Monthly Archives: October 2009

A week of Halloween festivities

I had a great Halloween week! The weekend before Halloween (Fri. 10/23) Jessie and her roommates hosted a pre-Halloween bash at their apartment. This year I dressed up as a gypsy and Kevin put on his annual gory wound makeup.

Me and my wounded husband, haha

The yummy spread!

Jessie the go-go dancer and her roommate Jessie the cat

At the party we spent a lot of time talking, laughing, drinking, eating and dancing away to some great tunes. Then a group of us (Lisa R., Cathy, Jessie, me and Rebecca–pictured below) decided to keep the evening going and went to a couple of bars in the area.

Bus ride to The Mint

On Halloween night, Kevin and I were invited to hang out with our new friends Maya (my co-worker) and her roommates Katie and Lizzie. We went to their apartment in Noe Valley (a really cute neighborhood a few miles from us in SF) to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters and watch scary movies (we watched Sleepy Hollow and Grindhouse Planet Terror). I was just happy to have a second chance to wear my costume! Kevin decided to go as Kevin Halloween night. 😉

Trying to get into character!

Katie had some sparklers so we decided to go out front and light ’em. I mean, who doesn’t like sparklers??

My first birthday spent in SF

My 26th birthday was the first one while living in SF and I had a really wonderful day. I went to work that day and nothing terribly exciting happened at work. But when I got home there were some beautiful flowers on the kitchen counter that Kevin got me. 🙂 This went along with the iPod Touch that he got me the night before (thanks Kevi!!)

We met up with my sister that night and went to Yo Yo Sushi for dinner (yummmm!) It was very reasonably priced for a sushi bar in SF and the sushi was delicious!


Then we decided to top off the evening with some yummy crepes from Ti Couz (Jessie had taken us here a couple of times during the last few years when we’d come out to visit and it is fantastic!)
Kevin got a fruit-filled crepe, I got chocolate mousse (but he heard me wrong at first so got me a Nutella-filled crepe with bananas on top and when I told him that the order was wrong he gave me my chocolate mousse and let us keep the crepe!), and Jessie got a crepe flambe.


So are you drooling yet? 😉

I had so much fun spending my birthday with two of my favorite people in the whole world. Thank you two for celebrating with me! 🙂

October trip to Long Beach

Kevin and I had a great time back at home and can’t wait to go back!

Thursday 10/15
We landed in Long Beach early Thurs. AM and Kevin’s mom Dorothy came to pick us up. Kevin went to visit some friends at Yamaha where he used to work so Dorothy and I went to lunch together at Grounds Cafe (they have delicious sandwiches!) That afternoon we hung out with Kevin’s family and then that night we went to spend some time with my mom. We went to dinner at Lola’s Mexican Restaurant (they have the BEST cilantro salsa I have ever had and great molé!) and had a lot of fun just spending time with my mama.


Friday 10/16
We took it easy Friday morning and just hung out around my mom’s house visiting with my family’s dog Luke (who’s an old fart now!)

Then my mom took Kevin and I on an adventure in Little Saigon–Chinese massages! My mom’s a big fan of getting these so for our birthdays last year she said she’d take us so we finally made some time to do it! It was quite the experience. We enjoyed it a lot and felt pretty refreshed (and a little beat up! haha) afterwards. We treated ourselves to some Vietnamese noodles and soup afterwards at a small cafe in the shopping center.

After that adventure (thanks again mama!) we went with Kevin’s parents to our nephew’s high school football game to see him perform in marching band. Josh is a sophomore at Mayfair HS and he just started band this year playing the trombone.

Josh is the one in the middle wearing the glasses

We met Kevin’s sister Judith and our neice Katelyn there and had a fun time just hanging out at the football game!

Dorothy, me, Katelyn and Judith

George, Kevin, Dorothy and me

After the halftime show we went to spend some time with our friends Brianne and Brian (the ones who visited us a few weeks ago). We went to eat at Lucille’s BBQ (one of our favorite restaurants!) and then went to hang out at their apartment. We got to meet their little kitty named Eva (sooo cute!) and we watched “I Love You, Man” which was quite entertaining (yay Jobin! haha) We used to spend a ton of time with them because they lived only a few blocks from our old apartment, so it was great feeling like old times again. 🙂

Saturday 10/17

Saturday morning we went to visit my Aunt Tina and had a great visit with her. She’s looking really great and was in the greatest of spirits when we saw her (it’s been a long while since I updated her blog, but in case you’d like to see it here’s the link!) She’s actually going to get her tracheotomy removed soon and will have a wheelchair that she can maneuver on her own in the next couple of months! She’s making amazing progress and I know that she’s only going to continue to improve by great leaps and bounds. 🙂

That afternoon we spent some time at the Edmonds’ home having a barbecue. Dorothy made my favorite ribs ever and it felt like old times again hanging out in the backyard with Dorothy, George and Thomas.

