Celebrating Daddy-o in the Best Way

Daddy-o had a birthday this week and while his birthday was a day full of school and work, we surprised him with a pizza crawl in San Francisco scheduled for the weekend. I picked 4 places that offered pizza by the slice in 3 different neighborhoods to try and we had a fabulous day!

Besides the pizza, we also walked around a little between places (had to keep our appetites up so we weren't forcing pizza down by the end, haha.) It was an absolutely gorgeous day and we started in the neighborhood south of Golden Gate Park (Inner Sunset) and then went to the Mission District, so we walked over to Delores Park for the views. Also stopped by the Dog Eared Books for bit and picked up Amy Tan's Backyard Bird Chronicles for me (I offered to buy Daddy-o and birthday book, but he declined so I figured I should get me a book, haha.)

Exploring those two areas took all afternoon so it was basically dinner by the time we headed to North Beach for the final two spots. We had saved Tony's for this point because it gets such high ratings so I figured we shouldn't start with what was likely going to be the best pizza. And it was really good pizza.

And then we went to Golden Boy which was the most unique style of pizza of the day (more of a deep dish, where the other three were thin crust.)  We grabbed some amazing gelato to finish off the night before we headed home.

We didn't eat any bad pizza the whole day. Arizmendi Bakery only has one flavor a day, and the mushroom with ginger and sesame oil was surprisingly delicious (and the scone we got to split was delicious!) Tony's had an amazing veggie pizza with so many toppings and great, floppy, NY style crust, Golden Boy was good, but the overall winner was Hi Hat! Daddy-o loved the spicy vodka and thought the crust was the best we had all day, and their other pizzas flavors were so good, too.

The best part is that there are still so many pizza places to try so we can do this again! (And Tony is opening a new place in Livermore, so maybe we'll need to do this with a few of our local places when that happens, although I can only think of one other place that does pizza by the slice.)

Happy Birthday, Daddy-o! 

Spring Break, Part 1

We got one kid home for Spring Break--with their breaks not lining up this year, we decided to do more stay-cation things. The boys spent a Saturday afternoon playing baseball down at the church field,

And found this cute frog (which is why they were all on the ground when I walked down after the online conference I was watching with friends.)

It is definitely spring around here!

So many beautiful flowers.

We don't really need to go anywhere to enjoy it.

We did spend one day over in SF with Bug, and lucked out with the best weather. Warm and completely clear with views of the bridge everywhere we turned.

We mostly walked around the Presidio, checking out the Tunnel Tops area (which we'd never been to before) and revisiting some favorites like Chrissy Field,

and the Palace of the Fine Arts.

We got to do a few miles of walking around, found a good pizza place near the Lucasfilm campus, and then left in time to stop at a new place on the way home.

The lookout on Yerba Buena Island had great views.

And the story of the Port Chicago 50 which I'd never heard of before. Always interesting to learn more local history, even if it's usually not pretty.

And we spent a couple more days up in the mountains,

 first skiing with our homeschool group for one last day at Dodge Ridge.

And then we stayed in the van that night

 so we could go to the Railtown 1897 State Park in Jamestown the next morning. I'd been wanting to visit this place since we moved back. It was fun to learn about the history of this spot, which stretches from early trains during the Gold Rush time period to extensive movie making until 2000.

We took a tour of the round house and got to hear stories about all the trains that have been used for different movies over the years.

Peanut got his Jr. Ranger badge, and then it was time to head home so we could start Spring Break Part 2, with all the kids!

Full Day of Adventuring

We got one more hike in--as a family and with friends. We did the 3rd Pantoll Quad hike, and this was our favorite so far. So much hiking through redwood forest along side a raging creek. We had postponed this hike from yesterday because of the rain, which ended up coming late and it was still raining when we were in the parking lot. The wet drive over had all of us questioning if this was going to be a miserable hike, but instead, we had a dark, drippy forest, but no actual rain once we started hiking.

The views of the ocean were beautiful.

