Adventures with Jimmy and Marian

When we landed at SFO on Monday night coming home from San Diego, we headed to the Hertz rental car center to wait for our great friends the Dickinsons, who were flying in from Cincinnati to visit! We were so excited to see Jimmy, Marian and (almost 18-month-old) baby Joshua! When we realized that we would be flying in just an hour or so before them, and they were planning on renting a minivan large enough for the six of us to drive around in, we decided it made the most sense to just wait at the airport so we could all drive home together, rather than take a separate uber. We typically uber to the airport rather than drive and park because the airport parking at SFO is sooo expensive! It's cheaper to uber there and back.

So, we settled in to wait for our friends... and wait.... and wait.... their flight was a bit delayed, and it took them a while to make their way to Hertz. But finally, sometime around 11 pm, we found them, a bit worse for the wear after a long, rough flight with sick, crabby Joshua. After some difficulty securing the minivan and getting both car seats installed, we were FINALLY on our way home, one exhausted crew with two passed-out little ones.

The next morning we got to catch up a little bit before Rich went in to work and they told us their big news, that Joshua has a little brother on the way (although we did not know it was a brother at the time)!!!! Very exciting!! But also making the travel that much rougher for poor Marian who was a bit more tired and queasy than she would have been without a bun in the oven.

The whole crew walked Valerie to school, and then I took the Dickinsons to Veggie Grill for lunch before they headed out for the next few days. They had booked a hotel up in wine country for Tuesday until Friday, at which point they would come back down and stay with us for the weekend.

We anxiously awaited their return on Friday, and we all piled into the van and drove over to Shoreline park near the Google campus to walk around the park and see the lake before we picked up Indian food for dinner.  Poor Joshua was still under the weather and not himself and poor Marian was fighting a bad headache. We ordered some Indian takeout and hurried home to devour it. Once we all scarfed our meal everyone was feeling a little better and the battle to get Joshua to sleep could begin. Poor thing, we just did not get to see his usual cheerful self on this visit; he was exhausted and unwell and just wanted Marian to hold him.

After a night of less-than-ideal sleep we psyched ourselves up to go to the beach at Santa Cruz for the afternoon. First Joshua ate a bowl of Cheerios, then he puked them up everywhere, so we debated staying home, but decided we might as well still venture to the beach. Fortunately he didn't puke again after that.

We had a fun afternoon playing at the beach in spite of strong winds (well, everyone except Joshua. I can't say he had fun at any point). Jimmy even submerged himself completely in the ice cold Pacific ocean water, and he also tortured Joshua by putting his feet in.

We ferried our ragamuffin crew back home for a quiet night in. We had tried to secure a babysitter to watch the kids Saturday night so the adults could go out, but she canceled on us, and with Joshua in the state he was in we realized we would have had to cancel on her anyway. The boy needed his mama close by.

It ended up being a really fun night in after all once the kids were asleep. We got takeout for dinner again, and played games with plenty of hilarity and got to catch up, which was fantastic.

On Sunday we got Oren's Hummus for lunch and went for a hike (ok... a walk) at Foothills Park. It was a lovely day and a nice walk, but we found out afterward that Marian must have walked in some poison oak because she wound up with a huge, nasty reaction on her ankle after they got home.

With all the sickness, puking, poison oak, terrible flights and lack of sleep, I'm not sure if our friends were really glad they came to visit, but we sure were glad they came all the way out to see us! We miss them and love them so very much! Love you Dickinsons and can't wait to meet new baby boy in December!!! XOXO

Nana and Papa visit

We had our first official visitors two weekends ago (not counting friends who stopped by while in town for work) when my mom and stepdad came to stay for three days. Boy had we missed them and were we happy to see them! We FaceTime often and I'm so glad we have that technology but nothing compares to being together.

I picked them up Wednesday night from the airport and Valerie got to stay up a little later than usual to open her presents and show Nana and Papa her twirling before bed. She loves her new ballerina outfit - leotard, tights and skirt - which is perfect since she demands to wear a pink tutu 90% of the time. It's very similar to an outfit I had as a child and becoming more apparent every day that she is my mini me. I loved twirly dresses, ballerinas and all things pink and sparkly much the same, although she also loves trains and construction equipment, which I did not. She got a hefty dose of her dad's personality too, but the similarities to 3-year-old me are uncanny.

