Keystone Condo Remodel

The remodel is finally complete, you really can't even tell it is the same condo! Here are the before pictures...

... And the beautiful finished product!

Our home away from home... aka "the snakepit" when all the kids and pack-n-plays are in there

The master bedroom

We can't believe the transformation! It really looks amazing!

And I just have to add a fun picture of the kids from a summer weekend in Keystone!

Get Sand in Your Crack at Big Mac!

....Well, that's what the slogan is!
Labor Day Weekend we got invited to join the Corey's at their beach house on Lake Mcconaughy in Nebraska. The girls got to ride in the boat, on the jet skis and they even went tubing! But their favorite thing to do was probably just playing in the sand and splashing in the water, they absolutely loved it

Sophia hanging out on the boat

Andrew is ready to waterski
Big brother Joseph was dancing all over the place!

Jolene, Joseph and Andrew tubing

James waterskiing - woooooohooooo! He was up on two skis pretty quickly and then spent the rest of the weekend trying to drop one so he could slalom ski

I tried and tried but wasn't able to get up on skis :( I did have fun knee-boarding though and I can't wait to get back out and try again! What a wonderful weekend, we looooooved getting sand in our cracks at Big Mac!!

Chile Peel

It's official...fall is near! We spent Sunday peeling chile's, cooking green chili and watching preseason Bronco football...What a fun day! It was the girls first time participating in the annual chile peel.

We started off looking for the farm where James has always gotten mirasol chile, but we found it was closed :( So we decided to stop at I-76 and Federal instead. The girls were being super cute, they enjoyed putting fresh tomatos, onions and cantelope in our basket while we waited for the chiles to roast.
We ended up with 1 mirasol bushel and 2 mild hatch bushels

Once they were roasted we brought them home and put them in water so James could start the peeling process...

Of course the girls wanted to help!

Yum! Fresh roasted chile

Some help arrived when Carrie, Christian and Pete came over!

Judy, Matthew and Lylah stopped by, it's funny how we had a patio FULL of cars and toys and the kids were still crying and fighting over them!

Sweet Sophie was being a ham

After we ate a yummy dinner of steak, onions, corn on the cob, green chili, beans and fideo we settled in to watch the bronco game... the daddy's ended up doing pony rides with the munchkins!

And of course then the munchkins want to give their babies pony rides - so cute!

We ended the day out by the firepit, it's nice that the weather is cooling off and we find ourselves appreciating those nice summer evenings more as they start to dwindle away....

What do we do with all of those tasty green chile's??? Read on!

Green Chile Tortilla Roll

Chop green chile and place on warmed tortilla, season with garlic salt, add a slice of cheese (and maybe some sliced tomato) and enjoy!

Green Chili

Cut 4lbs pork into small bite-size pieces, season with garlic salt and pepper and fry in olive oil until mostly done. Add flour to soak up any excess water (this thickens the chili) and stir until flour coats all pork. In a food processor add one onion, one can diced tomato, one fresh tomato and green chilis to taste, finely chop and then add the mixture to pork. Add water to desired consistency, then season with cumin, garlic salt, pepper, chicken boullion and kitchen bouquet to taste. Simmer for at least one hour and serve with tortillas, beans and fideo (recipes below) Enjoy!

Fideo:

Fry two 7oz packages fideo noodles with 1/2 chopped onion in olive oil at high heat. Stir constantly until onions tender and noodles are brown. Then add 4 cups of water, one 6oz can tomato paste, chicken boullion, garlic salt, crushed red peppers and cilantro to taste. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, check and add more water if necessary.

Beans:

Cook beans and water in pressure cooker or crockpot until done. In a small saucepan over high heat stir oil and flour together constantly for 10 minutes and then add to beans.

Salsa:

In food processor add diced tomatos, green chilis, onion and cilantro. Chop to desired texture then season with chicken boullion, garlic salt and lime juice to taste

San Francisco

Wooohooo! We were beyond excited that Mimi and Papa watched the girls for us so we could spend a long weekend in San Francisco with our friends :)

On our first day Carrie, Christian James and I arrived before Kassie and Brian so we headed up to the hotel patio firepit and checked out the ocean view! We could hear the fog horns and seaguls from the balcony, we loved it!
http://www.fairmont.com/ghirardelli
Can you tell we are really missing the kids!?!