We found about a dozen different types of mushrooms.

And several banana slugs!

I love the tiny ones.

And any that are red. I didn't take pictures of as many as I would have liked--one of the hazards of hiking with friends. I just save the mushroom hunts for when we're with a smaller group.

The creek was so pretty--so much water!

One of the highlights of this loop was the ladder, for sure. We'd hiked down the Dipsea Trail stairs--hundreds of steps leading down the mountain, and then had to climb back out, but part of the climb was on this ladder.

Then, after eating lunch back at the Pantoll Campground, we said goodbye to our friends who all had to get back for various things, and we drove into the city for a little more adventuring. I wanted to check out a couple of beaches so we could see the big waves that had come with this series of storms.

And see the view of the Golden Gate Bridge from Baker Beach. We usually go to the east side of the bridge, or the overlook on the Marin county side--I don't think I've ever been to Baker Beach before.

We even got a family shot! I need to start collecting these so maybe I'll have some fun ones to use on a Christmas card next year. We always get to November and I realize we don't have any good photos of all 5 of us.

Or maybe these will be our new family photos to document our adventures. I'm kind of loving them.

On the way back from the beach, we passed this bunker and stopped to play for a few minutes.

The kids love taking album cover photos. They actually have named their "band"--Hippies with Shotguns--and have a whole story about their rise to fame and selling out to the man, complete with album names and song titles for each one. It's hilarious.

Found another banana slug on the hill above the beach.

And more cute little mushrooms.

I'm so excited that it is mushroom season. I know that embracing winter in the Bay Area doesn't mean a whole lot since our average highs are still in the 50s, but the fact that winter also brings all the rain, and mushrooms, has made it so easy for me to fall in love with the season. I used to hate fall and the shortening of the daylight because it reminded me that winter was coming, but I think I'm over that now.

Another great view of the bridge, from China Beach. We went looking for a swing, but if it was ever there, it isn't anymore (and I didn't really see where a swing would be hung in the area marked on the map, so who knows.)

And then we drove over to the Fairmont hotel. We got so lucky with a parking space just a couple blocks away, and on the top of the hill so we didn't have to do anymore hills. After all of the hiking (we'd probably done 6-7 miles of mostly hills at this point) , everyone was feeling it and pretty much done with elevation changes.

We'd all brought a change of clothes so we didn't have to tramp through the hotel lobby in muddy hiking boots and pants. I always feel under-dressed as it is in there.

We were mainly there for the gingerbread house. It's always so impressive.

It wasn't designed to walk through this year, but it was huge and even had a room inside with a table where you can have dinner. It's a $500 reservation fee and still has a minimum cost per person.

We went out to the roof top garden, 

and enjoyed the view.

Such a full day. As we drove home, and it got dark, we felt like it was the middle of the night, and then realized it was only 5:30, haha. Busy winter days fly by.

de Young Art Museum and SF Fun

Some friends invited us to the de Young museum today and even though we were planning to come to the city on Friday afternoon, too, Bean, Peanut and I decided we had nothing else going on so we joined them for a couple of hours.

Bean had been talking about a scale of how you do museums, from 1-5 with 5 being a quick walk-through/no reading, and 1 being Bug, haha, meaning you want to read and study everything there (which to be fair, he's only like this in science and nature type museums, not art). Bean is a 1 or 2 in the art museums, 

most of the rest of the kids are not, haha. 

After we finished inside, the three of us wandered around the park for a little bit.

We found the tunnel that leads to a playground we had visited with other friends a long time ago.

And found some wildlife over by Stowe Lake.

It was pretty drizzly or we would have walked farther,

but we found a new duck (Moscovy)

and some really pretty Mallards.

Glad these two will adventure with me.

And then we came home for some cozy reading while it rained outside. Poor Bug had to miss out on this one because he is in the last days of college apps, but the end is in sight and he wanted to be free for the fun we had planned later in the week, so he had a quiet house to work in.