San Francisco part 1

A few months back, Marc and his dad were trying to work out a way for us to meet up in Yosemite and surprise his mom for her birthday. The timing wasn't working very well for Yosemite, but they were going to San Francisco for Marc's cousins wedding and the dates worked out a lot better. We could squeak out just enough money for the trip with some of our extra income this month as long as we kept things as a bare minimum. Marc has a lot of PTO that has to be used up, the boys didn't have school on Monday so we decided to go for it.

We left Thursday, October 20, after I was done with Splash around 3:15. We researched several hotels along the way, not sure how the kids were going to do and how far we were going to be able get. We originally thought we'd only be able to get as far as Reno, high hopes were Sacramento, and the best we could do was Vallejo, about 45 min outside of San Francisco (hotel prices went up significantly the closer we got). Our kids did Fantastic, considering the circumstances. We ate dinner in the car, turned on some movies for the kids and drove for nearly 10 hours. We got all the way to Vallejo, pulled into a Super 8 hotel, asked for a room with two beds, and ended up with a room with 1....were too tired to go back and fight with the front desk so all the kids slept on the floor. 

It was a miserable night for me. Couldn't get comfortable, started having stomach pains and then got hit hard with a stomach bug. I was absolutely zapped, but didn't just drive 10 hours to sit in a hotel room all morning! We got up and got dressed, ate a bowl of cereal in the room and drove to the Oakland Temple to meet Marc's parents. Our temple in Boise has been closed for renovations, so we really wanted to try and do a session together while we had the chance.

Bob & Debbie took the kids for us so we could do some temple work. I was so nervous I wouldn't be able to get through it, as weak as I was and not being able to be away from a bathroom for extended periods of time, but I was able to get through the whole thing and it was nice to be with my husband.

  We drove into San Francisco after that. Marc could hardly stand seeing all the people running along the bay or biking and he didn't have his bike. We eventually wound up at a park overlooking the golden gate bridge for lunch. After lunch, we tried to ride the trolley cars. The kids were most excited about San Francisco because of the trolley cars and we really wanted to let them experience it (us too for that matter!). But as we walked up, there was a huge line and it wasn't moving at all. None of the trolley cars were running and we had no guarantee that we would make it through the line and even get to ride one, so we sadly walked away. The boys were crushed, but Grandpa tried to make it up to them by making a stop at Ghiradelli Square.

 

We ordered some Sundaes to share. Waffle cones dipped in chocolate on the inside, a puddle of milk chocolate fudge on the bottom, with soft serve ice cream and loads of whipped cream and cherries to boot. I wish I would have felt like eating some!

 Grandma and Grandpa shared with Lexi and let her eat most of it by herself!

 Afterwards, the kids almost all but forgotten about the un-ridden trolley cars.

 Next, we headed to the beach to let the kids run around a bit and grab some iconic San Francisco pictures of the bridge and Alcatraz.

Tyler started complaining that his stomach was hurting. We told him he probably ate too much ice cream, and encouraged him to rest. We loaded up to go check into the hotel, crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, were in the middle of a 5 lane highway when Tyler told us again his stomach hurt, and the next thing we knew, he was puking everywhere in the backseat of the car. He was crying, Lexi was screaming and crying because he threw up all over her special blankies, and we couldn't do a thing about it except throw him a towell to try and clean up his face a little bit. We got him cleaned up at Bob & Debbie's hotel, tried to clean up the car as much as possible, and grabbed a little trash can for Tyler to hold "just in case" as we needed to drive another 10-15 minutes to our hotel. We were glad we grabbed the trash can as he didn't make it to the hotel. We got everyone settled, then Marc went for a run to relieve some stress and to scout out some stores for us to get dinner and laundry detergent. We heated up some macaroni cheese and fried chicken in the hotel microwave, washed special blankets and clothes and got the kids and myself to bed. The night didn't get any better...Bryce threw up too, Lexi was calling out a couple of times, and I'm very grateful for my husband who took care of ALL of it! Welcome to California!