27 years ago on our honeymoon...haha...that looks like a cell phone in Jimmy's hand. Wonder what it is?

via Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/BeI5Q5klTdW/

Corgi cake for Jimmy from his team and managers at work.

Happy birthday, Jimmy!!
via Instagram http://ift.tt/2vz9nhl

4th of July in San Francisco...

don't forget your parka and don't be disappointed with the fireworks being obscured by the fog.
Happy 240th, America!
___
via Instagram http://ift.tt/29eGnNM

12.6 First Partay of the Holidays

Every year our dear friends host a fun Christmas Cookie party. I missed last year so this year despite rain, sleet or snow (haha), I wasn't going to miss it.


While there were many other guests, our core group of 5-6 families were all there this year, too.
These guys have known and worked with each other at least once over the past 20+ years. They've all moved around to different companies, but a few of them still work with each other. They're an amazing group of guys who not only share similar work ethics, but also have similar lifestyles. It's hard to find 1 person so compatible with another, but 6 is downright amazing.

12.1 Daily December

It's that time of the year again! The busiest time, but the time when we should try to remember what the season is all about.

You might recall that the Daily December idea was started several years ago by Ali Edwards as a way to document and remember the little details that happen during this month. I've done this on my blog for several years, though I didn't really follow through last year. I'm hoping to do a bit better this year. Admittedly, starting off is easy this time around because my 1st Christmas party was tonight.
I got together with my crafty friends. Every December we go out to dinner and exchange presents.

The tree and gingerbread house were at the Palace Hotel. I walk by the hotel almost every day. As I walked by today, I looked into the hotel and saw they had a stunning tree in the garden courtyard so I stepped in to enjoy the tree and take a few snapshots.

A fun start to the month!

11.28 Thankful

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!
We celebrated with 19 family and friends on a gorgeous, sunny day by the coast.

Our beautiful hosts served 3 kinds of pie: pumpkin, apple and pecan.

I couldn't decide, so I had a small piece of each, as many of us did.
Which one(s) would you choose?

Mazel Tov

We celebrated a big family event this weekend.

The oldest of the 3 nephews had his bar mitzvah.

What a huge event and amazing rite of passage.

It was our first bar mitzvah but not our last. 2 more to go after this.

Jimmy and his oldest brother had a part in the ceremony.

Two of Max's brothers came in from New York. Reggie had his 4 most influential uncles up there supporting him.

I can't express how grateful I am to be a part of this family, how much joy they bring to my heart and how much love I feel for them.

I was honored when they asked me to do Reggie's video montage. They showed it during the reception after the ceremony. It was a lot of fun compiling the photos and add music to it. It's a pretty simple video, but everyone seemed to enjoy it.

The Graduate

The second to the youngest niece is graduating in a couple of weeks. She's accomplished a lot during her high school career. She's the captain of the varsity basketball and volleyball teams, is ASB President and excelled in her AP Physics, Calculus and Literature classes. She's heading to college in the fall, getting her degree in Mechanical Engineering. We, especially Jimmy, being a programmer and software engineer, couldn't be prouder.

We live about 4 hours from them, so we only see them 2 or 3 times a year, usually on Christmas and/or Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving 2004.

Nikki has always been sporty, atheletic and adventurous. She's 10 here with her new motorized scooter that she got for Christmas.

Summer of 2007, she and her sister, along with their parents joined us for an amazing week at Camp Retz.

Her younger cousins, the 3 nephews, wanted to take her down. She was 13, they were, 4, 6 and 8 and didn't stand a chance.

Spring 2011.

Christmas 2013. She likes climbing trees!

Last fall when she shadowed Jimmy at his job for the day.

She's an incredible young lady with overflowing ambition and charisma. We can't wait to see where her path leads.

Color burst

237th

Happy 237th birthday, America! You look great for your age!

Thank you for growing and changing as you get older. Last week, I believe you had a wonderful growth spurt by ruling that DOMA and Prop 8 here in California is unconstitutional. Keep growing, changing and learning. It's what makes you become a better and stronger country. I'm so proud of you right now.
photo credit: From SFist taken by zoxcleb.

Happily Ever After

One of Jimmy's co-worker's got married this weekend. The weather didn't cooperate very well, but they expected that. After all, it is summer in San Francisco. It was foggy and wet but the festivities weren't dampened by the weather.

They had a simple but beautiful ceremony in Golden Gate Park. Their reception was totally how I'd do a wedding if I had a wedding in 2013. A lot of beautiful and colorful crafty, DIY decorations with tons of flowers everywhere. I was throughly impressed.
The Bride and Groom.




life sized jenga for friends and family to play.

