We’ve now been back to the Bay Area for a month and everyone asks us how it feels to be back to the real world. It’s honestly been wonderful to be back in the Bay Area – we’ve traveled all over the world to 20 countries during our journey, but the Bay Area holds its own in terms of beauty, weather (even though it’s been cold and rainy), food and drive. If anything, we appreciate it even more than we did before. It’s been nice to not have to rush back to work that was waiting for us, and slowly transition back to normalcy. Anjali did a fantastic job in taking the lead to make sure our transition was smooth by getting us a very nice, home-like serviced condo in Corte Madera on a creek overlooking Mt. Tamalpais. It feels like so much space even though it’s small, since we’ve either been in hotel rooms or at our parents’ place. We put the kids back in the same school as earlier in Sausalito, and they were excited to be reunited (Ariana never did go to school before our sabbatical but she went to drop off and pick up Ayaan that made her very familiar). We drove Ayaan through our old home and he burst out laughing as memories rushed to him. With the kids in school, Anjali and I got some “us time” to have a romantic lunch, hike the headlands or do an adult-trip to wine country. It’s been fantastic to reconnect with good friends who’ve helped us out by keeping our car or storing our stuff. For the kids, reconnecting with memories at the BADM museum and local parks has been amazing to watch.

Most importantly, Anjali was able to secure a job she feels extremely passionate about in SF at a company called Autocamp that focuses on outdoor luxury camping. With that we are super excited that we’ll be staying in the bay area and in fact ironically will land back in Sausalito at a similar home to the one he had earlier. I love Sausalito and couldn’t be happier than to spend another year in this amazing quaint town. Things are coming together well and I can now focus my search on finding something I feel passionate about.

Even though our international travels came to an end when we arrived in the bay, we’ve continued to sneak in short getaways to enjoy what Northern California has to offer. We spent MLK at the Westin in Napa on a rainy day as we visited our favorite Duckhorn and Paraduxx wineries with good friends and ate at my beloved Bottega. Honig was new for us but the kid friendliness made the experience fantastic. Since our travels were optimized so it was summer the entire time, we drove up to Tahoe for a night and stayed at the amazing Ritz Carlton to have the kids experience snow for the first time. They absolutely loved it making snowmen, snow angels, throwing snow balls, ice skating and taking the gondola (another unusual word added to Ariana’s vocabulary). The heated pool was very relaxing and even though we forgot their floats, the kids really enjoyed it and even made a new friend called Tessa. For Presidents’ Day, we drove up to Anderson Valley to our all-time favorite Goldeneye and enjoyed some indoor pool and hot tub time with the kids. California is just so fantastic!