The Rosas-Standring Family

I love San Francisco. I spent a great day last week walking around the city and taking pictures of some of my favorite things. This city is so amazing, especially when you look at the right things in the right way. Especially on a beautiful sunny day this city is stunning.

San Francisco is such a small area and yet has so many distinct areas from China town, North Beach, The Financial district, Mission, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Castro, City Hall & Fisherman's Wharf. And that is just to name a few. Each of these areas has its each style and character. And that they are so different from each other and yet are literally just a few blocks from each other. In the above examples I did not even leave the downtown area and yet there are so many other areas.

I spent my morning walking around 6th and Folsom up towards City Hall. This area is a favorite of mine for a few reasons. One big one is that it is where the outdoor scenes were filmed for the film version of Rent. Every time I watch that movie it makes me miss home. Not to mention that this area is where I lived and walked for many years in SF. There are so many random colorful things done in a way that only SF would do them. It has one of my all time favorite buildings in SF. This weird building on 6th and Howard that has all of these strange things hanging out of the side of it. There are so many people that drive by that never even see it. It has a piano, bathtub, fridge, lamps and stuff like that.

I also got to finally see the latest Federal building that I watched them build outside of my apartment for YEARS!!! And it is one of the ugliest things that I have ever seen. Oh well, I am sure it important architecturally speaking and such. But I hated it.

After that I went to the city hall farmers market for a few snacks. I always loved this market. For one it was right next to my old apartment that I lived in on McAllister Street and it always was so lively and fun. On a beautiful day city hall is so nice. And the park here is nice as well. I never really brought the kids here because they were a little to young when we lived here to play in this park but it is a very nice park.

I then took myself to North Beach and had a quite lunch all by myself at my favorite little restaurant in SF. This is the only thing that I ever sent Ruben out for when I was pregnant through both kids. It is called Mona Lisa. It has my all time favorite dish in the world... tortellini with Gorgonzola sauce. It was a really nice lunch in a very nice little restaurant.

Afterwards I walked around and saw some of the places that really made me think of Ruben. Like the Tadich Grill. This is in the Financial district and is the longest running restaurant in San Francisco. I love the artichokes here. Neal and Momma brought me here once for dinner and I loved it. Ruben and I would always come here to enjoy killer lemon drops between shifts at Chevy's.

I really love this town. I miss living here. I am glad I do not because we are in a different time in our lives living a different existence but I miss it here.

Okay. So now that we are here. here are the pics from when we surprised grandma. It was so cute. I got in late at night and Juana picked us up at the airport. After sleeping at her house we all went to breakfast. I was going to surprise her sister and her kids but I guess that on her way to the restaurant she had called Ruben and he told her I was here. WTF!!! After a month of keeping it secret. Juana brought us up here to surprise the family and the cat got out of the bag at the last minute. It was not that big of a deal because the kids were really surprised and they loved it.

But the really great part was that after breakfast we went to pick up Ruben's mom. She had absolutely no idea that we were coming at all. I was in Juana's car and as we pulled up and I jumped out... well , I mean you can see it on her face. It was classic. Akilean was in the back seat and they quickly started hugging and kissing. Lena was in Lupe's car (Ruben's other sister) and so as soon as they came to a stop Kennedy jumped into her grandma's arms. It was really cute. By no-- obviously Ruben's mom is crying her eyes out. It was so cute.

That afternoon I went with Ruben's parents to visit Ruben's little brother Cesar. It was really great to see him too. I miss him a lot. We were always very close.

That was a few days ago but I am just getting around to blogging about it. A lot of this is not in the line of time... I still have a lot to say about the wedding and Chichen Itza and all.

I took Akilean on a date this morning. I love going on dates. The other day I went with Lena and my niece Melanie. We amped up on the walk saying it was a "ladies Lunch" and we were all going to be ladies like the princesses. And they had a great time. Well Today was Akilean.

It was fun because on our walk we came to the old SF library on 5th and mission. Well, he wanted to spend 15 minutes walking on the edge holding on to the railing. "okay, we have all the time in the world" It was so cute. He spent some time on this project of making it all the way to the other end. ( A victory marked by a hige high 5!) The funny thing was that 1) we had a small audience by the end of it and 2) almost at the very last point (after about 12 minutes of focus) he jumps down, reaches his hand in through the gate to the grass and grabs a dandilion and hands it to me with a huge proud smile, and then jumps back up on the edge! This kid is a great date.

We go to breakfast again at my friends restaurant where the benefit of eating there is great food and lots of it for a next to nothing price. And Akilean is just such a little gentlemen the whole time. He asked for a cup of tea and actually drank it. He ate a bunch of fresh berries (which is hard to get in my area of Mexico) and was polite and kind the whole time. It was great.

Then later on tonight I made dinner for Ruben's family. And this is one of the few times that I have so far. Usually a Thanksgiving style dinner or a birthday party but this was one of the rare times that I just made dinner for the family. I made one of my favorite dishes. -- A chorizo, veggie sauce over spaghetti. The family loved it.- It turned out really good.

I am having a really good time with Ruben's family but I really miss Ruben. I am so glad we have the vonage phone and I can call him anytime that I want when he is not at work. That makes it feel like he is closer. I know that he wishes he were here too. We are happy living were we live and we do not want to leave Mexico but I know that he wishes he could be around his family.

Okay... so I have not been able to blog about this because Juana, Ruben's sister, and I wanted to keep it a surprise for his family up here but we are in San Francisco. I am so excited about being here. Ruben and I lived here for so long and we loved it so much. I miss the energy of this place. The flight was tough. There were 2. The first was only only 2 hours to Mexico City and went very well. The 2nd was about 4.5 hours and was late and there was turbulence. I hate turbulence.


I must say that I love flying on Mexicana. In my opinion it is the best airline to fly to Mexico. They have a good baggage policy, free food and drinks (even cocktails) and the nicest people. There are lots of flights and they are on time. The food was also very good.


I had a wonderful day yesterday. When we woke up, I took the girls to breakfast at my friends restaurant in the very fancy Intercontinental Hotel here. The breakfast was very nice. The berries were my favorite. After breakfast I took Lena and Melanie over to the store to buy a few things that Lena needed.
The girls got matching dresses and ran around Yerba Buena park while I sat and talked with my friend Heidi. We took the girls to a grea frozen yogurt place. There were a bunch of flavors to try and every topping that you could hope for.



Later that night I went to dinner with Juana and Heidi at my favorite restaurant, the Mona Lisa. This is the only thing that I ever sent Ruben our for when i was pregnant. My favorite dish is the tortellini with a gorgonzola cheese sauce. It was even as yummy as I remember. Dinner was amazing and then we went over to Juana's husband's work. It is a really fancy restaurant bar and so it was really fun.