No lie - this actually happened

So the other day Jeff was waiting in the car while I was on a yarn run. When I was in the store, I guess there was a homeless man outside that looked really strange. And of course, Jeff started gawking at him from our car.

It was to Jeff's surprise that the man actually noticed him staring at him through all the rain and in the dark of the night.

Once the hobo made eye contact with Jeff, it was over. He decided to attack! He lunged for the car, yelling indecipherable phrases like - "BLAH BLEH PLEH PLICK MEH BLAH-BIDDY BO!", and fired his ammunition.

And what was a homeless person using for ammunition?

Why mashed potatoes of course!

We drove around San Francisco the rest of night with potato on our car. It was disgusting and it actually took us a long time to figure out what it was. Jeff was the one who figured it out.

He poked it with his keys.
Yucky.

Holiday Fun

So we had a fun Thanksgiving with Jeff's family with lots of delicious food and family time (P.S. - I highly recommend the movie Tangled), but we definitely missed these people...

We especially missed the cute girl in the back with the light blue shirt on since she wasn't able to make the trek in the snow to SF.
Maybe I'll see my sisters again someday...

Somehow from our NC trip this year, I didn't get a picture of my Dad. He always manages to be MIA in family pictures :)
He's usually the one taking them - like the pictures above.
But we missed him too!

We came back to San Francisco the day after Thanksgiving and went to see the lighting of the Macy's Christmas tree in Union Square.

There were so many people. I am lucky that I get to be in Union Square/Chinatown everyday, but I've never seen it quite like this with tons and tons of people everywhere. Well, I guess the only other time it was as crowded was when the city had a parade on Market for the Giants winning the World Series.

We could hear the music but we couldn't see the performers. Some people in the streets were getting frustrated because they couldn't hear anything and started chanting, "Light the tree! Light the tree!" This was then followed with a huge, very wide man standing up and rapping in between the chants and another larger woman getting up and pretending to pole dance while the large rapper waved dollar bills in her face. Ahhh...nothing makes it feel more like Christmas than seeing this sight while hearing "Let in Snow" in the background :)

These pictures always seem so fun, but they never look good...

All jokes aside it did make the holidays seem to officially begin and I kind of felt guilty for sneaking in some Christmas songs before this big holiday kick-off.

We'll definitely be there again next year!

The next day I took Jeff to see the sugar castle in the Westin St. Francis.


It is all made out of edible materials and is a towering 12 feet tall.
If you go read the sign. It's amazing to see how many pounds of gingerbread and other sweets they used to recreate this French castle.

I took the boys I nanny in the morning to see it unveiled and then took them on their personal favorite - the hotels famous glass elevators that go up 32 floors (I'm not gonna lie - I love them too! It goes a lot faster than you'd imagine and you totally feel like you're riding the Tower of Terror). The day of the unveiling ceremony they passed out sugar cookies and hot chocolate, which just seemed to make the castle seem even sweeter.

Too bad for us the day Jeff and I went, the hotel was asking for people to show their room keys to get onto the elevators. I've never seen that before, but it was a holiday weekend. Jeff's been but we wanted to see the lit Christmas tree from above. The hotel was thinking what we were, and our plans were foiled.

Jeff finished his finals yesterday and has three weeks off. I'm still working (if you can really call what I do working ;) ) but we plan on having lots of fun!

Shoes

Jeff's mom would make her boys slippers that they called "muffins."
(I think it's hilarious that three boys would call their slippers muffins :) )

We each got a pair last year for Christmas, and I started wondering what they'd look like as baby booties.

That's how they turned out.

I like them.
Don't they look like Tinkerbell's shoes?

Luckily, Jeff's mom was able to alter the pattern and make one so I could learn too and not spend forever trying to figure it out.

They're gone already because I gave them away at a baby shower on Friday. But now I'm kind of tempted to make more...
Maybe some green ones with yellow pom poms ;)

ClASSless?

In San Francisco? Of course not! What a silly idea...

This picture screams nothing but class!

I wasn't driving in the best part of town...if you hadn't already noticed.

Happy Christmas!

Today I saw this...


And I'm excited Thanksgiving is next week
(because we get to overeat and my little sister is coming - Hooray!)

and it also means

CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!!


p.s. - Who knew Union Square has an ice skating rink?
You can go to the Embarcadero rink or Union Square to ice skate.
I LOVE CHRISTMAS!

One Man Band

This is something you don't see everyday...
Look at all his strings!