Thursday morning I woke up to Valerie crying in my room, despondent that she couldn't find Nana and Papa anywhere - in other words, they weren't in their bed. "Where's Nana and Papa?!?!"
 "They're here! Don't worry! Let's go find them!"
We found them sitting outside on the deck having tea and coffee, and Nana was able to console Valerie.
 We made chocolate chip pumpkin pancakes for breakfast with Valerie's "help," and then we all walked her to school for a couple hours so she could take her nap while we went out for lunch and were surprised when she had a raving meltdown at dropoff. She did NOT want to say goodbye to Nana and Papa. I did not really see that coming since she never has a problem getting dropped off at school and was in good spirits the whole way there. But, we made our escape and enjoyed a fantastic lunch at Oren's Hummus Shop to kick off the weekend. We had the sampler platter with 3 kinds of eggplant, carrots, beets, yogurt cheese, and hummus and pita, and were all flailing with rapture of the taste-buds. We got the large hummus and pita to-go and wondered if they ship their hummus across the country.

After lunch we picked up Valerie (who had recovered from her abandonment) and drove up to San Francisco to have dinner on the pier overlooking the bay and Alcatraz. It happened to be Blue Angels practice downtown for Fleet Week, so we watched (and had our ears blown out by) jets swooping over and around us on our drive through the city. Valerie was not a fan of the blasting jet noises. Once we secured parking, for a mere thousand dollars per minute (slight exaggeration), we walked around the Maritime National Historical Park watching the fighter jets and the people. I hadn't ever been up to this northernmost point of San Francisco; it is such a cool area! I wish we had had more time to walk around and explore, but we had to make our dinner reservation at Fog Harbor Fish House, which was about a 15-minute walk from the park.

It was lovely! We got a table next to the huge windows overlooking the bay and enjoyed delicious seafood and a delectable hibiscus martini for me. Mom and I ordered shrimp and crab Louie salads, and wished we had split one; they were absolutely gigantic. I somehow still managed to finish mine, unnecessarily. One pound of lettuce and one pound of bay shrimp heavier, I had to be rolled back to the car. I forgot about my full belly, though, when I saw the sky.  It was an incredible, epic sunset over the bay as we walked through the pier back toward the car, all bright red and orange and pink.

Rich was flying back from Houston and arriving to the airport around 8, just as we were driving back home, so we stopped at the airport on our way to pick him up. It was a clown car situation fitting the 5 of us with Valerie in her carseat in the Mustang, but Mom and I squeezed into the back on either side of the carseat and white knuckled through the 30 minute ride home. My hips were compressed so hard my foot was asleep when we got home but we survived.

Friday we had planned to keep Valerie for the day, and were very glad of our decision after the dropoff debacle of Thursday, although some of us regretted it by the end of a day full of whining and crappy behavior.

We went to Tootsie's at the Stanford Barn for lunch so Rich could meet us and enjoyed the lovely outdoor seating there in spite of the hospital construction across the street. They didn't have a lot of kid options, so Valerie got to have chocolate pot de creme and french fries for lunch (and I helped her finish the pot de creme. Sometimes moms have to make sacrifices). We ate our lunch, were graced with a brief 20-minute appearance by Rich, and then headed out for a quick driving tour of the Stanford campus - which was a fail, because I drove us to Menlo Park trying to find campus, and then we had to get a melting Valerie home for her nap.

She was too excited to nap, so after waiting a while in vain for her to fall asleep, we finally got back in the car for an outing to the Stanford Shopping Center to get new shoes for Valerie, who was still squeezing her now - size 8 feet into size 7 shoes. It's become something of a beloved tradition for Nana and Papa to take her shopping for shoes so this was a highly anticipated shopping trip.

We hit several roadblocks trying to find girls' shoes. First we tried Macy's. We went to the top floor to the kids section to be told that all shoes were on the bottom floor with ladies' shoes. We found ladies' shoes, where there were no kids' shoes to be found. Next we tried Neiman Marcus, but quickly ascertained a similar lack of kids' shoes (and I discovered that place is a little too fancy for my blood! Shew!). Our last hope was Nordstrom, so we made our way there, and were relieved to find... drumroll please..... girls' shoes. They had a pretty good selection of some promising sparkly and pink kicks but Valerie was in a mood by this time. We had a very patient salesgirl help us try on several sizes of several styles and finally found a pair of bright-pink-and-orange sneakers that we all agreed were cute and fit right. Valerie kept trying to run off by the end so we wrapped up in a hurry. The salesgirl let her choose a balloon (pink, of course) and we left to find Papa.

