Downtown! (to the tune of that song that goes "downtown!")

Last weekend, we had planned a fun girls trip downtown to window shop, see the decorations and have lunch with Aunt Kristie and my cousin, Katy.  Very sadly, Katy got sick and couldn't join us.  

It was a really fun morning - beautiful day in the city, great decorations, and we were early enough to beat most of the crowds.  Grace did get into a bit of a funk, which was solved first by bribing her with some of my coffee (she had wanted to play on the cable car that parked, but when we up close enough, she refused to climb up and had a fit).  Later, her mood continuing to be a little sour (turns out she was hungry! good mom-move to not realize it), she made us climb flight after flight of stairs in the St. Francis hotel.  They are quite beautiful stairs, but I think she was looking for princesses or witches or something and finally Kristie and I had to cry uncle.  The St. Francis had the most amazing castle and village made of sugar.  Grace was captivated (until she saw the stairs), but I forgot to take a photo.  

We stopped by the Macy's windows to see the SPCA windows full of kittens and puppies for adoption. Inside, Grace could have played with the kittens all day.  It's a good thing we can't have pets, or I think a certain black kitty would have come home with us (despite my allergy and Steve's firm anti-cat stance).

We watched the skaters at Union Square for a while and Grace got some very cool balloons from a street vendor.

We took a few inadvertent detours, including one through the employee underbelly of San Francisco Centre, but we ended the morning with an extremely yummy lunch (traditional SF-style crab louie!) overlooking the city.  Here's Grace showing off her table manners!

Thank you, Aunt Kristie, for such an excellent and festive outing!

And funny, on the Muni ride home, Grace and I sat across the aisle from another family with a young child.  The mom looked really familiar but I could place her.  We joked about which kid was going to fall asleep first and then parted ways at the same stop.  Next morning, we saw them at church.  And an hour later, saw them at the park.  Such original lives we lead!  But this sort of thing happens more and more, and I'm having the exact same feeling I had the last six months we were in Boston of "but we really know a lot of people now!  We have a community!  We bump into people we know when we go places!"  I'm not going there right now.