Monthly Archives: June 2010

In loving memory: Margie

On Wednesday June 23 we lost an amazing woman who I was lucky enough to call my gramma-in-law, Margie.

She leaves quite the legacy: Born in 1918, she was educated at the University of West Virginia, served during WWII at the Pentagon and was a career secretary serving the education system. She leaves behind two children, four grandchildren (and a granddaughter-in-law!), and three great grandchildren.

I met Margie around 2001 when my husband and I started dating. The most amazing thing, though, was that she and my own grandma were friends before Kevin and I got together! They happened to live in the same rest home facility and would play bridge together! Margie was the resident journalist and actually interviewed my grandma for one of their monthly newsletters before I had even met her.

She was so incredibly welcoming to me and I will never forget that about her. I also will never forget all of the visits me and Kevin made to her apartment where we’d sit around and look through her old photo albums (which she put together and wrote captions for beautifully) and I’d write down notes as she told stories about the photos. Kevin’s been working on saving all of the hundreds of photos digitally and transferring the originals to an archival photo album for posterity. Now that she’s passed, we’re going to make a huge effort to get them done before the funeral.

She and her husband Neal made a home up here in Northern California so he is buried in Half Moon Bay and she’ll be buried right alongside him. Today Kevin and I decided to spend this extremely rare Saturday that Kevin didn’t have to work visiting the cemetery and paying our respects.

The grounds are absolutely beautiful, including this huge waterfall

And as we were driving along we happened to see a deer running through the grounds!

I think she sticks around because of the “free food” that people leave for her 😉

Kevin’s grandpa Neal and his great-grandparents (Margie’s parents Gladys and Dale) are all buried in the Veteran’s yard.

A beautiful statue that overlooks all who have passed and are laid to rest there

Kevin’s great-grandparent’s headstone

A carnation (his favorite flower) for Kevin’s grandpa Neal

The two headstones beneath a lone tree

The family will be heading up here in the next few weeks to lay Margie to rest. It is a beautiful cemetery that we will definitely be making trips down to more often to always keep Margie and her family in our thoughts because she was such a big part of Kevin’s life and had quickly become a big part of mine as well.

Margie–you are loved dearly and will be sorely missed.

One of my favorite photos–the three of us at our wedding in July ’06

Good eats: Ike’s Place

So anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE sandwiches. Lunch is my favorite meal and honestly, if I could eat a sandwich for breakfast, lunch and dinner…I would.

Me and Jess decided to check out Ike’s Place, a sandwich shop both of us had heard of in the past and luckily we were both craving sandwiches at the time so we decided to give it a try.

Let me just start out by showing a pic of the line we were in:

That blue building towards the right? Yeah, that’s the sandwich shop.

From start to finish we waited for one hour to get a hold of our sandwiches. Now that’s dedication! And apparently they are always like that.

Their sandwiches are not cheap…but they are huge. I ordered the Manage-a-Trois sandwich (Halal Chicken Breast, Real Honey, Honey Mustard, BBQ, PepperJack, Swiss, Smoked Gouda) which was highlighted on that show Man vs. Food (see clip below!) and Jessie ordered the Jessica Rabbit sandwich (Vegan Breaded Chicken, Stuffed Jalapeno Poppers, Franks Red Hot, Ranch).

Our thoughts? All I can say is that we had to force ourselves to not eat the second half of the sandwich because we were both extremely full from the first half but the sandwich was SO GOOD that we didn’t want to stop!

Was the sandwich worth the $11.11 (which included a bag o’ chips as well)? Hell yes.

Game night and doggie play date

On Saturday 6/12 we were invited over to Carleigh & Scott’s place for some food, drinks, games and doggie play time. 🙂

Scott & Lola (Lola would sift through all of Bailey’s toys and pick out her favorite of the moment)

Kevin & Bailey (isn’t that face so sweet??)

The kiddos, begging to be let in

Scrabble! I think Kevin won that round.

