Memories of Fall

as a kid it was my favorite season by far, marked in the sky by the gathering of clouds, each fleeing the spooky october winds, swirling about frantically but finding no quarter. i loved that halloween was coming, that a live fire would soon be crackling in the fireplace, casting a particularly warm glint in my father's already glowing eyes. fall: my favorite season by far.

babe's last post described the delightful summer we berliner's had, packed so full of fun that i hardly noticed it had gone by. the cruise, family camp, and every little giant leap Lucas took, packed into three short months, from the spring to the much beloved fall in a heartbeat. so what has fall brought us? i'm not sure how much i can describe that doesn't revolve around Lucas so I won't bother trying. the little guy is talking NON-STOP now and it's hysterical: "oh no trains ding ding wooooooow nai nai? one two three ooooooh mommy daddy todd! dee vee dee, football poh poh eeesh... why yet, yee, sam say, mmmmmmmm? gate close push bye bye home bye bye daddy bye bye mommy.  ooooh tunnel!"

Halloween Parties
Fall, of course, starts with Halloween. We had two fun parties this year and we were decked out in fine style. Babe was a dangerously beautiful vampiress, which I contend she always has been, such is her power over me. Lucas, who's short name is Luke, was, in a delicious example of irony, was Darth Vader. Personally, I love that he was a little bit evil. Babe had been pushing for a scare crow, and not the Dark Knight version, but I got my way and the little dude ended up with a really cool Darth Vader outfit, complete with a light saber and helmet. The first party was the Drinan's whose parties always rock, year after year. We don't know how they do it, it's always 50 people minimum and the house always looks fabulous. All of our friends almost always make it so the kids get whacked out on candy while the rest of us get to visit with each other. This year Jon Sy brought his turntables so we got to rock out a bit, so to speak. Our age showed in the end when the crowd went wild to some 80's hits...

Beautiful Count Babe and Darth Lucas

Daddy gets to DJ

Boo!

Scary Beautiful...

Our first time meeting little Liam Kennedy!

The second party was hosted by our friends Bryan and Mary and it was amazing. They and their friends decorated that house to the hilt. They should have charged a cover it was so well done. Matter of fact, Lucas walked in, looked around at the terror surrounding him, and immediately lost it! I picked him up and tried to walk to a different room to calm him down but each room turned out scarier that the last and he just cried harder and harder. We finally found a relatively safe haven in the garage where the music was pumping, the lasers - yes lasers - were flashing the they had a bubble machine that blew smoke filled bubbles. Lasers threw you for a loop - SMOKE FILLED BUBBLES! Haha, Lucas loved it and we hung out there for the rest of the evening. It was a great party and Todd got to hang with a few good old friends that he doesn't get to see too often. Here's a few of the highlights.

Lasers make everything look cool

No one was harmed in the making of this graveyard

I don't believe all the guests that arrived, left

Lucas meltdown #13

The goulish hosts: Mary and Bryan

Pretty sure he was alive at last year's party

Thanksgiving at Nana's and Hedda and Leonard's
amidst all the new found chatter, we have been busy. first up: thanksgiving at nana's place. thankgiving is typically a large, chock-full-o-family holiday for the berliner's in the bay area. life is different now though, family has grown, kids like todd's cousin mckenzie, are off at college. life had marched on and in the end, this thankgiving saw us down at nana's house with hugh, bella and max. Lucas is fascinated with his older cousins and had a blast running around after them in nana's back yard.

Thanks for the ice cream Max!

Left to right: Max, Hugh, Bella, Nana, Lucas and Babe

Nana and her grandkids!

Not only was it great to see and be thankful with family, but nana made literally the best turkey we've ever had. free range, of course, brined, and cooked to perfection with a "meat stuffing" that included sausage!