An actual one man band.
He sounded good too.
Who'da thunk it?

Kade Monster

I can't stop thinking about this cute post that my cute sister-in-law, Bridget, posted a while ago. Isn't it so creative?

I seriously felt like the pictures of Kaden matched perfectly with her dialogue for him!

Isn't Kaden just the cutest?
So handsome.
We miss him so much!

One year older and wiser too...

So after I'd been working extra hours for both families lately, the last thing I wanted to do was blog when I got home.

But I did want to show what's been happening...

Jeff had a birthday!

Got a homemade pumpkin pie!

And got to wear his "Bear Bottom" man jammies from Mama Rainy and Papa Tan Tan (my parents are going to kill me for calling them those names...)

I didn't take a picture of the bottom of the pjs, but they come with butt flap and all. My favorite part is that there is a bear on the butt flap...get it since they're bare (bear) bottom pajamas! Ha ha. Thank you Carly for finding them and suggesting that Mom and Dad get them. She found them at the Mass General Store in Boone, NC. Don't they just look like something you'd find there?

Love it!

We also got to go to Texas Roadhouse (yummm!) with Jeff's family thanks to his parents. I am still dreaming about those rolls with the cinnamon honey butter...

What do you do on a cold, rainy SF night?

Well...I don't know what you do, but we go get ice cream!

So we'd had several people tell us about this Bi-rite ice cream place, but we ever we thought, "You know what I could really go for some ice cream right now," there would be this ridiculous line outside. I'm not a fan of standing in line, as I'm sure most people aren't, but I'll stand in a line if I don't have anything better to do and I'm with people I can talk with. When Jeff sees a line, he just keeps on driving. He loses all desire to get whatever it is that people are waiting for. So Bi-rite just had to wait.

It was cold tonight and Jeff wanted to go to Twin Peaks for a while (I love that it's only two minutes from our place). Once we were out and saw the city, we just wanted to go do something else too. Seeing the rain dripping from the trees gave me the idea and feeling the chill in the air made me think well we sure shouldn't go get ice cream right now...or should we?

We decided to check it out and see if there was a line and just as I'd suspected - no one gets ice cream on a cold, rainy SF night.

But I'm sure glad we did....

Jeff looks so tired...poor thing. It was past his bed time.

Yummy!
This place is a definite winner.

Jeff got a banana split with caramelized bananas and the roasted banana ice cream. I didn't take a picture of mine because it was gone before we left the store, which is totally embarrassing, but it was too delicious. I just got a scoop of cinnamon snickerdoodle cookie ice cream.

It actually had snickerdoodle cookies in the ice cream!

I wanted to get either the roasted banana ice cream or the pumpkin ice cream, but could only choose one.

We'll definitely be back.

AND THE GIANTS ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!

What an awesome win! Watching the tense game helped me forget I was sick for a little while. Too bad I'm just not totally cured.

Let's go Giants!

Can you believe that our first year out here they're going to the World Series?

Jeff's still trying to convince his mom to give him tickets. He along with everyone else she knows will be harassing her I'm sure.


P.S. - Brian Wilson totally rocks! I've loved watching him and all his antics all season. Fear the beard baby! But does anyone know what the machine is? That's always gone over our heads. What the heck is that?

Have you ever...

seen a man bungee jumping off a tree?

I have.

He then proceeded to swing on a tire swing five times,
and glided on out of the park on roller blades and equipped with ski poles.

It was pretty awesome to watch. I wanted to film it but by the time I pulled out my phone, he'd already rolled on out and down the hill...sad day.

Playing Hookie

So sometimes I wish I could play hookie when I start getting sick. I've started to lose my voice but I don't really have symptoms of a cold. So who knows what's up.

Anyway, I was nannying and the little four year old boy turned, covered my mouth, and said, "Please only talk when you're reading the bedtime story."

Isn't it interesting that he cared about my voice, but not enough to skip the bedtime story? That bedtime story trumps everything. I thought having a raspy voice was cool, but I guess he didn't think so.

SPOILER ALERT!!! BRIDGET DON'T READ THIS IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT YET!

This is what I just sent to my nephew Kaden...




It's nothing special. But I'm glad that I made it for him, and maybe he'll keep it and someday have one of his little babies wear it.

I'd thought about sewing on these baby blue (for him it was Carolina blue since they're big fans) mother of pearl buttons, but I showed them to Jeff and he said they were girlie. So I didn't.

