Bananas Foster

Last night we made one of our favorite desserts: bananas foster.  I believe this is our third home attempt and I think it was the best so far.  Here are some pictures showing the process, fun and end product.  Enjoy!!

Cook 3 bananas in melted mixture of 1/3 cup each of butter and brown sugar.

Cooking bananas while readying 1/4 cup rum.

Add 2 tablespoons of creme de cacao and sprinkle cinnamon to cooked bananas.

After simmering, ignite the rum.

Pour blazing rum into banana mixture.

Pour bananas on top of vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy dessert!

Pool Season

This past Saturday was excellent weather for an opening pool day.  Elise and I spent the afternoon at her parents house and enjoyed the sun, water, company and drinks.  Below are pictures we snapped throughout the afternoon.  We used Jessie's (Elise's sister) Nikon D80 to shoot these.  We are borrowing her camera for about a month and thought it'd be good to shoot some pfotos with it.

Surprise!!

I thought it'd be fun to snap some pictures behind the waterfall  and catch the distortion
of the palm branches.  There wasn't enough room for my head and the camera behind
the waterfall so the shots were a bit of trial and error to capture it right.

Jessie enjoying the jacuzzi.

Elise and Jessie sharing a laugh.

Elise got some great shots of Birds of Paradise really looking like birds.

Day around the Bay

On Saturday April 14th we got the chance to hang out with our friends the Spoons. We met up with them at a marine mammal center and watched the volunteers feed the sea lions that were there rehabilitating. We also spent some time at the beach, and a discovery play center. As we were driving around we were also able to see some amazing views. Here are some pictures from our day with the Spoons:

Like we said before, the weather was beautiful all weekend.

Sea Lion's lounging at the mammal rescue center.

Ducks enjoying the cool lagoon.

View of the Golden Gate from outside the harbor; San Francisco is in the background.

We barely managed to get set up in time to catch the sunset.

It was so windy on the point that we could not leave our camera on the tripod to shoot both of us.

Enjoying the beauty.

Berkeley

During our trip to San Francisco we stayed in Berkeley for two nights with friends.  Berkeley is one of the more interesting towns I have visited and has earned its reputation.  One of the pfotos below is a sign we came across walking back from a breakfast diner.  The sign proudly proclaims the city of Berkeley as a nuclear free zone.  I find it ironic that a place so fueled by the hippie movement in the '70s and environmentally conscious would shun nuclear power; but even more ironic is that the University of California at Berkeley is still one of the few schools left in the United States with a nuclear engineering program.  Below are pictures we snapped walking around the neighborhood and driving through Berkeley's campus.

The diner we ate at had model trains decorating the walls and one running along a track.

I managed to capture a great shot of Mackenzie and Willie laughing during conversation.

See above for my thoughts on this.

The Golden Gate, prominent across the bay, from the rooftop.

Berkeley in the distance (also from apartment rooftop).

Pier 39

We also explored Pier 39 on our day driving around the city.  We walked around and got some clam chowder, enjoyed the sea lions, took in the views, and got 1.5 pounds of salt water taffy (YUM!).  The sea lions have now been at the pier for over 20 years.  After the earthquake in 1989 destroyed the docks in the area, the sea lions came in and pushed some docks out.  They have been on those docks ever since and are now protected to live their.  Here are some of the pictures we took on the pier: 

Awesome kite shop 

The wind was perfect to capture the lawn decorations from the kite shop.

These two sea lions look like they are cuddling but they were really playing and pushing each other off of the dock. So much fun to watch. 

This guy just decided to hobble over everyone else. The others weren't very happy. 

This was the king of the Sea Lions 

Alcatraz

Yummy Taffy