We also got to celebrate with our "other family" of friends up at Hedda and Leonard's place in San Francisco. It was a pot luck and a ton of fun as usual. It was really cool to remember that only a year ago, Hedda and Leonard had just announced their pregnancy at the Christmas pot luck at their house. Lucas ran around the middle of living room while the rest of ate, drank and enjoyed the company. needless to say, we didn't get to eat as much as we like because the little monster never stops running! everyone's food was really good and there was a cool range of classics like cranberry sauce through some pan fried noodles with tuna tartare. There was some bad news in all of this: I managed to make a dish that almost ended our marriage (kidding in case that's not obvious)! I was making a carmelized onion tart with duck confit, asian pears and gruyere  cheese. the onions wreaked havoc at the berliner's house. i carmelized about 50 pounds of onions over the course of a couple of hours and the smell was brutal. our friend Diana was visiting and she had to leave it was so bad. she and alisa both woke up with headaches the next day and all of us smelled like onions for a week. there's now an absolute zero onion policy in our kitchen. in the end the dish was good our our marriage did survive.

Well that's about it for the fall. Summer was too short and now fall has blown by like a twirling leaf. I guess time flies when you're having fun and we're having so much fun that I swear time's going so fast I feel like a time traveler.

Summertime Fun!

We had a really fun summer this year, so fun that I didn't even get a chance to blog about it for the past few months.  I've got a lot of catching up to do.

In August we went to Boston and it was a very special trip for us.  Along with Todd's mom, we took Todd's Dad's ashes back to where he grew up to lay him to rest.  He had asked us to bring him back to his Sailing Club where he first learned how to sail and had so many great memories there.  It was an emotional trip and at the same time, it brought Bobby back to life and loved reminiscing about what a great man he was.  We visited the town he grew up in, the sailing club where his picture is now up, the house where he grew up, MIT the university he went to, the MIT sailing club where he was sailing champ, and we even got to hang out with 2 of his friends from grade school. 



In September we went on a cruise to the Bahamas on the 2nd largest cruise ship in the world, the Norwegian Epic. We flew into Miami and met up with my parents and my brother's family. It was the first family vacation in a long time with my brother and my parents. I'm not a cruise person and I didn't have much expectations going into it, but we all had a BLAST! Travelling with a kid changes how you travel and the cruise just made things really "easy". You docked at the port and do a day trip at various destinations. There were 20 restaurants to choose from, night time entertainment like the Blue Man Group, kiddy water slides, bars, shopping, rock climbing, bowling - everything is on this boat or should I say floating city. Our favourite stop was Routan, Honduras - it was a beautiful island, very natural, the beach was so hot and the ocean so warm. It was Lucas' first dip in the ocean - and it was in Honduras (lucky kid).  When we got back we had the "cruise blues". We wished we were still on the boat and vacationing in the bahamas.


A couple of weeks after we went to family camp with a bunch of our friends. This is an annual trip we take with the gang and last year Lucas was just a few month old and we stayed at a hotel and hung out at the campsite in the day, but this year we actually stayed in a tent together. Lucas had a blast - he loves the outdoors and dirt. I had to get over the fact that he was constantly dirty, eating dirt, sitting in dirt. Zen with the "dirt". Plus there was poison oak at the campsite, so I was super paranoid that he would touch it. It was a test of patience and just letting go and I survived :-)

Three Years of Bliss

Although this post is fairly late, Alisa and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary a few days early - July 23rd and 24th. To this day, I still can't believe she said "yes," and marrying Alisa is and always will be the best move I ever made. As a kid, I always knew a few things about my life and my future: I'd always love my family, I'd never be an engineer (ok, I was wrong about that one), I'd have my friends for life, and so on. More to the point, I always knew I'd find the one for me. I just never in my wildest dreams expected the one for me to be someone like Alisa. Luck rabbit to say the least. Well, the photo above is from 2007 or, in anniversary terms, year 0. Before I talk about the most recent celebration of year three, a little review of the two years gone by.

