Noteworthy Weekend

Last weekend, my mom and sister came to visit Nate and me for the first time since we moved to San Francisco.

The weekend was amazingly clear and super hot for the bay area. We took advantage of the nice weather by walking around Chrissy Field, then going to the mission district to experience Bi-Rite Ice Cream, which was rated as one of the best ice cream places in the nation by MSNBC. After ice cream, we drove down the embarcadero to Pier 39, where Jennifer was enamored with the sea lions. We stayed on the wharf for an enjoyable dinner.

On the way home, we stopped to purchase a fan for our apartment! With the heat, no AC, and no wind our apartment was unbearably hot.

North Beach Festival

Today in North Beach, which is the Italian District in San Francisco, they had a festival full of live music, food vendors, and street vendors. They also had artists re-creating various stained glass windows with chalk on the street. The detail of some of the pictures was amazing!

We tried a potato and spinach knish from a vendor and also got fried mozarella cheesesticks with the most amazing marinara sauce. In addition, Precious cheese was one of the main sponsors and they were giving away free skewers with fresh mozarella and lemon marinated steak. Yum!

Ebelskivers

Ever since I started working at Williams-Sonoma I have wanted to try out their Ebelskiver Pan, or otherwise known as filled pancakes. Over the past few catalog seasons they've had the most amazing sounding recipes including apple filled, lemon mascarpone filled, blueberry filled, graham cracker banana filled and soon to come raspberry filled.

This weekend I brought home a sample of an ebelskiver pan and we made our first attempt ever to make Ebelskivers. We made banana with vanilla pudding filled, strawberry jam filled, and chocolate chip filled ebelskivers.

I think they turned out rather well. If I didn't know better I would think they were straight off of Williams Sonoma's website. Check it out! Can you tell which ones are ours? (Okay, maybe you can since we don't have the same photography capabilities, but overall I think the ebelskivers look pretty dang good!)

It's Panda-monium

Friday night, for the first time in almost a year, we went and saw a movie in the movie theater! Gasp! We actually hadn't realized it had been so long until we remembered the last movie we saw. Our night centered around everything Panda. We saw "Kung Fu Panda", ate Panda Express, and had Junior Mints, which we like to think that the black and white of the mints represented the fur of a Panda.

We were thoroughly entertained by the movie. It's got great graphics, funny lines, likable characters, a good moral, and a great story line. We recommend it to all-both young and old!

Happy Birthday, Hubby!

My wonderful husband celebrated his 26th birthday earlier this week. Thinking back over the "birthdays" we've had together I couldn't help but laugh:

• 2 Years Ago - Nate was living at home in Layton getting ready to start his internship in San Francisco. I was in Provo getting ready to go to a drive-in movie with a big group of friends that night. Last minute, my friend, Kristen and I decided Nate needed a little friendly birthday celebration. We sped, literally, up to Layton to surprise him with a little bag of his favorite goodies before the movie. After getting lost on the way, since we had only been there once or twice before, we were disappointed to find no one home. We called his phone over and over and over, but he never answered. We gave up defeated and started to head to the movie to meet everyone else when he called us back. He was in the middle of dinner with his family but came home to meet us. We convinced him to come to the movie with us, where Kristen and I both preceded to fall asleep and he watched the movie alone. What a great memory!
  
• 1 Year Ago - Nate and I went ring shopping for the first time a few days before his birthday. Although we already had the date set and our reception place reserved, we hadn't told anyone of our plans besides family since we wanted to wait to get the ring first. During those days I had a lot of "freak outs" where I wasn't quite sure I would go through with the wedding. (Luckily I did.) I bought him a book about San Francisco and highlighted a few pages of things I wanted to do together once we moved here ...but the thought of moving to San Francisco and being married was almost too overwhelming. It took a lot of convincing from my roommates and myself to show up to dinner with his family and give him the book on his birthday.

Needless to say, Nate's birthdays the last two years have been very memorable. 2 Years ago I would have never imagined I would be married to Nate. 1 year ago I was a little crazy to even be scared of marrying such an amazing person and one of my best friends, which now I laugh about.

This year we celebrated Nate's birthday by enjoying a nice dinner in the city. On Monday night we also invited some friends over for FHE where we had birthday cake for refreshments. I have to say this was the best year of the three and I am lucky to be married to Nate.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HUBBY!

The group of friends who joined us for FHE and Birthday Cake

Memorial Day Weekend

Dutch Oven Desserts, Beach, Bocce Balls and friends- What a great Memorial Day! Some friends mentioned they wanted to do some dutch oven cooking on Memorial Day. Nate and I were so excited since we received a dutch oven for our wedding but as of yet have never had a reason to pull it out and use it.

On Memorial Day we went to Half Moon Bay to spend some time on the beach playing games and to cook our dutch oven desserts. We even went gourmet. We had Apple Crisp and Mississippi Mud Pie, not just the traditional cobbler.

To top things off, we played Bocce Ball. After a fun filled day we decided we need more Holidays from work.

The dutch ovens

Playing Bocce against the champions

The guys playing an intense game