I have been meaning to blog about our summer vacation for a while, but have been frustrated with blogger and their picture capabilities. That’s why the pictures are all together and not spaced out—I apologize.
Anyway, with Mike starting a new job and his crazy training schedule, we knew we weren’t going to be able to take a summer vacation this year, so we took one early during my spring break from school. We went to Sacramento and San Francisco. It was a ton of fun and I don’t even remember how dreadful the 11 hour car rides were because we had so much fun during the week we were in California!
We drove out on a Saturday and just visited that night. Kai didn’t remember us, but warmed up real quick to Mike. Kai just LOVES reading and Mike went right to the books (without knowing…but good guess!) to get Kai to know him. After a while Kai couldn’t resist loving his favorite aunt and having the time of his life while we were there!
Sunday, Scott and Desiree were awesome enough to take us out on their boat on the “delta.” It was awesome being out in the sun after so much snow this winter. We loved it so much that we got sunburned and had to buy Mike a new hat so he wouldn’t get more burned later! But it was worth it. Sea lions roam around the river and some hang out on a buoy. We were able to get up pretty close to them—thank goodness they didn’t jump into the boat!
On Monday we went dirt biking at this pretty great course not far from Desiree’s place. It was both Mike’s and my first time… Mike did pretty well and was able to follow Scott around the actual trails and had a blast! He loved it, until he fell. Apparently he took a turn too sharp and fell onto his side. He was fine, except his ribs were sore for a couple weeks. I, on the other hand, took my time warming up to it. I stayed in first gear, and you can see from the video that I went way slow—no chance of me falling!!! That night Desiree took us to her school where she’s taking a photography class and we were her models for the night. It was kind of weird, but ended up being really fun. I can’t wait to see what she did with our photos! We’ll be famous! (And I guess I have a really big mouth when I open it up really wide…who knew?)
On Tuesday we went to a “family fun” type center and Desiree had found some really good passes to let us do almost anything, over and over. So we played mini golf, including Kai! We went on the bumper boats and got soaked. We raced around the go-kart track a couple times (I’m pretty sure my kart was malfunctioning EVERY time). And, they had this ride that spun around (motions like a ferris wheel), and you sat in a car that spun around—it was crazy. If you’ve been on the X at Magic Mountain…it’s like that but not a track. Regardless, it was fun and scary… Oh, and Desiree and Scott pretty much broke it by trying to get their cart to spin too much—it started swaying on the axis it’s not supposed to sway! Whoops!!!
Wednesday we said a temporary good bye to the Odenbrett’s and went to San Francisco. It was rainy when we first got there, but cleared up to give us two pretty nice days. We took the BART in to San Fran, so we had to walk everywhere we wanted to go. The first day was crazy because we wanted to see China Town on our way to our hotel. Of course it was all up hill, and then downhill, but a good workout! Neither of us had even been to China Town, and it was pretty interesting how there’s this section of the city that could have just been transplanted from China just yesterday. I especially loved the whole, roasted chickens/birds (complete with neck AND head) hanging in the shop windows. Gross.
While in San Francisco we also went on board a submarine from WWII. The guided tour was pretty awesome. We went to Pier 39 and ate at Bubba Gump’s—had calamari even! We took plenty of pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, but we couldn’t find a timely, cheap way to get to it. And of course we went to Alcatraz. We spent quite a while there getting all the juicy details of its history and inmates. It made me want to see “Escape from Alcatraz” again.
Come Friday it was time to say good bye and be on our way. It was an awesome trip and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Now we just have to wait another couple years before we go to California again Thanks again, Desiree, Scott and Kai, for having and entertaining us!!
Here are some pictures for you to enjoy (there's more on facebook). Hopefully they don’t space out like they did in the previous post…
Mike getting ready to ride
The crazy ride
China Town
AAAAAGGGGHHH!!! We're taking on water, Captain. There's nothing we can do to save her!!
Bubba Gumps. Alcatraz
