Happy belated birthday to the best dad and fiance anyone could ask for. Ezzy and I are so lucky to have you and we love you so much. Cheers to another year of adventure and firsts (first house!), and I can't wait to see what this year holds for us.
Since mine and Joe's birthdays are so close together and in the summer, we like to celebrate with a mini getaway. Our very first getaway was to Vegas, last year's was Santa Barbara, and this year we chose San Francisco. Since that entails a 7-8 hour drive, we actually spent a good amount of time on both of our birthdays driving. On our way home from San Francisco, Joe dropped Ez and I off at my parent's house in Modesto, and continued back to So Cal on his own, which means we didn't get to do dinner on his actual birthday. We made up for that by celebrating on Saturday night.
On Joe's bday wishlist? Shrimp sandwiches & Ghirardelli sundaes. Check. And check. We got his sandwich and my fish and chips from a little stand at Fisherman's Wharf and then ate standing on a pier with an amazing view of the sun setting over the bridge with a bunch of sail boats docked right in front of us and a couple of seagulls edging in on our food. It doesn't get much more San Francisco than that.
But I'm a little ahead of myself. Rewind to earlier in the day - after our Golden Gate Bridge hike we bought ourselves a little picnic and took a cab to the Golden Gate Park to meet up with my dear friend who was so sweet to brave the city traffic along with her two kids and meet us for an afternoon in the park.
In all my times visiting SF, I don't recall ever visiting the park. It is beautiful - like a little oasis in the middle of the city. Except that it's actually huge. We only covered a small portion of it, including: a lake (there are several), an island, a waterfall, two playgrounds, and several little paths that were pretty but not going the direction we intended too.
Ezzy loved playing with his new buddies and collecting every stick or leaf he came across. He did not love the swings (as usual). There were two kids a little older than him having a blast on the swings, and we thought maybe if we put him on the swings he'd pick up on the fact that they're supposed to be fun from his cheerful neighbors. Nope. He was the one stony-faced killjoy on that swing set. Not sure what the swings ever did to him, but he's not letting go of that grudge easily.
After the park we endured the cab ride from hell to get back to the wharf for the bday dinner mentioned above. Joe and I were both white-knuckled and holding our breath when we finally made it out of that cab alive. The driver was making his own lanes on already narrow, extremely steep streets so that we were playing chicken with oncoming traffic, and trolleys, and pedestrians...you get the point. It was scary.
After dinner and sundaes it was already dark, so we called it a night. The next morning we packed up and went back to Pier 39 for some mini doughnuts and coffee, followed by a little shopping. Then we were back on the road headed for mine and Ezzy's next adventure: a whirlwind Modesto trip visiting with dozens of family and friends. More on that to come.
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