the evolution of Leni

Hydra

Upon recommendation of my little sister, M and I visited the Greek island Hydra. There are no cars or motorcycles allowed on the island. The only way to get around is by donkey or foot.

That last photo is one of my favorites from Hydra. The man on the boat had just returned from fishing, and was selling the fish he caught off the boat. The cats would all gather around in hopes that he would throw some fish at them. It was so cute!

Athens, Greece

M and I are both super excited and very happy! I will tell you all the proposal story when we get the photos back. In the meantime, I will be sharing photos from our trip to Greece.

Here are some photos that we took in Athens:

On a completely unrelated note, I have been studying for my CBEST [I take the exam next Tuesday.] and I have not been able to catch up with my daily blog reads in a LONG time, and I am counting down the days before I can catch up with them! I have dozens of blogs that I love, but have not read them in several weeks. I know that it will take awhile to go through them, but I will read every past post that I've missed. 

I'm off to the library to study now. Have a fabulous day!

San Francisco (Part 4)

Here are the photos from Valentine's Day dinner and our evening together. We went to this cute Italian restaurant called La Traviata. [Very delicious food.]

M looking at his "notes" and trying to figure out how to get to the restaurant:

At the restaurant:

Here we are taking photos in the street:

As we were walking, we found some balloons that a store had put out before closing. I decided they were meant for me. Then I saw a little girl with her mom and decided that she'd like them better. M took a photo of me with the balloons before giving them to the little girl.

I like this statue of Linclon. It's right outside of the SF City Hall.

Here is the City Hall Building:

And the meridian:

And that's it for photos from actual Valentine's Day. On Sunday, we woke up early, packed our bags and had the hotel hold them for us. We also packed up the box with all the goodies to have it shipped backed to me. We walked from the hotel to China town. We ate Dim Sum at New Asia. (The restaurant was recommended by M's friend, and it was pretty yummy and cheap!) M ordered chicken feet. He said that they were good. I couldn't get myself to even try them.

We walked around the city (hugged tightly under an umbrella). It rained the entire day.

We then walked up 38,732,598,347,924 stairs to Coit Tower and then back down to Levi plaza. (Okay, maybe it wasn't that many stairs, but it sure felt like it!)

We decided to catch the Embarcadero BART back to the Mission District to eat some lunch at the bakery and dessert place that we didn't get to eat at the night before. (They were closed by the time we had finished dinner.) Along the way, I spotted these cute advertisements for the zoo. This photo was taken specifically for Tiff (she loves giraffes):

Here we are drying off and keeping warm at Tartine Bakery. (Also very delicious food!)

We also wanted to eat at Luna Parc (they were voted top 10 places to get dessert in SF). After eating our dessert, we decided to take some photos before leaving.

Somehow I managed to take this photo. I think it is of my hair. I just love the way it looks. (I want to paint a picture like it.)

We then took the BART back to the hotel to pick up our luggage before heading to the airport. (The next few photos were taken on the BART and at the airport, respectively.)

And just to show you how wonderful our security is... M had a water bottle in his backpack all day. Even though it went through the airport security machine twice (once normally and a second time because they wanted the DVD player in a separate bin) they still let him take this huge bottle of water on the plane. [Careless airport workers.] The worst part is that they wouldn't let a woman behind us keep a bottle of perfume she had gotten as a gift (that was a third of the size of the water bottle!). [Stupid rules.]

And this last photo was the early morning "Starbucks Date" that we had before going to work on Monday morning.

San Francisco (Part 3)

Here are a few photos of my favorite paintings (taken at the MOMA).

We also walked down to Embarcadero to take some photos of the Bay Bridge.

And I conquered my fear of spiders. (Okay, not really. I'm still scared of them.)

We were both so excited to walk past the Federal Reserve, that we had to take a lame picture of each other:

We ate dinner at Tadich - and it was DELICIOUS!

And we continued to walk around the city taking random pictures of pretty sites and nice architecture.

If you look on the bottom left corner of the tall building, you will see our neon signs that were hanging in the window. (I wish we had a better picture of it, but with all the other buildings around, this was the best we could do.)

That would pretty much wrap up our Friday. On Saturday we went to visit the Berkeley campus and took a few pictures there. Here we are riding the bart ... we both look so excited, don't we. Haha.

We ate at Venus (my favorite brunch place in Berkeley!)

We did a little shopping and along the way found a photo booth. (I LOVE PHOTO BOOTHS!) It ate my dollar and wouldn't work. Needless to say, I was a little upset and didn't love this particular photo booth. Instead, we decided to use the digital camera to take our own "photo booth" pictures. It definitely wasn't the same!

