Japanese Garden at Golden Gate Park

Across the street from the California Academy of Sciences was the Japanese Tea Garden. It was very beautiful and serene! We even had an afternoon tea. I had jasmine tea and Trevor had green tea.

We also found an example of the kind of bamboo we'd like the in atrium of the house we are in the process of purchasing.

California Academy of Sciences

Today, Trevor and I went to the California Academy of Sciences. This place is awesome! If you ever have a chance to visit San Francisco, this is a place you must visit. Great educational fun for all ages.

There's a 4 story rain forest dome. It's so cool! When you first walk in, you immediately feel the humidity in the air and see beautiful birds and butterflies fluttering across the dome.

There are also leaf cutting ants. It's so cool! You can see the ants actually cutting leaves and carrying them down. These are are super cool. There are parasite flies that lays eggs on the ants while they are transporting leaves, because the leaf blocks part of the ant's vision. So they actually have what are appropriately called guard ants that stand on the leaves and defend off the parasite flies.

Then there are exhibits about CO2, climate warming, sustainable living, and how you can reduce your carbon foot print. The California Academy Sciences building is LEED certified. The building utilizes many different technologies to be environmentally friendly:

- It has radiant floor heating - there are tubes under the concrete floor running warm water to heat the building
- It is insulated with recycled denim
- It has floor to ceiling glass walls and sky lights to utilize the sun light
- The roof has solar energy panels that provide up to 10% of the Academy's electricity needs prevent the release of 405,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emission into the air
- The roof is also a living roof - it house 1.7 million native California plants; this also helps to keep the building cool.

It has a gorgeous aquarium where you can learn about and visit Nemo, Dory, and friends. They can be found in the Philippine Coral Reef exhibit.

There's also a planetarium, which we were able to visit. You have to get there early and stand in line to get tickets. It is a free showing, but with limited seats. The tickets are given out on a first come first serve basis. Trevor and I arrived there at about 9:40am but we didn't want to spend half an hour waiting in line. We wanted to get right to the exploring.

It's just a lot of fun! I highly recommend it! =) Even the website has a lot of good information.

Valentine's Day!

So for Valentine's day, Grace and I went for a hike in the mountains in a place called "Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve." You can see where we started here. It was a bit cold and rainy, but fun!

The walk started through some grassy hills, and after winding around a bit the trail took us through some cool looking forests.


Most of the trees were covered with this damp mossy stuff that held a bunch of water. The trees were soggy, and even when the rain wasn't falling, the trees would drip down about the same amount of water.


When the sun would come out, the water evaporated off of the trees, and from a distance it looked like smoke rising from the forest.


We found a sign warning of the dangers of the forest...


IF ATTACKED, FIGHT BACK. Good advice.



Some of the trees were friggin' huge! (although Grace probably isn't a good reference to show how tall something is)


We found what looked like deer tracks in the mud. Maybe we'll find some wildlife nearby?


There were some really pretty views along the trail. We were surrounded by grassy hills, and and some points we had an awesome view of the San Francisco Bay.


Oh no! A Mountain Lion attacked Grace!


So I fought back! Eat it, Nature!


And we made it back in time for our Valentine's Day dinner reservation at this great little place in downtown Mountain View called Vaso Azzurro, which was delicious!

Coraline

We went out with Trevor's friends from work. We had dinner at Mahoo's Fish Tacos which has really good tacos and cheap beer (which I did not have the pleasure of tasting). Then we watched the movie Coraline. It's a great movie! I don't think it's appropriate though for children under 7 years of age at least. I was surprised at how scary it was. I really enjoyed it! =) It was fun a night! =)

You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover

Judgements...

Since I first started driving I have a nasty habit of leaving my keys in my car. Every time I get out of the car I deliberately take my keys out place them in my purse or back pocket and take a mental note (or at least I try to). Yesterday...I locked my keys in the car. Thank God Trevor decided to take the spare key with him to work. Otherwise we'd be in a pretty pickle. What's funny is Trevor said that morning I'll just take this in case you never know. Ever since we moved to CA I've had this feeling that something like this might happen so I've tried to be very cautious. But alas, things happen.

