Kayaking down Duval St.

Why drive when you can kayak?! On our second day in Key West it poured rain all day. It only does this about 5 times a year. But when it does, the streets and parking lots are flooded with water. This picture was taken on Duval street in front of our store. The street literally looks like a river.

WE MADE IT!!

We are in Key West!! We have crammed as much as we possibly could into the last few weeks. We left San Francisco at about 6pm on Sunday the 6th and drove through the night to Idaho to visit my family for a few days. This was supposed to be a 10 hour drive and turned into a 16 HOUR DRIVE. We hit a snow storm and had to get chains put on and then could only drive about 30mph. It was miserable, but worth it in the end. We arrived in Idaho at 10am Monday morning. It was so great to be home and see family. We had a little Christmas with them decorated the tree and opened presents.

From there we drove to Logan UT. It was so fun to see some friends and spend time with Chris's side of the family. While we were there we bought a new car.

Its a Toyota highlander. We needed an SUV (for all of our stuff) and Toyota is a good reliable car that will still get decent gas mileage. It's actually quite a comical story. We had been looking at cars in San Francisco online so when we got to Utah Chris had a few he wanted to go see. We had been looking and looking and hadn't really found anything. Then on our last day in Logan we went to General Motors. Chris's friend Nate works there so he was able to give us a pretty good deal. We bought the car and right there in the dealership started unloading all the stuff we had brought from San Francisco out of our Lexus and some additional stuff we were bringing to Key West that was in our Jeep all into our new Toyota. Haha! I am sure we were quite the site to be seen. We took off right from the dealership to begin our journey to key west, fl. We had about 27,000 miles ahead of us.

Chris is such a trooper he pretty much drove the entire way. We drove till Kansas City where we stopped for the night. The next day we drove to Mississippi where one of my best friends Erin lives. We stayed the night with them and spent half of the day hanging out and relaxing.

Here are a few videos of us all playing with Erin's little boy Owen. He is so cute!!

The next two days we spent in Florida. We stayed in Tallahassee the first night and in Ft. Lauderdale the second night. We shopped and ate lunch in Miami and then started the 3 hour drive along the Florida Keys. We are now getting settled into our apartment and learning our way around the island.

OVO (Ostentatious Vixens O-my)

Cirque Du Soleil came to San Francisco!  The three of us went to see the show together.  The show was called OVO and the theme was insects. It was amazing! I still can't believe how they pull of the stunts and tricks they do.  The whole time I was thinking, "how is that even humanly possible?!"

They set up the tent at AT&T park!

At intermission we played around trying on hats and masks.

The whole evening was epic.  It was the last night the three of us would spend together.

Adaline and I said goodbye to Kiera as her brother came to pick her up to go to Utah for her brother's wedding. Chris and I will be leaving on Sunday for Boise, Utah and then our next adventure in Key West.  So we wont see Kiera when she gets back.   Kiera is going to be taking over as manager here in San Francisco, we want to wish all the success to her and the store.   You will be greatly missed!!

Tourist for a Day

Kiera and I had the day off together.  We decided it would be fun to play tourist and take lots of pictures of EVERYTHING.  We walked all over town. Our first stop was at this cute little park.

I am a chocolate fanatic so I was pretty excited about this!

San Francisco is known for its fabulous farmers markets.  Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday there is a big farmers market down at the ferry building.  These are fun cause there is always a unique variety of items for sale and lots of free delicious samples.  Then inside the ferry building there are lots of cute shops and fun places to eat, so we had lunch there.

Picture on market street with interesting statue. I did say we took pics of everything.

Such a typical Kiera pose!  I adore this silly girl! It makes me laugh everytime I look at it.

Union Sqaure a must see in San Fran!

And of course you can't go to San Fran without going SHOPPING!!

Here I am playing where's Aubrey.  Do you think I stick out against all these gorgeous manikins with dark features?

 Cable cars are a classic tourist attraction.  Oooops missed it! Dang, I guess we will have to walk home.

