friends & family

well, we have returned! november has been an absolutely crazy month, and i cannot even express how grateful i am for all of the wonderful things we've experienced thus far.

keaner beaner's birthday celebration kicked off the month with all of his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in attendance. the little man hit the jackpot of toys, and now our family room can hardly contain them. we celebrated our miracle. our crazy, amazing, unexpected miracle. 

then, no less than one week later we headed out west. we visited friends outside of seattle and had a grand time hanging out with them and their two kiddos, hiking in the olympics, and spending time in seattle. there is absolutely nothing like hanging out with your best friend, and thankfully our families get along super well. we had a blast!

from there we hopped a plane down to san francisco, and made the trek out to fresno to visit my uncle and his partner. my uncle took thursday and friday off from work, and took us to both yosemite, and king's canyon. talk about breathtaking! we saw views that you wouldn't believe unless you had seen them yourself. and we got to see the nation's christmas tree, and many other giant sequoias. and when i say giant sequoias, i mean giant. one of them was 40 feet in diameter. for reference, that's 8 of me. just the diameter! i hesitate to even post pictures of some of these things because they do not come anywhere remotely close to doing them justice… 

we also got to go to the forestiere underground gardens in fresno. i had never heard of them prior to being in fresno, but this was also incredibly impressive. an immigrant from sicily came to fresno to be a citrus farmer, but hated the oppressive summer heat, so he dug down through the rock and built himself an underground home, and planted trees under the hard pan [rock] where there was actually good soil. the tops of the trees grew through skylights, and he would go up to ground level to harvest the fruit. not to mention the fact that he did all of it by himself, and by hand. i cannot adequately explain how cool this place is, but you can check out their website here.

this is a photo of the dining room table.
it used to have a dwarf orange tree growing in the middle of it...

after fresno we headed back into san francisco for the day before taking the red eye home on sunday night. [more on that not-so-good parenting decision later…] we packed quite a lot into our day in san francisco. we started by crossing the bridge from oakland into san francisco, and then proceeded to make our way through town, along the water, and over to the iconic golden gate bridge. instead of paying to park and all of those shenanigans though, we went down the hill to the old fort point at the bottom, and took our pictures of the golden gate, alcatraz, and the skyline from there. for free. we walked through the sculpture garden, sat on the beach for a little while, grabbed lunch from a one-off bagel shop, and walked through golden gate park for a while. we watched a baseball game while eating our lunch, and then peeked in the japanese tea garden, and let keane enjoy the playground for a bit.

then we headed over to fisherman's wharf where we grabbed a few souvenirs. after fisherman's wharf we made our way to union square where i ogled all of the shoes in barneys, and tried out tory burch's new fragrance in bloomingdale's.

from there we took the cable car up to the top of the hill - keane loved it! - and then got off and found our car. before heading out of town we drove the one block section of lombard street that is crazy windy and has a killer view.

{via san francisco diarystar}

ah, yes, and then there was our flight home. suffice it to say, we were the people whom everyone hated on that flight. keane took about an hour and a half to actually calm down and go to sleep. he wasn't screaming the whole time, and actually fell asleep for about 10 minutes toward the beginning of the flight, but then decided wreaking havoc would be the more appropriate way to go. at one point i was sitting on the floor in between the seats, and i just started crying because i couldn't comfort him and get him to sleep. ugh. it was an ugly moment.

he finally fell asleep for the rest of the flight, but him sleeping in my lap did not make it so easy for me to sleep, so i didn't… and when we got to charlotte, he woke up because of the noise and movement, and started screaming again.

yeah, we're not taking a red eye with kids again. ever.

other than that though, we thoroughly enjoyed our trip!

i tend to reflect while on trips, and away from the normal everyday hullabaloo, so i'll be sharing some of the direct results of that reflection over the course of the next days and weeks. it's just too much to put in here!

hope you've had a good first half of november [or two-thirds…] *wink*

xo