That night came the long anticipated Oktoberfest! We had gone three years in a row while living in LB so wanted to continue the tradition while we were in town. Kim, Frank, Alison, Seth, Brian and Thomas joined us to drink some beer and do the chicken dance. 🙂

Kevin, Brian and Thomas (pretending they’re too cool for the chicken dance!)

Alison & Seth (good friends from Redlands)

Kim & Frank (Kim’s a really close family friend)

Bet you can’t guess what we’re doing…

We’re such German-wannabe nerds!

Me ‘n Kev

The group

Sunday 10/18

Sunday was our last full day in town and Kevin’s family hosted a joint birthday party for our neice Katelyn (her birthday was Oct. 11th) and mine (my birthday was Oct. 20th). Sarah, Rob, Judy, Lisa, Brian, Brianne and the rest of the “regulars” came to celebrate.

Yummy cookies with funny Katelyn-designed quotes written on them

Kevin, Judith and Thomas

Rob & Judy

Katelyn opening up her gift from me and Kevin. We didn’t have any gift bags so we put it in a Christmas stocking. As you can see, she was pretty excited about the stocking itself…then she opened it up to find a pair of socks (haha, gotcha Katelyn!)…then she was pleasantly surprised to see a real gift inside. 🙂

The birthday girls

That night we went back to my mom’s with Brian, Brianne and Thomas and spent time hanging out with my mom. We had to hit the sack early that night because of our early AM flight the next day.

Overall we had a wonderful time back at home! It was a bit strange having not been back in three months, not having a car to drive ourselves around, and thinking of Long Beach as a vacation spot for us after having lived there all of our lives. Thanks to everyone for chauffering us around town and taking the time to hang out with us! When we’re down for Christmas we want to see more of you!! 🙂

Long Beach bound

Hi everyone!

Kevin and I are VERY excited to be making a trip down to Long Beach this upcoming weekend after 3 1/2 months away! Lots of fun events planned–seeing our nephew Joshua perform in the halftime show at his high school’s homecoming game (he plays trombone in the marching band), staying at my mom’s house over the weekend and all the crazy fun that is sure to ensue, seeing my family’s dog Lukey, a BBQ with the Edmonds family, meeting the newest member of the Lord family (baby Dylan born 9/24 to our good family friends Celia and Chris), a joint birthday party with my niece Katelyn who turned 10 years old last weekend, and of course Oktoberfest!

We’ll be jumping on a plane early tomorrow morning and be in Long Beach through Monday morning. My sister Jessie’s going to be watching Lola over the weekend and I know they’re going to have a great time, so hopefully she’ll want us back by the time we return home! 😉

Hope you all are doing well and if we don’t get to see you this weekend, we’ll be in town for a longer period around Christmas so hopefully we’ll meet up then!

Lots of love,
Lisa

Trip to Alameda & Oakland

On Friday 10/9 I had the day off from work and Kevin had the night off from class so we decided to take a road trip to Alameda & Oakland near where Kevin has classes. He had driven by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park, Arrowhead Marsh many times before but didn’t have much time to visit so we took a day trip there with Lola. It’s a really pretty area and a nice, peaceful retreat in the middle of the city of Oakland.



A good ol’ egret

There was this very strange piece of artwork (at least that’s what we think it was) right in the middle of the grass area so Kevin decided to climb up it with Lola. Watch the video here:

Lola, like a little kid, playing on the whale playground toy

Though I don’t think we’ll be driving across the bridge just to go to this park again, it was a nice get away from the city for a change!

Brianne & Brian’s visit (Oct. 3rd-5th)

Our really great friends Brian and Brianne came up to visit us Oct. 3rd-Oct. 5th and we had a blast! We gave them the whirlwind tour of the city and I think we did every touristy thing you could think of except for riding the cable car and the tour of Alcatraz. So here’s some photos of their visit!

After picking them up from SFO airport early on Saturday morning, we headed straight for breakfast. We ate at Just for You Cafe in the Dogpatch neighborhood and it definitely earned a thumbs-up from us (especially for their Beignets, a delicious New Orleans inspired fluffy donut covered in powdered sugar…mmm…)
After hanging out at our apartment for a bit and getting them acquainted with Lola, we hit the streets by bus for a true SF experience. We took the 44 bus for about 30 minutes all the way to Golden Gate Park and strolled through the park a bit. Then we jumped back on a bus that took us to the Golden Gate bridge.

