Western Tour Stop #3: Northern California

The next stop on our tour was a 6 day stint in Sunnyvale, California (sadly, Chris had to head back to Chicago to work--bummer).  My little sister, Miranda, and her husband, Ryan, moved to Sunnyvale last summer and we were excited to go see their new hood.  Miranda works at Paper Source (the coolest paper store ever) and Ryan works at Apple (he's a genius).  They are very hip.  We also got to go see Chris' sister Stefani and her new baby, Bailey.  We have high hopes for Bailey and Ella to be the best of friends.  It is an arranged friendship.  I also got to go to Palo Alto and Berkeley to visit dear friends--my first time in both places and I pretty much fell in love.  I wish I had five lives so I could live in all these amazing places. We sent the camera home with Chris so the only pictures are stolen from Miranda's blog.

Ella crawled for the first time at Miranda's house.  It was only a few feet, but we're still counting it.  Here she is practicing her new moves.  This is just a few days before she turned 7 months.

This is Miranda and Ryan at their wedding a year and a half ago.  We are big fans.  Chris and Ryan love to play Scrabble together.  Chris is so happy that someone at Pabst functions will play games with him that he doesn't even mind getting his trash kicked by Ryan.  We love the Murdocks!

At lunch with my dear friend Sarah at the California Cafe in Palo Alto. She also took me on my first tour of Stanford (loved it!).  I adore this girl--we have had many adventures together including study abroad in Jerusalem, living in the Spanish foreign language dorms at BYU, history classes, and meeting up over the years in D.C. and New York.  Sarah is brilliant and we share a love of history and politics, but most of this day centered on discussing our new shared love--mommyhood.

Ella and Sarah's baby Will.  We think their first date was a big hit!