this amazing place.

since we're "over the hump" now, i keep thinking about all the things we have left to do in this amazing city. i can't believe we now have less time left than we've been here. it's kind of boggling my mind. when levi originally talked about coming here, i was vehemently opposed. like "there's no way in hell i will live there, i'll never see you". but things change, promptings happen and then we ended up here and i can't imagine going to dental school anywhere else. 

{view from the bay area discovery museum. amazing.}

i love san francisco. i love the sky line. i love the people we've met. i love finding a special hole in the wall restaurant only known to locals. i love the weather, fog and all. i love the bagillion parks around for us to find. i love the amount of kid things there are to explore here. this place is amazing. yes, it's very expensive. but how often are we going to get the opportunity to live in a place filled with such culture? 

when we moved here, we created a "bucket list" of sorts. most of the things we want to do are touristy, but we want to get the most out of our time here. 

• run across the bridge
• go to a Giant's game 
• go to Off The Grid
• drive down Lombard street 
• try Gorilla BBQ
• Alcatraz 
• Drive to the beach house down highway 1 
• see the Painted Ladies 
• ride around town on the motorcycle

i know we have tons more things that we have to do, anything you recommend?

since new years, i have been trying to get zak out more frequently to cool places and he has been loving it. so much that he asks "mom, what cool place should we go to today?" every morning before breakfast. it's kind of obnoxious because he now expects it, but i do love the experiences we are having. too bad that he will not remember any of it. sad.  

so to start with, one of his favorite places is the zoo. 

our season pass has gotten our money's worth. most of the time, we come to eat lunch and watch the train go by and then go home. going with friends allows him to branch out a bit. and adds a little chaos too, but who doesn't need that in their life? ;) 

 zak's next favorite place is the bay area discovery museum. it's amazing. and is in the most gorgeous location {see picture at the top}. it's right across the bridge in sausalito and is a great place to let him run wild, especially when the weather cooperates. 

driving the boat is a favorite.

 they also have an entire building devoted to trains and their tracks. WINNNNERRR. 

 i go to look at the bridge and marvel at this amazing place that we live in. he goes for the diggers, trains and boats he can drive around. win for both of us. 

we recently started a music class through south san francisco parks and rec. to say that he loves it is an understatement. music really speaks to him; he learns so much through it, and will calm down, participate and love every second of it. this class was no exception as you can see from the picture below. miss theresa lets them play with tons of instruments, dance around with parachutes and sing lots of songs with mom. it's a win. i think we will be doing it for more than just the 8 weeks. 

he was happy, i swear.

mom's favorite place to go is the beach. we have a great one about 5 minutes away from us, that's a little bit warmer and nice when it's sunny. we went there this morning while levi went surfing and got to bask in the warmer sunlight until nap time. it was great. 

 it was a little too exhausting for the wee man. he gave in about half an hour after we got there. 

zak loves the beach. another thing he got from mom. we made soup, train tracks, buried feet, ate snacks, dug holes, and so much more. oh and pretended to surf. 

love his sunglasses too. he's such a cool dude. 

 i love that greysen can sit up now. it makes my life so much easier. 

these are only a quick three of our favorite places. i think i'm going to start writing down other ones we do so that i can look back and see everything that we did while we lived here. we've got to start crossing things off our bucket list, or we will leave wishing we could have done so much more than stay home and watch tv on levi's free days. 

crafting snafting.

for some reason, the last several weeks, i have been inspired to craft/redecorate. could be because all my stuff was sitting on the ground in the dining room and zak kept playing with it, or because all my christmas decorations gone make our house seem so boring. 

what's better to decorate for than the next holiday of lovey-dovey-ness? 

this last week, i crafted with some girls from dental school and made these cute things. So fun eh? Super easy with wood letters, mod podge and scrap book paper. We antiqued the edges with a chalk stamp. It's my favorite. 

