Almost 2007

Tim and I have enjoyed a week off doing pretty much nothing. It is funny how doing nothing can take so much time. Well, we have been a little productive. We ordered the last of the furniture for our "nursery" (if you can call it that) and we have been planning our bathroom remodels. I look forward to decent bathrooms, but am hoping that the drywall dust doesn't fly for too long this time.

We had hoped to get some hiking in this week, but the Bay Area has been terribly windy. We have been able to see a few days with amazing waves at the beach.

Please check out our Holiday "card" at http://web.mac.com/lealotus/iWeb/timles/Christmas2006.html.

Have a great New Year's!

Blizzard in Colorado

We are already having a White Christmas. We arrived in Colorado Tuesday night. We had come early to Colorado because we used frequent flyer miles. Well, that has really saved us. Less than 8 hours after we arrived in Boulder, Colorado was hit with over 2 feet of snow in less than 24 hours. Roads are a mess and we are thankfully in our friends' home enjoying their company and relaxing. One of our friends actually got stuck on the highway (on a bus) and had to be rescued via a Humvee and sent to a shelter for the night. We are so very happy to be stranded this side...rather than being with the 5000 people stranded at the airport. :O

Attached are pictures from Boulder of the snow!

Ready for Christmas

We are getting ready to go to Colorado for Christmas. Because we are using free tickets, we are leaving the night of December 19th and returning on Christmas Day. We hope to be in Boulder for a few days and then spend the remaining time in Denver with Tim's family. I am so relieved that my winter coat actually fits over my belly so I won't freeze to death. I hate to buy a winter maternity coat for just one cold week in Colorado. :>

Yes, we did put up a Christmas Tree this year. We bought it from Delancey Street, a great non-profit foudation here in SF. Click here to read about the Delancey Street Foundation.

We'll be back in San Francisco on Christmas night. Tim and I are hoping to get caught up on lazing around and catching up with SF friends!

Visit to Louisiana

I finished all of my last school assignments and left town. I am visiting my parents and friends in Louisiana. Tim as able to join us for the weekend after a long week of work travel. As usual, we are eating lots of good food. However, I cannot drink like I normally do. :> I have been able to catch up with my college and high school friends. And, I got to spend the afternoon with my old college friend, Deidre. We think we even have our college friend, Susan, trained on email finally.

I attached a few old pictures that I had never gotten from my mom. The summer beach picture is from my cousin's (Mandy) wedding. The second picture is from San Francisco in October (I'm about 22 weeks there).

Thanksgiving 2006

Tim has spent the majority of the holiday installing his new engine in his car. It's still not done, but he is getting closer. I have seven papers ready to turn in this week and I am ready to be done with school! I'm not sure what to do with myself now.

We spent Thanksgiving over at our friends, John & Mary Ellen's. Tim did one turkey for the dinner, so he doesn't feel too deprived. I went on a great hike at China Camp yesterday with my friend, Devora. She is 30 weeks pregnant to my 28 weeks. I have pictures of both posted, but please do ignore the hiking hair.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Almost Thanksgiving

It's almost Thanksgiving and I am ready. My goal was to finish all of my papers before the Thanksgiving break, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. I have one paper that I still haven't started and I keep putting it off. But, everything else is in process.

I'm coming to Louisiana December 7-13 to visit. I found a frequent flyer mile account that I forgot about and booked a free ticket. Like free money! I thought it would be good to travel before I get too huge and uncomfortable for flying.

I've attached a picture of my new favorite dog, Buddy. Buddy's owner, Kerry, is my school colleague and I have been hanging out at her house doing child observations of her son for one of my papers. I just had to take the pictures of Buddy.

Nothing else exciting going on here...

Deep into School Papers & Getting Kicked

No post for over a week...I am in the midst of school papers. I turned in three this week and am targeting two for this week. After that, I have three more left. If you want to know anything about Child Temperament, Treatments for Anxiety, Disordered Eating and Mindfulness Meditation, then I am your expert. It's a good thing I am so busy because Tim is working late every night. He hopes that his big crush of work will ebb a little before the end of the year.

On the baby side, I am getting kicked constantly. More so when I want to sleep. I think that's a good thing though. I can only imagine it will get more intense. Almost 26 weeks along, so almost in the third trimester.

I attached my new favorite picture of Tim...him hiding under the pillows to drown out the garbage trucks that come by every single morning at 4:30AM!

Update your web links

Given that I am supposed to be writing 10 papers for school right now, I have decided to upgrade my website with all of our pictures. So, if you had visited our old website before, I've taken it down. But, the new one is at http://web.mac.com/lealotus

Most of the pics are the same, but I have links to a few ones at the bottom of the page. The newer site is easier for me to update and takes up less file space.

With that, I will return to my 10 papers for school and be a good student. For an update on Tim, he is now on to a new project...installing a new engine into his 1971 Triumph Spitfire (pictures coming). He bought it on ebay and the engine wasn't up to Tim standards (i.e. the engine could fall out at any time). We are practical people after all. You know, buying a convertible right before having a baby. :>

Going backward a few weeks...