First things first.... we hit up the winery across the street (Cellar360) for some wine tasting

http://www.cellar360.com/

Once Kassie and Brian arrived we kicked things off with a walking gourmet food tour in Hayes Valley. http://www.gourmetwalks.com/html/gourmet_on_hayes.html We were able to sample cupcakes, french fries, fish tacos, cheese with sourdough bread and wine, tea, artisanal chocolates and last but not least french macaroons - my favorite! We also discovered a new favorite we have had a few times at home already: goat cheese drizzled with honey served with sliced green apples on french bread, yummy!

We also stopped in a sake shop, the bottles were pretty, I liked the snowflake one!

When we got back to the hotel we got to finally check out our sweet condo!
Our hotel lit up at night was so pretty!

Sonoma Valley... UnFOGettable!

On our second day in San Francisco we got picked up first thing by Max, our private tour guide to check out some redwood trees and vineyards. http://www.maxnapatours.com/
He took us accross the Golden Gate Bridge and up to Armstrong Woods near Sonoma Valley....


The redwood trees were absolutely beautiful. It was really cool because we were almost alone in the forest, surrounded by giants, what an awesome sight!



The first vineyard had some wonderful Sparking wines, and the best views! We looked out over the rolling hills while we sampled Iron Horse wines... http://www.ironhorsevineyards.com/
Porter Creek was the most intimate atmosphere, and probably my favorite wine! We loved smelling the different vintages, especially one where we could even smell a forest fire that happened that year, it was cool. http://www.portercreekvineyards.com/pages/home_main.html

These grapes were from Porter Creek, we couldn't resist tasting a few!

Hanging out in the vineyards at Porter Creek... Yet another picture where you can tell we are missing the kids terribly!

Arista was a beautiful winery with a cool patio, probably the most crowded of the 5 we visited with a dozen people inside :) We loved the secluded feel of Sonoma County...
http://www.aristawinery.com/arista/index.jsp

We picked up some sandwiches and had lunch at Zichichi winery. It had amazing views from the deck and it was so fun to taste the wine right out of the barrels. They sell out long before they get bottled here so most tastings they have are out of the barrel! http://www.zichichifamilyvineyard.com/

http://www.untivineyards.com/

The last winery was Unti, but due to technical (wink,wink) difficulties we weren't operating the cameras anymore at that point! All of the wine started to taste the same at that point and we were a little giddy, hence the term UnFOGettable! Coined by Christian, one of the funniest moments of the trip as we were all a little slap happy by the end of our wine tasting day :)

Upon arriving back in San Francisco Max drove us down Lombard street in his SUV! It was fun to see such a crooked street, but Max told us that it is actually not even the most crooked street in San Francisco. We spent the evening in Fisherman's Warf, checked out the scene and had Cioppino for dinner

The Rock

Saturday was our last day in the city, we stopped for irish coffee at Buena Vista before heading off to Fishermans Warf to catch the ferry to Alcatraz.... Along the way we stopped by Pier 39 to check out the sea lions, they were fun to watch!

The ferry ride had a beautiful view of the city, the golden gate bridge and alcatraz. There were so many sailboats on the water in the bay, kinda made us want to move to San Francisco just so we can spend the weekends sailing! Alcatraz looked very creepy as we approached, hundreds of birds circled the building and it was so quiet.

Locked up!
The tour was very interesting, so sad to think about what life would have been like for the prisoners, especially since they could see and hear the life going on in San Francisco just across the bay. The escape attempts were interesting to hear about as well, although they never did mention the documentary Brian saw with Sean Connery involving ex-cons taking over the prison and the military sending missles at it, hmmmmm....

After Alcatraz we decided to check out some more of the city, we got a ride up to China Town and wandered around there for awhile before hopping a trolley (or three, since we kept hopping on the wrong trolleys!) to get back to our neck of the woods...

The trolley ride was crazier than I thought it was going to be, there was barely room for us so we jumped on and held on for dear life!

We ended up back at Cellar 360 for more wine tasting...and then at Wattle Creek for even more wine tasting... and then back to the hotel to finish off the wine and sake we still had that can't go on a carry-on back home.... Unfortunately James and I had to pay for all of that wine intake the next morning when we took that bike-ride, ouch!

http://www.wattlecreek.com/

Back in Ghirardeli square it was an absolutely beautiful night, we decided to get pizza and have dinner at the firepit overlooking the bay, what a fun night to end the vacation! We had a blast and are looking forward to planning another vacation soon!