Exploring SF: Hayes Valley

Despite living in SF for four years, theres a lot of the city I haven't seen yet so Lindsey, Alicia and I decided to fix that this weekend with a trip to Hayes Valley. Its pretty sad that it took me this long to get over there since it is so freaking close...like an '8 minute bus ride' close. Oh well lesson learned, onto our Hayes Valley adventure! We were quickly drawn into the brightly colored window display of Room Service. Really cute (and bright!) accessories and the prices weren't too bad. Loved all the vases and obsessed with the giant horse head(s)- I have no place for it but I reeeeeally want one.

#18 Go to Disneyland

After the wedding extravaganza, my mom and I woke up bright and early to go to Disneyland!!!! I love Disneyland and always have. My mom is also a huge fan so we take our trips pretty seriously. And by pretty seriously I mean that before I even left for LA, I had printed out maps of both parks and highlighted all the rides we wanted to do while we were there...I mean we only had 14 hours!! This is not our first trip- we are seasoned Disneyland go-ers so we do not mess around...get in, hit the major rides and get out. 

We got to the park around 8:30 and ran over (literally) to California Adventures to get Fastpasses to the new Cars ride Radiator Springs Racers. It wasn't even 9 and the return time on our Fastpasses was already 1:40 so we knew it was going to be a popular ride (it sold out of Fastpasses by 11 AND the wait was 2 hours long- crazy!!). Then in a Disneyland miracle, the line for Toy Story Mania aka the best ride ever was only 7 mins long so we jumped in line. After beating my mom (100,000 points to 96,800 points <--- sucker!) we raced back over to Disneyland since we were taking a tour! Everything was all done up for Halloween so there were pumpkins everywhere - apparently on main street there are more than 300 and no two are alike.  

Turning the big 2-8

It was my birthday this past Monday (woo hoo for best day of the year!) and after a long weekend of wedding and Disney (update coming soon after I edit down my 200+ pics) fun, I decided to take the day off of work and just relax. Well it turns out that the weather had other plans and my flight back from LA was delayed 3 hours due to fog...at least I had a good book (Game of Thrones- seriously awesome). That meant less relaxing at home and more frantically trying to call a cab to get downtown for drinks with friends at Waterbar.

LA Wedding: Elisabeth and Alex

It was a crazy busy weekend but so much fun! My fam and I all met up in LA (where my brother lives) to celebrate the wedding of Liz and Alex! Since we don't have any family here in the US, we've been going over to Elisabeth's family's house every year for the holidays...that means twelve years of Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters. Basically I think of them as my fake family- or how my mom prefers it, my California family (she thinks 'fake family' doesn't sound too good).

Blog-iversary and SF-iversary

The blog is officially one year old (technically it was one year old in August but I'm always late so this  late announcement is in keeping with how I roll) that means I've been American for one whole year- woo hoo!! I'm celebrating by eating dry Puffins cereal (regular not PB) and drinking wine by myself and watching the best show ever (aka Friday Night Lights)..my life is craaaaaazy try not to be jealous. Anyways, I've completed 18/48 American items on my list making me 37.5% American- I've got a long way to go but it has been so much freaking fun crossing things off my list. This past year has been a BLAST and thank you to all my friends for making being American so awesome. What's next? Who feels like showing me something American???