San Francisco #1

Since we've lived here we've always wanted to go over to San Francisco. We decided that this weekend we would take a family day trip over the hill to have some fun. We were the perfect tourists, taking pictures of everything, and excited over everything. I was excited over a big bridge and steep streets, Adam a football stadium, and Gabe loved touching the ocean water and seeing fish. We left first thing in the morning to freezing temperatures, and arrived in Cali spending the day in 70 degree weather. We forgot it was November while we were over there, cause it was so warm. The only thing that reminded us was the cold ocean and one random Christmas tree set up at pier 39. Gabe was surprisingly harder to deal with in the car than her brother. I think we talked up how fun everything was going to be, she had a hard time in the car longer than 20 minutes. We thought for sure that she would be entertained watching a few shows on our iphone, and we'd call it good. Nope, she kept asking for the ocean, and to see the fish, and the bridge, to get out of her seat, to have us hold her. We also wondered what we'd do about getting her to use public bathrooms. We still haven't conquered her fear of them. (Even though we have ventured out and tried) We have made progress, she will sit on them. She won't go, and is still terrified of the flushing. We gave up and put a diaper on her when we spent our first hour there trying to get her to use one. It turned out to be a blessing, because we found three things impossible to find in that city: bathrooms, parking, and gas stations. However, the entertainment, views, and food made the journey all worth it. Adam luckily downloaded a very good GPS navigation app for his phone. We would have been very frustrated and lost without it. The only time it led us astray was one random time trying to find a gas station, it kept telling us to turn left into a building. Ha! We don't get to venture out much as a family, so we took a million pictures. I had a hard time narrowing it down. So I posted a lot for my blog book.


Happy to finally be there, to a two year old the drive felt like forever.

This is the Bay Bridge you first drive over from Oakland out to San Fran

We started off going to the 49ers stadium to take some pictures......



The streets and buildings amazed me. I loved it all. Once you started going down the streets I couldn't help squealing at how steep they were. I have no idea how people parallel park on them. It truly amazes me. You couldn't pay me to drive a stick on those roads. Thanks to Adam who had no problem. I would have been sweating bullets trying to not roll down the streets,

We then headed off to view the Golden Gate Bridge. We didn't drive over it, cause we had already paid our fair share of tolls, and had already driven over a few big bridges. We were content viewing it and taking some pictures with it. Getting Gabe to smile for us was a little tricky, cause she was so crabby when we first got there. Little stinker. It was kinda new for us, cause she's always willing to cheese for the camera. You can see in the nice family pic how excited she was to keep taking pictures. She just wanted to go play in the water. When we told her we were going to play in the ocean, she'd say, "Not the ocean, play in the water."







We had promised Gabe the next thing that we'd do was to play in the water. We wandered down to the beach. The first few minutes we were there, she ate in and feel in the water. Her pants were drenched. (The reason she is in her diaper in all the pics) Luckily I had brought spare clothes in case of a bathroom accident. Adam ran out to pick her up and got his shoes wet. For him I didn't bring spares, so poor guy had wet socks and shoes to walk around in the rest of the day. We didn't bring suits, cause even though there were others swimming, it still was November and way chilly. I do think that we'll try to make an ocean beach trip this summer, cause it was so much fun. Gabe could have stayed there all day. She loved it.




Someday maybe if we go back we'll go to Alcatraz, but with kids we had no desire. We settled for a picture from the beach