Callifornia

A couple of weeks ago we travelled to San Francisco for a weekend before driving down to Pebble Beach/Monterey for a conference that Phil was invited to attend by one of his partners. I was reminded of how great San Francisco is even this time with a 2-year-old in tow. We stayed at and all-suites hotel in Fisherman's Wharf that was right on the Hyde Powell cable car line. Sasha thought it was too good to be true that we could just hop on the cable car and ride without any doors with the cars and street right there in front of us. We got our Asian food fix at Brandy Ho's, our favorite little restaurant in Chinatown and tried an incredible upscale Vietnamese place called The Slanted Door--not to be missed if you're in town.

The Monterey Peninsula was gorgeous. I had never been there and was really blown away by the beauty. We went to the famous Monterey Aquarium one day, drove down 17-mile-drive to Carmel, and enjoyed the facilities at the place where the conference was. It was a real honor for Phil to get to go to the conference and we pretty much felt out of our league the whole time. Phil actually got to meet all the super well-known legends in neurosurgery which he thought was pretty cool. The last night we went to our first black tie dinner so Phil busted out his college chamber choir tux and I dusted off my prom jewelry from 15 years ago and we rocked it--knocked up style of course.

Easter

This is the first year Sasha really got into Easter. She LOVED coloring eggs, hiding eggs, cracking hard boiled eggs, trying to peel them, and there was a period of a week where she was eating 1-2 hard boiled eggs every day. The weeks leading up to Easter I had been hiding empty plastic eggs around the house for her to find and each time she spotted one, she would say in a very animated high voice, " Hey, I think I see another one!" After the Easter egg hunt at Gabriela's house though where every egg was filled with a treat, she lost interest in the empty egg hunts at home.

We enjoyed a nice visit from Phil's parents over the holiday. Unfortunately they left sunny 80 degree weather in Indiana to come to our chilly cloudy weekend, but we had fun anyway.

Sasha has definitely hit the "terrible twos". She has to do EVERYTHING by herself which means it takes twice as long as it used to getting ready for bed, getting out of the house, getting dressed in the morning, etc. There are many more tears and time outs than there were even a month ago. Sometimes Phil and I just have to take a deep breath and remind ourselves or the other person that she is just learning how to be a big girl which is what we ultimately want.