Date night

I'm sure everyone has heard that San Francisco is a really expensive city. We came from Tokyo which is supposed to be one of the most expensive cities in the world, but I'm coming to think that SF is even worse. Childcare costs (babysitters and nannies) in SF are the highest in the nation, along with rent, and gas. Babysitters charge on average $20/hour and some of them don't even speak English...

Despite the ridiculous cost for a babysitter, we've hired a babysitter to watch the kids twice a week for 4 hours each time so I can go run errands, go to yoga or whatever. It's been 2 weeks and I have to admit, I'd pay even more just to get a short break. Normally it's during the day but last night, we decided to try it out in the evening and go out on a date night. Both the kids love our babysitter so we weren't really concerned about them but we did get a good laugh at the end of the night when we realized that date night which included a few taxi rides (no drinking and driving), a nice dinner followed by drinks at a lounge afterwards ended up costing us $350+ once we paid our babysitter. Maybe date night won't be happening weekly as I had originally planned! :) Needless to say, we had such a fabulous time walking through the Mission and re-visiting some of the places that we used to hang out in before kids!

But at the end of the night, there's nothing better than coming home to this! :)