14 Months

Dear Annie,

Every month I think this, but this month has DEFINITELY been my favorite with you - you have changed so much, you're practically a different kid now! You are extremely expressive, and your faces are just hilarious. We love the determined look you get when you are trying to figure something out, and the look of excitement when you see your Dad or I - you're usually pretty happy, but if you're not, you have NO fear of letting us know.

A few things you love to do this month - you've grown much more fond of reading books, and frequently bring me a book you want to read and climb right in my lap. This is probably my favorite development of this month - even if I'm sitting with my legs pulled to my chest on the floor, you'll put your hands on my legs and force them into a cross legged position so you can climb on in. I used to have to help you, but now you can get all comfy on your own! Your favorite books are all of the little books your Auntie Becca and Uncle Joe got you for Christmas (Happy Hen and Sally Sheep in particular), and of course Tails, Kisses, and Heads - you turn the pages, pull the tabs, make the tails "wag, wag, wag" - all this love for those books have nearly destroyed them so we might have to get you some backups soon!

Singing to you has been a big hit this month! Any song that has motions to it captivates you and you try to figure out how to do them yourself. You love "if you're happy and you know it" but you like to go through the motions REALLY fast - immediately going from clapping to stomping your feet, which is your favorite. Ring around the rosie is another hit, but all you like to do is "fall down" at the end. Itsy bitsy spider is my personal favorite - you touch your fingers together, love to say "dow, dow!!" and bring your arms down, swing your arms around for the sun coming out, and then you just clap. Sometimes the order isn't EXACTLY correct, but oh well!

You still love to see your friends and family, and get very excited when people come over to our house - crawling very quickly into the living room and squealing with glee. Other kids that come over are older than you, and usually take your toys but you don't seem to care at all. I see how territorial they get, and I'm not looking forward much to that stage, I have to say.

Toys are lots of fun for you - your chair is still a big hit, as well as your baby doll. You page through books, and love putting things in containers and closing them up. Taking lids on and off is a favored activity of yours, as is emptying and filling various containers and bringing them to other areas of the house. You fill up your basket with random stuff, empty it out, walk around, come back and fill up the basket again to be on your merry way. Blocks and cups are now more for stacking than banging, and you LOVE the big ball that you got at Nathan's birthday party.

This is the month that you started to actually move around for fun versus just as a means of transportation. You don't have a walking or push toy, but you have figured out how to push anything and everything around and walk with it. Your favorite is the Ikea basket from the bookshelf, but you will also push any tall box or toy. You can go up and down the stairs on your own, and while you did go up and down about 10 times one night, now you have chilled out about that but still like to climb up when we are going up there.

You can stand up on your own now, but don't do it all the time and still seem a bit scared when you do. You like to practice in your crib in the mornings when we come in because I think you feel safe there. You CAN take steps because we've seen you do it a few times, toward us and in between furniture, but you do not prefer to walk, you still like crawling. You still absolutely will not tolerate being put down standing unless you are within reach of something to hold on to, you just WILL NOT put your feet down. As your Grandpa says, you have an excellent self preservation chip, apparently!

On the communication front, you seem to have entire conversations in babble, and will sometimes mimic what we say. Again, the facial expressions that you have when you are conducting these conversations are hilarious! You say hi and bye bye, and call everyone Dada/Dad/Daddy, including me. The only time you seem to say Mama is when you're sad or whining... lovely! You seem to be waving more consistently now, and at the appropriate times. You LOVE to clap, and will clap when we tell you to or say "yay!" or when anyone else is clapping.

No new teeth sprouted in your mouth this month, but your shirts and bibs were completely soaked with drool. I'm really hoping a bunch of teeth come through soon because I'm really sick of all your cute outfits being ruined with wet fronts! I also look forward to you getting some molars so you can try out some more "crunchy" foods.

A few more stats - you still sleep from about 7pm-7am, sometimes cry out and need us maybe once a night but most often not. Naptime is still from 1-3pm. You are wearing 12month or 12-18month clothes, and you weigh approximately 20lbs but seem WAY taller than you were at 12 months. You still may eat us out of house and home with your appetite, but I don't know where you're putting it all! You drink 3-4 sippy cups of whole milk with your meals and snacks, and have recently started just DOWNING your milk which we never thought you'd do at first!

