Dawn on the Bay

B man and I randomly woke up at 5:30 on a Saturday for no reason. Instead of going back to sleep, we decided to get up and be productive! We walked down the Embarcadero to the ferry building and got our peets coffee (really 6 am is the only time I can handle the ferry building...no people around!) and sat near the peer and watched the sun come up! It was so peaceful and pretty, I just had to share my picture!  For just an iPhone, the picture didn't turn out so badly!

Happy Holidays...2 months late!

After a week in Dallas, I took my flight home for the holidays!  Actually, I feel like San Francisco is "home" and DC is a close second. I got to see several friends and my dad so I was a happy camper!  We flew into DC, spent a night there, drove down to Newport News and spent 3 days there and then went up to Annapolis. It was great to celebrate with friends and relatives our great news as well as spend quality time with family!  Hannah and Teresa came to visit me at my favorite bar....

I totally brought our mugs from San Francisco back to their happy place...Four Courts!!!

And of course life wouldn't be right without koozies....and of course I got Christmas sweater koozies from Target!

After a whirlwind week, we flew back to San Francisco for New Years Eve!  I'm now taking my friend Erin's advice as I kick off the new year....less frowns, more gowns!!

Anchor Brewing Tour

I took the B Man to the Anchor Steam Brewery here in San Francisco! Man, was it hard to get in. You have to purchase a ticket for $15 each and they only have tours Monday-Friday at 10 am and 1 pm. Um...when do you have free time in the middle of the week?  Well, B Man had the day off and I took the afternoon off to go!

Anchor Brewing began in 1896 and survived prohibition and made some changes throughout the years and settled in its current location in Potrero Hill in 1977.

Waiting for our tour to begin.

Viewing the beginning of the process in the huge copper vats.

What makes Anchor Steam so unqiue is their cooling process.  From their website:

UNIQUELY ANCHOR BREWING The fermentation of Anchor Steam® Beer takes place in our shallow, very wide, open fermenting pans, cooled entirely by filtered San Francisco air moving through the fermentation room. These fermenters are an important part of our unique brewing history and represent a marked difference from the vertical tanks found in other breweries in America. Except for the occasional hot day, we still simply use the naturally cool air from San Francisco's foggy coastal climate.

Which you can see here:

And since it was December, they had their Christmas beer out!  Every year, Anchor brewing makes a unique formula, no two years are the same! AND the Christmas labels change yearly too, the same artist draws a new painting that is used for the label.

All of the types of beers they brew

All the different Christmas labels.

And then at the end of the tour, they took our picture and posted on their instagram account!

Shout out from their instagram account after they posted the picture from that day!

Christmas/New Year miracle

 Stan (Melissa's dad) was able to play Santa and scrubbed and scrubbed his hands and was able to give 8 NICU babies their first picture with Santa!

 

Two days after my birthday in December my best friend scared the crap out of me!  She texted me to tell me she was going in labor.  Scary part? She wasn't due until mid March!  SAAAAYYY WHHHHAAAATTTT?!?!?!?  She was having a few stomach pains but thought it was just gas and she had gone to the ER over the weekend to just check it out, and they checked her over and sent her home to sleep it off.  Crisis averted, or so I thought!  I texted her to see how she was feeling and I got a calm "I'm going into labor"....well it came off as calm, I doubt she was too calm on the other end!

What was even worse is that her husband travels for work so she was all alone. And in the middle of the day, while everyone else was at work.  Nikki lives in NC and I was in CA, so neither of us could be there for her and we felt helpless. Her mom lives in Florida and hopped the first flight to VA.  Thankfully our other best friend Erika was able to leave work in the middle of the day, even though she's a teacher so I'm not sure how she pulled that off!  

Mckinley Anne was born a few hours later (daddy was able to high tail it back in time for delivery I think) at a robust 3.5 pounds. I thought Nikki's babies were small at 5 pounds, Mckinley must have been TINY in comparison!  Thankfully I was flying home to DC and made my way down to Virginia to visit her. I dropped B man off at the bar with his friends and ran straight to the NICU.

Introducing Mckinley.....

She doesn't look too small until you see this comparison to her mom's hand...

She always had a death grip on mommy's hand...

Thankfully she pulled miracles off and was able to quickly get out her oxygen tube and eventually was able to feed from a bottle shortly afterwards.  And I'm happy to announce that after 49 days in the NICU, Mckinley met all of her milestones and was able to go home this week!!!!  She was born 3 months early but this girl is a fighter!  When she was born the hospital said she would go home around her original due date in mid March, but she pulled through and was sent home a month before expected!

Happy family ready to go home!  Melissa I am so happy she has excelled and is on the healthy right track! Here's to many more scares throughout her life, but rest assured she is a fighter and will prove everyone wrong every day! I can't wait to finally be able to hold you Mckinley!

Long Time No See

Me and the cows at Pioneer Plaza, bronze sculptures commemorating the western cattle drives

Phew, man...its been a long time! Sorry abut that!  I feel like my life has been a whirlwind since early December!  Considering the last time I posted was mid-December, I'll catch ya up on my adventures:

Dec 12: Got engaged
Dec 13: My birthday
Dec 16-19: Dallas
Dec 20 - 27: D.C., Maryland and VA
Dec 31: NYE!
Jan 8 - 22: Cabo, Mexico!
Jan 27 - now: Dallas again

I'm SO ready to be back at home for more than a few days! I'm in Dallas until Tuesday evening and I can't wait to go home and be back on a schedule again!  Not that I didn't have a blast these past 2 months but my body needs some down time.  I have a lot of catching up to do with the blog, but its going to have to wait a day or two until I get home.  Catch ya on the flip side.