I'd started using a dark blue yarn (I liked it b/c it was Duke blue) and Jeff said that I should knit in a D and tell them that it was for Kaden Davis but really the D was for DUKE! I know...tricky tricky. Sadly, the yarn was VERY difficult to see. So I changed colors.

I just love gifts that are made with lots of love...I'm very glad Jeff's mom taught me how to knit so I can make these types of gifts.

Now that I finally just mailed it...
Onto the next project!

Pizza Pizza!

It's decided. My pizza's now officially the best in San Francisco.

We had homemade pizza tonight. I just had to make it after thinking about how disappointing all the San Francisco pizza places have been.

It was good. I made two pizza's one for me and one for Jeff, but I only took a picture of Jeff's. Jeff just cut his so beautifully that I decided to take a picture of his.

I don't like black olives, so I prefer when we can get separate pizzas (like at Nicolitalia...I know. I need to let it go. It's out of my life forever.)

But doesn't it look delish?
Okay anyone in SF want to help start a pizza place with me? I've already got the pizza recipe.

Pillow Talk

The other night Jeff and I were having our nightly pillow talk routine (which has now extended a lot later than it used to since I work so late now). Jeff told me about a conversation he had with his friend Chris at school.

Chris: My wife and I went to this restaurant over the weekend. Several people told us it was the BEST breakfast place in San Francisco. We went and it wasn't even that good, especially for how much it cost.
Jeff: Yeah, I finally realized that when people suggest restaurants, I always need to ask them first, "Wait? Do you live in San Francisco?" Because for whatever reason, people in SF think expensive means good. And they're never right. It's never good.

I was just glad to hear that someone else was having the same experience in food hunting as we were. It's been rough replacing "the regulars" from Provo. The pizza hunt I've decided won't ever be a success. No one can replace Nicolitalia. Now I can only dream about it in my sleep. With it's perfect ratio of chewy to crunchy crust. Mmmm...

In fact, I've become so disappointed with the lack of acceptable pizza here, I've just starting making my own. I've never been that into making homemade pizza, not because it's not good, but because I have always thought of pizza as being a special "out on the town" type of food. I guess you could call it a treat and one that I just didn't have to make. Well not anymore. I make that too.

And the thing is when you ask most people what's one of the best parts of living in a big city? They say the food. Well, for me at least, it's the food. I LOVE food. I love making food. I love eating food. I just love it. Cities should bring a whole new selection of restaurants to the table. And we fully expected there to be plenty of places we'd be able to visit that'd be within a reasonable price range.

But they're not reasonable priced for what you're getting in most places (probably because they have to pay rent in SF). We haven't been to a ton of places because we're poor, but where we've been it's usually a disappointment.

I leave saying, "I could've made that."

And isn't that why you eat out? To be given food that you just can't replicate at home?
Or is that just me?

When we first moved here, we kept receiving referrals from people we'd meet. One place (La Taqueria) we went to was on the Food Network. All the places also happened to be on this list.


Let's just say Jeff no longer believes in that list.

We wanted to replace Diego's Tacos (well I did... Jeff never loved that place, but he wanted to replace Taco Trucks in Modesto), so we went to the Mission District and ate at La Taqueria.

It was expensive for what they gave you.
Took a long time.
And wasn't anything special.
Let's just say, I could've made it better at home.

We wanted to replace JDawgs and so we went to this sausage place in the Mission District, Rosamunde. We had the recommended Beer sausage with sauerkraut and grilled onions.

It is no JDawgs.
Was fairly inexpensive.
Didn't taste very good.
And had nothing special about it.
I could've definitely made way better at home.


Maybe before we leave SF in four years we'll actually find some place that has special food AND that is reasonably priced, or at least worth what your paying for.
Here's hoping...

Today I...

saw a human head.

It was juicy. It's eyes still rolled around when you moved it.

The eyebrows were still there, which was weird.

I was glad it was cut in half, so it didn't seem so real.

The part I really didn't like was when Jeff said, "Oops. A little piece of her brain just sloughed off."

Sick man.

In college, I never had to take anatomy for my education major, so this was definitely an experience for me to see what Jeff's been studying.


P.S. - I HATE how it smells in there. Blek. I seriously can't stand that smell. I always tell Jeff he reeks when he comes home from the lab.
P.S.S - The weirdest thing was we went to a BBQ place in Pacifica afterwards, and the girl that took our order told me I smelled good. I hope she wasn't talking about dead people smell, because that's straight up nasty!

Get your orange on!

