We had a wonderful holiday season with both our families. We spent Thanksgiving down in AZ with my family. Then for Christmas break we drove to California to be in San Clemente for my cousin Spencer and his cute new wife Taylor's wedding. We spent the next few days before Christmas in Oceanside with Jordan's family who met us there. We went to Disneyland, the U of U bowl game in San Diego, hung out by the ocean, did some mad go-kart racing, and of course shopping. It was so much fun! Here are a few of the pics from that trip
After Cali we headed to Arizona for Christmas. Mesa brought us a little sunshine, time with family and good food (pretty much all we do on vacation is eat). It was a blast and we're lucky to have the two most wonderful families. A few pics from AZ...
Sadly we had to return to real life of school and work. We've both been pretty busy this semester. Jordan has a mile long list of things he's doing including too many hard classes, studying for the DAT (which he takes in June), shadowing a few dentists, research, volunteering at a dental clinic, and working at the MTC. I started my nursing program at Provo College and have loved it so far. I still work at Sammy's and enjoy the pie shakes too frequently. :) In between we fit in some date nights and spending time with friends and family. We've taken a few trips down to Richfield with our friends Jake and Kalei, which is always a blast. My family came up for springbreak and we enjoyed a few days a skiing at Deer Valley with the my fam and the Zaharis clan. Thats always a blast as well! Life is busy, but great.
Now... For the real reason I even decided to blog in the first place. We just got home from a trip to San Francisco this last weekend and had the time of our lives! San Francisco has a Dental school at the University of Pacific that both Jordan and I are hoping he gets in to. Its one of the top schools in the nation and has a strong clinical base emphasis early on in the program, which is definitely a plus. My neighbor growing up, Chad Curtis and his wife are in Dental school at Pacific right now and when Jordan talked to Chad he suggested we try and get out to San Fran to visit the school and meet with the dean. After he very generously offered to let us stay at his apartment, we decided to make the trip. Jordan got to meet with the dean and tour the school while we were there. Meanwhile, we got to see the beautiful city of San Fransisco and had tons of fun.
San Fran is probably the coolest city I've ever been to. It rivals NYC for me. Its so unique and beautiful. The architecture and homes through out the city are unlike any I've ever seen. There's so much to do and see, I just couldn't get enough. There's like a million yummy restaurants to eat at and cool shopping on lots of the streets. We ate at this bomb breakfast place called Mama's. If you're ever in San Fran, I highly recommend it. We went shopping down at Union square and boy was that an experience. Its a tad bit on the scary side down there, to say the least. I saw more cracked out homeless people, sketchy looking men that I swear were dealing drugs in broad daylight, and an abundance of homosexuals than I've ever seen before. Parking is slightly ridiculous downtown so after about an hour of searching the streets for a free meter, we decided to ask a cop where the best place to park was. His response: "Not here. You're car will get broken into." followed by a chuckle. He apparently thought that was funny, while I was a little more on the frightened side. When we finally found a parking garage, across from the Hilton hotel where all the employees where on strike, Jordan asked the man at the gate if the car would be safe there. His response: (in a Hispanic accent) "If a man comes in with a gun, what am I supposed to do?" Comforting. Luckily, we got to do our shopping and returned to our car still in one piece. I couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation and appreciate the change of scene from my sheltered Mesa/Provo life.
In the short 2 1/2 days we were there, we saw the Golden Gate bridge, visited Sausalito, visited Fisherman's wharf and Ghiradelli square, where we enjoyed a delicious 9 dollar sundae, went shopping, ate at yummy restaurants, saw the Painted Ladies (the Fullhouse houses), went to Farmers market, and drove around the city admiring it's uniqueness. Here's a few pictures from the trip. Unfortunately it happened to be windy every time we tried to take a pic... therefore hair in the face. Oh well.