That first year brought the incredible news that we were pregnant. On our first anniversary, my mom Coni hand delivered flowers as a surprise to Alisa at work. I had planned a "date night" complete with an invitation designed using the same style and theme as our actual wedding programs and theme. Finally, we enjoyed a wonderful, and pleasantly private, Vietnamese dinner at Ana Mandara in San Francisco. The food was very good but it was the ambiance and romantic settings that truly allowed us to enjoy our very first wedding anniversary.

Our second year was celebrated with the babysitting help of our dear friends Hedda & Leonard. A cute cake, a cute night, and a little bit of a surprise as I tried to give Alisa a break and actually plan the night myself. With me in charge, we headed for the closest stakehouse: Porterhouse in San Mateo. Alisa said it best in her post at the time, "it was nice to go out on a date together, sans diaper bag." Haha, very nice babe... I put together a video card that showed all the photographs we had taken of Alisa's growing belly during pregnancy - it was really cute although toward the end Alisa certainly felt otherwise! Of course by now, we'd been raising Lucas for 7 months and you know what? We were tired! We celebrated, but I think our greatest gift to each other was a pass on an ornate celebration in favor of a low key indulgence in our favorite food, just a little bottle or two of wine, and some much needed rest. Good lookin' out babe, good lookin' out.

And here we are. Number three. By this point in our marriage, Lucas is one and a half years old and there is no question that raising him rules our world. (This is by no means a complaint, we love the little monster and wouldn't have our world run any other way.) However this is also no question that it is still our world, lit day after day by the light of our love. Although we strive now to lavish Lucas with the love and devotion that will form a foundation on which we can begin to build, through discipline and example, a fine young man, I believe firmly the single most important example we will ever set will be our own relationship. So, on to the celebration!

Our Celebration

We met at my office at 5pm and headed through the Market Street madness toward the Parc 55 Hotel where we were staying the night. Driving through the bustle of downtown San Francisco, feeling the electricity in the air, the pulse of the city, all brought a slight smile to our faces as vague memories of our downtown days danced in our heads. After checking in to the hotel we headed a few doors down to Puccini & Pinetti for a couple glasses of happy hour wine and a bit of people watching as the sun began to set on the city. We hit up a bit of downtown shopping then adjourned to our hotel room to get ready for what was to be an incredible meal at the french bistro, Chapeau!.

As pictured above, there were roses and cupcakes decorating the bed, lit by afternoon light coming in the window with our fabulous view. Alisa enjoyed a candle lit, rose petal bath and then got ready while I watched and reminisced. One of the fondest memories I have of dating Alisa was the simple pleasure of watching her get ready in the morning. She'd sit, cross-legged on the floor of her apartment in San Jose, in front of her mirror, straightening her hair and putting on makeup. I would watch her and think, holy crap she's hot.

We finally headed of to dinner, where the photo above was taken, at Chapeau!. Dinner was wonderful - a decadent french meal of various proteins bathed in buttery sauces. We ever so slowly enjoyed the foie gras and salmon tartare first courses. The second courses of seared scallops and pan roasted halibut were divine. And finally, the main courses of duck breast and tenderloin of beef reminded us why we love food so much, and why the meticulous mastery of the most essential dishes is what makes great french food one of the greatest arts in the world. Stuffed and silly with wine and the pleasure of a great meal together, we made our way back to the hotel, past all the bars we thought for sure we'd go to, and straight to bed to get cozy together and drift off to a blissful end to a perfect anniversary.

First Scrape

First knee scrape and Todd had to capture this.  He was running (more like flailing his arms and galloping) and then boom on the cement floor.  He just got up and continued, not even aware of the scratch on his knee.  Todd's was proud - he's a boy!

Happy 4th of July!

