Bodega Bay Trip

Why not take a nap? 101 was horrible on a Thursday night.. Accident up ahead and rush hour makes for slow driving - added 30 minutes to our 2 hour drive :(

Dinnertime! We arrived at the house just after dark, 7PM-ish, and had great foods waiting for us.  

Next morning art time! 

View from our bedroom. Not bad. 

 The back yard is huge and has great ocean views. 

Great weather this weekend. Usually this place is lost in thick fog, but we lucked out and can't spend enough time outside. Tonight hot tub time!

Art Center Car Classics 2011

Finally a weekend all to myself. I can't remember exactly last time I had a weekend without company of any sort and it was a nice break. I stayed with David out in Venice and I am super grateful for his hospitality. He lent me the sofa and the keys to the Jetta. I was also struck by how nice that part of LA is, just a great neighborhood.
I came down to LA to go to the annual car show at Art Center where I went to school a few years ago. This car show is not like any other, its quite unique. Most car shows are either centered around new and coming cars, or vintage classics, or race cars, or hot rods, which are all exciting on their own, but the show at Art Center tends to bring the best and most significant and unique cars from all these genres together in one show. Usually there are other vehicles as well such as aircrafts and motor cycles, but I have also seen u-boats and spacecrafts there. This year was no exception with a very cool amphibious plane on display and although Jay Leno and Chip Foose was not there I met up with old friends and caught up on the latest.
I now have several hundred photos and videos to go through but in the mean time here are a few pictures from the show:

The impressive new concept car from Cadillac: "Ciel"

Very rare Ferrari #1 

Very rare Ferrari #2

Pictures from April 9

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Happy Birthday Lucia

She's 2!!!!!! We had such a fun day. It was a jam-packed day of fun activities. We started with Mimi and Big Pappa letting us sleep in, which was awesome. Then we started opening gifts: a dollhouse from Mimi and Big Pappa. Then an Upsy Daisy doll from Bestemor and Bestefar, along with baby bedding for YouYou, her doll, to rest comfortably in her bed. Aunt Kate sent her a stroller for her doll that Lucia kept commenting was so "nice." Mary sent her some wonderful books, which was great cause our supply was getting a little tired. Uncle Josh got her the book Where the Wild Things Are and a stuffed character from the book.

Since we had gulp - 37 people - coming to the party, we did a LOT of the prep work last night and made lists upon lists of lists. We planned for ham and turkey sandwiches, chips, pasta salad and of course, chocolate cake.

It was an awesome party; Lucia wore her new tutu and dazzled everyone. She played a lot on the slides and swings while we waited for everyone to arrive. You've got to love/hate California for people running constantly late. It was nice because we had some time to breathe before the chaos began. It was great to see everyone. Big Pappa organized a game for the kiddos, which they loved. We sang Happy Birthday, blew out her candle and Lucia managed to eat 3-4 bites of chocolate cake without breaking out in hives.

We are SO GRATEFUL AND LUCKY to have friends who love us so much. Mandy made this teepee for Lucia. She MADE IT. Stayed up until 5:30 a.m. to finish it. Seriously. How cute is it? She already pulled her dollhouse into the teepee, and as you can see, she's making herself at home in it.

After the party we all took long naps, then went to In-N-Out for dinner. I asked Lucia if she had a good birthday, and she said yeah. "What was your favorite part?" I asked her. She didn't answer. "The cake?" I offered. No answer. The teepee? Upsy Daisy? Your dollhouse? No answer. I agree. It's a tough call as to the best part of the day. What an awesome day.

Wedding in Florida

We had a wonderful time in Florida. We enjoyed the warm water almost as much as Lucia, and we are looking forward to next time we have the opportunity to spend time there with the Harrisons. The rehearsal dinner, ceremony and reception was very nice, and spending an extra day really topped it off,

What happened in Vegas ...

It was my first trip to Las Vegas and it started with great food and drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe Friday night. From there we went through several casino-hotels and saw a lot of weird and wonderful things, even spent some chilly minutes in an ice bar called Minus5 Ice Bar where everything is made out of ice, even the glasses!Our hotel was awesome and amazing (The Aria) and the food was great too however the smell of vanilla was kind of obnoxious. I guess they are trying to mask the smell of cigarettes.
Saturday we walked for miles down The Strip, mostly indoors because it was about 109F/42C outside.
Unfortunately we spent too much money at the pool the first day so the next day we decided to walk across the street to SevenEleven, stash up there and head back to the pool where we melted into the water with great success. The clerk at the front desk never managed to give us a room higher up as we requested, but with a bit of luck, his life is ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know.
But it was a great trip, thank you Chris and Mandy!! we are looking forward to next time!

