Ashley & Emily come to visit!

We had more visitors! This weekend Ashley and Emily flew out to visit, it was so great. Ashley and Emily are just the sweetest, most fun friends to have and I am so glad we got to spend the weekend with them. Thursday night we took them to Bi-rite and Delores park.

^just trying to fit in with the fellow weirdies at Delores Park :)

Then we went to the Conservatory of Flowers to see the Summer of Love light show. 

Having visitors is the best because it forces us to get out of the house and do all the fun things. Friday night we went to the Church of 8 Wheels...aka..our favorite place in the city. We disco skated the night away along with our new friends Bre and Andrew. 

Thanks for coming to visit, Ashley & Emily! We love you!

a sunny day in Oakland.

It's summer so we are doin' all we can to escape our foggy city and catch some sun rays.

Saturday we went to Oakland. First stop...the temple! Holy moly, that place is seriously the best. We both felt so happy and refreshed after a session there. I was a little nervous to go in the temple with bright pink hair, but all I got was smiles and compliments. 

The Oakland temple has quickly become my favorite. There are stairs that lead you to the roof of the temple which has this amazing view above Oakland and San Francisco. 

After the temple we headed downtown to find some food. I am on a pretty restrictive diet these days and eating out is pretty hard. (I will write more about this in another post.) Miles found this little hole in the wall Ethiopian restaurant downtown. It is family owned, cheap, delicious, gluten free, dairy free, huge portions, and super spicy. Basically covered all my needs and more.

Whenever I have heard about Oakland, mostly I just picture the most ghetto place on earth and I am yet to discover that side of Oakland. Every part of Oakland I have experienced is beautiful. We had heard cool things about the Mountain View Cemetery so we made our way up there and it was pretty amazing. I'm weird and I find cemeteries really cool to begin with. 

 There was a portion of the cemetery called, "millionaire row" full of these HUGE graves. We walked along millionaire row and googled each of the names and read their story. My favorite was finding the family that the movie Cheaper By the Dozen was based off of. They were all buried here! Also, Mr Ghirardelli the chocolate man is buried there as well. His tomb was full of Ghirardelli chocolates that people had thrown in there. What a cool dude. 

How handsome is Miles? There is no other person I would rather walk through cemeteries googling dead people with than him. 

Last stop was the Berkley Bowl. The Berkley Bowl is basically the Super Bowl of grocery stores. You can find every fruit or vegetable you could ever need (+ a ton you have never even heard of) all organic, grown at a farm only a couple hours from here. Food has been a major topic on my mind the last 3 months. There is a lot to be said about how messed up the American diet is, but as I was walking around the Berkley Bowl I had this moment of realization and gratitude of how insanely blessed I am to live in a place where I have access to such a huge variety of freshly grown fruits and vegetables. I am so lucky to live in a place where eating gluten and dairy free is a little tricky but not impossible. We were able to find gluten free, dairy free, chocolate chip cookies at the Berkley Bowl! I feel so grateful for this food journey I have been going through and I am grateful to have the means to feed myself healthy food that makes me feel good. Ha, so there is my heartfelt testimony about a grocery store... If you are ever in the East Bay, the Berkley Bowl is actually at the top of my recommendations of places to go. 

They had pink carrots to match my pink hair! And edible flowers in case you have been craving those?...Haha

Then we headed back home into the fog. It was kinda spooky driving across the bay bridge back into the city and only being able to see the bottom half of all the tall buildings. It's a weird place we live. 

Thanks for the sunny day, Oakland!

PINK HAIR

One of my all time favorite Instagramers, Brooke White (if you don't follow her, you should!) has semi-permanently dyed her hair several different colors lately. She gave a little tutorial on her story of how she does it and I have been thinking to myself, "this looks amazing, I would love to do that, but WOW I am not that brave!"

Miles has been telling me since we started dating that he thinks I should dye my hair a crazy color, just for fun. I have always laughed that off and been like, "you can dream but that is never going to happen. I'm not that brave."

Then the other night we were at dinner with some friends and somehow the topic of colored hair came up. Tasia mentioned that she would also like to dye her hair a crazy color but was nervous. The next thing we knew we both agreed that if we did it together, we would dye our hair.

Tasia pulled the trigger and bought this hair dye from amazon, we mixed it with a whole bunch of conditioner, painted it in each-others hair, waiting 30 minutes.

We went from boring old blondies....

 To two crazy girls with cotton candy PINK HAIR! I absolutely love it!

As you can tell, we were pretty liberated from this experience. We felt bold and fearless!

Miles caught this selfie taking action happening. A million selfies were necessary for such an occasion. 

The dye we used is only semi-permanent and will only last through a week or so. It has been 4 days and the color is about half gone. It has been so fun while it lasted. I got all sorts of compliments wherever I went. I will totally do it again.

Life lesson learned...doing things that scare me is always worth it and I never regret it. Even if it's just dyin' my hair pink.

Mt. Tam

A couple of weeks ago we headed up north across the bridge to Mt Tam with our friends Emil & Ira.

This has been on my SF bucket list for quite a while and I am glad we were finally able to make it happen. We picked the perfect night to go, it was a rare fog-free evening

The hike we chose was about a mile each direction. You hike through thick woods and right at the end of the trail leaves you on these golden rolling hills next to the coast over looking Muir Beach with the city in the background. It was warm (notice that we aren't even wearing jackets!) and so peaceful and beautiful. 

We are so lucky to have Emil & Ira as friends and to live in such a breathtakingly beautiful place.

It was an evening for the books...or the blog. 

Surfin' USA

Last year we let the fog ruin our 4th of July plans, but NOT THIS YEAR.

Our 4th of July consisted of two trips to the beach, a burger (well a lettuce burger) and a nap. It wasn't quite a Utah 4th of July, but it was still pretty great.

In the morning we headed down to Linda Mar where we surfed the day away. Of course I was singing the Beach Boys Surfin' USA the entire time. The waves were just perfect for us beginners and we were all able to get up a few times which is a blast. The highlight for me was being out in the water with dolphins! It was like a 4th of July miracle! There were these huge pods of dolphins there were poppin out of the water so close to us. Kinda scary at first to see the fins, but they super exciting to be so close to all those dolphins! 

It appears Miles' wetsuit has gotten a lil small there. He had some real nice back cleavage. 

I need to remember to take a BEFORE picture next time we go surfing, it leaves you lookin pretty rough after!

We headed to In-n-out then back home for a nap. Surfing takes every last ounce of energy you may have!

Then back to the beach for a party with our friends! Being away from family on holidays is a bummer, but we are so lucky to have friends here who are just like family to us now. We couldn't be more lucky with the group of friends we have! We played Spike ball, watched more dolphins, ate yummy snacks, and danced with sparklers.

We are surrounded by the cutest little girls in our ward. Here's to hoping we have daughters as cute and fun as them someday. Isla, in the pink below and I have become really good friends. Whenever we are around her she comes and sits on my lap and tells me stories about the time 'when she was a little baby.' It's the cutest. Her Mom, Julia, told me that whenever she and her sister Addie play house, Isla always wants her pretend name to be Carrie. 

Happy 4th of July!