San Francisco

For the Fourth of July weekend, we took a trip up to San Francisco. I'd never been there before and I love going to new cities! The motivation for the trip was that Jeff's brother, Kevin, and his wife, Aubrey, are living just outside of the city for the summer while Kevin completes an internship. Jeff's parents lived there before Jeff was born, so they came down to show us all around. We really enjoyed being with family for the weekend.

Jeff worked Thursday morning and then we took off around noon. I kept Ellen up all morning and it paid off--she slept for almost the first two hours! Even after she woke up, she did great! We only had to stop twice the whole way (7+ hours).

A few highlights from Friday and Saturday...

We got to ride on a cable car. Check out the incline on the second picture.

We had lunch at Pier 39 and then walked to Ghirardelli Square.

Ellen's favorite part of Ghirardelli Square. (Our favorite part was the ice cream in chocolate dipped waffle cones...yum! Thanks, Dad!)

You can see Alcatraz in the background.

We drove down Lombard Street.

We swam in the pool at our hotel.

We watched fireworks from the Oakland Temple grounds. They overlook the San Francisco Bay and you could see lots of different fireworks shows going on. However, it wasn't as cool as being at a show and having the fireworks going off right on top of you. I was still glad we went because I'd never been there before.

Ellen was a trooper! She functioned amazingly well on a few short naps and late bedtimes. It probably helped that she had six adults giving her all their attention. :)

On Sunday, we went to church with Kevin, Aubrey, and Jeff's parents in the ward that they lived in 30 years ago. We left for home about 4 pm and made it before midnight. We were hoping to miss the coming-home-from-the-Fourth-of-July-weekend traffic in LA and we did! There was some slowing before that, but we got home in about the same amount of time as it took to get there. Poor Ellen was sick of the car. She kept doing her sign for "all done"! Thankfully, driving that late at night meant she slept the last three hours.