Cornhole toss game with a profile of the bride and groom on each platform.

Instead of signing a guestbook, everyone signed a jenga tile so the couple would remember their guests whenever they played. Clever!!






Cheers!!


Confetti Wedding Cake! So fun!
Cotton candy and caramel popcorn for us to take home.

the joy of being an aunt. the 'joy' of being a homeowner.

It's a good year to be an aunt!

The 2nd oldest niece got married last weekend.
I made this card for her and her beloved earlier this month. Her husband's last name is very similar to ours. She joked about hyphenating her name. That's not at all awkward, lol!

Jimmy and I got this letter today from youngest Retzlaff nephew.
(click to make the photo larger)
How about that?? Can't wait till they all come up for our annual Camp Retz. The kids will finally get the loft all to themselves. Probably more important to their parents because they won't have to share a room with them. Ha!

Note from nephew...segues to finally being able to use the loft...segues to...another cabin remodel video. LOL. Yes, I'm on a video kick. So is Jimmy, he's putting them together, I'm putting them up to share.

This is a yucky part of the remodel. In order to get the deck approved for permits, we had to have our leach field completely redone. A major annoyance. It seemed to us that the old leach field was fine, but the type/style is no longer allowed, so whenever anyone rebuilds, they have to have their's redone. Anyhoo...Jimmy set up a webcam in one of our windows to take a snapshot every 5 minutes. Here's another time lapse video of the work the man did on Monday. It's short, about a minute. The first 20 seconds just shows the sun rising, which is totally cool to us, but you can skip to 20 seconds in to watch the guy start working. If that even interests you at all. We like being able to see what's going on especially since we can't be there in person to watch.
(didn't put music to this one. really. what music would be appropriate for something related to a septic system?).

Floating in Air

A bunch of us went to the Chabot Space and Science Center for Ninja Nephew's 7th birthday. We had the chance to float in a 'space station'.

or jump in front of an image of the space station and have a camera timed to take our photo at the exact right moment. But shhhhh don't tell anyone.

3.16 Stomping Around

Without ever getting into the car, we managed to cover a lot of ground today, too. But this time we stayed within our own stomping grounds and did almost all of it on foot.

Earlier this morning, I was crafting at my desk and heard some louder than normal noises on the street. So I peeked out the window and saw something I've never seen from my window before:
Horsies!!
The St. Patrick's Day Parade was today and they set up on our cross street. So we quickly got ready to go out and enjoy the festivities.

On our way to Market Street, we walked by many of the parade marchers. This handsome dog, a massive Irish Wolfhound, rested before he had to walk the 1.5 miles down Market Street to Civic Center. I'll share more photos from the parade soon.

After the parade, we went home for a few hours to do a few household duties. But we felt like going to North Beach for dinner.

We got takeout and sat on a bench at Washington Park with this view:
Saints Peter and Paul Church. It's a Roman Catholic Church that traces it's original foundation to 1884.

After dinner we walked to Fisherman's Wharf for dessert before heading home.

A perfect day in San Francisco.

3.13.13

13 totally random things for March 13th, 2013...

The last time I went to the Grand Canyon was in 1993.

Most of the family went...you may recognize Ashley since I've been posting about her a lot. The other girl is our niece from a different brother. She's getting married this year, too.

This "House on the Hill" is in the desert town I grew up in. It was built by the founder of the town. My mom was employed by the founder as a housekeeper and nanny and actually worked up there. The property, which is in extreme disrepair but includes 22 acres is for sale for $750,000. Any takers? {no.}

This is the church I went to every Sunday until I was 14.

My best friend from elementary school through high school also got married on March 9th. But 6 years go.

Her twin boys from a previous marriage graduate this year. I can't believe they're already 17. They were only 13 in this photo.

I miss my wisteria tree in San Jose.

I also miss my kitty.

Spring!!

Sometimes I still have to pinch myself to make sure that we really do live in this amazing city. In one of those buildings.

Ashley is with her beloved on this same island right now. Photo from 2006.

Anyone watching House of Cards on Netflix? Or Homeland on Showtime? Great shows that are based in Washington DC. Photo from 2005.

Ashley's husband is from Chicago. And it's almost St. Patrick's Day. Chicago does St. Patrick's Day right. There's definitely Irish blood in her husband's lineage. Her new last name, after all, is Mrs. Kelly.

-Out!