Hello

Hello from Kings Cross Station!
more from my london visit soon to come.

San Francisco {The Final Installment}

After running the race and getting ready at the hotel we headed down to the wharf. We were starving for lunch so we headed over to Boudin Bakery. We had ran past it in our race and could smell the sourdough bread, so tempting. So of course we wanted to try it out for lunch. I got their tomato soup in a sourdough breadbowl. Yummmy! We sat outside while eating our lunch, it was a perfect day.

 

After lunch we walked around Pier 39. We did a little shopping. (Most of which was at a candy store).

Me at Pier 39. Not sure why I decided NOT to smile for this picture. Trying to be serious?

We stopped by and looked at the seals. Man they were so stinky. As soon as you started to walk towards them on the pier you were overwhelmed by their stench. They just lied there, didn't do anything interesting but it was still neat to see them like that.

Looking back at the city line from the wharf. What a beautiful city San Fran is.

My sister in law Lindsay and I just HAD to take a picture of us together because we were practically matching. Yep, pinkish/purplish pants and a dark striped top. Too funny.

The view of the Golden Gate Bridge. I love this picture. I was so bummed that the fog was too heavy during our race for me to see it that I was so ecstatic when I finally did get to see it while walking along the pier.

Then we had a little mother-daughter photo sesh:

Sis in Law Lindsay & her cute mom

Aunt Cathy & Cousin Brooke

Me & My Mom- Yep, it was so windy that I was practically eating my hair. Whatevs

After walking around the wharf we headed to Chirardelli square.

My mom and I shared a chocolate malt shake for dinner. It was the best chocolate shake I have ever had. A great way to end the night.

I would love to go back to San Fran and do a few things that we weren't able to like Alcatraz, Chinatown, etc. We were going to try Alcatraz but it was sold out. Bummer. Until next time San Francisco!

Music Monday

 Rock & Roll with Feelings...

Ron Pope, everybody. A personal favorite of mine, give him a listen.

It's Monday and I'm thinking about music.
Let's talk about our music preferences and how they come about....

Elementary years- Family and siblings, I listened to what they listened to and therefore I thought I was cool

Junior High- Friends. My musical horizons were broadened to hip-hop & rap, and we thought it was cool.

High School- Myself. These are the years everyone tries to find the stuff no one else has heard which ends up being the stuff everyone is listeneing. My favorite is when we all got upset when a bad became popular and like made it on the radio... wait shouldn't we want success for our favorite bands. Oh yeah that's right we are way to hipster to listen to main stream music in high school.

Now (college)- Blogs & Justin Bieber- obviously listen to Justin Bieber everyday so that's a giveaway. But I don't have the time like I did in high school to find cool music so I search the blog world listening to the youtube videos bloggers put up of their favorite songs and from there I search that artist and if I still like them I keep them. Let's just say Blogs are the best way for me to add artist to my ipod it work wonders.

Which leads to my recent discovery... A friend of mine started a blog strictly about music. Lovely Banter. It is great. They are three friends each with different music tastes,  music they love and are inspired by. I love the range of music offered by these three friends, they are adding to my music library everytime I read a post. I would highly reccomend checking out their blog... Lovely Banter

Shoppings More Fun WITH BLOGGERS in Tooele!!

Last Friday I had the opportunity to attend a Downeast Clothing blogger mixer.  It was located at their new store that they just opened up in Tooele, UT. I was so excited to meet some new bloggers and of course do some shopping at DownEast. (I love their clothing!) Since Nicole was in Chicago I convinced my mother in law to come with me as my guest. As soon as we arrived we were given a goody bag filled with a giftcard to Downeast, chocolate, and a pretty fall scarf.

All the bloggers in attendance:

And guess what? DownEast is 21 years old. Can you believe it? They were (and still are - if you hurry) having a sale for 21% off of EVERYTHING in the store. You can't beat that!

I did some shopping. Here are a few of my favorite things:

And guess what? They have little girls clothing as well. It seriously is the cutest, EVER. They have some great pieces that would look great in family pictures. (I'm just planning ahead here...)

 

 Doing some more shopping:

DownEast has so much to offer. They have stylish, affordable, modest clothing. Not only that but in some store locations they are an "outfitter" which means that they carry name brand clothing for an unbelievable price. I love to buy my name brand jeans here. So glad that I was able to go to this blogger mixer because shopping really is more fun with bloggers!

Snow-Tober

It's October.

And I woke up to a winter wonderland this morning...

Mia wanted to immediately put her boots and coat on and go play in the snow. Daddy took her outside for little bit. She didn't last very long before she wanted to come back inside...but she loved stomping in the snow and picking it up in her hands. (I did put gloves on her!)

Brrrr. It is so cold outside. Today definitely calls for some warm homemade soup and bread. I'll definitely be making my dad's yummy recipe of Butternut Squash soup for dinner tonight. What I look forward to all year long. MMMMMMM

And I made a batch of these super moist  pumpkin chocolate chip cookies yesterday.

 I love this time of year.