Annie, you are a funny, adorable and charming little girl. You don't necessarily fit into the ready made checklists they give you for development, but you are doing things on your time frame and we're trying to relax and let you do what you are ready to do, when you're ready to do it! Your Dad has no problems with this, but sometimes I fret and worry too much. This will be a common theme your entire life, so best get used to it, honey buns!

Love you SO much, baby girl!
Mom

Pigtails!

First and foremost, we have achieved pigtails!!

Annie's bangs were getting pretty long -I didn't really want to cut bangs for her, and she won't keep a clip in, so I decided to experiment with some ponytail options. The results were definitely hilarious and adorable. Annie did try to pull out the ponytail a few times, but after redirecting her and distracting with a toy, she left it in. I'm a little scared to leave them in long term in case she pulls it out and puts the binder in her mouth, but my friend Leigh just gave me a tip to keep pigtails in that I can't really explain and can't find a visual of, but if it works, I will take pics and share :)

Her facial expressions are off the charts lately. I really can't even begin to choose just a few pics from the other night, so I will just go ahead and share a ton :)

Reading Tails - her most requested book by far!

We like to call this one her "determined face"

Haaaaaaaaaaaa

She really wasn't even mad - just making faces

Getting a wee bit frustrated that she couldn't get a piece of food to stick to her fork

Annie has been whizzing along with her basket and anything else she can push, and also recently grew fond of climbing the stairs. Our stairs are hidden in our office, so she never really goes in there. We knew she could climb all the way up, but the other day she also discovered she can go back down on her own, too. So she did, 10 times. 6 times in a row before I cut her off, and then a few more times going in there from the living room. She'd get to the top, and then just come back down, crawl into the office a bit, and then turn around for more. I was bored walking up and down with her so finally I just closed the door and cut her off :)

This shows how fast she can go now. I think she's ready to give up the basket, but apparently she doesn't agree since she hasn't taken any more steps since last week! The end also shows her climbing into my lap to read a book, which I LOVE! Oh and note about her outfit - she leaked out of her diaper (guess it's time for the next size) at daycare and we apparently haven't brought a backup outfit for quite awhile :) I guess now it's pretty clear that she's grown!

This toy (from Mindy & Josh for Annie's birthday - thanks guys!!) is meant to be a pound the balls type of thing, which Annie was doing for awhile when I first got it out for her yesterday. Eventually she figured out that she could push THAT around too, so did that for awhile until it caught on the floor and she fell on top of it. Then I took it away until she can walk for real and can handle it a little better :)

A few of our favorite meals

Anyone who is a long time reader of this blog (I'm talking years, people) knows that when I started, I barely ever cooked. As in, my main culinary specialties were queso dip (with Velveeta, which I still love) and hamburger helper. Seriously. No one was more shocked than I when the first year we had our CSA, I started taking an interest in cooking and reading tons and tons of food blogs, and all the sudden this cooking thing didn't seem quite so intimidating. I've never really looked back, and still do love to cook, although the fact that I see Annie for approximately 2.5 hours a day on weekdays makes it tough for me to justify spending a ton of time in the kitchen. Ben has resumed his role of main cook of the house lately, but we tag team a lot. I know many couples do not have that luxury, and I'm very thankful that cooking and eating well is a priority to both Ben and I.

It is very important to me that Annie establishes healthy eating habits and is exposed to a wide variety of foods. There are tons of articles and books about toddlers and eating, I found this article interesting - it talks about how to have a "successful" family meal in that all members of the family eat the same thing. We don't actually abide by all of these principles yet, but something to aspire to I guess. I could (and maybe will someday) write a whole separate post about the topic of food and toddlers and my personal approach, but I will stop at that so I can get to the point of this post which is to share some of our current favorite meals.

