Elaine and Sean share a love of nature and exploring the outdoors, and they regularly go on long hikes with a nice bottle of wine in tow. After considering many possible locations for their engagement session, they set their hearts on this beautiful spot in Las Trampas Regional Wilderness Park in the East Bay. The…
February. Almost one year later, still living the pandemic life. Our Office of Accountability has new swag! Thank you for designing these, Do-Hee! A walk at Fremont Older Preserve in Cupertino. Neighborhood blossoms. Cassie and I started a weekly Chinese conversation hour to practice our Mandarin! We just talk about random stuff, or use questions…
Our neighborhood walking tours began in December 2020, borne out of pandemic restlessness and a desire to trick myself out of hibernation and into exploring my surroundings (safely) again. I researched free walking tours or assembled various articles and book chapters to make up my own background reading on various places around the San Francisco…
Just like that, we slipped into a new year. We were down in Cupertino for the first couple of days, where Alex got to try out his new barbecue smoker. A visit to Larkspur, where the trees roam the streets. And a walk around Mission Bay. Weekly Whitney chat. Weekly Talya chat. More scenes from…
I am often quite happy to hibernate and never go outside– especially in the winter, but I’ll admit, generally too. This serves me well during a shelter-in-place pandemic. Alex, however, dissolves away inside. He says he is fine with staying in, but he is a natural extrovert, an outdoor person, and all of this has…
What a treat to be able to visit Joshua Tree via road trip. We visited on a girls’ trip a couple years ago, and we even had a whole portrait session in the desert. This time was a bit different, thanks to the pandemic, with Courtney and Jackson in town for work and Cassie and…
We have been all about the California road trip this year. A couple months ago, we headed south, about three hours south of San Francisco, to Paso Robles and the surrounding Central Coast areas. It made for a wonderful long weekend excursion. Our first stop was Bruce Munro’s Field of Light at Sensorio. It’s a…
After a couple glorious days in Yosemite, we drove north to Lake Tahoe, where we had camping reservations for the rest of the week. We had such a wonderful time in Emerald Bay, and we really loved our campsite in the Eagle Point Campgrounds. Would 100% do it again, pandemic or not. We left through…
I consider myself incredibly lucky for having ever visited Yosemite, let alone getting to visit twice within this very strange year, 2020. We originally had a campsite reservation for May, but of course the pandemic happened, and the park closed. Luckily, Alex went ahead and made new arrangements to visit later. Reservations are now required…
Oh, how quickly things change. The hallmark of August was my first-ever backpacking trip, which just happened to coincide with the very unexpected and extreme lightning storms that subsequently lit California on fire. Well, I’m glad to report that we are totally fine. But here’s a look through another wild month of 2020: Garden bounty…
I usually don’t get around to posting these recaps until the end of the following month, which is quite unfortunate, because 2020 is quickly outpacing my ability to remember what these past realities were like. But here goes, a look back to July, a month in which we took four different outdoor excursions around California…
Welcome to the June, 2020 recap. The month felt different, more somber perhaps, than the earlier Bon Appetit youtube videos/ gourmet food projects/ Tiger King portion of quarantine. My attention turned to the struggle for social justice, while protests against racism and police violence spread across the country and the world. For the month of…