I saw a ton of felt garlands on pinterest, and decided i should make one because i already have tons of felt from my headband making extravaganzas. you're technically supposed to sew it together, but i'm super lazy and just hot glued it. or maybe it's because i couldn't figure out how to thread the bobbin in the sewing machine. you'll never know. i originally only made one but then i saw it hanging on the frames all by itself and decided it needed another layer. much better. 

i want to make some more valentine-y things but i haven't decided what else is speaking to me yet. i need to stalk pinterest more.

on a different note, we may or may not have bought a french fry cutter to make veggies small enough for greysen to snack on. it's pretty awesome. so far we've baked sweet potato fries and regular fries and they're both delicious. and healthy{er} too. 

a long time ago, ok, like three months ago, i had a craft night at our house and made these chevron canvases. ok. that's not true. i tried to make them, but couldn't mathematically figure out how to make the stripes, so levi taped it. and i painted it. i have a cool husband like that. but, like the other things sitting on the floor in my dining room, i jut got around to finishing them now. i'm loving the addition to my dining room now. as a side note, aren't these printables like the cutest? totally googled "kitchen printables" and they showed up. i don't remember what website though, sorry! 

 this project was probably my favorite one. i'm especially proud of it. levi had a bunch of 2x4's left over from his garage cleaning up project, so i decided i would antique them and make them jewelry holders since i've been buying more from groopdealz. it's like an addiction. i love cheap jewelry. anyways, i stained them with apple cider vinegar and steel wool and then spray painted them cream and then sanded them down. i bought some knobs from anthropologie and then my crafty/genius husband figured out how to attach them to the wood. and here they have sat in our room. and every time i look at them, i burst with pride. ;) i also wear my stuff much more frequently now that it's not in a giant pile on my dresser.

i also made these burlap covered canvases at my craft night, and left them in the dining room because i couldn't find anything to do with them. then i realized that i could poke my earrings through it to hang them. GENIUS. sometimes i just amaze myself. 

that is a brief summary of my achievements this past week. i forgot how much i love to craft/decorate because i haven't done it in such a long time. funny how being awake during nap time can be so productive. 

six months.

i haven't done a post about this dude in a while. although he's not six months quite yet, in a week to be exact, i figured i might as well post on him while i've got the stream going. 

we've been doing solid food, and he has been loving it. i began doing baby led weaning with him, and he looooves feeding himself. 

i had to find pictures of zak eating, because i love comparing their looks. unfortunately, greysen got the short end of the stick on the hair, making him look a little less cute than his brother. no offense baby, we still love you lots, but your brother was just so precious. see below. 

however, in greysen's defense, he smiles way more and is way more chill than his brother, so he wins in both of those departments. 

he's getting better at sitting up!! he can go for a few minutes before getting overly excited and falling. trying to watch zak has a lot to do with that because he likes to follow him around and that causes him to fall. he has absolutely no interest in crawling/moving but neither did zak until 9 months so i guess we just have slow moving children to begin with. 

his favorite foods now include: roasted broccoli, cucumber, ham and anything that mom and dad will let him eat off their plates. he gets very offended when we eat something different than him. 

yes, that's just a stick of ham chilling in his mouth. that's how we roll. 

he still does not nap anywhere besides his bed. his longest nap outside our house is about 20 minutes, unlike his usual 2 hour ones. it's unfortunate, but luckily he's pretty content so you can't really tell most of the time.  

his sleeping patterns have been totally wack since coming home from canada and getting sick.we've been working on readjusting them, but being sick just ruins everything. cept for his personality. he's still just as happy.  

i just want to squish those cheeks so much. love you little man. muah.  

adventures.

one of my non written resolutions was to get out more with zak. unfortunately we may have set the bar too high the past couple weeks because now he says "i just wanna go do something fun mom" when he's been stuck inside for too long. doubly unfortunate is the fact that it is freezing outside recently! like really cold. not canada cold. just san francisco cold. 

but last week, grandpa came into town so we took him to our favorite cheese steak place by dad's school. it's seriously amazing. if you haven't been to the cheese steak shop on divisadero, i highly recommend it. 