Getting a quick meal on the table is made much easier due to the fact that Ben works from home and thankfully is able to do a lot of prep work for dinner. He usually has it started by the time I come home with Annie a little before 5. We used to have Annie eat right when she got home, and cooked while she ate for our own meal which we'd eat after she went to bed, but we both decided that eating all together is important to start now so she can see us eating the same thing she's having and so we can have that time together be a habit as she gets older and our family grows (family growing not happening yet, FYI). She has been getting better, but even holding her off from eating until 5:30 was difficult at first. For people that get home later than that, crockpots and freezer meals are probably the best way to go if you want to all eat together, or serving your kiddo a small snack right when you get home. We save super involved meals for weekends, and try to make sure meals aren't going to take longer than 45 minutes to prepare from start to finish.

Most meals that we make are "one dish" meals - while we like the occasional meat-potatoes-veg type dinner, it's just easier when all food groups are melded together, preferably with cheese. Annie seems to strongly prefer those types of meals as well. When we don't have a meal for Annie, we usually give her peas or carrots with hummus (which I froze in tablespoon size hunks - put them on a plate in the freezer and then in a freezer bag after they are frozen), toast and peanut butter or cream cheese, and some kind of fruit. We also have a sweet potato, black bean and onion mixture that we sauteed and froze in a muffin tin that is a guaranteed hit with her. Oh, and it will become clear that we don't really mind a mess at mealtime. Some meals are immediately followed by a bath. [Edited to add: A few of these recipes call for shredded chicken, or a whole chicken - if we make a whole chicken (rare) we usually shred any leftovers and freeze them in 3 cup increments, but a lot of times we just buy rotisserie chickens when they are on sale at Whole Foods and shred and freeze the whole thing for use in future recipes - saves a TON of time the night of!]

On to the food! I'll post a photo, a link to the recipe, and a short description.

Crockpot Lentil Veggie Stew - a surprise hit - Annie devoured this for several meals. We just had the half we froze yesterday, and she again ate it all up. We added parmesan cheese and served with bread.

Coconut Rice with sweet potatoes and black beans - we swapped sweet potatoes for the squash in this recipe. This was VERY quick and easy. We knew it would be a hit with Annie because she loves sweet potatoes and black beans anyway.

Spicy Kale Lasagna - ok, THIS WAS SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!! I didn't miss meat at ALL in this dish, it was just as good as the other lasagna we love. Annie seriously shoveled this in as fast as she possibly could.

Chicken spaghetti - blogged before, was in our freezer stash - all members of this family love this one.

Vegetable Tamale Pie - Another great one from Alex & Sonja!! This was the meal that inspired Annie's death glare in this post, but despite that look, she ate it up. I'd like to have made this in the cute little dishes like Alex and Sonja, but an 8x8 dish did t he job for us.

Chicken chowder with chipotles - we gave half this batch to Becca and Joe. I liked this more than I was expecting to - a nice twist on a traditional chicken soup. When we have soups, we just give Annie the chunks of veggies from it with not much broth, and soak some hunks of bread in broth which of course is her favorite part :)

Chicken Pot Pie - this was definitely a Sunday meal, and took me awhile but was actually fun to make! A big food processor is a huge time saver with this. This has lots of cream and butter in it, so really couldn't be bad. It also made 2 full pies so we have one in the freezer for later!

Carrot, broccoli and cheese orzo - we added shredded chicken to this because we had it, and accidentally food processed the carrots and broccoli a bit too much so it more resembled pesto. I was skeptical of this but it was actually quite tasty and Annie loved it.

Chard and white bean stew - Loved this - apparently Annie and I both love soups with leafy greens, beans, and some kind of tomato. Ben wasn't as big of a fan but oh well. We need to make sure we cut the greens up enough for Annie though, or else we end up with her pulling one of these out of her mouth 10 minutes after putting it in:

OK, that basically clears out the past 3 months of food photos that I had on flickr.... I feel very cleansed, and I hope you all found something you want to try in the future!

Meal Planning

Remember back when I used to only post about food? Yeah, it's been awhile. I've still been diligently taking photos of the food we make and eat, and will share some of my favorites in my next post, but first I want to share with you all our process of meal planning because I think it may help to make cooking more approachable and eating balanced meals easier.