Me & Carleigh (and a bottle of Maker’s Mark, gotta love that being front-and-center of this photo, haha)

Road trip down south

On Friday 6/11 Kevin and I had the rare opportunity to spend an entire 24 hours together uninterrupted by work or school! 🙂 Kevin not only had the day off from work and wasn’t in school at the time but it was a furlough day for me so we decided to take advantage of the day and take a road trip (just like old times!)

Instead of going north to Marin County like we always seemed to do in the past, this time we set our sights further south: to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, Pescadero and Half Moon Bay.

Lola has grown by leaps and bounds in terms of her comfort level in the car–no more car sickness and scaredy-dog! She’s up and about sniffing out the window like a normal dog now and she’s now discovered how much she loves being right between us on the armrest

Lola, our favorite co-pilot

Beautiful view off the 9 Highway towards Big Basin

The state park was gorgeous–we loved all of the fresh smells and how quiet it was driving through there. We were a little frustrated, however, by the park once we got there though. On their website it said that dogs were allowed on some trails (some trails) but didn’t distinguish which ones. When we got to the park’s HQ we were surprised to find out that dogs are only allowed on one trail and it’s a paved road! 🙁 Then we found out that parking was $10 and the trail map was $5 (neither of whose prices were on the website, of course) so since we could only go on one sad little trail with Lola we decided to skip the fees and just drive through and enjoy the sights. We’ll be back though (without Lola in tow of course) because it was so beautiful!

After driving through all of funny small towns (Bonny Doon anyone?) we ended up on Highway 1 and drove up the coast towards home. We stopped off at a small beach to do some exploring.

A little video of our rock-climbin’ pup


Lola, the beach bum

Can you tell it was w-i-n-d-y?

Apparently my chin smelled like food, haha

One of the stops off PCH that we knew we wanted to make was to Pescadero that my mom and her boyfriend Steve had visited on their last trip up to SF.


Arcanegli Grocery is a really cute little supermarket that has some of the most amazing breads and spreads.

There wasn’t a ton to do so we just walked up and down the main drag and I took some random photos…

…like of this rusty fire hydrant.

…and of this person’s garage that I was really into, haha.

Our last stop before home was Half Moon Bay which we actually weren’t super impressed with! Maybe it was because we were tired and starving and the restaurant we ate at (Spanishtown Mexican Restaurant) was less-than-stellar (great service but bland food!) I guess we’ll have to give it another shot in the future. 🙂

It was so nice spending some daylight hours with Kevin! Can’t wait for another day like this to come along (hopefully it won’t be too long!)

"Sex & the City" at the Kabuki Theater

Jessie’s boss purchased tickets for the Sunday 6/6 showing of “Sex & the City 2” at the famous Kabuki theater but ended up having to work so instead of letting the tickets go to waste she gave ’em to Jess to take out a couple of friends! Me and Carleigh were the lucky ones that got to join her 🙂

Me and Jess had lunch that afternoon at Ti Couz (where we went for dessert for my birthday…YUM!)

An impromptu photo shoot outside the restaurant

The Kabuki Theater is owned by Sundance Cinemas and is located in Japantown (as you probably could’ve guessed). It’s a really great theater that shows independent films and happened to be showing SATC2. The tickets we had were for the third floor which is 21 and over and has a bar and you can eat/drink inside the theater (pretty cool!) I had only seen maybe a couple of episodes of the tv show and had never seen the first movie but I had been told that I didn’t really need to see it to be able to understand the film…and luckily it was true. Overall I thought the film was really goofy and I’m not sure I care to see the first one, ha! I realized that this was the first movie I had seen in a theater in over a year (at least since living in SF), crazy huh?

We got some dinner and snacks at Nijiya, a great little Japanese supermarket (reminded me of home! My mom has taken us to Japanese markets since we were kids)

Jessie on the overpass leading to Japantown

Inside the theater (I’m a sucker for cool lighting apparently!)

Tis the season for BBQ’s!

On Saturday 6/5 Kevin got out of work early enough to come home and enjoy a delicious BBQ with me and Lola. On the menu: Korean-style ribs, red quinoa and kale…YUM!

Lola sure enjoyed the BBQ experience (as you can tell by the photos):

Lola: Hmmm…I don’t think Dad’s looking…maybe I can snag a little piece…

Lola: Pleeeeease tell me that piece is for me…?

