Made it!

Rain!

Turns out in rains in the Pacific Northwest. A lot. For 100s of miles.
But we're only 60 miles away!

Still don't like yerba matte

Thought we'd try some yerba matte in Oregon. I didn't like it in
Brazil and don't like it here. But we sure like Ashland. Its like a
little green Durango.

Ashland!

Just like home, sort of...

Olivia made herself right at home at the Shasta Mountain Inn - she was
cooking breakfast on the second day!

Now it feels like Christmas!

In our land of palm trees and balmy weather we'd felt that Christmas
wasn't really coming. Now that we're in the snow on the side of Mt
Shasta, it definately feels like Christmas! We miss snow...sort of.

Mmmm...

It sucks to be stuck in traffic

What do you do when you're stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge with an
iPhone?

You take pictures and blog about it of course!

Pinnacles National Monument

We drove about two hours south of Mountain View last Saturday for and overnight camping trip to Pinnacles National Monument. The Pinnacles are too hot to visit in the summer but are a perfect fall, winter or spring destination. We went on two lovely hikes. On the first day we climbed through the pinnacles on a 7 mile hike with a few sections not for the acrophobic. We also saw a few California Condors, one was even resting on a rock pinnacle near the trail. It was especially inspiring to see the California Condor as there are only 155 in the wild and there were only about 30 in the wild in 1983. On our second day we climbed 3200 foot North Mount Chalone, one of the higher mountains in the Galiban Mountain Range, which lines the east side of the Salinas Valley. The climb was strenuous but the views were worth it.

Pinnacles National Monument

Thanksgiving!

We had a great Thanksgiving with friends in Santa Cruz. After celebrating on Thursday we drove to Santa Barbara with David and Marta for the weekend. It was a fantastic time, and it was great to see our friends and more of the beautiful California coast.

Strange, how different it was from our last Thanksgiving.

Photos from our weekend can be found here:

Thanksgiving 2007 and Santa Barbara Road Trip

Quick visits

One of the fun things about living in the Bay Area is that we've had a lot of friends pass through town for a variety of reasons. Thus, we've had a serious of "quick visits" where we get to see a friend as a bonus on their business trip. Recently we've seen Jessie, Megan and this weekend we hung out with Julia.

Julia was in town for a class, we met her downtown and went to a tea shop in Chinatown where Julia decided to "rub" a tea leaf in our tea sommelier's hand, instead of grabbing it, like he asked. It was funnier than it sounds.



We then had a fantastic meal at a Cantonese restaurant in Chinatown before heading back to Mountain View.

San Diego Fun

We took advantage of United Airlines reduced mileage awards for a quick trip to San Diego.  We went to the zoo, and the wild animal park and the beach.  We decided we need more three day weekends.

San Diego 3 day weekend

Big changes to oliviandchris.com

We have decided to migrate our old web page to this more dynamic blog with the intention of being able to update our digital lives more often. Look for updates soon. While you're waiting, check out some recent photos (the photos are links to web albums, click on them to see more photos).

A visit from all of Olivia's family this summer to celebrate her birthday:

CabSyDun visit

A visit from Chris' parents:

Adams family visit

A weekend trip to the Sonoma Coast:

Sonoma Coast 2007