I became a proponent of meal planning during our first CSA season because it helped us to make sure we were going to use all of our veggies. I've mentioned this before, but I absolutely hate wasting food - I feel bad for the food we throw away in much the same way that I felt bad for toys I didn't play with anymore as a child. Probably the reason that I still sleep with a teddy bear too. Anyway, since starting meal planning, I honestly can't fathom how one cooks and grocery shops efficiently without it. Because I love meal planning so much, I thought I'd devote a post to our system. I know some of you are thinking - there's no way I could meal plan, I'm not organized enough, and I'd never want to lock myself into eating a certain meal every day, but just TRY it for a few weeks - I felt the same way and will never look back.

Why meal plan?

There are a number of reasons to meal plan. For us, one of the big reasons is because we like to try a whole bunch of different meals instead of just relying on the same 5-10 recipes in a rotation. This is primarily me more so than Ben. We try to have a good balance of meals throughout the week too - maybe pasta one night, vegetarian a few nights, chicken one night, and no two similar meals back to back. It helps you waste less time and money at the grocery store buying random crap (like those boxes of rice a roni that expired 3 years ago), helps ensure that you eat somewhat balanced meals, and eliminates the frantic feeling of not knowing what to cook when you get home from work. I feel there is more pressure when you're responsible for another being who you don't want to eat cereal and cheese every night, but meal planning is valuable for EVERYONE, even if you're living alone. Many meals freeze well, so you can make a batch, have some for lunches, and freeze the rest. I could go on and on, but will leave it at that - namely: saves time, helps you stay healthy, saves money.

How do we find recipes?

As previously mentioned, I read a lot of cooking blogs. To be precise, 53, and there used to be many more before I went on a mad spree of unsubscribing after being completely overwhelmed with blogs after having Annie. I have them in a "Cooking" category on my google reader, and while I might read a post that catches my eye in the "Recently posted" homepage once and awhile, often I leave them until I'm bored one night and just blow through like 200 posts in a night by quickly scanning titles to see if I'm remotely interested in the dish. If I am, I read the entire post, and if it sounds like something I'd want to make, I star it. That's it - some people categorize, but I don't. That's how I find recipes - Ben usually just googles things the day he wants to make something and looks through them until he finds one he likes. He'll have a general idea and then go from there.

A few of my very favorite cooking blogs:

Annie's Eats - who wrote an awesome post about her meal planning method here.

A Couple Cooks

The Way The Cookie Crumbles

Weelicious (this is specifically a baby/toddler food blog but has recipes the whole family can eat which is perfect for us right now!)

Simply Recipes

Elly Says Opa

Pioneer Woman Cooks (although I use this less now that I actually feel pressure to make things "healthy")

Logistics

Now, on to how we actually write up the meal plan. It usually happens on either Saturday or Sunday and almost always is initiated by Ben by him saying: "hey, let's plan some meals". This is usually done while Annie is playing in the morning. We first start by thinking about if there is anything specific we need to use up from the fridge or freezer and try to incorporate that into our meal plan. We should be better about doing this, actually, but usually we remember. If we have a specific ingredient, I search for that ingredient through my starred items in Google Reader to see what comes up - this is where I begin to hate blogs with truncated feeds that don't all show up in Google Reader. I use this searching technique a lot to get recipe ideas, searching for things like: chicken, vegetarian, black beans, mexican, pasta, spinach, soup, crockpot just to name a few. We look at the calendar for the week to see what nights we actually need to cook, and usually plan 5 meals total for the week because we know something will come up inevitably and we'll need to move one meal back, or we'll want to go out one night. I also try to think about using some items multiple times, for example cilantro, parsley, or carrots, which are rarely used up in one dish. As I mentioned previously, we try to not eat too many similar meals, and maintain balance of types of protein and general healthiness of the meals.

For those of you who are into the old fashioned paper and pencil approach to meal planning, check out this post over at Navigating the Mothership.

