5 Year Anniversary

Anniversaries are great excuses to celebrate, reflect, and plan for the future. Our 5 year celebration also marked our first night together, away from the kids. It's amazing how much you can do and see in a day when you don't have to load in and out of car seats, plan for naps, bathroom breaks and diaper changes.
After checking into the Westin St. Francis, we went shopping on Union Square, (Benj was all too happy to bring this sack along with us to a classy dinner - sorry:)), to dinner at Fith Floor (get it? 5th anniversary - 5th Floor:)), then we purchased some hot chocolate and walked around the city.

I've always wanted to stay at the Westin St. Francis ... mostly because I wanted to ride the glass elevators - and the experience certainly lived up to my expectations.
Not to mention, we stayed in the tower and had a room with a view of the bay and the city - nice.

Saturday morning we went for a walk. First stop, the Embarcadaro and farmer's market. This is not your typical farmer's market - in fact, I've never seen anything like it: purple bell peppers, red/orange/purple carrots, yellow watermelon, green/yellow/orange heirloom tomatoes, a myriad of lettuce products, cheeses, mushrooms ... you get where I'm going. It was a feast for the eyes and taste buds! Definitely adding that stop to the 'Becker SF Tour.'
We continued our journey past the piers and over to Telegraph Hill. We climbed the steps to Coit Tower (morning workout). We thought about stopping for breakfast at Mama's, but at 8:30 a.m. the line was already too long. So we peeked inside Grace Cathedral, and watched the ladies finish their morning Tai Chi routines.
Then on through China Town. We finally made it to the fortune cookie factory ("room" rather than factory would be a more appropriate word). Once we got back to our hotel we had room service deliver breakfast and then got ready for the rest of the day's adventures.
Here are a couple pictures of various lap-posts we saw while walking:
. Cool, right?
Benj loves art, and it is fun to go to museums with him because he has such a broad knowledge of artists (yep, "there's an app for that"). So, we spent a couple of hours at the Legion of Honor.It was a great 'adult' activity. (notice us in the reflection?).
Then we went shopping on Fillmore Street - still sort of touristy, but more ''boutique" style than Union Square. We spent the remainder of the late afternoon on the bay. It was relaxing to sit and chat as we listened to the water and watched the boats. For the record, we did really miss Anne and Ella. We often found ourselves doing spontaneous charades, and asking: "who am I?" To which the answer was, without fail, Anne Catherine or Ella Jane. Thanks Ally and Ben Nielsen for taking such great care of the girls.

Finally, what do Sharon Stone, Cindy Crawford, Benj and Meagan Becker and the Gorbachevs have in common? We've all eaten at Tommy Toy's. It's a great Chinese restaurant in the Financial District, that we both highly recommend.

All in all, a great anniversary and 28 hour get-a-way to celebrate the completion of five absolutely fabulous years of adventure, growth and love. Thanks Benj. I love you.