A Miami weekend!

Last weekend, I went to Miami to celebrate Katy's bachelorette party. It was 40 degrees warmer than was in Chicago.  It's a high of 47 degrees today and there's a windchill that makes it feel like the upper 30s. Katy's getting married in two weeks, on November 17th! We all arrived by Friday night, flying in from Boston, Chicago, and Baltimore. We stayed in a cute boutique hotel in Surfside, outside of Miami.It had a little kitchen that we made all our meals in. Saturday night, we had a mardi gras theme dinner and costumes! We ate King's Cake and dressed in green, yellow or purple with lots of mardi gras beads!  We went into Miami to a hip-hop dance club, called Buck 15. We heard awesome 80s and 90s music, including the Ghostbusters theme song, but the best part was our celebrity sighting! Shaquille O' Neal came to the club while were there! Katy gave him beads and I gave his girl friend some beads too. My beads, however, were incredibly tangled and when I tried to give a few to Shaq's friend, they all clumped together. So, Shaq, his girl friend and I spent 5 minutes untangling them together!!! When he finally separated them all, Shaq put them back over my head! I couldn't believe how nice he was, to help me with them all. I was going to give them all to him! 

We didn't get photos with him, but you can see his silhouette in the background here. 

With the exception of Heather, who caught a 6am flight, we woke up leisurely on Sunday to check out of our cute hotel. Fan and I got Serendipity frozen yogurt and saw Dexter's house on the way to the airport!It was a wonderful warm weekend but I'm really looking forward to Katy's wedding. I helped her with place cards this weekend and went with her to pick up her wedding dress!  I just picked up my eggplant Amsale bridesmaid dress and I'm so excited to dance in it! Source: amsale.com via Emily on Pinterest

Miami pictures coming soon!

I'm hoping to post pictures from Miami soon. I've been super busy this last month with applying for jobs, bridal showers, working long hours, and a quick weekend trip to Florida!! I announced to my work that I will be leaving and it feels so good. We will be moving back to Seattle at the beginning of the year! I love Chicago, but it will be nice to be closer to family again!

Last few days of vacation...

It's been a whirlwind of events since we returned from Michigan and we're traveling to St. Louis for Labor Day. Thus, this post will mostly be a photo drop.Lyra wasn't a huge fan of the family cabin and mostly stayed in the attic. On Thursday, it was overcast and raining so we explored the small towns of Northern Michigan.Mr. F and I checked out the Cherry Hut. It was super kitchsy and sugary but fun to try once!The menus reminded us to go to Gwen Frostic.I love their nature block prints!The printing presses were going while we were there too!This is how they wrap your purchases!Thursday afternoon was still stormy, so we read and played with the kitties, especially Lily.On Friday, we went to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park. 

We went swimming with Lee Lee, the wirehaired fox terrier in Lake Michigan,

and watched the sunset!Next up, I'll post about our week with our out-of-state cousins!

Foodie weekend in San Francisco

This was our view from our San Francisco hotel,the Westin St. Francis, over the weekend. It was sunny Friday afternoon so we walked towards the Yerba Buena Gardens  and the Mission neighborhood after my conference was done for the day. The Foreign Cinema was recommended to us, by a friend,  and we were delighted that we had dinner there! We had delicious West Coast oysters, a fresh salad with cucumber and goat cheese, fancy fried chicken, and also salmon and green beans.For dessert, we had peach pavlova! On Saturday, I was in a conference for most of the day but they did have wonderful desserts in the lunch buffet! Late Saturday afternoon, we took a trip the Golden Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, it was soo foggy that you couldn't really see the bright orange bridge! It was refreshing to be on the Pacific Ocean again! For dinner, we had another great dinner recommendation. At Barbacco, we had yummy beet salad, delectablepasta with lemon olive oil cake with strawberries. 

On Sunday morning, we got breakfast at a cute diner called, Cozy Cable Car Cafe!We loved getting sweet and savory crepes before going to the airport.We stopped by a few statues in Union Square before checking out of the hotel. Kuky even made the trip to San Francisco.We felt so pampered and really enjoyed all this wonderful food for our anniversary weekend!