Using Google Calendar

Ben and I have been using Google Calendar to manage our super active social lives for several years now. Ben converted me awhile ago, it took me awhile to actually admit to liking his suggestion, but I shoved my pride aside and went with it. We have multiple calendars - my personal calendar, Ben's personal calendar, a family calendar of things we all do because I didn't like things we both did showing up side-by-side if it was on both of our calendars, and a meals calendar. I like them to all be different colors, so activities I have to do are all blue, meals are purple, and Ben's calendar is green. I don't know how I set this all up, but I am sure Googling "setting up multiple calendars with different colors in Google Calendar" will pull up some informative results. Once we've decided on a meal, one of us enters it into the calendar as an "all day" event, so it shows up on the top of the day. We try to remember to put the recipe in the "location" or "description" field so we have handy access to it later - a bonus of doing this is that you can easily pull up the recipe on your smart phone if you have one. This also makes it really easy for us to just swap around meals if we for some reason can't or don't feel like making what we originally planned for a night. Here are a few examples of recent weeks (click on the photo to view larger):

Grocery shopping

We do most of our grocery shopping at Whole Foods, and use the Grocery IQ app on our iPhones to manage our grocery list. Ben picked that one because of reviews or something, but it allows us to both share our lists with each other, so if one person is at the store and the other thinks of something, they can just add it to the list. We also just add things to the list when we notice we're out. You can have multiple stores in there too, so for all the processed food goodies I love, I put those on the Rainbow list for the next time we're there. After we've got the meal plan nailed down, we go through each recipe and add all the things we need to our list. The main reason we meal plan is so we only have to go grocery shopping once during the week. Sometimes we forget stuff or find out we need something else and have to make a 2nd trip, but it's not a major one and that is rare. We do have a well stocked pantry by this time so most of what we need is produce and other perishable items, and to re-stock our pantry and freezer if necessary with things like beans, canned tomatoes, oils, vinegars, spices, etc.

In the next post, I'll actually share a few of our meal plans and will also share meals that have been a particularly big hit with Annie for you fellow moms of toddlers out there. I hope this was helpful to someone, and if you have any tips or have written a similar post on meal planning on your own blog, please comment!

Who is this kid?!

I'm just going to ignore the view out my back window today (thankfully I'm working from home at least!) and focus on more positive things...

yes, the patio set is still pretty much covered. it is depressing. maybe it will be spring in May?

Seriously, Annie is like a different child the past few days. It felt like she had been doing the same stuff pretty much since she figured out how to pull up at 9.5 months or so, only just a bit smoother on the delivery. Now, in the past week she's just changing at rapid-fire pace!

First and foremost, ANNIE TOOK HER FIRST STEPS on Monday, literally hours after I wrote this post! (Note: to those of you (and I know there are many) that were sad to hear how much I worry and am anxious, take heart, my logical side wins out far more often than my emotional side takes over, and usually I'm as chill as can be about Annie's development - I know she's fine and all that, sometimes I just have a little freak out moment, which is normal - most people just don't admit it as readily as I do ;)

Anyway, a little back story - when I got to daycare, Sue immediately told me that Annie had been pushing around a chair literally all day - from the moment she got there, just back and forth across the little room they are in to play. She said she was so worn out that she even had to be woken up from "quiet time" (aka naptime, from 12:30-3) which NEVER happens, NEVER. Usually she won't even go to sleep until she sees that every other kid is sleeping, and wakes up around 2 or 2:30. She said she was just so excited with herself and was laughing and smiling the whole time - what a cute mental image!! I love hearing stories like that.

When we got home, I was playing with Annie in her room while Ben prepared dinner - she stood up on her own after grabbing a pillow off the floor and picking it up. I think the pillow tricked her a bit but she did it and stood up all by herself! She was standing over by the crib later, and Ben came in - he sat down a few feet away from her and said "come here Annie!" usually she either ignores us (most likely) or just crawls over, but this time she turned and took 3-4 steps toward him before grabbing his arms! Yay, Annie! No more steps that I know of since then, but she has stood up on her own without any pillow props a few times so I think walking is imminent.