So here's a picture Jeff's mom sent us from our most recent Giants game.

I seriously loved those rally rags. "Get your orange on" - how fun is that?

Whoever does the marketing for the Giants is seriously so awesome. I'm sold on all their slogans. Their main tag line "It's magic inside" makes AT&T park sound like Disneyland.

Fun baseball, fun family, fun times!

(I'm banking on this post being good luck for the Giants tomorrow. I hope I'm right...)

Did you miss me? Did you miss me?

Okay...so if you think, judging by the title, I've been around too many toddlers lately then you're right! I've been a little MIA for a while, but Jeff forked over the Mac just so I could post!

Lot's of things have been going on and I don't even really know where to begin or what I've let out.

Jeff had his white coat ceremony...
















It was fun to hang out with Mom and Dad Youngberg, and doesn't Jeff look so cute in his white coat? (Even though it was too small. There was a mix up with the sizes. That's what you get I guess when you're 6'2" and have super long arms - you can't get away with wearing a medium.)

Now let's play a game...

Guess who's the dentist!























Can you tell? I know we're pretty tricky like that.

(White Coat pictures are courtesy of Jeff's mom. Mine were lame, so thankfully she got a ton of awesome shots.)

The Giants have been playing so well that we got to go with Jeff's family to the first game in the series against the Padres the first weekend of October. They lost that game, but it was still fun to go with family. That was the first game Jeff and I had been to this summer where the Giants actually lost.

Because the Giants made it to the Playoffs, we invited friends to come over and watch with us. We had yummy ginger cookies (with crystallized ginger from Chinatown since I walk through their everyday :) ), guac, and pumpkin spice chex mix - which is the bomb by the way. I'd never made the chex mix before and Jeff asked me to make again as soon as it was gone.

It was very casual but I impressed myself with my ingenuity. We got rally rags/towels from the game Jeff's parents took us to. I'd just washed them, saw them sitting out, and when I was putting the cookies on their plate, I had the idea to make it look like they were a runner.

Check it out...























Jeff and I were debating about whether or not it was ingenius to make a runner out of rally rags. He said that it was creative. Jeff argued that I didn't use any ingenuity since I didn't make any plates float in mid air. Whatever. I think Jeff's confused about the difference between ingenuity and magic. What do you think?

Obviously, Jeff couldn't care less about my ingenius/creative faux Giants runner. He was more concerned about the proper use of adjectives.

I LOVED Fleet Week and all the tricks that the Blue Angels showed off. We have a Blue Angels kite, but I never actually knew how cool they were until I got to see them in person. And let me tell you what, they are way better than our stupid kite.

Just to end this post on an extremely happy note...

Check out this beautiful view I had on Sunday morning. I was eating breakfast and had to snap a shot of it.


















I LOVE our apartment and all the trees. It makes me feel more like I'm back in NC. And the third story is way better than our basement apartment in Provo. Too bad we're paying for it - literally.

Central Park ain't got nothin' on Golden Gate

We walked around Golden Gate Park today and I still haven't figured it out. Why is Central Park the only park that everyone hears about in the US. It's in shows and movies and books. Everyone knew about it in NC, but I don't know of anyone ever mentioning the Golden Gate Park. But it totally kicks Central Park's trash.

We've been having fun going to see Giants games for free in the archways at the stadium; hanging out, eating s'mores, and having a bonfire with friends at Ocean beach; and finding an amazing Chinese restaurant close to us. We were especially glad about the Chinese place. We were beginning to think that we'd just have to get Panda Express whenever we wanted Chinese food...

And so sorry but no pictures.

I've been kind of lame lately and haven't been taking a lot of pictures. But we also save all our pictures on the Mac because it's got photoshop, and Jeff has decided to use it for school. Since school has started he's using it all the time to study and work, so...sorry but no pictures. I might have to start posting at odd hours just to get pictures up again because well... I don't know about you, but I really like the posts that have pictures too on blogs.

Man in Black

Dear Man in Black,

Why were you banging your duffel bag against the door of the train over and over and over again? I don't understand why you kept screaming at yourself. And what is in your duffel bag? I was getting really creeped out when you started pacing up and down the aisle and then started yelling "F*** it, f*** it, f*** it, f*** it!" Next time please stay home so someone can help you and you won't hurt anyone.

Sincerely,
A girl on the N-Judah

Dear San Francisco,

Why are there a bunch of men dressed up like queens and chanting on the street in the Castro? Was it a drag-queen face off? I'm so confused what they were doing.

