California 2010

I meant to post all of these pictures right when we got home, but as usual life gets the best of me and so you are getting them a few weeks late.  The week before school started Erik and I went to California to visit his mom Karin for her birthday! She lives in a beautiful town called Morgan Hill, just outside of San Jose.  We got there late Wednesday night, and her birthday was Thursday.  Unfortunately she had to work on her birthday, so Erik's brother Steven took us to Monterey Bay for the afternoon.  I wanted to make sure I emptied my memory card for my camera before I got there, and it wasn't until that day that I realized it was still sitting in my computer at home.  I was so bummed! So there are no pictures of Monterey Bay, but we just walked around and ate lots of candy anyway.

That night after Karin got home from work, we went to Erik's grandparents house for a special birthday dinner.  Thank you Andy and Lois! This is the birthday girl on her special day (we won't tell you how old she is).

The next day, Friday, we went to Santa Cruz beach for the day.  The weather was PERFECT.  It was a little chilly on the pier, but after a hot summer in AZ it felt so good.  We loved this beach because they have an old school boardwalk with a ferris wheel, roller coaster, and carnival games.  It was so fun!

As we were walking along the pier, we saw a ton of sea lions swimming around in the ocean.  I was so amazed! Erik kept laughing at me because I kept wanting to take pictures of them.  But I've never seen them swimming around so close to the shore like that.  We then came across a random staircase that led down to this:

Lets just say I clapped my hands and jumped up and down.  I am very easily amused and I could have stood there watching them all day.

Every time Erik tried to get close enough to take a picture with these ones, they would turn to him and bark at him.  They clearly didn't want him in their space.

The next day, off to San Francisco! I was most excited about this day because I have never been to San Fran before.  I can't jump very high without wetting my pants, so I had Erik jump to show how excited we were.

It was freezing right there by the bridge! Although you can't see it in this picture the wind was craaaaazy.

We could not believe how pretty the views were, and these were just from the streets.  I was oohing and aahing all day long.  Erik says I'm like a little kid.

In front of some random heart at Union Square.

We saw so many random people walking around, and YES, very many gay people.  Take this guy for instance, he has a fox around his neck.

Anybody seen the Double Rainbow video?

Towards the end of the day, we were eating at a pizza place called Uncle Vito's, and as we were walking back to the parking garage I had mentioned that I still wanted to go to China Town if we could find it.  As I said that, we walked straight into this street without even realizing it.  I was once again very excited.  We spent the rest of the night walking along the stores, trying on Chinese outfits and laughing at all of the Buddhas.

Once again, really random people:

After a long day, and some delicious pie, we said farewell to San Francisco.

(Erik saw this and took a picture of it without me even knowing it.  I didn't see the picture until later on in the day.  I love it!)

We loved spending time in California with his mom, even though we did a lot of stuff it was such a relaxing weekend! Hopefully we will be able to go back for the holidays before Jude is born and before I get too big in the belly.  Thank you so much Karin for letting us stay in your home and entertaining us the whole weekend, we had a blast!