a lovely day in Sonoma at our favorite winery Viansa!

enjoying some amazing dessert at Tartan bakery near our place!

Updates!

It has been a while since we've posted on here and we've have several requests to get back on. So here we are! The past month and a half have been crazy busy to say the least. We're settling into our Noe Valley home and certainly finding plenty to do!

This month has been a hectic one for Michael at work. He's been working 6 days a week and is ready for some down time! Marilyn has been also keeping busy with volunteering at Save the Bay, networking, and babysitting for three families! We have set a date for the wedding (October 6, 2012) and are beginning to have some fun starting to plan it all.

This past week Kay and Louis visited us from Atlanta. They were our first visitors so far, and more importantly, our first family to visit. It could not have been more special! Although we all agree we ate way too much while they were here! But SF has such wonderful food so we couldn't feel too guilty! Some highlights from their visit include exploring Noe Valley, Mission, and Castro; shopping in Union Square and in Hayes Valley; touring Golden Gate Park, the Marina, and Presidio; spending a lunch in Cupertino at the Apple campus; enjoying the Saturday market; and a wonderful day trip to Sonoma.

Monday unfortunately came all too quickly and it was time to say goodbye. Although we are far from home, we are so grateful for phones, texting, email, and Skype to keep us in touch with our families and friends. Visits from them are always special but seem even more so now that we are out here. We truly enjoyed having a piece of home and family out here with us and look forward to many many for visits to come!

Pictures from our wonderful week coming soon!

Lots and lots of love,

Marilyn and Michael XOXO

Sonoma for the 4th of July!

Since Michael had the 4th of July off from work, we decided to take a trip to Viansa Winery in Sonoma. It was only an hour away but an incredible day trip! They had live music, wine tasting, and brick oven pizza. It was a blast! And it was an incredibly gorgeous day!

Images Continued

Images continued

Images Continued

Finally Images of Our New Apartment

A trip to Berkeley

Yesterday we dropped our friend Erica off at the train station in Oakland. Since we were already in the East Bay, we decided to take advantage of it and go have lunch in Berkeley. We drove around the campus some (which was beautiful) and then found a place to go have lunch. As much as we love out little neighborhood in the city, we have not had time to explore much outside the city yet. So we were excited to have the chance to finally get to know the area some more.

Finally feels like home

After a whirlwind moving experience we are finally settled into our new place! Our most recent challenge proved to be getting internet (which is why we are so late on this blog post).

Michael has been catching the Apple Bus every morning from only three blocks from our house. He is really enjoying his job and loving being a part of an Apple Team.

Marilyn is staying busy with job interviews (fingers crossed), running errands, and making sure the house is organized.

We are both loving living out here so far despite all of the craziness that has come along with moving across the country. Some of our favorite local spots are in our neighborhood, Noe Valley, and just a few blocks from our house.

Bernie's Coffee Shop (where we have met Bernie and know several of her employees) is our favorite coffee place to go on the weekends and for a treat during the week. The Saturday market in Noe always proves to be wonderful with tons of local farmers and delicious, colorful produce. Green 11 is one of our more recent finds. It provides refills for household cleaning products, shampoo, conditioner, etc. So we just bring our empty bottles and they fill them for us. We're loving how cheap it is but also how sustainable it is! The Whole Foods in Noe sells wonderful local milk that comes in bottles (which we can return for refilling) with delicious cream on top. Our new bank, Wells Fargo, is in town too. Our new favorite pizza place, Patxi's, burger place (with veggies burgers), Barney's, a brunch place (Toast), a florist, hardware store, and gym are all right in the center of Noe Valley. We love the convenience but also the community. Everyone is very friendly and it definitely has a small town feel.

We had our friends Alex and Kenna over for dinner the last week. They live just down the street which we are so excited about. They were absolutely blown away by our place and espcially our view. We feel so fortunate to have them so close and to have such a wonderful place to call home.

Moon Rise Over the City From our Living Room

It is official!

Today we headed to the Santa Clara DMV! Since San Francisco only has one (yes one!) DMV, we decided to head south a little bit in hope of by-passing some of the wait. After a slight delay (the power was out when we got to the DMV, but was back on when we got back from lunch) we were able to get in and out in an hour! Definitely record DMV time! After passing our driving tests (whew!), registering the car, taking our license pictures, and registering to vote, we were set to go! We are officially California residents!

Here are some pictures of us putting on the new license plates!




























Also, for those of you who would like it, our address out here is:

630 Alvarado Street
Apartment Number 305
San Francisco, CA 94114

Sending lots of west coast love,

Marilyn and Michael

First couple of days in our place!

We moved in to our new place on Monday June 13! Although our furniture does not come until this Saturday, we are really happy in our empty place. It is much better than the moldy corporate apartment!
We're enjoying being walking distance to EVERYTHING! The heart of Noe Valley, our neighborhood, is only three blocks away. There are plenty of stores, restaurants, banks, coffee shops, and grocery stores right there.
The picture above was taken from the living room of our place. It overlooks the Castro, Noe Valley, the Mission, some of Glen Park, and the beginning of the east part of the SF Bay. Further left you can also see downtown! (Not shown in this picture)
Once the furniture gets here on Saturday, we will post pics of our completed apartment.
Until then, we are sending everyone lots of west coast love. XOXOXO

Michael's First Day of Work

This week closed Michael's first week of work with Apple Corporate as a Camera Test Engineer. Here are two pictures from his first day (June 6, 2011) right before he headed to work!

Russian Hill

It was a nice Sunday afternoon (although a little chilly), and Marilyn wanted to show me some parts of SF that she had explored while I was at my first week of work. These are the photos I took at the top of Russian Hill!

We found an apartment!

After a long and stressful day of apartment hunting all over the city with our real estate agent, WE FOUND AN APARTMENT! We're incredibly excited and absolutely LOVE the place. It is right in between the Castro and Noe Valley, only three blocks from an Apple bus stop and the heart of Noe, and walking distance to Mission. We're in love! We are moving in on Monday and hoping that the moving truck will be here soon so we can fill up our place! As soon as we can we will post pictures! The living room, kitchen, and dining room all have gorgeous views of the whole city!

First post!

Today is the fifth full day we've been in San Francisco and it is a gorgeous cool sunny day!

This morning Michael took the bus for the second time and looked forward to a slow day around the office to get some things done. We're in our corporate apartment on Pine Street right now and are eager to get settled in a place of our own. The rest of this week is dedicated to looking for an apartment, especially on Saturday when we will meet with our real estate and spend the day touring apartments.

As for me, I am staying busy with organizational things around the apartment and trying to get to know the city. I've been enjoying walking around the city and meeting as many people as possible for now. The public transportation system has proven to be a bit more challenging to learn than I had expected but I think the best way to get the hang of it is to explore as much as possible.

We're enjoying this new adventure so far and are excited to find a place of our own some time soon!