Alice's Summerthing

To cap off my already awesome birthday weekend, we went to the annual Alice's Summerthing (ironic name) free concert in Golden Gate Park. It featured Andrew Allen (from Vancouver!), Parachute, Michelle Branch, Matt Nathanson, and OneRepublic. Pretty sweet heh?

Michelle Branch

Reading >> Michelle Branch

Michelle's tweet. There were 20,000+ people there

Matt Nathanson

The lead singer of Parachute, Will

Andrew Allen

OneRepublic

Yay happy times!

Good friends are like stars...

...you don't always see them, but you know they're always there.

So continuing from the previous blog post, after driving back to SF from Monterey, my sister told me I couldn't go on my computer until she said it was alright. She then proceeded to post the following clue (with my response after I found out what the final surprise was)

So my sister and my boyfriend had been coordinating with my closest friends from Vancouver. Across 17 on the crossword was "flickr". My friends had posted photos of themselves holding signs on flickr and I had to search for them and string them into a sentence. This was the following result:

This was the nicest surprise I have ever gotten. And to add on to that, my amazing boyfriend got this for me. My life goal is to save the drowning polar bears.

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Leading up to my 22nd birthday, my sisters and my brother-in-law asked me what I wanted to do and I honestly thought it wasn't a big deal so maybe mini golfing or going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium was enough. Little did I know they had planned something so elaborate. The day before my birthday I woke up to an envelope that contained a custom made crossword puzzle (drawn by my lil sis) and a tag with a clue.

"Across 17" was Forever21 and attached to the clue was $21. So off to Forever21 I went. Then after a mini shopping spree at the store, I got the second clue (shown below). "Down 10" was "booji" aka Tiem and Carol's nickname for "bourgeoisie". A "booji" version of Forever21 turned out to be H&M. Since I was growing up I needed to shop at a more "booji" place. Attached to the clue was $22. So clever.

In between, my lil sis and I stopped by Little Italy for some gelato. Shopping can be so hard.

Then my sister came home with a Scharffen Berger cake from Miette

We went to see X-Men First Class after dinner then ended the night with some delicious cake.

Before bedtime, I received this next clue. Down 14 on the crossword was "Fifth" and Across 5 was "coffee"

The next day started off with a drive to Blue Bottle Coffee on 5th Street

Then off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium we went!

The "special animal" as written below is the polar bear, one of my favorite animals. The clue came with $20 for me to buy a polar bear doll at the gift shop. No luck :(

The children's bib was too small for my head

After the aquarium and a stroll down Cannery Row, we had dinner at Passionfish

Then the biggest surprise came at the end of the night..