Oh The Places We've Lived

How did that happen? I swear I can't be getting that old. But I'm afraid it's true. Tyler and I celebrated our six year anniversary on June 27th. We went to a Switchfoot concert at the Del Mar Fair (I had been waiting years to see them in concert! And they were awesome!)

Then, we packed our bags and headed up to San Francisco for a weekend away (thanks to Danielle and her babysitting skills). Actually, Tyler flew up a few days before me for a conference and I met him there for the last few days. We wanted to go back to the Bay Area and reminisce a bit in a place that's pretty special to us. We love San Francisco and Berkeley and it was the place we met and fell in love and got married.

The day I flew in started with a dim sum -- I love to start my SF trips with dim sum. Then I had fun driving all over the city with Cuong and Alice. We had a lot of fun (I think we had more fun than we all expected).



The view from the top of twin peaks.




Roomies -- we were waiting for Cuong to take the picture... and it was windy.


A quick stop at Kara's Cupcakes!



Then on to the Golden Gate Bridge.




And the Legion of Honor where we saw a weird wedding ceremony and a replica of "The Thinking Man."


We also stopped at the Palace of Fine Arts.




And rounded off the afternoon with a light jog up a million steps. Pretty, no?


Tyler met up with us later and we had Russian food for dinner. It was surprisingly delicious.


The view from our hotel in San Francisco.


The next day Tyler and I went all over Berkeley to all the places we used to love to go and eat at. We also took pictures in front of all the places we lived because we realized we had none!


Bay Bridge on our way to Berkeley.





Drove by this:


Had breakfast here:


Walked around Berkeley for a while. We were shocked to see so many stores that had gone out of business and empty store fronts. Kind of sad. Although, it's fitting for a place like Berkeley I suppose, a place that is always changing but manages to somehow stay the same.


Hippie vendor who yelled at me to not take his picture!


The famous Blondies Pizza on Telegraph. I think Fat Slice is better, though.

Stopped by the food ghetto for lunch.

I seriously miss this place!! And it's cheap tasty food! Like Thai fried rice -- oh man, soo good!!


Walked around campus for awhile, saw some special places to us -- the spot were we first kissed, where Tyler asked me to be his girlfriend, where he proposed, where we took our wedding pictures.


Drove up Cenntennial for the view -- gorgeous even if it was a little hazy!


Watched Tyler try to catch a lizard.


Isn't he cute?


Tried to go to Nobolom Bakery where we ordered our wedding cake from but it was closed.


Stopped on College Ave and had a snack of bread and cheese that was out of this world!


And wrapped up our day with dinner at Fonda -- this yummy tapas place we had our rehearsal dinner at. Nice and romantic!


Our first apartment together -- 1644 Oxford Street in Berkeley. It was called "The Manor" and the building was bright pink. The old Chinese lady, Angie, who managed the place really liked us for some reason and thought it was so fun that us young kids got married so when we moved in she gave us a wedding present -- a rice cooker.


Second place we lived -- 632 The Alameda in Berkeley. An amazing house with an amazing view. We house sat for a couple in our ward who went on a mission for a year. They had a panoramic view of the entire Bay and San Francisco. It was amazing!

The third place we lived in we don't have a picture of and didn't have time to go by. It was in Oakland -- a cute little apartment that I loved! Although it was right on the freeway (literally, ON the freeway) and across from a halfway house it was bright and sunny and we lived next door to some awesome friends that we miss a lot!


Tyler's first apartment -- GHETTO!! Seriously. It was a pretty nasty apartment. I rarely went there (mostly because Tyler was my apartment a lot eating our food). And the neighborhood he lived in wasn't the nicest in Berkeley.




The first place I lived in Berkeley -- Telegraph Commons -- on the corner of Telegraph and Channing just two blocks from the Berkeley campus -- a private dorm. Oh, don't let the word private fool you. This place was a rat infested hell hole. I do have awesome memories though -- all the TC5 girls. I lived there my freshman and half of sophomore year. Sigh... I'm getting all verclempt just thinking about it!


My very first apartment -- 2620 Hillegass Ave in Berkeley. Alice and I lived there together. I remember apartment hunting with her and after seeing a lot of crappy crappy places we found this apartment and it was so awesome -- felt like home! I loved this place! We had a crab and beer night once where we bought about 20 crabs, threw them in the bathtub to keep alive, steamed them in huge pots I borrowed from the institute, cracked up some beer (root beer for me!) and had a blast with our friends. We just threw newspaper and plastic down on the floor. Man... good times!

Tyler and I had a really great time remembering our 6 years together, reminiscing about the past, discussing the present and dreaming about the future. Thanks for being so awesomely wonderful Tyler! I love you! And I know it's only going to get better!