Violated

WHAT PROPELS PEOPLE TO STEAL?  Seriously, some people are so selfish.  Don't they realize how there actions affect other people?  I don't get it.  Last Friday our apartment was broken into.  I didn't write about it in the last post because I want to remember that weekend as being so fun and all the great things we did with people we love so much.  Not as the weekend our apartment was broken into and how scared and violated I felt. 
If you read the previous post it happened sometime between when we left to go to the movie and when we came home after a late lunch/dinner.  So it happened in the middle of the day, sometime between 11-4.  The thing that really upsets me is that it is most likely someone who lives in our building.  There is 24 hour security guards for our building, everything is locked, you have to have a key to get into the building, and then a seperate key for each apartment.  We are on the fourth floor.  So my question is why us?  Were we the only ones who didn't lock the deadbolt that day.?  We keep kicking ourselves about that.  Don't get me wrong our door was locked but not the deadbolt. We usually lock it especially at night but because of all the security we didn't feel the need to lock ALL the time.  But if we had locked the deadbolt whoever broke in most likely wouldn't have been able to.  Stupid, Stupid!
When we discovered the mishap Chris's mom Lisa and Jeff were with us.  Chris walked in and the first thing he asked me was if I had my keys and I was like ya they are right here.  Well where is my Xbox 360? I told him I didn't know.  We both looked at each other like this was supossed to be some kind of joke.  Then I realized the laptop was gone.  We started to panick.  Did someone really break in?  We went to exaimine the front door, sure enough there was a big dent in in the door.  It looked like someone had used a screwdriver or sometype of really thin knife strong enough to wedge into the door and get the door open.  We then began to look if anything else was missing.  Sure enough a bunch of Chris's games, a case of about 100 DVDs, a duffle bag (which the person probably used to lug away all our stuff), and our checkbook.  Chris went down to the apartment office and talked to the security guards and we called the police.  They were pretty quick coming over, they made a report, exaimed the damage, and looked for prints.  But other that there really wasn't anything that could be done. 
It was a horrible feeling.  Knowing someone we didn't know had been in our place, looking through our stuff.  I hated the fact that this person had our computer and our checkbook, he knew what we looked like, our names, our bank account and who knows what else.  We changed all our passwords to emails and online accounts.  We went to our bank and cancelled our account.   We tried to think of anything that he could possibly learn and use. There wasn't anything else that could be done, at least not that night so, do we sit at home the rest of the night feeling sorry for ourselves and let it ruin our great weekend.  Nope.  We had tickets for the basketball game so we still went. Needless to say we always use our deadbolt and will not be making that mistake again.

A weekend with Jeff and Lisa

  Last weekend Chris's mom Lisa and her husband Jeff came out to visit.  We had a ton of fun with them.  They flew in Thursday night.  Chris went and picked them up from the airport.  Lisa was such a trooper all weekend, she had been sick and was just kinda starting to get over it.  Their flight got in late so Chris took them to their hotel so they could go to bed early.  I on the other hand went to the Mat Kearney concert with Kiera.

It was a great concert.  I wouldn't say I was a huge fan of his before the concert. I went for Kiera (she's in love with him).  After seeing him live I must admit he is quite "dreamy".  We both bought some Mat Kearney fan wear afterward.  We were so hyper and silly when we got home.  Chris didn't even know what to do with us.

On Friday we woke up early and had breakfast with Jeff and Lisa at their hotel. Then we went and saw the movie The Box at the theater.  It was a pretty lame movie.  I wouldn't recomend it.  After the movie we went to dinner at Bubba Gumps.  I love that place, soooo good. That night we went to the Golden State game in Oakland.  They played the Clippers.  I don't have any pics from it, but Chris and I actually went to the Golden State vs Memphis game the Wednesday before so here are a few pics from that game.

We had some great seats on the 11th row.

