halloween 2016

I decided this year we would do easy, cheap, or creative costumes!

Brandon was a deviled egg

 Tyler was a serial (cereal) killer

And Natalie was a lovely little angel (hand-me-down costume from her cousin)

I found a Minion shirt for me and a referee shirt for Kevin at Goodwill for a few dollars each. I think this is the only the second time he's ever dressed up for Halloween since I've known him!

pumpkin carving with the meekers!

Once again we carved pumpkins with the Meeker family! And once again, it was super fun and easy thanks to power tools!  5 pumpkins carved in an hour is how we like to roll!  And best of all Buffie's dad is a pumpkin farmer so we even got FREE pumpkins!

Due to the extremely hot October temperatures we had, one of the pumpkins was already rotted, so Brandon opted not to do one.  Tyler did a spider and Natalie did Harry Potter.  Thankfully all the kids chose easy designs this year!

We love this fun tradition with our dear friends!

san francisco: day 7

Day 7 we went back into San Francisco to finish the last of the things we had on our list.  After a VERY long wait, we finally got to ride a cable car.

We stopped at the Cable Car Museum, which was fascinating (and free!) and helped us understand better how the cable cars worked.  All of the cables for the entire system run through this building.  It was very loud and smelled like grease.

We hopped back on the cable car and had the coolest gripman. He let the kids stand right behind him (Kevin and I were seated up front) and he even let Natalie help him drive.

We got off at Lombard Street and walked down it. It is hard to get a decent picture of it with all the people and cars in the way.

After hiking back up Lombard Street we hopped on the cable car one more time and rode it down the hill to Fisherman's Wharf.  I happened to snap this picture right as a historic street car passed!

We walked around Fisherman's Wharf for awhile and then went over to the Maritime Museum .  It was just okay.  There were a bunch of displays and then we went out and toured the big historic ships. Not sure it would have been worth the money if we would have paid, but Natalie had a 4th grader pass that gets us into most of the National Parks free for the year. Can you see Kevin and the kids in this picture (bottom right corner)?

Natalie did the Junior Ranger program and this is her taking the pledge and getting her badge.

A visit to San Francisco wouldn't be complete without a visit to Ghiradelli Square so we saved the best for last!

Some of the best (and most expensive) ice cream I've ever eaten!

 Tyler's shake was delivered a bit later than ours, so he got his own picture!

We waited in another LONG (1 hour) line to ride the cable car all the way back to downtown, but it was worth it since we finally got to stand on the outside (except Natalie who sat near us).

We had a wonderful week in the Bay Area.  The kids were troopers with almost no complaints, even through 37 miles of walking and the equivalent of 122 flights of stairs (hills).   The weather was perfect and we are so grateful for the opportunity to get away and spend time together and create wonderful family memories.

san francisco: day 6

Day 6 we drove out to Sacramento (about 1 hour 15 minutes).   Our first stop was Sutter's Fort, which was a trade colony built in 1839 during the California Gold Rush.  We got there right after it opened and basically had the place all to ourselves.  When I was a kid and Dad was dragging us to historic sites, I always swore I would never do that to my kids.  Look at me now!

We rode a bus a few miles down to the California State Capitol and walked around inside of it for awhile.

After lunch, we went to the California State Railroad Museum.  Several people recommended it and it was ranked the #1 thing to do in Sacramento on TripAdvisor, so we did it!  It was AMAZING and very well done.  Trains of every shape and size and age, model trains, displays, you name it.

After the railroad museum, we walked around historic downtown Sacramento along the river.  It was mostly gift shops and food, but it was fun to look around.

 We even found a train very similar to the one Brandon restored for his eagle project.

 On the bridge, above the Sacramento River.

san francisco: days 4 and 5

Day 4 we headed back into San Francisco via BART and then took a bus over to Golden Gate Park.  I had envisioned renting bikes and riding around the park and exploring all the different areas, gardens, etc.  Don't let the pictures fool you...it was not as fun as it appears!  It was Saturday so the park was very crowded with people, cars, and pedestrians.  My kids are not expert bike riders and there aren't bike paths everywhere (most are just riding along the streets).  Plus I forgot about the fact that San Francisco has hills and lots of them in Golden Gate Park which makes for some tough bike riding for kids! We all ended up frustrated and I was very nervous the whole time that someone would fall off and get seriously hurt, swerve into traffic, or hit a parked car.  The bike rental guy was a bit surprised when we returned them just few hours later, but we all survived and tried something new!

