San Francisco is special to many, including to this family. Meet Melissa, a lovely mom of a sweet little boy. Her heart was bursting with love when she got to spend some quality time with the two men of her life in the city that she adores.

"My husband and I love traveling. For us, traveling means exploring new places, discovering new delicacies, and most importantly, spending quality time together. After Jaden was born, we decided not to let having him change our lives in terms of our travel enjoyment. Having a child couldn’t really stop us from going to places, could it? We took Jaden many places since he was a baby, and when he’s four, we took him to one of our favorite destinations: San Francisco.

To both of us, San Francisco has always been a special city. There’s something about it that makes it beautiful yet quirky. I’d love to take the MUNI across the town and enjoy all the people watching, or explore the uniqueness of many neighborhoods have to offer. And the fog, oh the way it drifts through is so dreamy. I love the city so much but mostly because it marked important milestone of my husband’s life, and held some of our sweetest memories of our honeymoon. So when we had the chance to go back to San Francisco with our son, I was so excited.

I’d be lying if I said that traveling with a kid is always easy. We’re blessed with a good little traveler like Jaden, but there were a lot of learning moments in each trip. We learned and understood the importance of packing carefully – what’s important: first aids, snacks, travel-friendly toys, and extra layers, and what’s not important: bulky toys. But the most important lesson that we learned was that he deserves to explore the world too.

Because of that, we never want to rush around. When all that he wanted was to running and rolling around in the grass, in the foggy, chilly, San Francisco-typical morning, we just let him be. We also took Jaden to watch basketball game from a seat in the stadium. Jaden and his dad love watching basketball and for Jaden (and for me), it was our first time watching a game live and turned out to be so fun. Jaden must have been thrilled too!

I admitted that travelling with our little boy has forced us to slow down, but I’m proud to say that being able to see the world through their curious eyes has given us some of the most rewarding moments we’ve ever had. San Francisco did it again, and this city will always have a special place in my heart.

-Melissa Stevani, Mama of Jaden