Here we are playing in the main library. If you turn the nobs, the shelves move. Here is M having fun moving them.

M and I decided to play a little game. We wanted to see whether he could run from one end to the other before I was able to move it.

Obviously he didn't make it ... but I did get a good photo out of it!

And because this post is ridiculously long, you'll have to see the Valentine's Day dinner photos and photos from Sunday in another post.

San Francisco (Part. 2)

We arrived early in the morning on Friday. The hotel was nice enough to let us check-in to our room early. M had a friendly business meeting to attend, so I stayed behind at the hotel. I had a box of "goodies" shipped to the hotel in advance. After M left for his meeting, I opened the box and decorated the hotel room with Valentine's Day decorations.

Here are those neon signs that sparked the whole idea:

And here they are at night:

Somy candy and Pre-Valentine's Day gifts:

Lor had this great idea to hid these little "kiss" coins all over. There were 48 of them in total and with each one that M found, I gave him a kiss.

It was fun to watch M hunt for them. (And he did end up finding all of them.)

I got up early on Valentine's Day [Saturday] to put the sticky letters on the mirror. [Too bad they didn't come off very well! My sincere apologies to the cleaning lady.]

Friday night we had chocolate fondue dessert in the hotel. With the exception of the champagne (I thought it might break) and bananas (I wanted fresh ones!) everything seen in the photo below was in the box that was shipped.

I wish that we had taken some photos of the actual fondue. It was delicious! For dippers I made rice crispy treats, brownies and pound cake. I cut them up into tiny squares, and shipped them with the rest of the fondue set and decorations. We also had marshmallows and bananas to dip in. The chocolate fondue was a mixture of white chocolate melts, milk chocolate Hershey's bars, marshmallow fluff and milk.

More on SF to come.   :)

San Francisco (Part 1)

I seriously took hundreds of pictures this weekend. I have been going through them trying to figure out which ones to post, but I love them all. (I honestly want to post every single photo.) Here are a few for you to enjoy in the meantime.

At the MOMA [I will photoshop those people in the background out of the photo!]:

The Bay Bridge:

The rainy weather:

Kickin' it with Lincoln:

Weekend Photos

This past weekend was great!

On Saturday, we all decided to do a little shopping. Poor M was so tired; he found the most comfortable chair in the building and took a nap!

We also decided that it was MANDATORY for us to go to Ikea (since M and Timmy had never been). They just LOVED it!

They enjoyed playing in the carts a little too much:

M did a little meditation. (I think he was really mentally preparing to race Timms!)

Spunky kept playing hide and go seek with us all weekend:

I should also mention that she is very excited to FINALLY be home again!!!

We also stopped by Balboa Island to walk around get some frozen bananas:

The chocolate covered banana with sprinkles is my FAVORITE!

Poor Lex and Spunky were so tired after the whole crazy weekend. It was all really was great and exciting, but also exhausting at the same time!

I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight!

"The OC"

I actually hate it when people say "the OC". I find it annoying; perhaps because it's usually a fake, superficial teenager saying it.

My visit so far has been great. It's been full of fast passed adventures and running around trying to get everything packed into one little weekend. It's a little exhausting - especially considering the fact that Spunky isn't letting anyone sleep at night!

Although I haven't been able to photograph it all, I did manage to photograph some of the funny moments. I will post photos later.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend!

Almost there Spunky!

I'm super excited! I'm almost done packing for tomorrow. Timmy just got to Irvine and I'm driving down right after I get off work tomorrow.  We have fun things planned for this weekend and I'll have my camera in my purse!

I am equally excited to see Spunky tomorrow. I've missed her so much over the past few days, but Lex has been kind enough to keep me updated. I will post cute pics that Lex took tomorrow. (And by tomorrow, I really mean "later today" ... but I'm heading to bed now, so it "feels" like it will be tomorrow.)

FYI: For those of you that don't know, I went to grad school in Irvine. It's also where M and I started dating. So, as you can imagine, I have my list of places to visit already figured out.

The Best Pizza in Irvine, Ca

Gina's Pizza is my favorite pizza. Wait, let me clarify. Gina's "Barbacoa Chicken" pizza is my favorite pizza! After unloading Lex's stuff in her apartment, we went over to Gina's to grab a bite to eat with my best friend. I'm really looking forward to visiting Irvine again this weekend! Now I just need to decide where I'm going to eat and what I'm going to do!

Those two girls are also the best two girls in Irvine, Ca!