A Visit From Chuck & Judy

The 'rents arrived last Wednesday. It was their anniversary so after work I ran to the store to get ingredients to make them a carrot cake, from scratch, with my new KitchenAid Stand Mixer!! It was my birthday gift from Jordan and it was a wonderful surprise :) I must say, the cake was delicious and supposedly was more healthy than normal carrot cake, since the recipe came from Cooking Light. We picked them up from the airport pretty late and then just came home and went to bed. On Thursday they did an all-day tour to get all the touristy stuff out of the way and then Jordan met up with them for dinner in the neighborhood. I wasn't able to join because we had a social event for the new start class at work.

On Friday I was able to meet my parents for a quick lunch near the Ferry Building. That night was also a little thrown together because Jordan ended up being busy at work so he wasn't able to make it home for our reservation at the Cliff House, a nice restaurant right on the Pacific Ocean. We drove out there through some intense fog and since the sun had set by the time we got there, didn't have much to see anyways. But we still had a good night and the food was delicious!

We celebrated the holiday on Saturday (the start of college football season, of course) by cooking up a nice lunch and settling in to watch the boys in blue. It was somewhat of an anti-climactic start with all the weather delays and the game ending early, but we won and showed some signs of definite improvement over last year. We're both really excited about the season and finding places to watch games! Although this Saturday, we're hosting an all-day open house since ESPN Gameday is reporting from Ann Arbor. We have our first night game ever against Notre Dame so we'll have friends over all day to get ready and watch! I'll have to try out some game day snack recipes :)

On Sunday, we got started early with a quick drive over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, the town just north of us across the bay. We walked around, browsed some shops, and then took a shuttle up to the Sausalito Art Fair which was going on all weekend. It turned out that tickets to get into the fair were expensive (they had some entertainers there too) so we just visited a building that housed studios of local artists until heading back home.

Once back home we did a little shopping on Chestnut and Union Streets in our neighborhood. Jordan and I bought a console table for the dining room to serve as a wine/bar table. We might also look for something more suited as a wine cart and use the console table in the entryway, but we'll figure that out later. The table was the floor model at Pottery Barn so it was 50% off and we even snagged the display tray they had on it for $14! I love a good deal! After shopping we went out for a nice dinner on Union Street and then capped off the night by watching Gran Torino.

My parents took off this morning. I might not see them again until Christmas but it was really nice to have them here for a few days! Now I have to get back to the books because I take my next CPA exam in a month. Goodbye freedom!