Wine Country with the Folks!

The Allees returned to California last week to spend some time in Sonoma Valley (aka wine country)!  My parents rented a house with their friends so Shane and I (as well as their daughter, from San Diego) had the pleasure visiting for the weekend to check out a few wineries and get out of the city and into the sunshine!

Our adorable accomodations

Isn't she radiant? That's my Momma :-)

Dad, constantly making us laugh :-)

Just wanted to show off my new photog skills, thanks to my new camera!
(b-day gift from the Parentals)

Total wine connoisseur now

Cheers!

Take me out to the ballgame!

Everyone was talking about the Giants this week after Matt Cain threw a perfect game against the Houston Astros. You may, however, have missed this bit of excitement at that same game:

San Francisco is so cool :-)

On a related note, Shane and I took our friend Buck (a friend from Sarasota who has recently relocated to the Bay Area!) to a Giants game last Sunday. The game was a total snoozer (Giants didn't get a single run, and the game was over in less than 3 hours...), but we got more than enough enjoyment from the great weather and the AMAZING views of the bay (not to mention the ballpark hotdog). Here's a few photos from our outing...

 

 

There were over 42,000 fans at the stadium that day!

Sweeney Ridge

WOAH it's been a long time since I've blogged.  Sorry, folks! But I'm back with the photos I promised over two weeks ago from our hike through Sweeney Ridge.  Enjoy!

Playing Tourist, Part II

Our second set of visitors, James and Jessica, arrived last week and we were so thrilled to have them! 

We met James and Jessica when we were all working for a previous employer.  James and Shane (both software engineers) became good friends and even stayed close after James & Jessica moved away to NYC!  They came to experience all that the bay area has to offer, so they spent a few days in Napa, a few days with us exploring the South Bay area, and are doing their last few days even further south near Big Sur. 

Here's a few photos from their stay with us...

We went hiking at Sweeney Ridge in San Bruno (additional blogpost with A TON of photos coming soon!)

After the hike, we came home EXHAUSTED and watched the sunset on our roof!

Then the menfolk made us dinner!

Thanks to James & Jessica for providing the lobster! LOVED it!!

Archie loved making new friends, but he sure was exhausted by the time they left!

Volunteering

Last Friday, Shane and his team at work volunteered at a soup kitchen!

That's Shane in the top right

I don't really have any details other than Shane had fun with his friends. I just wanted to share his good deed :-)

San Francisco Segway Tour!

My friend Kennedy was just recently hired by Electric Tour Company as a segway tour guide. Oh. My. Gosh. You cannot imagine my excitement.  I have always wanted to do a Segway tour! Saturday afternoon, she had some room in her tour group so I was able to go and watch her in action!

First of all, segways rule. They are so fun to ride and are surprisingly easy too.  I was so nervous that I'd fall or roll off a cliff or something, but alas, I survived!  AND now that I've officially mastered the segway, I can go on the advanced tour that goes down Lombard Street, up to Coit Tower, and various other super cool places.

Secondly, for a girl who moved to the Bay area just a few months before we did she sure knows her stuff! I was seriously amazed at how much cool San Fran knowledge she has and dang do I live in a cool city!  I have compiled a list of a few of the most noteworthy San Francisco factoids that I learned during the tour:

• Cable cars were invented by the Scottish man who invented cables.  They operate by having a continuously moving cable underground that the car grips onto and releases at each stop.  The cable moves at 9.5 mph which means... you can beat it if you're racing it on a segway!
• Many people believe that Joe DiMaggio married Marilyn Monroe at the famous Sts. Peter and Paul Church because they had a ton of photos taken there on their wedding day, but they actually got married at City Hall because the church would not recognize Joe's divorce from his first wife.
• The tour guides at Alcatraz tell you that no one ever escaped from Alcatraz, however, there were 3 men who made it off the island by making a raft out of raincoats.  They were never found, but their raft and clothes were all found. Sounds like an escape to me!
• The verb "Shanghai" (as in: "He was Shanghaied") originated in San Francisco during the gold rush.  People would kidnap (or "Shanghai") men and throw them on a ship headed to far-off locales like Shanghai to gather more people to return to America and dig for gold.
• Bonus factoid: Kidnappers would identify men in bars as having crew experience (and therefore be ideal for kidnapping) if they were eating with their elbows on the table because that's what you'd have to do at sea to keep your plate in front of you when the ship was rocking back and forth.
• Russian Hill is not named for the Russian population here (Russian Hill doesn't actually have a significant Russian population).  It's named Russian Hill because when people were settling here in the 1800's they discovered a cemetery with Cyrillic (Russian) writing on the headstones.
• During the gold rush, people most often arrived to California by ship and were in such a hurry to get to Sacramento to dig for gold that they'd often abandon them in Yerba Buena cove.  Some ships just rotted there, some were turned into hotels, saloons or brothels, some were stripped for materials, but all of them were eventually covered over with sand when the coastline was extended.  Today, builders have discovered many ships beneath the city (one was discovered as recently as 2005!).  There are "Buried Ships" plaques all over the city to denote where they have been found.

Now that you've all learned a little something, I'll conclude with some photos.  The first two are just sightseeing photos I took on our segway breaks (you're not allowed to take photos while on the segway for safety reasons).  The rest are self-explanatory...

Fisherman's Wharf

Golden Gate Bridge

Read it and weep!

Before & After: Our Dinner Party

Shane and I had the pleasure of hosting our friends Kennedy & Dan for dinner on Friday night.  Shane has been talking forever about cooking a huge beef tenderloin, but we've never had an excuse to do something so large (since we exclusively cook for two and neither of us particularly care for leftovers). 

Well, we finally decided to go for it and share it with our friends.  It was such a wonderful night of wine, amazing food, and lots of laughs.  I give you the before & after...

Before...

Shane is the master of meat

I am the master of décor

and After...

Nom nom nom nom....

Playing Tourist

Three weeks ago we had our very first visitors! Our friends from Florida, Buck & Sheena, came to stay with us for a few days (yes, that DOES mean that our guest room is finished which also means that yes, you CAN come visit now and yes, there WILL be a blog post with before & after photos coming soon!).  Some of these photos have already been on facebook and if you're one of our parents (hi moms and dads!) you've received printed copies as well, but for the rest of our readers, here's a few photos as we played tourist with our visiting friends!

Union Square

Chinatown

Chinatown

Embarcadero

Bay Bridge

Smiley faces

Ferry Building

Tulips at Fisherman's Wharf

Carousel at Pier 39

Alcatraz

Pier 39

Skyline, from Pier 39

Fisherman's Wharf

Golden State Warriors game

Silly faces