Spring Break: San Francisco

Normally for spring break we love to go to Southern Utah.  We planned on it this year but Rob only had half of the week off, and the cousins all had a different week off.  So we told the kids to present their ideas for Spring Break to us.  Lucy put together a most hilarious and fabulous power point on the merits of a Spring Break spent in SF.  Her presentation won us over.  On Wednesday we got off (on time!) in time to make it to San Francisco by noon.  It's a pretty painless drive from Reno, which is a comforting thought.

 We crossed the bay bridge...

...and made our way to the de Young for the most exciting to me exhibit of VERMEER'S GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING!  Huzzah!  It was gorgeous.  She is there whilst her home in Amsterdam in modernized and renovated.

After the museum the kids enjoyed snacking on pretzels>

 And then we went to the Japanese tea garden and meandered.  It was beautiful.  Lots of spring blossoms.  With one more day the wisteria would have been in bloom, but it was still lovely.

 On the way back to the car some kids nearly took a dip in the fountain, but ended up only "softing" the water, as Clara once dubbed it.

 We made our way across the Golden Gate Bridge where there is a viewing area and car park.  We walked across (well part of the way across) from there.  It was WINDY and the traffic was LOUD, but it was fun.  We could see seals and the weather was amazing.  Excellent views of the bay.

 We drove up to the Marin headlands for even more spectacular views of the city on the east and the ocean on the west.  What a location for a city.

 We then made our way to the Palace of Fine Arts and strolled around.  It was beautiful and Clara discovered a love of disturbing the pigeons.  She growled fiercely as she chased them and even spit at them:

 We were pleased to see that David and Clarice had donated a bench in the park:

 We decided we had a little more time before we headed down to base camp in Palo Alto so we drove through the hilly streets to Grace Cathedral which has a copy of the Ghiberti doors found on the Duomo in Florence.

The kids enjoyed time in the meditation maze, disrupting one woman's actual contemplative walk.  Oh well.

Not a bad first day in a wonderful city.  So glad Lucy made that power point!  After we drove to Palo Alto and had a chat with some of the "California" cousins who were arriving in CA for a massive celebration of Colette's 80th birthday.  Fun to see so many I hadn't seen in years.

Spring Break Begins

Sprng break started off with a bit of disappointment.  We planned on meeting people at the park in the afternoon and I invited several families over that evening for a barbeque.  But sadly we woke up to snow.  Ick.  So instead there was a lot of lounging around and a lot of screen time.  Blech.

 We redeemed the day with a family game night and a few candid self portraits by Lucille:

 The following day my parents arrived and the weather warmed up a tad so some of us went to the park for a bit to climb trees, play basketball, mess around, and visit:

That night we enjoyed dinner at our favorite Chinese place:

A little footage of Clara's later and less successful attempts at cartwheels.  Before I pulled out the camera she had some good ones, of course:

Arrow of Light

Tucker earned his arrow of light award and last pack meeting was the award ceremony.  Another mom and I were in charge and had a really cool thing all arranged.  However, at the lat minute the guy doing the presentation bailed so we had a not quite so cool ceremony, but it was fine.  Tucker is no longer a cub scout, but a full fledged boy scout.