It’s fall! I know that a lot of people say we don’t get a fall here in Northern California but they’ve never spent time on campus I guess. I love to see the trees change and a little chill in the air is always fun here. I can wear a light jacket and not fear the pummeling of snow approaching, so I always try to welcome the change. It’s also just so novel at first that it feels okay. And hey, we’re celebrating 10 YEARS in California this fall! #californians

It’s been one of the best fall seasons though. We actually tried to kinda prepare for our pumpkin carving party—at least better than in previous years! I think we had 7 people over plus us to carve 9 pumpkins in total. They all turned out so good and it was hilarious to do something random with friends and make a giant yard-sized mess. Mariela skillfully cleaned and roasted all the pumpkin seeds from 9 pumpkins and did her specialty Santa Fe seasonings. She also made, not one, but two apple crisps! (One was gluten-free!) It reminded me of the time she made vegan Jell-O shots for me to take to work and someone said “omg that is sooooo #bayarea!”

So all of our pumpkins rotted by actual Halloween (so much for planning ahead eh!?), but we went over and gathered around a little bonfire in our friends’ front yard because they get trick-or-treaters. We made s’mores and checked out all the popular marvel costumes. It was such a great Halloween even though I didn’t even dress up this year!

Other obsessions for us have been our Vespas of course! I joke that if Mariela wouldn’t have gotten a classic white Vespa she would’ve already cleaned the color right off of hers!!! She keeps her Primavera spotless. We’ve had many hilarious project days doing random modifications to them—like adding racks for coffee (also serves as a speaker holder if you have the right Sonos portable speaker!), a rear rack for my camera bag, and swapping out the Primavera’s pod lights for Euro-style white break lights (we’ll post a video about that soon.) For now, here are some snaps of them out in the wild:

What else…

Oh, we finally returned to Sonoma with friends for our second-fourth annual wine country extravaganza!!! It was amazing as ever, especially after being stuck in the house for 2 years. We definitely raised the bar this time. Ridiculously fun time! It’s gonna be hard to beat the 6-person stretch, but safety-first sweetie!

I know what you’re thinking—what is happening with adoption!? Well, I’m happy to report that we did adopt! A teeny tiny black cat by the name of Olive Oyl!!! Hahaha she was such a little terror at first, but she’s grown into such a sweet kitteh and we love her so much.

But seriously we are still hoping to adopt internationally. We’re just on the conveyor belt of expiring documents that we tried sooooo hard to avoid. Still, we carry on and keep positive attitudes. Everything in life just has a process.

We keep very busy with our world of projects and silly things that seem to mean so much to only us! Speaking of, we’re working on a giant Lego installation in our workshop…there will be lots more about this in the future, but I can share a glimpse of our progress. I’m so happy to report that the LEGO Coaster is complete and open for ticket holders!

We’re not alone in this huge project though, we’ve pulled our dear dear old old old friend into it and he loves building whatever weird thing we suggest. It’s been so amusing to work on it. I can’t believe the amount of Lego we’ve accumulated. (Picture a filled garage of LEGO.)

Oh! We had family visit for almost a week and we took them everywhere—San Francisco's usual suspects of the Golden Gate, best tacos ever at La Taqueria, and Ritual Coffee. We took a beautiful and loooong drive down to Big Sur in the convertible for a primo viewing experience! We hadn’t been down there since buying the convertible!!?! What!? So we had lunch at Nepenthe and then stayed almost directly on the beach in Santa Cruz for a few days! Mariela won a jumbo prize at the boardwalk—and I’m talking “JUMBO!” It wouldn’t even fit in our car without the top down! So naturally, we had to give it away to young people on the beach that night (hilarious story that you have to hear from my brother-in-law and wife). We couldn’t imagine the weird airBnB charge for leaving an enormous Mrs. PacMan (PacLady?).

We also had a short stay in Half Moon Bay to visit a friend from out of state! Our first venture into staying at a Bed & Breakfast. It was nice, but also kind of as weird as I always thought it would feel. Mariela made us do the whole experience of the breakfast and that part was actually kinda fun because it’s California and it’s always nice enough to sit outside.

We were lucky enough to spent a lot of quality pooltimes with friends.

Finally saw Stevie Nicks again IN CONCERT and that felt like a dream come true. I never thought we’d see her again when the pandemic hit. It was such a phenomenal show. (Pro Tip: Ride a Vespa/motorcycle/scooter to Mountain View Shoreline Ampitheater because you get free VIP parking at the front door! #vespagang)

Amazingly, we also got to see ELTON JOHN live in CONCERT, too! Don’t even get me started about the parking situation in Santa Clara because I could rant about the fact that we thought we were doing the smart thing, the sensible thing, to rideshare instead of taking our car. HUGE MISTAKE. Never ever take a rideshare to Levi Stadium! We were literally stranded for 2 hours with unauthorized limos blocking all of the rideshare cars from entering the lot. They wanted hundreds of dollars to take people a mile…It felt like a bad dream after such a fun concert. Luckily, we have a ridiculously great friend that came to collect us at 1am! Whew. I am so thankful for him (for oh so many reasons).

And here’s just a random assortment of campus love photos because it truly is one of my favorite places on earth.

But I know the fall can be a tough time. The leaves changing and the early evenings can wear people down. So just remember to hang in there, just like our little Olive Oyl kitty!