 as you can tell it is kid approved as well. yes, admire our parenting for letting greysen enjoy clean, healthy food. 

we then went to the beach house for a few days so that dad and grandpa could go golf. thrilling for us, let me tell you. while they golfed, we snuggled, went on way too long walks, played in the jacuzzi tub and went to the park.

greysen just adores his brother. i think the feeling is mutual. i love them too. 

we went on this walk that ended up being at least a mile, with several steps because he wanted to go down to the beach. zak had to take several breaks on the way back because it was way too long for him. so that was an adventure. 

 he was a little tired coming home. this was before we even pulled out of the driveway of the beach. 

 zak has become an excellent long boarder. going in uncle josh's footsteps.  =) 

we spent a couple days this week at zak's very favorite place. the zoo. 

 this is zak's bestest friend. who's only two months' older than him, but he looks like a giant compared to him. 

we also went to burlingame to see zak's second favorite place. the caltrain station. i know, he has high expectations of fun. he's easy to please. 

however, we did also make it to j crew to buy presents, and anthropologie for this fabulous mug to make me going to the train worth it. =) i could spend a lotta money in both of those stores. 

we went to the zoo again today with some other friends and got to do special things; ride the train, carousel and buy hot chocolate. he is so lucky.  

mom's a little tired now. we may have to tone down having so many awesome things to do during the week, taking the two of them places is always an adventure. 

new year.

new years eve. the night when parents are forced to stay up til past midnight, only thinking about how their children are going to get up 6 hours later and expect miracles out of their parents. 

that's how i feel anyways. haha. but out of obligation, we must do something for new years, i refuse to be those people who go to bed before the clock strikes 12. we're not to that point in our life yet. 

so, we had some friends over, and did fondue and games. very exciting. i mean that seriously, because i do get all excited for chocolate and fruits. and i did dominate at ticket to ride.  

but to add to the excitement, we had left over sparklers from 4th of july, so we whipped out those bad boys.

if you don't know what excitement is, try and give two almost three year olds sparklers and keep them from attacking each other. win to the husband who drew boxes on the ground for them to stand in. except for we had to reposition them because they could touch each other's coats with them. sneaky devils. they did have a blast though. 

i feel like we haven't done much this year, i had to go back through my old posts to see the things we've done: 

gone to the beach house a few times alone and with friends

celebrated levi's birthday

went on the trains for zak's birthday

moved to hopefully our last house here

went to disneyland

went to a major league baseball game

potty trained zak

had a baby

went to reno for the rib cook off

went camping for the first time 

went trick or treating for the first time 

celebrated thanksgiving with my mom 

went to canada for christmas. 

basically our fun things this year consisted of traveling. not too shabby. hurrah for being half way done dental school and almost on the our next adventures. 

 i went back to look at my resolutions for last year, and i feel like i did ok at them. maybe it's because i was pregnant, but they were really not very difficult. get dressed? pfft. fail. i really should do better at that this year

as for resolutions: 

mine are: 

-be in bed by 11:00. {greysen is determined to ruin this by waking up at or after this time every day this week. this kid is out to get us this week}

-get up and exercise every morning before the kids get up. {side note: greysen has been waking up at 5:00 because he starving recently for some reason, which makes me getting back up at 6:15 to work out very difficult. i have yet to switch his schedule around to accommodate my working out. this is a work in progress resolution, however i will say that i have done it every day, just at a different time. 

-read the lesson for sunday school each week. since i pay so much attention to it while we're actually there. 

-eat three meals a day. i hate making lunch. it's the worst. 

-stay in budget. this is a problem i'm trying to overcome seeing as i have recently just found this site, and it makes me want to blow my entire monthly allowance/budget on jewelry. i'm obsessed. 

we shall see how these go, i need to make some changes, but i'm optimistic about them. my spouse is not one for making resolutions, so i don't really have any for him to write down. 

yeah for 2013!