NWM Tiffany&Co Finisher's Necklace

When my aunt asked me if I wanted to run the NWM half marathon with her she told me that all finishers would receive a Tiffany&Co necklace. As soon as I heard that I was in! Upon crossing the finishing line at the race we were met by firemen in tuxedos handing us our Tiffany&Co boxes. I was very patient and waited until we got back to the hotel to open it. I guess I was just savoring the moment. I didn't want to ruin the perfect little box that it was in. The necklace is a silver chain with a "dog-tag" that is two sided. Here it is:

 

I love wearing it! What do you think???

Chi-town

 

 

Chi-town is great! The first night we ate at Lou Malnati's for dinner and it was great deep dish pizza.
The next mornng we went to the shedd aquarium and stood in a line for too long and finally walked along lake Michigan to navy pier. I loved seeing the Chicago skyline on such a clear day we got extremely lucky with the great weather.

 

After wandering to navy pier we headed over to millennium park and saw the bean!!!!!

 

 

After the bean we headed up to the John Hancock building.   That night we headed up to see the Chicago Temple. After we ate at a little place called Etno.  It was so good and I would recommend it. I had the butternut squash soup and it was delicious.

Friday's Letters

Dear Jet, Today is your ultrasound and we get to find out how many puppies you are carrying. I seriously can't wait. The anticipation is killing me! Dear DownEast, Thank you for throwing a Blogger mixer tonight. So excited. Dear Nicole, Wish you weren't flying to Chicago right now so that you could go to the blogger night out with me but I hope you have an amazing weekend visiting Chicago with some good company. ;) Dear Mia, I really, really, really missed you while I was gone. Thanks for the cuddles last night. Dear Pedicure, you were exactly what my feet needed yesterday. Dear Hubby, glad you are back from your work trip. TVD tonight!!! Dear blog friends, I promise that I will post a picture of the Tiffany&Co finisher's necklace in my next post! And P.S... almost made it to 300 followers...woot woot!

San Francisco Day Two {Part One}

On the morning of the race we woke up at around 5:30 to get ready and head downtown to Union Square. The race started at 7am. We got dropped off downtown and started making our way to our "Pace Corral". Since there were so many runners they placed you in a "corral" according to your pace. We walked to our corral and my Aunt Cathy decides to take a short cut down an alley. I was a little sketched out and told her that's where the scary people were. She said, "All the bad guys are gone and asleep somewhere." To which I replied, "No, this is where they LIVE!" Literally two seconds later she almost stepped on some homeless guys that were sleeping in the alley we were walking in. Needless to say we started walking quite a bit faster to our pace corral! As soon as we got there we couldn't believe how many runners there are. I can't even describe what 25,000 runners looks like all in one place. Just imagine it...so many people! We got in line for the porta-potties and waited for the race to start.

 

We didn't actually cross the starting line until about 13 minutes after the gun went off. There were so many runners it was almost impossible for me to run as fast as I really wanted. I was dodging in and out of runners. I had alot of energy and was amazed at how much of a difference being at sea level made. I wasn't gasping for air at all. I don't think I got out of breath once the entire run. We ran downtown t and ran along the coast. There were a few streets that were very steep and narrow. This was nuts because imagine thousands of runners trying to run up a hill all at once on a really narrow street. At one point they even put us on a path that was even narrower than the street. I just ran on the grass at that point, trying to dodge runners. You would be running up a hill and all of a sudden a few runners would decide they wanted to walk up the hill. I just about plowed through them! At mile 6 there was a pretty good sized hill for about a mile. I run hills at home so it wasn't really anything that I am not used to. Tip: Always train with hills. It prepares you for everything. We ran past the Golden Gate Bridge but I never saw it because the fog was so thick. It literally felt like I was running through at cloud at some points and I was sopping wet from the mist.

My mom was waiting at mile 11 and snapped this photo of me:

She hurried and went to mile 13 and got this super blurry pic of me. I thought it was a hilarious picture.

At the finish line they had firefighters dressed in tuxedos handing us our Tiffany&Co boxes. Inside the box was a pretty silver finishers necklace.

Me & My Tiffany&Co box

I went and got my runner's goodies and waited for my sis in law & aunt to come across the finish line. We were pretty excited about our Tiffany's boxes, can you tell??

Just an idea of how many people were at the race. This isn't even ALL 25,000 runners.

We finished! We were supposed to be flexing our muscles but Lindsay and I ended up being the only ones who posed for the picture.

My Cousin Brooke & her mom Aunt Cathy

My Support Team- Love you MOM!

After the race we had to walk back to our car which was about 3 miles away from where the finish line was. I was freezing because I was so wet from the mist. I am the only person I know that gets goosebumps on their face. So weird. Once we got back to the car I finally opened my Tiffany&Co box.

We headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready to spend the rest of the day at the Wharf & Ghiradelli square. Overall the race was a really fun one and I would definitely do that one again. The only downside was that I wasn't able to run as fast as I wanted but I enjoyed myself so isn't that what really matters? I finished in 2 hours which is pretty average for me. At some point I would like to beat my PR (1hr 52 min)....someday.

More about our day at the wharf next....