Off to Vegas!!

Babble Babble Babble

Lucia is very very into a few things lately:

• Babbling. It goes like this: Babble Babble Babble. Pause. Babble Babble Babble. Pause. She likes to say some things (uninteligable) with lots of emphasis and volume, like SHE REALLY MEANS IT.
• Reading books. She wakes up and likes to finish her *milk, then heads to her bookshelf to select a book. We read that one. Then another. Then another. Then another. Then repeat the first one. Then we go in and wake up Daddy and she wants him to read her more. She holds out a book and says: BEEEE BEEEEEEED. We're interpeting that as READ! *milk = formula
  
• Combing her hair. I taught her how to do this a few weeks ago; now she gets a certain proud look on her face when she does it. It's hilarious, since most of the time she's just moving the handle across her head.
  

In other news:

• Lucia has a cold, which means she's super stuffy and unfortunately for Pete, super cranky all day. OOOF. We're hoping she's on the mend soon, and we're REALLY hoping, we don't get it.
  
• Related: she'll be starting daycare 2 days a week next week. Pete is basically over the moon at this news. It's great; she's adjusting to Stacey and now doesn't have a problem being dropped off. Hooray!
  
• I turn 36 Friday, and I can tell you 100% certainty this has been the longest year of my life. Really.
  
• My parents arrive Sunday! FUN! We're really excited to hang with them and for them to babysit see Lucia. ;)
  

Liz's Birthday

We went to celebrate Liz's birthday last weekend and had a really good time. First stop was at this interesting teahouse in Noe Valley where they serve old style foods and lots of tea, the place may also looks like your great great grandmothers apartment. Second stop was a special home brewery bar; The Elizabeth Street Brewery. I liked this part the most. This guy Richard had his garage fixed by the show While You Were Out on TLC (the TV channel) and they turned it into a bar where he brew his own beer and have guests. Pretty awesome night. There was cake too.

SORRY!

We're sorry we have neglected you. Here are the updates:

• Lucia now knows how to say "tittei" (pronouced: titay), which means peek-a-boo in Norwegian. She says it over and over again, and proceeds to play peek a boo. Her version of peek-a-boo ranges from actually hiding behind something and popping out, to swaying her head back and forth and saying titay.
• Mrs B. is having a rough time. She's had um, GI issues. After trying five different foods, she's on a bland diet now, and after countless runs with our mini steam cleaner, we are all hoping the worst is behind us. Not sure we can handle those smells again.
  
• Lucia turns 11 months this week. We can't even believe it. Aside from peek-a-boo, she's walking constantly, likes to point and babble to pictures in her books, and really, really likes to see pictures of other babies.
• We'll be glad when the summer is over; not having an air conditioner is uh, tough.
  
• Thank god for our gas grill, which we use just about every day. We're addicted to the grilled pizzas.
  
• We have nothing planned this weekend and it is LOVELY. I'm going to the Farmer's Market tomorrow a.m. with Little Miss, and we're meeting up with some friends to borrow a stroller.
  

Nice weekend

We had a great weekend get away / honeymoon to Carmel and Big Sur. We drove down with the top down and loved every minute of it. I have been to Big Sur several times and was excited to show the sights to Heather.

We headed west up the sinuous mountain road and stayed on HWY 1 all the way to Monterey where we stopped for cookies, then we followed the coast to Carmel which was at its loveliest. Searching Yelp we found a great italian restaurant and had a very memorable dinner before we headed to the ranch.

The Carmel Valley Ranch was a pretty swanky place beautifully located on a golf course. The Suite was so large I wish we had more friends with us to share, but the next morning we headed down the coast to Big Sur all the way to Julia Pfeifer State Park. Here we could have stayed longer, but time was running out and we had to get home.

Sunday drive with Mattias

Not easy taking a good picture when driving on a twisty road..
We took a drive up in the hills near Saratoga today, it was really hot, so we kept the convertible top up. Next time I think we need to do this later in the day or when it is not so hot.
I hope Mattias's Porsche is ready then too.