good throw in

Lola being a good girl and bringing it back to us (about 85% of the time, anyways!)

The next day we made a trip to Albany Hill Park to do some exploring on this hill that we had seen numerous times driving around North Berkeley/Albany/El Cerrito/Richmond…it was about time we made a trip up the hill and we are so glad we did!

Be-a-u-tiful eucalyptus trees!

The view from the east side of the hill (I forgot to take a picture of the view of the bay from the other side of the hill)

To our delight, we found a tree swing just hanging out and begging for Kevin to give it a whirl! He spent a good 15 minutes swinging on that thing and Lola’s reaction to him swinging was so perfect, I caught a couple of hilarious videos for your viewing pleasure!

Kevin up among the trees (and Lola below, freaking out)

Lola attempting to bite Kevin’s ankle upon landing, hahah.

Kevin about to give me a good whack in the face (and Lola trailing behind)…I love this photo.

Lola about to get smacked in the face by Kevin’s big ol’ feet! I’m surprised she didn’t get hit the whole time they did this.

And here are the videos! Here’s the first time Kevin attempted the tree swing and Lola’s initial reaction to all the action. Here’s another video of Kevin dodging Lola’s attempts to bring him down from the rope swing. And here’s a quick video of Lola versus the rope swing.

The result of Lola’s battle with the rope swing?…

…one very sleepy pup.

Our forties photo shoot

Posted by Lisa On December 8th, 2011

As most of you know, Kevin and I went back in time for a forties-themed photo shoot the weekend after Thanksgiving. A little background on how this came to be: Lindsey, a friend from high school, is now a professional photographer and I’ve followed her blog for a while now. Some time last year she had a little contest that if you commented on the blog you would be entered to win a free photo shoot…and I randomly won! I never win anything so I was surprised beyond belief. Soon after winning the contest she moved back down to Southern California and I was afraid we may never get to have our photo shoot. In early October, Lindsey e-mailed me letting me know that she’d be in the Bay Area for a few other photo shoots and luckily we were able to schedule a session! I thought it would be so fun to do a forties-themed photo shoot (instead of us dressed in matching cardigans, haha) and we spent a good month or so researching outfits and putting things together piece by piece either through online stores or local thrift shops. We were pretty happy with the final result.

And of course I enlisted the help of my amazing sister to do my makeup and hair (because goodness knows what I would’ve turned out to look like if she hadn’t been there to make me over!) I can’t thank that girl enough for making me look damn good. 🙂

Sisters all done up!

We were pressed for time and were extremely nervous leaving our apartment with only 30 minutes to get to our destination in the city. Without traffic, we could be there in 20 minutes. But it was a Saturday afternoon and traffic can be INSANE getting across the bridge at that time. We got so lucky and arrived to meet Lindsey only a few minutes late.

Our adorable chauffeur

My hope was to take some fun photos on Embarcadero near some of the piers, I thought it would look very timely for our 40s shoot. But I didn’t realize that at 4pm (my favorite time of day to take photos in the soft sunlight), all of the tall buildings downtown would cast shadows along the piers. Boo! But Lindsey made it work and had us take our photos in Levi’s Plaza Park, a great little garden area (Kevin and I took Lola to this park once and had a great time).

We had Coit Tower looming overhead as we readied ourselves for an hour session in the cold (I hope my goosebumps don’t show in the photos! Hahah).

Dorothy and George came along for the ride (or was it for Zante’s Indian pizza we promised them that evening…hmmm?) and Dorothy snapped some good shots over Lindsey’s shoulder…

Leaning in for a smooch!

We had a bit of an audience throughout the shoot as well

I was afraid Kevin might drop me, haha! Luckily, we both survived.

We had SUCH an amazing experience and cannot thank Lindsey enough for her generosity. I am beyond excited to see the final photos once she’s finished processing/editing them (fingers crossed it’ll be before Christmas!) If you’re in Southern California and want some amazing family photos, maternity photos, baby photos, wedding photos, or even a fun boudoir session, all you need to do is spend five minutes perusing her portfolio on her website to see her work speak for itself. We highly recommend her! 🙂

Our forties photo shoot

Posted by Lisa On November 27th, 2011

A friend from high school who now owns her own (amazing) photography business advertised via Facebook about a contest to win a free photo shoot with her after looking over her updated website and sharing our thoughts. Somehow I actually won!! I was ecstatic. She was traveling to the Bay Area after Thanksgiving and had a small window of opportunity to squeeze us in so we took advantage and within a few weeks had planned for our 40s-inspired photo shoot. Dorothy and George were in town for the holiday so they tagged along. I bought a vintage dress on Etsy and bought a cute hat and shoes from a hat store and a thrift shop in Berkeley. We bought Kevin’s outfit both at thrift shops (pants, shirt, vest), the hat shop in Berkeley, and online (bow tie). My amazingly talented sister did my hair and makeup that day (thank goodness!) We met Lindsay on The Embarcadero at Levi’s Plaza.

Here are my favorite shots!