golden gate park.

man, we are just zooming through things on our bucket list. it helps that the weather is AMAZE-balls this week. {levi absolutely hates when i say that. haha} it was 75 degrees at the park today. how could i pass up gorgeous weather when it happens so rarely by us? usually it's foggy and disgusting and all i want to do is sit around and eat cupcakes in my sweats. ;) 

in any case. we ventured to part of golden gate park today. it really is humongous. we would have done more, but we suffered some battle wounds and nap time arose {someday we'll get out of the house before 11:00} so we needed to go home because the people walking around us did not want to hear the screaming and crying from the stroller. 

we went to one of my favorite places, stow lake. zak was a little disappointed this wasn't an actual park with a playground {nothing on this bucket list is going the way he wants it to. no trains, no playgrounds. lame.} but then he saw the geese, turtles, baby ducklings, dirt piles, waterfalls, giant sticks and he got a little more into it. plus, that kid can use any opportunity to run rampant. 

this place is so gorgeous eh? 

of course greysen fell asleep as soon as we turned onto the street so we sat outside the car for a bit and played with sticks while we let him get a little bit of a snooze so he would be somewhat pleasant with us. ;)

 oh look, he is pleasant now. 

  

trying to take pictures of the two of them together is becoming torture. it's a rare gem if i can get both of them to look at me, and have a decent looking face. today was not one of those rare gem days. 

ohhh the selfies. it stinks going by ourselves so no one is there to take pictures of us. 

zak had to walk over to the waterfall on the other side of the lake so he could check it out. i think it was a success judging by his creepy face. haha. 

we were loving seeing all of the animals there. my favorite was the cute duckling. just so precious. 

zak minorly ate it crossing over the water fall path {which is a bunch of flat stones on water} and got his foot in the water. it may have been my fault because we were racing, and i pressured him by saying i was going to win. haha. but it was all down hill after that, because when he cries greysen cries. and that means it's nap time for all of us. =) 

legion of honor.

for our adventure this week, the children and i ventured up to the legion of honor. if i didn't have them, i could have spent a lot more time there, i love art history. 

i mainly wanted to go because it's a fabulous photo op, but on tuesday when we didn't go inside because we were meeting dad for lunch, zak got very distraught and i told him we would come back on friday. 

unfortunately for him, he though the "pictures on the wall" would in fact, have trains on them, so he was bored after two rooms. the thing that kept him occupied was all of the naked sculptures/paintings that he could comment on after every time we passed one. "MOM! Why are they naked?? They look redonkulous! That lady needs a shirt on!"i'll admit i laughed at him. 

he actually did really well, and only got asked once to not touch the paintings. i'd say that's pretty impressive for a three year old. he's getting so cultured. haha. 

in any case, i had a great time looking at the pieces in there. it's pretty reasonably priced too, $10 for me  for me to get in and the kids are free up to age 12. i felt like i was in europe looking at the monet's and rodin's in there. if only. 

this picture sums up our days. they are seriously hilarious together. 

i had to bribe him to take pictures and be good inside with throwing money in the fountain. he ended up with 12 pennies by the end. which he thought was awesome. 

this place is truly amazing. one of my favorite places we've been so far, i think. 

i love that the legion of honor is 10 minutes from levi's school and it looks like this. so lush and old. it's pretty great. i'd recommend going there, even with kids, they can always use the experience. =) 

vegas baby!

this past weekend i went to vegas with one of my fabulous friends. all by ourselves. with greysen since he's somewhat attached to me still. luckily, i have grandparents who live there, so i got to nurse in the morning, leave and nurse in the evening. it was amazing. 

while we didn't do anything very vegas-y, we had a blast escaping from our kids, being free and being away from our kids. did i mention that already? it was a much needed break and escape for us. sometimes you just need to get away to come back refreshed and ready to play with your kids. 

we started our weekend by getting our nails did. although they took way too long, they upgraded our nails for free {gels? why have i never done those before? oh, i know. i'm poor. they're so awesome though!}

 nancy was very excited for her hello kitty stickers and bows. i was just excited for my polish to stay on more than a day. when we finished at 10:30, {this nail place was open until 2:00 am. that's vegas for you ;)} we decided we were starving and needed to eat a second dinner. so we went to serendipity. oh my delicious-ness. in case you haven't ever been there, it's famous for their frozen hot chocolate. get it. it's delicious. 

and because that giant hot chocolate wasn't enough we got dinner too. lots of dinner. nom nom nom. 

 we're not embarassed. haha. 

saturday we started off with massages at the palms spa. that place was amaze-balls. i've been to several nice spas before, but this one was exceptional. we got all day access to the pool, so we spent the rest of the day ordering delicious drinks, getting some sun, well nancy did, i didn't, and reading magazines. and talking like adults. ahhhhh it was great. so so great. warm and sunny. 

i swear i did have a swim suit on. unfortunately, i forgot my sunglasses so that was lame. however, the pool was totally fabulous, so i dealt with it. =) 

later, we hit the buffet, gained 5 lbs. and enjoyed the multiple rounds of ice cream cones. we spent the evening hitting the outlets and spending loads of money. 

sunday, we hit up nordstrom rack, and guess what?! i found a cafe rio. words cannot express how excited i was to see that goodness. and introduce nancy to that fabulousness. 

it's just not the same making it at home. cafe rio just has something extra special to it. 

then we went back to the outlets. i spent the day deciding if i should invest the entire amount of my vegas money on this beauty. obviously, i did. and it was worth every penny. i loves it. so so so so much. 

we booked a 9:40 flight home sunday night. that was a mistake. of course, greysen slept on our flights there, but when it's bedtime and he's expected to, no way man. our flight was delayed so he finally fell asleep around midnight after random bouts of crying. yep, i was that mom on the flight. who brings their kid on late flights like that? how annoying. 

this picture was taken at 1:00am. he was wide awake. lovely baby. good thing he's so cute. 

and this is what greysen did while mom was gone escaping. 

he was having fun, i promise. he loved those doggies so much. he spent the weekend with grandma and grandpa playing with ducks, dogs, and snuggling. unfortunately, i think he is a little sensitive to the heat, he was very grouchy being outside in the weather and he's never grouchy. but we found he loved getting in the pool and being wetted down.

all in all, we had a fabulous weekend and were ready to come home, kiss our spouses and snuggle our big kids. hurrah for a great time away!