So it's my first year celebrating the 4th of July as a US Citizen!  First I was being sworn in at the ceremony, then being called for jury duty, and now the 4th of July.  We went to Coni's place for a 4th of July BBQ and hung out in her newly landscaped backyard.  She had a littel kiddie pool for Lucas and he spent much of the time throwing things in there and taking it out.  At night we watched the fireworks from our home and saw the Macy's fireworks show on TV (filmed on the cruise ship we will be on in August, the epic!).  Lucas was super excited about these bursts of light in the sky.  Look, he's even wearing a 4th of July pj set! Next year, we will go see them up close since he enjoyed it. 

Video of Lucas and Todd watching the fireworks from our place.

Girls Getaway in Napa

Myra and her sister Tracy came to visit SF, and we took a little trip to Napa.  It was nice to getaway with the girls (Diana made it too, who is one of the few people I know who is actually grew up in SF).  There was food at Ad Hoc, Thomas Keller's casual restaurant, wine tasting at a few places and cheese and you can't forget the factory outlet shopping to top it all off.  The night before I stayed at their hotel in Union Square, dinner and drinks (without a highchair and diaper bag!) It was like a mini-getaway for me.

June Updates

June flew by without any posts - maybe because it was a busy month or I've been lazy. It's been increasingly difficult for me to do anything with Lucas around since he's now a "toddler" and he gets into everything and has to show me everything. I don't need to work out, since he's got me moving my body and using my biceps.

Father's Day!
We celebrated fathers day by going to Sausalito for the day. It was such a beautiful day, no fog and the view of the city was so clear. We stopped of downtown for a coffee and breakfast sandwiches, while Lucas napped in his stroller (nice for us!). Then we spent the rest of the day at the Children's Discovery Musuem. It's such a great place for toddlers. Lucas loved the water play area, where there's river stream and plastic fishies you can play with. They had 2 big playrooms he could climb and run around. There was a train room, arts and crafts, and other rooms that we just didn't have time for. Todd had a fun day and he's such a great dad and Lucas loves him so much. I see it when he gets home from work and Lucas is running to greet him and is all smiles.

Hedda & Leonard's Baby Shower!
We threw a baby shower for our good friends Hedda & Leonard at Coyote Point Park.  It was a BabyQ theme, so we grilled and had tacos, played those baby games, and enjoyed the park.  The guys had to play break the water race, which meant carrying a water balloon between their legs, while running. That was funny to watch!

Oh and 2 weeks early, Trevor came into their world.  Hello Trevor!

Vancouver Trip!
So for the second time, I travelled on the plane with Lucas alone.  We went a week ahead which gave us time to see all the relatives and friends, and give Daddy a break.  Luckily I got an emtpy seat beside us, and he was consumed with opening and closing the window shade, then he moved on the tray, and then climbing up and down the seat, then the ice in the cup trip.  Finally, he slept for the last 20 mins of the trip. Phew I was tired, and we weren't even there yet! As always, my trips to Vancouver gives me a chance to reconnect with good friends and my family.  They just can't wait to see Lucas and since we don't live there, he was a celebrity - alisa who?  Lucas also partied like a rockstar, since his bedtimes were so late trying to fit everything in. He loved visiting my Aunty See Ling and Uncle John's beautiful backyard garden.  So much to see, like the fish pond, the rocks, fresh strawberrys, flowers, and little dogs.  His Grandpa took him on walks around the neighborhood and to the park.  We even went to Granville island where he saw all the boats, ate fish and chips and played in the waterpark.  We also spent a day in Stanley Park where we rode the miniature train with Myra and her niece and nephew, and Tania and her baby Nikolas.  He just loved that! We spent an afternoon with my cousin Grace who got him a bubble set and had fun blowing and popping bubbles in the park. We fit in a trip to Victoria with Jul, Cam, Maddie and Jen.  It was Todd's first time there.  We also got to hang out with Lucas' cousin Aisha who is 4 months old, which he isn't so interested in at this point because she just sits there.  It was nice to celebrate a belated fathers day with my dad, todd and a new dad my little brother with a 10 course chinese meal.  I miss those kind of meals.

This is my aunt's backyard.  It looks like a park back there!