I just got pictures from a few weeks ago. Tim & I attended our friends', John & Mary Ellen, wedding up in Napa. They had an incredible event. Friday night at Domaine Carneros and the wedding was at the Culinary Acadamy at Greystone.
Link to Greystone
The food was incredible, the weather was cool, but beautiful, and they had a mariachi band. I don't usually like mariachi, but they were great! We, of course, forgot our camera, so we just had someone email us a few pics. Here they are!

New York City Trip

Our vacation was a really a work trip for Tim, but I did get to enjoy a little down time in NYC this past weekend. Tim had work meetings the majority of the weekend, but we did have time to wander the city. It was my first time to visit the city in the fall, so it was nice to have real fall weather. We didn't get to any
museums, but I think I walked most of the city. We went by the WTC site, which was just huge. They actually started finding more remains the day we were there.

Some highlights of our visit:
- Whoa! The prices of hotels are outrageous! I thought SF was expensive, but I knew nothing! (We were at the W at Union Square...very nice, but I'm still in shock over the prices)
- I spent a great amount of time trying to find cute maternity clothes. They still stink...even in NYC. I did get to shop for all sorts of cool strollers, though.
- I did NO homework! But, I did hang out in the bookstores at every chance. I saw the funniest thing when I was passing the Teen Section of Barnes & Noble. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that both Kim Catrell (Sex & the City fame) and Bill O'Reilley (Fox News) had Self-Help books for teens. What? Are you kidding me? What a spectrum of advice!
- We had great dog watching throughout the city! I thought SF had a lot of dogs, but NY has us beat.
- On Sunday, Tim was able to steal away for dinner with our friends, Tom & Tracy and their son, who used to live in SF. At least Tim got a little socializing in.

Check out the pics...WTC site, some pics in Central Park, a picture of me 5 months pregnant, picture of Union Square & our hotel (W). The Blog website is having problems posting pictures today, so I'll add more later to the post!

Pictures & Links from my parent's visit

Mom and Dad left on a midnight flight last night, but we squeezed in lots of driving and playing with electronic gadgets. I finally got the right cable for the video camera, so I am including the link to my first movie using iMovie. It shows Dad at Pebble Beach, which is really beautiful.

Link to VIEW Dad's Pebble Beach Movie

Or, Link to DOWNLOAD the movie

We also tripped on a "casting call" for a pet calendar in Carmel. We had to forget about the cute shops and hang out with 400 dogs for a few hours on the beach. It was better than a dog show!

Nita & Kirby Visiting in SF

Mom & Dad arrived in SF yesterday from Louisiana. We have already gone to Ikea and to the Cookin' Resale Kitchen Store in SF. There is some shopping that you just can't do in Zachary. Mom made me chicken and rice for a early birthday dinner.

Christmas (for the next three years) came very early. Mom & Dad gave us a new video camera and enough baby clothes for Baby Anderson for the first six months of baby. I have so much blue clothes and blankets that I guess I'm really having a baby now! Guess we're going to be taking lots of videos for the Louisiana grandparents.

We're now at the downtown SF Apple store. Dad is shopping and taking an Apple workshop while I am waiting to get some service on my computer. Tomorrow, Dad will get to play golf at Pebble Beach. So, I hope to have some good pics from Carmel and Pebble Beach tomorrow night.

Beautiful San Francisco Weekend

We are finally getting our summer in San Francisco. That is, our real summer is late September through November. Sunday could not have been a better day. Even though Tim was sick, I had to drag him out of the house to ride around in his convertible. On great days like that, it seems okay to be poor living in SF! So much to do...we went and watched the Blue Angels from the Presidio. It was our best vantage point since seeing the Blue Angels (during Fleet Week) for the first time seven years ago. Check out this link of great pictures from Fleet Week and the Blue Angels on the San Francisco Chronicle.
It was too nice to head home after, so we went to Ft. Funston after for quality dog watching! Now, I just hope that the weather holds for my parent's trip to SF this upcoming weekend.

Procrastinating Homework

There is far too much going on in San Francisco to be motivated for schoolwork. Prenatal yoga with renegade French yoga instructure in the AM. I can hear the Blue Angels flying overhead now. I think I'll go see them tomorrow. The Bluegrass festival (free) is also going on, but I'm musically illiterate and don't want to go alone. (Tim is hanging drywall at our friend, PK's house today). I had to buy a new cell phone because my old one finally died today. This means my new phone is a camera phone and I have no excuses to not take pictures. Nothing exciting yet...I just snapped a picture of the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park on my way home. Maybe it will be recognizable...it's even better in person.

Experimentation Post

This is a post to experiment with blogging. I'm getting a little harassed by family and friends that I am not taking pictures or updating everyone on the happenings and adventures of the San Francisco Anderson's these days. It's a little slow to use my mac webpage, so we'll try this out.