House guests with kids

Dean, Steph and Aidan have just visited for 2 weeks – having a child to visit meant we had to adjust the schedule, dragging everyone around coffee shops was not really an option! Here’s the only photo from the trip with all 5 of us in it and it’s a great photo!

On this trip I realized that Dean and I have been bestest friends for more than half my life – quite a special milestone!

• We all went to a San Francisco Giants baseball game the day after they arrived.

• We visited the Ferry Building and it became a bit of a regular day trip for them when we were at work for ice-cream and coffee.

• The Mister and I slept in on a pull out couch and lived out of a suitcase – but I could see the Bay Bridge lights as I fell asleep every night.

• I had a long lunch hour at the shops with Steph – she’s quite a good shopper and even took one of those large mesh bags around a shoe shop for when you clearly intend on buying more than one pair of shoes!

• 4th July picnic and Golden Gate Park, homemade burgers (including vegetarian patties) and fireworks.

• Had cars and noise and hundreds and thousands and finger prints all through the house.

• Napa day trip for the boys with me as their sober driver – burgers for breakfast, coffee break in Yountville, wine and picnic lunch and meat tray for dinner.

• Day trip to the outlet mall for the girls while the boys went to Santa Cruz to play on the beach and go to the movies. There’s no food at outlet malls so we ate peanut butter rolls I’d taken in my handbag and to fight off caffeine headaches we subjected ourselves to (get ready for it) Starshudderbucks – Steph was disgusted by her iced coffee that was just a bucket-o-cold black coffee with ice in it and my latte with an extra shot tasted like savaloy water. Awful.

• Dean changed the batteries in all our smoke alarms after we were woken one night to the flat battery beep.

• Got a sitter and enjoyed a night out at a vegetarian/vegan restaurant with a view of the Bay Bridge. I even wore shoes that didn’t require socks!

• Visited an extremely large Toys R Us out in the ‘burbs.

• Very foggy day the one time we went especially to see the Big Orange Bridge.

• Did the Muir Woods and Sausalito circuit.