I Love You, California!

Sunday A few weeks ago we discovered our favorite S und ay activity in the city, Picnic in the Pres idio . Today we went back for more! It was pretty windy, but we had a full afternoon of sunshine and enjoyed the company of some great friends. Monday We've been itching to get out on the hiking trails again, and a few weeks ago I found information about the site of an volcano that existed about 10 million years ago just five miles away from where we live!  Here is some information from the ebparks.gov website. I'm copying it here for you because it is so interesting what has happened! Round Top, one of the area's highest peaks, is made up of lava and volcanic debris left over from a 10-million-year-old volcano. During the past 10 million years, massive tectonic forces on the Hayward and Moraga earthquake faults uplifted the Berkeley hills, folding bedrock formations and tilting the Round Top volcano complex on its side. Softer sedimentary rock from the ...

We have been so busy exploring around the Bay Area, that Will and I came to realize that it had been far too long since we had stayed local and enjoyed what our own neighborhood has to offer! We started the day with a wonderful breakfast at Rockridge Cafe, just a few blocks away from our apartment. Afterward we went on a little walk around the neighborhood before we stopped for a few errands at our CVS and Safeway stores. Then it was time to come home to enjoy the warm afternoon sunshine with some pool time! This time we had a visitor! Our sweet little peanut "niece"! Isn't she the cutest! She really loved swimming with Uncle Will : ) While we were out earlier we picked up some new flowers for the garden. I'm having a hard time getting something to look right and stay healthy in this spot, so hopefully these will work!

Will and I, especially, had been down for the last week or so with an icky cold virus, so we were really anxious to get out of the house. We were excited to learn that an old friend from high school was in San Francisco for a training and wanted to get together with us! I started searching for something very "SF" to do, and stumbled upon this little event. It was held at The Old Mint . Now a National Historic Landmark, it was the one building downtown that withstood the earthquake of 1906 and served as the depository and treasury for the city's relief fund. It is a beautiful old building with architecture that is not commonly found around the city because of the disastrous earthquake and fire which claimed many of the buildings built in the 1800s. The Hops and History event served the purpose as a fundraiser for what is being slated as the San Francisco Museum at the Mint. It featured many local breweries and a local food vendor. Being that this was not a recurring even...

Our next visitors came to us from Minnesota! Mark and Kristi are two of our dear friends from our college days back at the U of M. They are certainly two of the many people in Minnesota who made it difficult to want to move away! Mark and Kristi were in town for the weekend for a wedding, and they extended their trip by a few days so that they could visit with us. We've been planning this almost since the time we moved to Cali, so we were so excited that the time was finally here! Mark and Kristi arrived in Oakland on Wednesday evening. Unfortunately it has been a really busy week for Will at work with the out of towners in town for meetings, and getting ready to go to Arizona for the day on Friday. Wednesday night Will had a dinner meeting so after work I picked up Mark and Kristi from the BART station and brought them back home. We had a nice evening catching up, eating the lasagna I had made that morning, and later on Will came and joined us for some games and libations around...