San Fransisco

On the ferry on our way to Alcatraz

Once again--have I said that I love going on family vacations?  Mostly I love to just get away from the routine, force our kids to be with us and only us:), and have Mario all to ourselves.  We will do this for as long as we can.  I had the thought a few times that this was Audrey's last 'official' family vacation.  From here on out, it's her choice if she wants to go with us or not.  Where's the rewind button????!!

Mario and Alicia on the island

We found plenty to do in San Francisco.  It was a unique city that seemed to be stacked on top of itself.  Everything was so tight!  Mario and I paid for the xtra insurance on our rental van--not something we usually do and we weren't even sure why we did it then, but we later  put a nice dent into into the side door while trying to get out of a parking garage.  We were really happy we'd paid the little xtra.

Six flags--here we come

This was taken on the Oakland temple grounds

Day one was filled with all things Alcatraz.  We all became quite obsessed with a prison on an island, to the point that we went back to our rental house that night and watched "Escape from Alcatraz".  I didn't think an island with a prison on it would be all that interesting for me but it was way up there on our list of trip successes.

The Oakland temple was beautiful and unique.  And the view of the city from there was amazing.  Mario, Audrey and Ian did baptisms and Alicia, Isaac and I went to the visitors center and then just tried to kill time (they were in doing baptisms for an xtra long time).  Teesh started to have a mental breakdown because Isaac and I were playing a game and she was bored of her book.   She yelled, "I am losing it people!," and then proceeded to attack us and cause physical harm.  This sent me into one of my laughing fits that I couldn't stop. She's always a funny child.

The temple had a place where you go up on top and there are gardens up there

The ocean by Muirwoods

Muir woods was beautiful and also the beach by it (although cold.  Because of the time of year we go on vacations--beaches have always been cold.
Six flags was a big hit for most of us.  I am finding that I'm way more effected by giant rollercoasters than I used to be.  Especially when they suddenly do their whole run backwards.  It took me awhile to recover and dare to get on another ride.  I did not get my personal money's worth for the day.  I paid to walk around and look at walruss and other sea wildlife.

Muirwoods park

This photo we set up didn't quite work out

This was the first falls that the kids hiked up to

The highlight of our trip was definetly  Yosemite.  It was so beautiful and we loved the hikes we went on

My blog is acting weird but I guess I can't change it.  Anyway, I'm personally out of shape right now and lagged behind on all the hikes.  I was calling myself a flabbery flub of flapjacks.  I don't know why I've become so lazy.  We stopped at a strawberry farm on our way to the park and bought enough that we all had unlimited fruit for awhile.  This did not have the best effect on Isaac's digestive tract and once again, Alicia got us laughing pretty hard.  She was sitting in the back with him and kept complaining about what he was doing to her and then she suddenly yelled, "I'm done Isaac!  I am seriously nauseous."  We were on a really curvy road at the time so I'm sure the combination of both was not great.  Poor girl.So overall, it was a wonderful trip with no major issues.  Because of that, we may not remember anything about it by next year.  It seems to be the disasters of a vacation that you're still laughing about years later.

This was taken at the base of El Capitan.  We could not believe that people were rockclimbing this and had been for days/weeks.  Ian claims he's doing it someday and I told him he better not tell me when he does.

Taken at one of the upper falls