Back to Reality

It feels weird that the wedding is over now. After waiting so long for it to happen it's a little surreal. I'm glad that the planning is over and so blessed that we had such a great wedding day. We had beautiful fall MN weather, and we took outdoor photos with some of the pretty leaves in the background. Our photographer is amazing and I can't wait to see her work! Here is her website page if you want to check it out. Hopefully she will have ours up soon. The whole day went so well and I loved my flowers from Petalum! Thanks to everyone who helped make our day special. I finally got to marry my prince charming.

I think these were Dan's photos

After our wonderful wedding and great honeymoon trip to Lake Tahoe, it definitely feels good to be home. I wish we could have brought the trees and lakes from Tahoe home with us though. We both loved it there. Will looked at me in the car one day while we were there and said, "I just feel like I belong here." Agreed. I would go back in a heartbeat. I recommend the Ridge Tahoe resort to anyone looking for a getaway. It sits high up on the ridge on the southeast side of the lake. We enjoyed hiking at nearby state parks, went on a lunch cruise on the lake, tried our luck at the casinos, wandered in the shops, and took a drive all the way around the lake on our last day. Oh, and got some relaxing massages and facials at the resort spa and enjoyed the hot tub in our building that overlooked the Carson Valley.

 The hot tub view

And now we're back in the desert. Sweating and trying not to get hit while driving, haha. I got stuck in a dust devil at the airshow yesterday, that was not fun. Dirt in my eyes, mouth, and frozen lemonade. Will is back to work, I am back to housewife duties and getting my Pampered Chef business going. Back to the grind, but now it feels like we really are married. Married for real, as my brothers would say. Ben said he didn't believe I was married because he wasn't there when it happened. It feels great to (still) be married.

San Francisco Part II

Ahh...there it is. The photo that would not upload previously. Did I mention that I love this bridge? Yes, yes I did. I hope to go back to San Francisco someday and maybe bike across it and explore more of the city. I really liked what I saw of it. I also really enjoyed Pleasanton. It kind of just feels normal now for me to pick my life up and live somewhere else for days or weeks at a time so I felt totally normal being there, driving someone else's car on streets I don't know, and taking care of a 7 year old. I had fun exploring the area and playing "mom" for a couple days making lunches and driving her to and from school. The whole CA doesn't bus children to school thing just baffles me. Sure, it's expensive, but every single family driving a car into a tiny school parking lot every morning? Chaos. And school starts after 8 which is when most people would already be at work. And they have a late start day once a week. It just seems very challenging for families to work it all out. I'm thankful that I grew up in MN with a wonderful school system, that my best friend now teaches in!

I was traveling most of the day, got home to the rainy thunderstorming Twin Cities and went to the grocery store at 10:30pm because I have no food to take to work. I think I went to bed before 10 for the past 3 or 4 nights, so you'd think I'd be more tired again tonight but as soon as I get home I feel like I have a million things to do. However, it's 2 hours later here and I have to get up for work in the morning so I better get myself to bed.

San Francisco

I arrived at SFO on Saturday night and got picked up by my friends and they brought me to their town of Pleasanton, CA. Their downtown is adorable, and even at night I could tell while people like living in California. Yesterday I had a wonderful day in San Francisco. I had a 7 year old and someone I barely know as my tour guides, and we got a lot done in one day. We took the BART train into the city and bought an all day transportation pass so that we could take any trolley, cable car, or bus around town. The city itself reminded me a lot of Paris or other French cities that I have been to. We also saw a lot of French tourists while we were out and about. Anyways, we started off by taking the cable car up and down one of the giant hills. There were so many tourists crammed into them, my guess is people that live there don't actually use them for reliable transportation.

Our first stop was China town, which Esther was very excited about because she is from China. We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant on the second story of a building with huge windows. Great view and good for people watching. Esther was delighted that she got to eat so much rice. And Marissa got 3 fortunes in her cookie!

We wandered through some of the stores and looked at the weird foods in the grocery stores. Then we hopped back on a cable car that took us down to Fisherman's Warf on the waterfront. It was pretty windy down there but there were a lot of people wandering around and there was a festival going on at the Ghiradelli factory. We got some ice cream from their little store and then headed on to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was amazing to see the bridge up close, I just think it is so beautiful. I've always thought San Francisco was gorgeous from all my days of watching Full House (which I actually watched today haha). I didn't get to see the Full House house or Lombard St. but oh well. We were all pooped by the end of the day and still had a long train ride home.

Ok, Blogger is taking forever to upload any of my other pictures...maybe I will try to put more in a separate post.