so, as i mentioned, my 10-year-old niece Mariah, was here for the last few days. and what a wild, crazy, fun weekend we had. she's been here twice before on her own, bravely flying up from Burbank all alone, just to see me. and we always have the best times. for some reason, i just now got her pictures developed from a year ago upon her first visit, and so they're mixed in here with pictures and stories from her trip this time.

this one is of my niece first getting off the plane a year ago ready to visit her Uncle Reese for the very first time on her own:

and here's a pic of her taking San Francisco by storm:

her love of the cheap ramen noodle packages you can buy at the store for 30cents or so took us to Japantown last year for some real ramen noodles, which of course she said weren't anything like her real ramen noodles and she didn't like them:

she loves to ride the bus in san francisco because 'it's like a rollercoaster' with all the steep hills and such:



anyway, here's the real reasons you're here, for pictures of this weekend's trip: we had a major weekend too. first, we went to the Hello Kitty store for some necessities, then off to suburbs to catch
on saturday, we went to Build-A-Bear to build her own stuffed bunny
then off to the park and the Exploratorium (which totally rocks! just try to get a young child to leave once inside, just try), then off to the Sing-A-Long Wizard of Oz:

and here she is with my friends Beverly, Phil and Susan after the show:
and we all went out for pizza. sunday was the big St. Patrick's Day parade which we got to ride in with Assemblyman Mark Leno where we blew bubbles, threw Hershey's Kisses out the window, and yelled 'Happy St. Patrick's Day' through a long green bullhorn:

look in the rear view mirror here
and here's an extra picture of me in costume that she took after it was all over:
so now she's back in Southern California and we're both very tired from so much fun and frolic in San Francisco. the only one who didn't enjoy the weekend was Amaya, my cat, because she is such a grouch and doesn't like my niece, so she got to be cooped up in the kitchen the whole time:
too bad she's so grouchy
anyway, Mariah and I are quite tired now:
but we're getting ready for the next big trip in May. what should we do then?

p.s. upon leaving my home to head out for the trip back to Burbank, she repeated the 'Drama Queen' movie lines with her own words: "Goodbye Uncle Reese's home, Goodbye San Francisco, Goodbye Amaya, Goodbye Broadway, Goodbye New York, Goodbye any chance of becoming a movie star...." Oh, the drama