Sunny Easter Sunday in San Francisco

Sunday morning, Dave and I woke up to sunny skies on Easter in San Francisco. This was our second Easter in the City, and we had some loose plans for the day.

After breakfast at home, we suited up in our Sunday’s Best and headed up the hill to Grace Cathedral Church. It’s an absolutely gorgeous old Episcopalian Church in our neighborhood, which I attended before when my Mom visited back in October.

Inside the church, there was a display of ribbons hanging from the ceiling. The installation, called Grace with Light, features nearly 20 miles of ribbon.

I read online that the Easter service tends to fill up, so we showed up about 20 minutes early and still had to sit on the make-shift chairs on the side of the church, which had obstructed views.

I wish I knew how many people were in the church for the service, because it was jam-packed with people standing in the back, and every seat and pew was full.

The crowd at Grace Cathedral

While we waited for the service to start, we perused the thick program and people watched. There were some fancy ladies in church hats, some hipsters in skinny jeans and actually quite a few families with little ones in attendance.

Directly behind us sat a young couple with a toddler-aged boy. He fell asleep on his mom’s lap shortly into the service and started snoring really loudly. It was adorable. His parents didn’t wake him up, so it continued for some time.

The very lengthy service

The service was a traditional Episcopalian one, featuring a boy’s choir, a men’s choir, an orchestra, singing, hymns, prayers in Latin and of course, communion.

Our programs provided all of the words to the prayers, responses and songs so we could follow along (we don’t attend this church regularly and neither of us are Episcopalian, so we needed the guidance).

When I sang, I tried to hit all the right notes and would lean over to Dave to make sure he heard me during the high ones. He says I sing like a hummingbird and he kept laughing, which made me laugh.

Easter confession

I’ve got an Easter confession. We left the church service early. About an hour into it, with several pages left of the program, people started leaving little-by-little. We made it to the hour-and-a-half mark, and after I took communion, we peaced out.

We did have time to pose for a couple of pictures in front of the beautiful building.

We were both starving and thirsty by the time we left church, so we stopped at the corner market for some beverages (coconut water for me, sweet tea for Dave), and headed home to change for outdoor play.

Easter beach excursion 

Because it was sunny and moderate, we wanted to take advantage of the sun and eat outdoors. So we put on our casuals, stopped by Trader Joe’s for some lunch and drove out to Ocean Beach, a spot we’ve enjoyed before.

If you stood in the wind, it could be chilly, but we found the perfect spot to sit blocked by a seawall.

For my dining pleasure, I selected my favorite Trader Joe’s prepackaged salad, the Shrimp Louie.

Yes, I was wearing jeans at the beach. So were a lot of other people. It’s not Hawaii, it’s San Francisco. If you walked about 10 minutes up the hill, the temperatures were in the 60s.

The scene at Ocean Beach

There were tons of families and dogs running around Ocean Beach, which provided visual entertainment for us as we ate and laid back enjoying the vitamin D.

We hung out in our spot for a bit, got up for a short beach walk and then went home.

Easter dinner at home

Our Easter Feaster came compliments of my Mom, who sent us a surprise Omaha Steaks package on Friday. Dinner included crusted mahi mahi, mixed veggies and roasted red pepper quinoa (Safeway item), as well as a bottle of fine Justin red wine.

Please excuse the picture, snapped by my phone below, but I was too hungry to pull out the regular camera this time. And we know my food pictures aren’t exactly the best anyways. This was right after plating the meal, and you can see the steam rising off the food.

It was an excellent meal and much better than the disastrous one from the night before during our drama-filled experience at Ala Romana.

Dessert, which is not pictured, was some Omaha Steaks carrot cake, and it was extra-lemony, moist and delicious. Thanks Mom. (We missed you!)

Holidays as a two-some

Because Dave and I live so far from most of our friends and family, we’ve become accustomed to celebrating holidays just the two of us. In case you missed it, our last Thanksgiving was an awesome one, even though we didn’t get to spend it with family.

Over the past year-and-a-half we’ve definitely shared some significant moments in the course of relocating across the country, and on holidays we always seem to reminisce and chat about how much our lives have changed.

Enough of the deep thoughts.

What was the biggest news on Easter Sunday for us? We finished the final two episodes of the Breaking Bad series. Wow it was good. I was a little sad that it was over. Not as sad as I was when we finished the Friday Night Lights series a couple of months ago, but sad nonetheless. If you’ve watched both, did you notice that Jesse Plemons is in each? And boy does he play different characters.

Now we are going to catch up with Mad Men for this season and begin to consider what our next Netflix obsession will be.

Questions of the day

How was your Easter? Did you do anything fun this weekend? What’s your current TV series of choice?