On our way back through the mall we saw the American Girl store and thought it would be fun to look around in there. Valerie LOVED it and I love how sweet and innocent she still is in stores. She doesn't seem to quite fully grasp yet the concept of buying things. She was happy as a clam playing with the dolls and accessories in the store. She pushed them around in the doll stroller, stacked them in the doll wagon and fed the baby doll. Then we told her it was time to put the dolls back and get going. She was so good!  She didn't ask to buy anything; I think she just thought the store was a place to play with dolls. So sweet.

We made one last stop then, at Sprinkles Cupcakes. A sprinkle cupcake for Valerie and a red velvet for the adults to share! Yum. She devoured all the icing off the top (definitely my child). And then the combination of sugar and no nap produced her whiniest behavior yet for a most pleasant rest of the  evening.

here you can see the new shoes

We headed from there to Local Union 271 for happy hour, where Rich would meet us when he finished working. Right away, I placed Valerie in a chair while we waited for a server to bring over a booster seat, and she somehow pushed it over backwards and fell splat on the ground. I think it scared her more than anything; she cried hard but pretty quickly calmed down, her booster came and we ordered much needed sangrias and cocktails. I was busting out lollipops, youtube on my phone, and every weapon in my arsenal trying to keep her pacified for our short meal.

We headed home for an early bedtime for The Tired One and got to relax for a while before Rich and I went out for our first real "date" since we moved here. Mom and Paul were kind enough to stay home while Valerie slept and we went out for a late dinner just the two of us.

We went to Evvia, a highly rated Greek restaurant in downtown Palo Alto with lots of expensive wines. We had a delicious mushroom appetizer special and crispy zucchini cakes, and I especially savored the really good olive oil that came with the bread. Rich got the lamb that all the reviewers rave about, and I had more appetizers for my meal; the roasted cauliflower and grilled artichoke and eggplant skewer. I loved all of it, but Rich was less than impressed, and we were definitely feeling a bit gouged by the wine prices. I would love to eat there again when someone else is paying. Ha!

We had a big day at the beach planned on Saturday for our last day with Nana and Papa, who left that night on the redeye. We drove down to the boardwalk at Santa Cruz and had a perfect lunch at Ideal Bar & Grill right on the beach and then we hung out on the beach for a couple hours. Valerie was in heaven, chasing the surf, playing in the sand, twirling around and generally being adorable. It flew by all too fast and we walked down toward the boardwalk and then back to the car to head home.

Whew!  We squeezed in as much fun as we could in three short days and started our countdown til we see them again at Thanksgiving. What a great visit we had! We miss them already!

Don't burn your house down, eat hummus!

I had my first kitchen catastrophe in the new house yesterday... I was going to make cheesy zucchini brown rice and beans, and I thought I could leave the rice to boil while I walked over to pick up Valerie from school... but I was mistaken. We returned to the smell of smoke, a kitchen filled with smoke and some seriously charred black rice in my best stockpot. Sad face. No rice for us, and today the house still smells like smoke. Plus Rich nearly had a heart attack when he found out I left the stove on. We are just glad a real fire didn't start, and the worst damage is to the pot, which has been soaking until I attempt to scrub it.

Since my dinner plan was foiled I came up with another idea and it was more successful. My friend Sarah found this Layered Mediterranean Dip on pinterest and since I had been wanting to make my own hummus anyway, this inspired me to turn hummus into a meal.

from the seeded at the table blog

I made the hummus recipe from my Blendtec recipe book, which is yet to steer me wrong. I had some leftover sun dried tomatoes that I wanted to use up, so I made the sun dried tomato variation of hummus, with some smoked paprika. Wow delicious!!! I have had homemade hummus come out poorly before but this one is a winner.

I spread the hummus on the plate, and topped it with chopped fresh heirloom tomato, cucumber, red onion, parsley and feta. I did not have banana peppers or kalamata olives on hand, or those would have been excellent as well. The pesto layer from the blog version is not represented either because I forgot about it. Next time!

 It came out looking so pretty and appetizing and colorful, and tasted light and healthy but satisfying. I really wished I had some pitas or pita chips to dip in it, but we made do with some toasted Ezekiel bread, lentil chips and crackers.

A few lessons learned: don't leave a pot boiling on the stove on high; and well... I guess that's pretty much it. So, one lesson learned, and one tasty hummus dip eaten. At least the day wasn't a total loss!