Lola: Okay, folks, I think that should be enough for you two. I can take care of this tiny piece that’s left on the plate, don’t you worry about that.

The final product = Delicious!

A day with the girls

A few weeks ago me, Lola and Jessie had some fun girl time. We started out at the dog park (one of Lola’s favorites: McKinley Square Park) and as we were leaving the neighborhood me and Jess spotted something off the side of the road and decided to take a closer look. Turns out it was an art installation by one of the local high schools.




We then hung out at our place that night, just goofin’ around and spending some quality time together 🙂

Lola sure loves her Auntie Jessie!

Our latest family portrait: the dog pile edition

Happy bloggin’ anniversary!

Today marks the one year anniversary from when I started this blog. I’m so happy to see that I’ve actually been able to keep up with it! This has been such a great idea (if I do say so myself, haha!) to keep family and friends updated with what we’re doing and I know it’s also become a great online scrapbook so that we can look back and remember all of the fun things we’ve done with ourselves up here.

June 19th will be my one year anniversary of living here in SF (Kevin’s is July 4th) and all I can say is that this has been one of the best decisions we could have made for ourselves.

Here’s to many more blog posts! 🙂

An amazing opportunity

I have some exciting news to share about an amazing opportunity that just recently landed in my lap! On Monday I am going to be starting my Master’s of Education in Teaching program through the university I work for…for FREE!!!

I knew that I would one day want to pursue my MAE degree, but never thought that it would happen anytime in the immediate future–mostly because of the cost. Being a staff member at Alliant, I am able to take one course per term for FREE and be able to apply them towards a degree. Amazing!! I feel so fortunate to have gotten this job that enabled us to move here to SF and now it’s enabling me to pursue a degree in higher education which will be extremely beneficial when I become a teacher (not only because of the things I will learn and be able to apply to the classroom, but because teachers are paid on a scale depending on the number of years you’ve taught and on the number of post-baccalaureate units, so with my MAE degree I’ll be automatically starting at a higher pay scale).

The program is all online, so it’ll be convenient for me and my work schedule. My supervisor is extremely supportive of my desire to continue my education through Alliant and I appreciate this opportunity so much! I’m a bit nervous to start school again (I didn’t think I’d have to do any homework for some time, but next week I hit the books again!) but I know I’ll do great.

Yesterday I worked at our campus’ commencement ceremony which was held at Fort Mason (a gorgeous venue for a graduation!) and I couldn’t help imagining myself walking across the stage in a couple of years getting “hooded” with my MAE hood, and receiving my hard-earned MAE degree!

I’m really excited to start this new journey…wish me luck! 🙂

Carnaval!

I had heard about Carnaval before we moved up here from Jessie who had been before and raved about it, so I was excited when the time had come for SF Carnaval weekend! Jessie was out of town at a yoga retreat in Joshua Tree (her graduation gift to herself!) and Kevin was busy working so I was afraid I might not go because I didn’t want to go alone. But a friend who I’ve met through the blogging world, Elisse from Vancouver, Canada, e-mailed me a few weeks prior letting me know that she and her friend Cindy would be in SF that weekend and wanted to check out the festivities!

Plenty of feathers, fish nets and thongs to go around! 😉

So many beautiful performers in the parade!

I got a little teary-eyed when I saw the baile folklorico de Nicaragua group approach–for those of you who don’t know, I studied abroad in Nicaragua in 2004 and had an amazing time. The huge woman you see in the background is called “la Gigantona” (the giant woman) and is popular in Nican parades and events, and I hadn’t seen “her” since my time there! I immediately had to text my good friend Erin who was one of my bridesmaids who I met in Nica 🙂

Beautiful danza azteca group

Benjamin Bratt was there too! (He’s in the white shirt in the back of the car, click photo to enlarge) He was there promoting the new film he is in that takes place in the Mission (the neighborhood that the parade was in and the neighborhood he grew up in), the movie is called “La Mission”.

Some kids watching the parade from their apartment windows

I just HAD to get a photo with these two! Their costumes were gorgeous.
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