 

We explored several other areas of the park walking and then thankfully found a free shuttle that drove us around part of the park and saved us about a mile of walking.  

I saw on the map that our next stop (Lands End Trail) was less than a mile away, so walked there along the beach.  It was beautiful but what I didn't take into account was another hill to walk up to get there!  So we hiked to get to our hike!   Thankfully the Lands End Trail did not disappoint.  We decided to just look at the old Sutro Baths instead of hiking down to them and then back up!

The trail provides gorgeous views of the Golden Gate Bridge from the other side.

We had been told the Labyrinth was very cool so we hiked down to it.  What we were not told about was that there were a BRUTAL 265 steps down and back up! (see the tiny people up top? that's the main trail)

The labyrinth is not a maze, but rather a collection of rock formations on the beach that are just balanced on top of one another. 

This board was just balanced, but not secured.  The boys had fun playing teeter totter for a few minutes. What could possibly go wrong?

Another bus ride back to the BART (the kids were pretty much experts on public transportation by this point).  8 miles and 21 flights of stairs walked just this one day! 

Day 5 was thankfully Sunday, so we could rest after 3 long days.  We attended my brother's ward and it was one of the friendliest wards I've ever visited! 

Sunday afternoon we went to see the Oakland Temple.

The temple is closed for several months for major renovations so we couldn't really walk around it, but we did go to the Visitors Center and enjoy the displays.

san francisco: day 3

The lady next to me on the plane told me that it was Fleet Week in San Francisco while we were there, so we rearranged some of our plans to avoid the crowds in San Francisco on the weekend.  So Day 3 we headed away from the city up to Muir Woods.  I learned it is impossible to capture the majesty and size of the redwoods even with a nice camera.  But it was a truly beautiful day.

 

Funny story about this picture.  My camera was sitting on a post to use the timer to take this family picture.  When I ran over to sit down next to Brandon, I didn't realize the tree was split and I basically sank backwards into the log.  Thankfully I recovered before the timer snapped the picture (though it might have been a very funny picture).  

Muir Woods only took half of the day, so we decided to rearrange our plans (again) and drive over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco.  After some confusion with Google map directions and some funny family memories (we may or may not have driven in circles a bunch of times), we finally made it to Fort Point.

Fort Point itself isn't super exciting, but the fort and parking are both free and you get a different view of the Golden Gate bridge from underneath it.  We also watched a movie about how they built the Golden Gate Bridge, which was a truly amazing feat, even more so because it was done in the 1930's.  Fort Point is the brown building on the bottom left corner of this photo.

According to the sites I had read, I thought it was just a set of stairs up from Fort Point to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was actually a trail plus stairs that was almost a mile long and straight up the mountain...and that was before you even get onto the bridge!  But it was worth it for postcard-worthy views like this!

We walked the bridge out to the first tower and learned that Brandon is terrified of heights.  

Because it was Fleet Week, the Blue Angels were flying back and forth across the Bay.  It was unbelievably cool to be standing on the Golden Gate Bridge and see them flying overhead every few minutes (it was also extremely loud)!  Getting pictures of them was a fun challenge!  We had to keep reminding the kids that the Blue Angels were NOT an everyday sight in San Francisco (we saw them a little bit from Alcatraz the day before). 

With Fleet Week plus the Blue Angels, there were hundreds of professional photographers everywhere.  I managed to ask one who was packing up his car and he was kind enough to take a great family picture for us.

Since the hike up to the bridge took far longer than anticipated, it left us driving out of San Francisco at 4:00 pm on a Friday during Fleet Week.  Rookie mistake!  It took us two hours of sitting in brutal traffic to get back to Eric's house.  And then when we looked up restaurants, the one we wanted to go to ended up with us driving around a mall parking lot looking for it realizing it must be inside the mall food court! Most of the time we were very thankful for Google maps, but sometimes it took us on crazy adventures!  So we ended up at Five Guys Burgers where the cashier apparently decided Kevin needed a "little cheeseburger" instead of the regular sized one he ordered, which is now an inside family joke!