While I didn't get any video proof of her steps, I did take this super long video of her pushing around her basket yesterday. I just find it so hilarious that she's all the sudden decided to do this all the time - that basket has been there for her entire life, and she just pulled it out and started pushing it around a few days ago and now that's all she wants to do! I know this video is long but it is so cute to me - how she appears out of nowhere in the beginning, takes a breather for a bit, and her little noises and drool. I had to stop sometime, but of course right after I stopped recording, she sat down and fixed the rug - straightened it back out and patted it flat.

I also want to say that despite me thinking that I wouldn't be as excited about new milestones since they aren't early, I still was - I got teary eyed when she took her first steps and definitely have felt my heart swell with pride each time I see her doing something new!

San Diego - Day 2 - March 14th

I forgot to mention in my last San Diego post that Ben and I have been there before - we went to visit Becca and Joe back in October of 2006 (thank you Gmail search feature for letting me know that since apparently my camera dates were off). While we hit some sites that time, we didn't actually see a ton of San Diego because we flew in and out of the John Wayne airport, and spent a night in LA visiting our friends Maria and Nic. There were a few repeats on this trip, but actually not too many, and there's definitely still more that I didn't do on either trip! The last time I went, I wasn't too enamored with the city, largely due to the rainy weather we encountered (which "never happens!!!" according to Becca ;) during much of the time we were actually in the city of San Diego. After this visit in the sunshine, I think I'd even go back, although 4 visits to southern California in the past 5 years is probably enough for me for a long while.

The next morning, Monday, I heard Lori get up and leave to go running. A little while later I heard Erin's alarm go off a few times, and decided I should probably think about waking up myself. I must have been sleeping pretty hard, because I didn't even hear Nick leave to go golfing at 6am at all! Erin got up and ready and was off to work - sadly, no vacation time for her!

After Lori got back and both of us were showered and ready, we headed out to The Mission SoMa for breakfast per Erin's recommendation. We first stopped at the grocery store so I could get some sunscreen since my sunburn was pretty bad - it ended up peeling even - yikes! We both decided on pancakes - Lori got banana oatmeal, and I got blackberry banana. These were divine! There was a fruit puree around the edges of the plate that was delicious as well. I would HIGHLY recommend this place for breakfast - it was packed even on a Monday morning!

After we ate our fill of the pancakes, I mapped our route up to Balboa Park on my trusty iPhone and we set out. It was a pretty boring walk through downtown, and I was actually feeling hot by the time we finally made it, even just in my tank top. It was probably only 65 but seemed pretty toasty. We finally made it to the park and walked around, checking out the amphitheater and some of the beautiful buildings. We saw a family photo shoot, as well as a random woman doing yoga in the roots of a tree... odd. We were walking around when all the sudden a 20-something woman approached me and asked if we'd take surveys for $5 - I was skeptical but she seemed legit and said it was for school, so I said sure. Both of us doing a survey would help pay for the taxi we wanted to take later anyway! It took us about 5 minutes and was about our understanding of Health Care Attendants - thrilling stuff!

Just checking twitter. Nice sunburn, huh?

We really barely scratched the surface of this huge park (which even has an iPhone app), but by this point it was nearly noon and we had more on our agenda before Jacquelyn was done with school at 3pm. We asked the survey woman for a recommendation on where to find a taxi, she gave us a phone number (444-4444) and then told us which direction to leave for our best luck. While we saw a few while wandering around the streets in downtown San Diego, none were successfully flagged down. Finally I just called the number, and learned that I could just TEXT my address to get a cab! AWESOME. The company is GoFastCab and I can't wait til they come to Minneapolis/St. Paul! Anyway, I texted and a cab came in 5 minutes and we were on our way to Hotel del Coronado! The cab driver was a little dense and didn't KNOW where the hotel was (which is odd since to my knowledge it is the most famous hotel in the city) but we managed to make it.

