I went a little gung-ho with the Christmas lights...

After trying to put up the Christmas lights last year in the rain and sleet, I decided to try to get them done before the weather turned wintery. So I put up some lights last week using the six foot ladder, but really needed to get on the roof to put the majority of the lights up. I convinced my dad to be my spotter this afternoon, and we got the lights nearly done! (I need a short 10-bulb strand for one section on the roof.) Anyway, thought I'd share!

Halloween

This year, I had a hard time deciding what to be for Halloween. (A lot of us dress up at work because the BPD and ACSO officers bring their kids trick or treating at the office.) So, I decided to be a cowgirl sheriff...appropriate, huh? It was a fun costume, but I don't know how people can wear cowboy boots all the time! Talk about blisters galore...

And this is my awesome Twilight pumpkin. I got this 48lb pumpkin at the Linder Farms pumpkin patch, but didn't want to do a basic design. So, I tried to carve Bella and Edward's faces (just like the Twilight movie poster) onto my pumpkin. It looked awesome on Wednesday night after it was carved, but started to shrivel a bit by the time I took this picture on Friday night. I think you can still see a bit of it anyway! (And actually, I think the same photo is on the Twilight countdown widget below...so you can see what I was trying to make it look like!) I know, I'm a bit of a freak about Twilight... :)

San Francisco!

Angie and I decided about a month and a half ago that we needed to take a girl's trip. She was looking to escape Blanding, UT for a weekend, and well, I'm always up for a vacation! We ended up with San Francisco, since neither of us had been there before. So, we met up on Friday, October 17th at the San Francisco airport and embarked on our great San Francisco adventure!

We stayed at the Good Hotel, in a funky little room that almost looked like a dorm room! But, it was recently renovated and pretty nice overall. It was just off 7th and Mission, so we were about a block south of Market St.

We had ordered CityPasses before we got to San Fran, and those are fantastic...it included all of the attractions that we wanted to see and a MUNI pass for transportation. Overall, we saved about $60 each by getting the CityPass.

Aquarium of the Bay, where I chickened out on touching a leopard shark..

Pier 39, with a whole bunch of cool shops and SEA LIONS...

Ghirardelli Square...but we resisted the urge to buy any chocolate.

We LOVED riding the trolley cars...we took the Powell/Hyde street trolley three times, and the Powell/Mason street trolley once.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art...wicked cool to see all sorts of paintings that I had studied in school!

We were amazed by the size of the Westfield Shopping Center, and the Old Navy store on Market Street, and were psyched to eat at Rubio's, In & Out Burger, etc. We did try some good sourdough bread too!

Alcatraz was unreal...we took the short cruise over to the island, then toured the gardens and prison. As you'll see below, we couldn't manage to pull off the aggressive inmate look when we were behind bars...

One of the other things that we really wanted to do was to take a ride over the Golden Gate Bridge. We tracked down a tour company that offers 2-hour trolley car (on wheels) tours of the city. So, we jumped on and went all over...looked at famous sights, learned some of the history, saw some celebrity houses, and went over the Golden Gate. (Unfortunately my camera died prior to the tour, so I'll try and track down some of those pics from Angie to post on here.)

It was an awesome time, and I'll post some GGB pics when I can!