Field trips!

Our family has taken lots of fun field trips in the past few weeks. A few weeks ago I was able to join Audrey's class for a day at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. When you leave Fresno at 7 a.m. and return by 5 p.m. that doesn't leave much time at the aquarium, but she and her classmates had a good time, nonetheless.

I returned to the aquarium with Isaac's class two weeks later. Let me just say, chaperoning fifth grade girls in NOT the same as chaperoning third grade boys! I likened it to being on a treadmill for four straight hours...from one exhibit to the next, excitement abounding! Again, it was a relatively quick turnaround but very fun for the kids!

This past week was Spring Break and since my mom was able to take a few days off from work, she graciously offered to watch the kids for a couple days so Randy and I could "get away" by ourselves. So Sunday we headed to San Jose and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and evening all together, then Monday morning my dad drove us to the nearest BART station before heading to work. Randy and I love visiting San Francisco and with my parents in San Jose, it makes for a quick trip! Grandma (and sometimes Grandpa, if he wasn't preparing for all the Easter celebrations at church) took the kiddos to the park, the library, both Rose Gardens (where they created pages of Smell-o-meters to record the roses and their differences), and the Egypt Museum!

We left a camera with the kiddos and they took pictures of LOTS of things over the three days, but most were blurry, and hardly any of them included people (just a bunch of stuff). Fun to see what they saw though, and hear them explain it all! Wednesday afternoon my dad picked us up from the BART and we were able to hang out all together for another full day before heading back to Fresno. Randy and I had a great three days in San Fran, walking all over downtown, visiting some new restaurants, finally going to the California Academy of Science building, as well as catching a late-night showing of Hunger Games. Randy took lots of pictures throughout our trip. Here are a few!

We stayed at the Andrews hotel, near Union Square. A quaint, historic building on Post Street with small but nice rooms, fresh pastries and coffee for breakfast, and a great Italian restaurant downstairs! After checking into our hotel (they let us have an early check-in at noon and even upgraded our room), we headed out to walk around the city! We wandered all through the city, exploring, tasting a pastry here, a coffee there, clicking photos right and left, and who can resist a treat from the Creme Bruleé Cart before heading to North Beach for dinner!






We decided to branch out from our favorite dinner at Il Pollaio and try a new restaurant, Sotto Mare. We shared their "best damn cioppino" and were not disappointed!

Tuesday we hopped on the MUNI to Golden Gate Park and spent a few hours in the CA Academy of Sciences building.


After a walk through a bit more of Golden Gate Park, we took a standing room only bus back to downtown to explore a bit more then rest a bit at the hotel and change for dinner.

Mosaics as far as the eye can see...up!

True city life astounds me! This was the building across the way from our hotel and I found myself gazing at the windows, numerous times, wondering how people do it, what life in a big city is like! This picture alone includes windows of six residences!

Beautiful blue skies our second day!

Gorgeous architecture everywhere!

Our second evening we ate at Farmer Brown's, a funky, farm-fresh soul food stop in the Tenderloin. I had their fried chicken dinner. Randy chose the catfish with red beans and rice. Both were great! We finished off the meal sharing a slice of bourbon pecan pie, pepper ice cream and some New Orlean's coffee. YUM! We will definitely make it back...hopefully on a night with live music!

Sunrise over the city on our final morning.

We were very tourist-y on Wednesday morning and took a photo in Union Square in front of the "I love SF" heart, then waited in line for breakfast at Sears' Fine Foods.

After a bit of shopping in Union Square, getting a few Easter treats for the kids, we headed back to the BART to head back to San Jose.

Thursday Randy was able to help my dad with a couple things around the house like digging out a dead tree stump in the front yard, smashing out cement in the backyard to make more garden space (Isaac also enjoyed helping with that, goggles in place and mallet in hand...yikes!), and creating a "rugged" cross for part of the Maunday Thursday service at my parents' church, which we were able to attend with them before driving home. Friday and Saturday of Spring Break were spent relaxing as a family (it was fantastic weather here in Fresno), playing at the park, and getting quite a bit of yard work done! We set up some raised beds after Randy finished re-doing our sprinklers in the back (he trenched, re-structured them and everything...he worked hard!) so we are now ready to plant all our veggies for the summer! Whew!

The last few days of the kids' Spring break, including Easter Sunday, were wonderful time spent together with family and friends! I'll have to do another post later this week to include those pictures!