Brian was pretty hungry that day!

After that we took the bus to the Fillmore Street Festival which we were pretty excited about but ended up being a bust. 🙁 The festival was only a block long and you had to pay for tickets to do wine tasting which didn’t sound extremely exciting to us at the time. So we hopped on another bus and went down to Union Square.They were a little too excited about the bus trip, haha

Me and Kevin in Union SquareThat weekend ended up being pretty popular in terms of visitors because my friends from Redlands, Sneha and Beka, ended up coming to visit that day as well! Sneha was in town for her mom’s birthday (she’s from San Jose and now lives in NYC) and Beka is now going to school at Stanford so is in the neighborhood. We met Sneha and Beka at the Cheesecake Factory at the top of the Macy’s building in Union Square and had a great lunch/dinner together.

Me, Sneha and Beka at the Cheesecake Factory!

After saying bye to Sne and Beka, we hopped on another bus to head back home. We had a pretty quiet night because of all of our walking that day and we knew we’d have another busybusy day in store for us on Sunday!

Sunday morning we piled into the car (enough buses for the weekend!) and went to Fisherman’s Wharf. Our landlord has a friend who works at a parking lot near Pier 39 so was able to get us in for free!

Brian and Brianne ordering up their lunch

Chow time! We had fried calamari (mmm), crab chowder (mmm), fried shrimp (mmm) and garlic fries (mmm)…talk about a healthy lunch!

After lunch we stumbled upon the Musee Mecanique antique coin-operated arcade at Pier 39. From the outside, it didn’t look like much but it ended up being really entertaining!

Brianne getting her fortune told by granny

One of the many creepy figures they had there

You’ll just have to ask Kevin personally what he saw (or go there and pay a quarter to see for yourself!)

They had some of the funniest little arcade machines and we spent a ton in quarters watching them do their thing. Here’s one, the Thimble Theater, that I couldn’t resist putting my quarter in (watch the video):

And Kevin decided to go up against one of the funniest ones there (it’s a video too, so give it a look!):

The last thing we did at the arcade was take a group photo in the old photo booth they had there:

After spending a roll of quarters (not really) at the arcade, we headed out to Ghirardelli Square.





We were pretty exhausted by then, so we headed back home and relaxed for a bit. Then we decided to go to dinner at Goood Frikin Chicken (one of our favorite spots in SF so far!) and Brianne and Brian were definitely impressed! 🙂 Then we went to meet up with one of my co-workers for a weekly trivia night that she and her friends attend at Noe’s Bar. We celebrated into the late hours of the night as it approached Brianne’s birthday, so we had a few drinks to commemorate her entrance into her 25th year! 🙂

On Monday I took the day off and we did some more sight-seeing. Our first stop was Haight Ashbury and though it was pretty quiet on a Monday mid-morning, there were still some sights to be had!


We were so happy that B&B came up to visit us and we can’t wait until they visit again! 🙂

Taking a pit stop in the Presidio to get a look at the Bay

Sarah & Rob’s visit (Sept. 25th-27th)

Kevin’s sister Sarah and her boyfriend Rob came up to visit Fri. 9/25-Sun. 9/27. They drove up Friday night and after hanging out a bit we went out to dinner to Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack (a delicious and fun Italian-inspired restaurant whose menu changes occasionally so you can never get tired of their food and it has a great atmosphere that even includes a DJ on the weekends).

On Saturday I unfortunately had to work from 8:30am-2pm in Oakland so Kevin took them sight-seeing and then I met up with them near Golden Gate Park and we headed out to the Golden Gate Bridge to check out the sights. We made a pit stop to Bi-Rite Ice Cream Shop (a MUST for anyone visiting SF!) and enjoyed some honey lavender, raspberry white chocolate swirl, salted caramel, balsamic strawberry, and mint ‘n chip ice cream (are you hungry yet??). Mostly we just drove around the city and it was nice for Kevin and I to be tourists for a change. 🙂 Saturday night we were fortunate enough to be wined and dined by Sarah and Rob who made us a delicious dinner. And then Kevin and I surprised Sarah with some yummy strawberry cupcakes for her birthday.


On Sunday we went to our trusted brunch spot, Zazie, and I think we made two more fans outta them. 🙂 They had to leave that afternoon to drive back down to Southern California so we didn’t have a ton of time to spend with them that day. Overall it was a really great visit from them and we were so happy that they came up to visit!

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