Your new resident,
Whitney

Happy Halloween!

So this is what I came home to today...


That's right people it's a skull. A human skull. Did you know dentists bring home skulls to study? Well I sure didn't. Bleck. Who knew!

Take a look inside this treasure trunk...



Yep it's full of what else but bones. The skull I at least get because of the teeth but bones? I'm just glad Jeff didn't decide to put a bone in our bed...

It's Begun!

Today Jeff officially started dental school! Well...at least orientation, ha ha. But still...Hooray! I am so excited for him because this has been his goal for a long time.

Here we go...buckle up! It's gonna be a long ride.

CANDY!!!

We went to Pier 39 the other day to hang out. We like to look at the shops and we've passed by the candy store called "Candy Baron" a couple of times, but we finally took a closer look at what was inside...

Check out Jeff's awesome find.

I discovered that Obama and the first lady have their own mints...who knew!

Does anyone else love Cadbury creme eggs? Growing up my brother and I always looked forward to them every Easter. I found this candy bar that is a creme egg! Mmmmm...


















I saw this one and thought what the what?!


















Not for girls? Seriously? I wanted to prove them wrong and eat it but then I checked out the price tag.



















Jeff spotted this handy store :) for my dad and little sister...


















They had a really clever idea. Spiral bound notebooks that had the spirals on the right side! I'm not left-handed but seeing that notebook sure made me wish I were left-handed just so I could try this notebook. I'm sure it's pretty cool.

This was our favorite find though and we really want to try it (but not for five bucks).

Did you notice the new canned dog food flavor? Yummy!

Have video games really gotten that bad?

So we not only took pictures at the arcade, but we also took some awesome video that were all sideways...oops! Sorry about that :)

Here's the what the laughing lady did...


I'm glad we didn't have to pay for it.

Check out this game...




I know...you couldn't see what happened. But I wanted you to see the title of this game.

Here is the video that actually shows what happens.




Check out this one...





So disturbing that they looked at this stuff for fun. Who were these people?

Needless to say...we enjoyed this place.

Musée Mécanique

So...the other weekend we went and saw this crazy vintage arcade at fisherman's wharf. It was crazy cool and kind of creepy at the same time. When we walked in, Jeff didn't see too impressed (even though he was the one who'd thought of going :) ), but after seeing some of this weird stuff...how could you not like this place. I mean really...take a look at this stuff!

So I guess back in the day they were totally obsessed with watching goofy little goons laughing. This was just one of them. We passed on paying money to watch Jolly Jack laugh because...

We'd already overheard this crazy lady cackle when we walked in the door. Luckily someone else had just paid a quarter to watch her laugh. She was pretty weird and I was trying to show on my face how scared I was. Too bad it was a bad picture, so we had to try again.

Take Two: What can I say redos of crazy faces never seem to turn out well. I just ended up looking like a spaz. Oh well. At least you can see how huge the lady was.

Here was the next game we wandered upon. At this point Jeff was still not impressed. Then he started to become disappointed (as you can see by the look on his face) when he thought the ancient machine had taken his quarter without letting him play a fun game.

But really he just didn't know how it worked. But luckily he's smart. He's going to be a dentist, so he figured it out. The ball just suddenly popped up and this was his face when it did, ha ha :)
Boys are such kids! You've gotta love it.

This picture of Peppy the clown is for our friend Jack. Since I've known them they've always had a clown voice and said..."Hey kids!" Don't ask. I don't even know.

Then we saw this. What kind of games were they letting their children play. Opium. Really people? Take a look in the drug den. It's totally creepy too.
They look like zombies...bleh!

We were a little too scared to take a peek inside this game...eeek!

We tried to figure out what Jeff's future career would be...you know just to make sure we weren't going into tons of debt for nothing. But it wouldn't tell us and we wasted our quarter, so we'll never know I guess.

This measured what kind of lover you are and I think the picture speaks for itself :)

This was outside the submarine. Who knows why it was out there but what can I say...we just can't pass up the chance to put our face in one of these things. Well...Jeff can. He said it was a girl thing, so he wouldn't. Ha ha. What a goof.

Jeff has spent the night on this submarine...

just like these boy scouts. Well he actually was a boy scout when he did it.

Here's Jeff trying to prove his strength. He was a hoot at this place.









We had a lot of fun here and it turned out to be a lot better than we both thought it was going to be. We're just glad we've had time to go have fun together since the dreaded first year is coming up very soon.


The best of this place is yet to come...