Happy Birthday, John!

We celebrated John's 29th birthday with our friends at Lee Harvey's, an outdoor bar and grill in South Dallas. 

No birthday is complete without balloons and cupcakes!

Friends stopped by and we ate, drank and ended up staying to listen to The Cure cover band play at least the two songs we knew....It was pretty awesome. 

Happy Birthday, John! Get ready for the big 3-0 next year!!!!!

Happy Easter!

Obligatory Easter picture at my parent's house on Easter Sunday...

**Note the eggs in the tree**

John's Favorite Day

You'll recall that John's favorite day is opening day for the Texas Rangers. And now that the Texas Rangers are actually good, it's almost impossible to find affordable tickets and actually attend the opening day game. 

So, rather than attend the game, we headed to the Nodding Donkey, which featured $1 hot dogs, $2.50 beers and the Rangers playing on every television in the house for opening day. It was probably the second best way to watch the game. 

Looks like one happy dude. And yes, the Rangers won. 

Happy Favorite Day, John! 

Monterey-->Mountain View -->Dallas

Our final day in California was spent touring the offices of Google in Mountain View! My dear friend, Tamara, works at their headquarters and invited us for a tour and lunch. 

Tam and I

Dinosaur on Google campus!

Fun umbrellas all in google colors!

Space craft? Planes? I don't know...it was just cool to see this in an "office" building. 

Garden that provides food for the Google cafeteria. 

Sweets adorn one of the main yards. 

And an android...

Group pic with the gingerbread man!

What....

Cool motorcycle. 

And a google-themed bike that you can hop on and take from building to building. 

It was an INCREDIBLE tour and loved getting to see Tam, the google headquarters and another part of California. If you ever have an opportunity to tour Google, don't miss out.

After this we headed to the airport and returned to DFW. We had a great trip, loved spending time with our family and will fondly remember our times together in Cali!

Monterey Day Seven

We left SF Sunday evening and drove two hours to Monterey, CA! We woke to the sound of the ocean the next morning and decided to go on the famous 17 mile drive up the Pacific Coast to Carmel. 

We were able to stop along the way, put our feet in the ocean and take in the gorgeous surroundings. 

Amazing. 

Dandy's been talking to the sea lions, below the frame of the pic, since 2001. 

The Lone Cypress Tree

Christmas card?!?!

Favorite pic of the entire trip. 

When we finished the drive we were in Pebble Beach. Since John and Dandy are golf fans, we walked around the pro shop and wandered around the hotel and course. John is here on the 18th hole. Guess we'll have to make it a point to come back and actually play someday. 

We got back to our hotel in time for happy hour. We're quite the wine connoisseurs after our time in Napa! 

Then we cleaned up and headed to my all-time favorite dinner, coconut crusted shrimp from The Chart House. 

We may or may not have traveled all the way to Monterey for this one meal....

But it was, in my opinion, one of the best meals of the trip. We saw dolphins from our table, ate delicious food, drank some wine, watched the sun set over the water and enjoyed our time with each other. Not even clam chowder can top that! 

San Francisco Day Six

We got up Sunday morning and headed into the city for our tour of Alcatraz! 

(View of the bay from the sea)

Alcatraz!

It's such a creepy, little island and it doesn't look too far away from shore. 

Until you get there. 

Guilty. 

I didn't realize how many infamous inmates lived at Alcatraz at one time. Again, creepy. 

Jailbird. 

 Several inmates attempted to swim to shore from Alcatraz but  most were caught, except for ONE...

Afterward we had a delicious lunch ant In and Out, a California must even though they are in Texas now. 

And one last obligatory trolley pic before we left for Monterey!