San Francisco- April 2008

I sat here this morning skimming over my annual 2025 goals list, trying to earmark a few things I want to prioritize in February. We’re already 1/12th of the way through the year, so I want to be mindful to not keep saying “later, later”.

Anyway, one of my annual goals is to “Write 5 past trip recaps on the blog”. I have a big master list in Google Keep of (I think) all of our travels since Ivan and I got married in 2007. I started the blog in 2020, so I’m looking at filling in 2007- 2020. That’s a lot of years! But on the plus side, our travel was fairly minimal during the first ~5 years of our marriage while the boys were really little.

I wrote on my February list that I’d like to tackle at least one of these past recaps this month. And then I realized, I have a little time right now…. how about I just do one now?! ✅

I already did our honeymoon to Disney in 2007. Looking at the list, next up is a trip to San Francisco in April 2008.

I was 24 years old, and we traveled there with Ivan’s cousin + wife, plus Ivan’s best friend Jonathan and his girlfriend came along. (Sad side note: Jonathan was tragically killed in a local car accident a couple years after this. 😥 So this very fun trip with him always holds special memories for us.)

We went primarily for our baby nephew’s baptism + party (his cousin Sonia’s son Beto, who live in CA- and is now about to graduate high school…. ), but we also did a little touring around San Francisco! It was our first time there. Oh, and I was at least 6 months pregnant on this trip!!!

*Looking back on these pics is a teeny bit cringey to me. lol. I just feel like, I don’t know, this phase was not my best look?! Maybe it was the pregnancy? I feel like I looked a little disheveled or something in a lot of them, and some of my maternity fashion and personal image choices seem, um, questionable. 😂😂 Also, my hair is my natural color here with no highlights at all and I personally find it to be very… drab brown. Ah, well, that’s the fun in looking back on old photos, right? I excluded some of the really bad ones. Haha.

2008 was also before I had a smartphone, so all of my photos from this trip were taken on an old digital camera. The quality is not stellar!

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San Francisco: April 2008

The weeklong trip was split up into basically 3 parts:

1. the baptism/party
2. some downtown San Francisco sights (and Alcatraz)
3. other local fun things together near their home/ family time

Here I am upon arrival! This was my first time ever setting foot in California.

The baptism!

Ivan’s cousin and wife that we traveled with were the padrinos. We didn’t have to do anything besides just attend the mass and the party! 🙂

Sonia and her husband had a very lovely home for entertaining, at the time, in Modesto, CA. They no longer live there, but it was a great place to visit. They had an awesome outdoor bar + pool.

The post-party was a typical loud Mexican fiesta, with a LOT of people, loads of delicious food, drink, music and dancing that went late into the night.

Ivan’s cousins are excellent dancers. These two below are brother and sister. Ivan basically grew up with them, and they’re all still super close today!

I do not recall if I attempted dancing. I’m not a particularly good Latin dancer when I’m not extra fat and pregnant… with a pool on one side. Haha! I think if I had, there would have been at least a 50% chance that I ended up in the pool. 😆

San Francisco Sights!

After the party, we still had the rest of the week to enjoy.

Of course they took us to see the famous Golden Gate Bridge. (*Not the most vibrant photo colors here… darn.)

View from the Crookedest Street! This was a nice shot.

We did a tour of Alcatraz, which I really, really enjoyed. When we went back to S.F. some years later with the boys, I think we opted to not do the tour again just since the boys were rather young and we weren’t sure it would hold their attention. But I know they’d like it now! Fascinating place.

One of our nieces. Who now has a daughter of her own!! mind blown.

I recall the audio guide being very interesting!!

The girls were so cute! It was their baby brother who got baptized. They’re both all grown up now….

After Alcatraz, the details are a bit fuzzy. I think we just walked around, mostly. We had a pretty large group, and this was before my “trip planning days”, lol, anyway. I am pretty sure we just followed along wherever his cousin took us!

Fisherman’s Wharf!

Chinatown:

Other fun family time in California!

We had some great weather, I recall.

We went mini golfing:

Bowling! I looked like I swallowed a ball. 😅

Another day we went to a huge family fun place with go-karting, laser tag, batting cages, etc. and spent a long time there.

Here’s me driving a go-kart with my niece along:

The laser tag was fun! I think I was fairly bad at it, but oh well. haha.

We did a lot of hanging around the house, eating yummy home cooked meals (his cousin is a great cook!) and enjoying their backyard (and the guys played a lot of pool).

Ivan getting a feel for pushing a stroller…. 😉 What a natural. 😉

One really gorgeous day we took their jet ski to a local park on a lake. I remember this being a great day. We took food and had a carne asada (basically their term for a grill out- technically means “grilled meat”. But it’s grilled steak tacos instead of burgers and hot dogs).

The “carne asada”:

And that was it! Like I said, this was before my iPhone days, so I don’t have quite as many pics as I’m sure I would today…. hehe. But surprisingly these photos bring back a lot of memories and I can actually recall quite a lot about this trip from them.

One thing that really stands out about this trip is just the group nature of it, traveling with both family and friends. It was a lot of fun! On the whole, I’d say nowadays I’m not really a huge fan of bigger group travel, just because I kind of like to be able to decide what I want to do and when! ha. But obviously in certain situations it can be great, and this was one of those times. 🙂

I also recall this being a special trip because a few short months later in July, we welcomed Ethan… and of course our life got pretty turned upside down for a while after that. This wasn’t exactly what I’d call a “babymoon”, but it was the last trip for a LONG time where I mostly just had to worry about myself!

*Now I’m going to go check off one of my “5 past trip recaps” from my 2025 Goals List. 🙂