11.11.11

Tak had a big birthday this year on 11.11.11. Luckily, no major quarter-life crisis.

To celebrate, I took him to see Cirque du Soleil Totem in SF.

We love Cirque (almost as much as Jenny)!

In the tent

A birthday toast

I took these sneaky pictures inside before the show started! BA.

Then, during the intermission, I tried out some items in the gift shoppe.

It was FABULOUS!

On the big day (11.11.11), we went to a friend's wedding in Livermore.

Aren't we cute?

Benjy was there too! He was very dressed up.

The bride and groom, Richard and Lisa.

Here are a few post-birthday things that have happened:

We made falafel again. It was delicious, as usual.

We took some senior pix of Alena in this big chair at Ikea. She's back in the East Bay now, hooray!

Napalicious

Last weekend, we were off to Napa again! First stop was Turnbull (thanks Mom!), where they also had a new photo exhibit.

As a super special bonus, Jeff and Manisha joined us!

Chillin with my wine.

We took some fall-themed glam shots at Charles Krug.

And I found this chic beret at Grgich.

It was barrels of fun (eh eh eh)!

Kansas City

Last week, I went to Kansas City for a project at work. On the way, we flew past Lake Tahoe.

Dale lives near where we were staying and he graciously offered to take me and my coworkers out for a deeeeelicious BBQ dinner! 

 It was the highlight of the trip.

We also did a (driving) tour of the Plaza (it was really raining) and saw this fountain! Did you know Kansas City is the city of fountains??

The fancy (not) sign they put out to welcome us.

My coworkers getting serious in the training room.

We stopped at the Legends Outlet Mall, which had legendary Dorothy marking the parking lot.

Plus a yellow brick road!

More legends.

Photo shoot!

I found this local brew at the airport and enjoyed it as a farewell to KC.

Then it was back to SF, where we got to deplane with these airplane steps. Exciting!

GO BEARS

A couple of weekends ago, we busted out our Cal gear and headed to a game at AT&T park.

I took this artistic shot of Tak with his new iPhone.

They were handing out these free signs and Tak took about 1 million, which I thought was SUPER funny at the time.

Betsy hooked us up with free tickets to the game. Go Bears!

Halftime show marching band

We played Utah and won by a landslide.

(birth)day of fun!

Kelly and Nick came to visit for my birthday! After a lovely dinner at Jupiter on Sunday night, we hit the Cal campus for a tour.

In the reading room at Doe Library.

Kelly and Mark sharing a moment.

I took Monday off, so we got to sleep in for a while before heading down to Oakland to bail Tak out of work for sushi (#1!) and sightseeing.

We visited the Oaksterdam mural across the street from his office.

And the Kaiser roof garden (which was new to me).

Tak on the roof garden bridge.

Next up was the Oakland cathedral. It's pretty spectacular.

The mausoleum

We did our best to show up the Seattle coffee scene by taking them to Blue Bottle in Jack London.

It's' all the rage with the hip kids.

We had big plans to see some redwoods in Redwood Regional Park, but there were fewer than we anticipated.

But I did learn about fish ladders!

We navigated our way through the Berkeley hills (and the Cav survived!) in the hopes of getting a GGB shot for Kelly and Nick's holiday card. You could sort of see it (not in this picture, though).

Our holiday card?

Kelly and Nick's deep, pensive shot.

Finally, it was off to T-Rex to meet many of my favorite folks for a scrumptious birthday dinner. Mmm mmm.