I never planned on going to San Francisco. Full House was as much as I ever thought I needed. It seemed like a lot of traffic and people and weird. It’s all of those things, but it’s a lot more than that, too. There’s a lot of culture, and the food that tags along with it; SanFran is a tasty city, make no mistake. Ramen, sourdough, sea creatures so fresh they wiggle if you’re into that sort of thing, mac n’cheese versions of Chipotle, impossibly good breakfast — if you can crave it, SanFran very probably has it. Hungarian? Yep — great Hungarian. Japanese grill-your-own-meat-at-your-table experiences? Mmhmm. French baked goods that make eating anything else that is isn’t a French baked good sad? Yes, and they are enlightening. New Orleans inspired BBQ with a Russian twist? In that specific case, unfortunately yes, they have that, too. Variety. Soooo much variety.

But there’s a lot more than food on the bay. There are festivals pretty much all the time, there’s always live music somewhere, and mass transit that, well, kindof gets you to all of it — okay, some of it. It’s called BART (Bay Area Rail Transit, I think?) but Amanda usually called it BERT or BENNY; whatever felt right in the moment, I suppose. So many hormones.

But this last trip, like the transfer trip before it, was 5 days long because it’s deemed safer for the freshly-transferred embryo to not fly for a few days post-transfer. So, per doctor’s orders, we hung around San Francisco for a bit.

But we aren’t city people, not really. We are suburb people, absolutely, but not really downtown folk. So we skipped town and drove somewhere out of the city on the daily: 2 hours north, 3 hours south, beaches crowded only by sandpipers, tide pools crammed with starfish, waves that drown out your thoughts, especially hermit-y crabs that hate everything — rocks and trees and skies and seas. That San Francisco is beautiful. So we spent our time there picking up tiny green rocks and polished emeralds sea glass for our biggest smallest fan back home and running for higher ground when rogue waves snuck in around sunset and having staring contests with seagulls who were always up to something — I swear they are organized and up to no good — all because adventure is out there but you have to go to find it. So we did. And we took some fun photos as we went along, Like this one:

Hey, I was looking at that magnificent sunset while I was taking this picture of an equally stunning sight. What? So I multitask.

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And, finally, this one:

That last one is pretty much a perfect snapshot of our trip: a whole lot of taking in the beauty around us while mentally and emotionally preparing for more waiting. And that’s exactly where we are now — and for 8 more months.

Amanda is pregnant.