Today we are making steaks for dinner. I went to the courtyard yesterday to see if the grills were working. I check grill #1 and the flame is so low I think it's not working. So I move on to grill #2. I follow the instructions careful to keep my body back and VOOSH! Flames at least a foot high spurt from the grill. "Wow!," I think, "That was awfully close to my face." So I decide to go tell management about the broken grill #1. He shows me that grill #1 is actually working and is their newest model. He gives me a tip to turn it on an hour before we're ready to grill so it is warm enough. I thank him and go back to the apartment. I walk in the bathroom and the front part of my hair is FRIED! As some of you know my hair is very short now, chin length (I cut off at least 10 inches and donated it to Locks of Love). So seeing the front part of my hair fried made me start to tear up. After I got over the initial shock, I cut off the burnt parts of my hair. Luckily it wasn't a whole lot that got fried.

Something that was reiterated to me yesterday is...You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover.

I thought yesterday was going to be absolutely horrible. I was late getting dinner ready. My hair caught on fire. I locked my keys in my car. But it actually turned out to be a really good day. Dinner was worth the wait. It was only my hair that got burnt and not my face. My hair will grow and no surgery and huge medical bills will be incurred. Trevor had the spare car key with him. God was looking out for us yesterday. And at the end of the day when I checked my email...our wedding photos were ready!!! =) Yay!!! =)

Moving Adventure

Hi Guys!
As you may know, Trevor got a job in Sunnyvale, CA (near San Jose). This past weekend, I helped him move. Here's a recount of our awesome adventure!

The first day of traveling we drove to San Diego to visit our favorite restaurant Sammy's!

We had a 3 favorite dishes: duck tacos, 4 onion soup, and goat cheese pizza! Mmm...delicious!!! =) We had an awesome time!!! =) Exhausted though from the 6 hour drive.

The second day we drove from San Diego to Sunnyvale. We stopped by this cute restaurant for lunch called Anderston's Pea Soup. The soup was really good! It was a really cute local restaurant!

Then we drove to the apartment W.L. Gore (the company Trevor works for) provided for us. After 8 long hours of driving and we finally reached our destination.
Here are some pix of the apartment...it's awesome!

The Main Building

Yay! The Front Door! Looks good so far!


The living room. There's a desk next to the armoire where Trev put his computer.

The dining table was already set for two when we walking into the apartment


The kitchen. There were two bottles of water waiting for us in the fridge.

The Balcony


The view


The Bedroom. It has a tv, dresser, his and her closets, and a king size bed. They even gave us extra sheets and towels!


The bathroom. It's like a hotel! There were sample size soap bars, shampoo, lotion, and conditioner!

After moving all the boxes up from his car we went looking for dinner. There's a Mill Ave (but better) like street called Castro. It's awesome! It's about a or two mile from the apartment. We ate at a cute Mexican restaurant. Some of the other kinds of restaurants: Filipino, Italian, Thai, Chinese, Greek. There's a ton of fun stuff!

After our delicious dinner we went grocery shopping! Crazy! California taxes you twice on your bottles and cans! You get it back when you take the cans to a recycling center. For groceries and other essentials (shampoo, Kleenex, Tylenol, toilet paper, laundry detergent, etc) our total was $250! That's crazy! But hopefully it won't always be that expensive. You don't always have to buy those essentials every time you go grocery shopping.

It was a grueling two days of travel! The drive from San Diego to San Jose was beautiful; we drove by the shoreline. There were so many vineyards on the way too! It was awesome! =) The apartment looks great! It was a lot of fun.
It was sad parting on Sunday. But we'll see each other in 2 weeks. This will definitely be an interesting time in our lives!

Stay tuned for more adventures!
Soon to be Posted....Nancy and Adam's Wedding Reception!