At half time they had these guys come and do tricks as they dunked the ball after jumping on a trampoline.  It was cool and looked like fun.

Allen Iverson, Chris's Favorite BB player.

Saturday we went on a tour to Alcatraz Island.  This the view of the city from the boat.

This is Alcatraz island!

View of the City from the island.

In Alcatraz Prison.  If you can't read the sign it says "break the rules and you go to prison, break the prison rules and you go to Alcatraz."

It was so interesting to learn about the history of the island and the prison. They do a great job with the tour. 

On the boat ride back to the city with a view of the Bay Bridge.

Sunday, we went to the 49er game.  It was the best weather.  I swear it was like 80 degrees. We wish the 49ers would have won, but it was a close game. After the game we all went to dinner and then dropped Lisa and Jeff off at the airport.   Thanks for such a fun weekend you guys.  We love you!

Dinner and Ballet

Thursday night Chris and I went to the ballet.  For dinner I made Greek-Spiced Baked Shrimp over rice.  We also discoverd a new favorite drink cranberry and orange juice mixed.  Go try it you will love it.

Chris enjoying his first bite.  YUMmmmmmm.

Our view of the stage.  I actually really liked these seats, dead center, far enough away you couldn't see the sweat dripping off the dancers but close enough to see facial expressions and pointed feet.  The Ballet was called The MOROCCAN Project.  It was a contemporary ballet danced by the Alonzo King Lines Ballet Company.  I have seen them once before when they were on tour in Jackson, WY.  The company is based in San Francisco and they are most talented dancers I have ever seen

 

In the mood for dancing.

Opera and Fondue

Wednesday night Kiera and I went to our first Opera in the Opera house.  Instead of going out to dinner we decided to make dinner together at home.  The dish we made was called Roast Pumpkin with Cheese Fondue.  It was really rich, made with gormet cheeses and tasted delicious. 

So you actually clean out the pumpkin and fill it with the bread and cheese fondue and then bake it all together in the oven.  The pumpkin flesh gets really tender and is surprisingly delightful to the taste buds.  Unfortunately, the pumpkin was shaped a little lopsided and the fondue ended up spilling out the side.  It looked like the pumpkin regurgitated all over the pan. 

This is the view from our seats.  The entire building is beautiful.   The Opera was called the Daughter of the Regimant.  It was light hearted, facetious, and had a happy ending.

So we both suffer slightly from ADD and got bored during intermission.  We tried entertaining ourselves by pretending to pose as Opera singers.  This was our best attempt.

Here we are pretending to be normal again. It was fun to get dolled up and go out.

Pumpkin Pandemonium

Last Sunday Pier 39 (where our store is located) had a big Halloween celebration. They called it the WICKED Pumpkin Pandemonium. There were tons activities going on all day, and kids could come trick-or-treating at all the participating stores.  So of course we were involved.   Kiera, Adaline and I got together and made Halloween decore for the store including painting these fun pumpkins. 

(Chris and Adaline working in the store)

All of us girls went shopping at some of the local thift shops and put together these creative custumes.

(Puss n Boots, Mulan, Peter Pan)

(Chris and a trick-or-treator)

Our store was asked to offer Free Nail Polish Paintings at a booth in the front of the Pier.  We had a great turnout.  There was a constant line of adorable little girls all waiting to get there nails painted by Mulan or Peter Pan.  We were asked all day if people could get their picture taken with us.  It was the funest day of work ever.  I love my job!

Half Moon Bay

This is Half Moon Bay.  We spent the day here on our day off last week.  It was a really pretty drive all along the coast. 

 

We stopped to watch the surfers.

We walked around the downtown strip.  It was full of really cute and unique shops.

This was in a really neat antique shop.  Thay had everything. Chris had the camera and he went a little crazy following me around taking pictures of me everywhere.  I felt like I had my own personal papaprazzi. Some the pics are pretty funny and really random.

Chris was pretty excited to get a photo with Marilyn Monroe.

He was in a silly mood that day.