A lovely shot I got in the cab across the cool bridge to Coronado Island

I wouldn't turn my nose up at this house

We walked to the beach behind the hotel, which is absolutely huge and wide. This was one place I did go briefly on my last visit, but this time the beach seemed even more vast - probably the widest beach I've ever been on for sure! We basically walked around for awhile and then walked through the grounds of Hotel del Coronado to get to a Mexican restaurant that someone recommended to Lori that is across the street.

A pirate ship?!

This water was straight up freezing

These girls were doing a little yoga

There were tons of gardens around the hotel

Thanks, again, to the iPhone, we were able to locate Miguel's and sat out on the patio. We pretty quickly ordered drinks and got what basically amounted to virgin pina coladas which hit the spot. I know from previous experience that any time I try to drink during the day, I just want to go to bed at 5pm. The server also brought out chips and queso, which immediately made this the best restaurant ever to me. We decided to order the appetizer sampler so we didn't have to make any decisions and managed to finish quite a bit of it! I was pretty beat by this point, so requested some relaxation time after checking out the hotel.

We walked back to the hotel and looked at a bunch of the shops because Lori wanted some flip flops - her new shoes had given her blisters. Sadly, all of the shops were a little too fancy for us - the cheapest flip flops were like $20. We then ventured back on to the beach and set out to read our books. It had gotten a bit chilly and was pretty windy at this point, but it was still nice to be in the sun by the ocean, that's for sure! I was surprised to see people prancing around in bikinis - I was practically cold in jeans, tank top and cardigan so I'm not quite sure how they weren't freezing. We heard from Jacquelyn that she was finishing up at school, and soon she was on her way to pick us up.

It was weirdly dark in there - definitely not what I expected at all!

We headed over to Ocean Beach, Jacquelyn's first home in San Diego. We all wanted to get our nails did, but there was a bit of a wait so we ran some errands with Jacquelyn and found Lori some cheap flip flops at a store called Closet that was super cheap and was kind of like H&M only a little less trendy. We then went back to the nail salon - Lori and I got pedicures and Jacquelyn got a manicure. My pedicure was much needed, and I probably should have gotten one earlier so I could have shown it off for longer than one night! We were there for quite awhile, there were a few people getting pedicures at the same time so we all kind of went in stages. I read my book while in the massaging chair so the wait was a-ok by me.

Newport Ave before pedicure

Newport Ave after pedicure

The sun was on it's descent by the time we left, so we headed down to the pier (the longest concrete pier on the west coast) to watch. Surfers were still out, and I got some of my favorite photos from the entire trip. We also went over to the cliffs on the side of the pier to finish off the sunset. It was a beautiful sunset, and I did see a flash right as the sun finally set into the ocean.

Favorite photo from the entire trip! I had to actually use the live view for this one and hold the camera above my head to get the sun to shine through the letters. I love it.

By this point, Erin was finally done with work and was meeting us at South Beach Bar (warning! music on website! argh) for fish tacos, my other San Diego requirement. We found a table in their recently opened upstairs, which had a great view for the last minutes of dusk. It was much more open than the crowded downstairs bar area, where I actually ate on our last trip to San Diego, judging by the similarity of this photo to the meal I ate this time. I got one wahoo taco (grilled), and one baja fish (fried), with beans. I thought it came with rice too, but apparently not this time. These are the best fish tacos I've had (not that I've had many) and it's a fun spot. Cash only, so be prepared! It was a great way to end our trip.

iPhone again - wasn't really into the food photos on this trip I guess

A NOT so great way to end the trip was being forced to watch the season finale of the Bachelor back at Erin's apartment :) ha - just kidding, obviously I didn't care that much since I really just fell asleep on the couch because it was sooo boring. Even I, who watched zero episodes, could tell he was going to pick Emily.

The next morning, we didn't have time to actually go to a real restaurant for breakfast before our flight because it took too long for everyone to get ready, so we just grabbed coffee and pastries at Starbucks before texting for a cab to the airport - our flight left on time with no issues whatsoever, and then we were back in cold snowy Minnesota around 5pm on Tuesday! It was a great time, thanks to Erin for hosting us, Jacquelyn for showing us around and hanging out, and Lori for being an awesome travel partner yet again!

iPhone pic from my window seat