Category: Our Family

After the temple we had a mini-adventure trying to find someplace to buy a new SD card for my camera. We finally came across an Office Max and Kyle took a few of the kids in to buy a card for my camera and to make a quick potty stop. We also used this stop as an opportunity to feed everyone some lunch. Then we were back on our real adventure.

I tried to take a picture of San Fransisco while we were driving across the Bay Bridge. Every one of my pictures, has the bridge cables in it.

Liesl wanted to take us to see Lombard street, so that is where we headed. When we got there, Kyle wanted a picture of all the people standing in the road taking pictures. 😉

I remember these super steep roads from when my family visited San Fransisco years ago. We were in the motorhome and it was terrifying to drive through town, feeling like the motorhome was standing up on it’s nose as we went downhill. It felt just about the same driving through town this time, even though we were only in a 12 passenger van. It was totally awkward to park so we could get out and walk down Lombard street. Liesl parked, and it felt like the van was going to fall over. As Dinah unbuckled her booster seat it did lean over. Then when she got out of the van, she still felt like she needed to hang on.

Here we are at the bottom of Lombard St.

Standing ON Lombard St.

Here is a view of the city from the top of the street.

We also had a nice view of Alcatraz Island, and a pretty neat looking boat.

We are having so much fun!

And here is our view as go drive downhill in the van.

This morning Kyle and I made a run to Trader Joes to get some snacks, and things for our road trip home. We have pretty much eaten up most of everything we brought along! While we were gone, Liesl curled Tyra’s hair.

When we got back to Liesl’s place we got our stuff cleaned up and loaded into the van, since we were hoping to start the trek back home after seeing some of the sights. Kyle and a couple of the girls helped to deflate the air mattress.

Then we headed to the Oakland Temple.

The first thing we came to on the grounds was the fountain, and no surprise, all of the kids were attracted to it.

We weren’t at the temple long before I realized that the SD card for my camera was almost full. There just was not going to be enough room for a full day of adventures worth of pictures. 🙁 So I had to stop taking pictures and let Liesl take them for me.

Kyle pointed out that Liesl had got a picture of Ethan, so Ethan responded by spitting out his tongue. What he didn’t realize was that Liesl was getting him again!

As we were walking back to go to the van, I noticed that this rose tree is shaped like a heart from one angle. How cool is that?

That was our visit to the Oakland temple. Next stop…somewhere we can buy another SD card for my camera! 😉

Last night we left the restaurant that we had gone to with Grandpa and Grandma and we headed south, driving through the night to get to Liesl and Ian’s place. I didn’t really like being on an unfamiliar, windy, downhill stretch of road in the dark. But we made it safely and that is what really matters.

We arrived at their house in the early morning hours, unloaded all of the kids and everyone just crashed on the couches and the floor for a few hours. Liesl got up in the morning and made pancakes for everyone before heading out to go to an appointment that she had. We ate breakfast while she was gone and when she got back we discussed options for the day. Liesl had a meeting for work in the afternoon so she couldn’t be with us all day, but she suggested that we go to the Jelly Belly factory without her. The kids ears perked up when they heard “Jelly Belly factory” so that is what we did today.

We got to the Jelly Belly factory and went inside. Adam was thrilled to see all the candy!

We got in the line for the tour and waited. The group we ended up in was the last tour of the day. An employee took us upstairs to wait for a guide. While waiting, Lydia found this mosaic made of jelly bellies:

She was so thrilled to see Minnie Mouse made out of candy, her two favorite things in the world.

We weren’t allowed to take pictures during the tour, but we got to see how Jelly Bellies are made from start to finish, and how they are packaged up for shipping. I did get a couple of pictures of the kids in front of the factory though.

When we got back to Liesl and Ian’s place they had bought some pizza for dinner. We finished up the evening by eating pizza and having movie night. They have netflix, so we browsed through lists of movies trying to decide what to watch. Liesl chose Ghostbusters, but Ethan started pouting so we ended up picking Clue. I didn’t really want to watch Ghostbusters either. We have that movie at home, so it would have just seemed silly to go hundreds of miles away, have access to all kinds of movies we don’t have, just to end up watching something we have at home. Clue was pretty funny too. Some of the kids thought it might be scary, but they were pleasantly surprised and they were caught laughing multiple times. 🙂

I’m grateful that Kyle got off work early today. After we toured the Symantec building we got in the van and headed south to visit my grandparents. The drive to their house wasn’t a long one, maybe a couple of hours, and I recognized their property before we turned onto their street. We turned into their driveway and parked by the garage. Grandpa and Grandma came out of the house as we were unloading the kids from the van. It wasn’t long before the kids discovered a couple of cows in one of the pastures. Dinah couldn’t be kept away and she and Lydia ended up roaming the pasture, while we warned them to mind where they were walking so they don’t step in any surprises. We were invited in the house and Grandma gave the kids some lemonade. Then we went out back. The kids were of course attracted to the pool.

Last time I was at their place they had a pond. But right now it is all dried up.

See the bridge behind Jeremy? That’s where the pond was. That bit of land would stick up out of the middle of the pond. We used to go down to the pond to try to catch frogs. 🙂

After we shooed the kids out of and away from the pool, walked to the other side of the yard. Here one of the kids discovered an acorn on the ground, so they all began hunting for more.

Just a side note, Dinah’s skirt is not wet because she peed her pants, it’s wet because wading her feet in the pool was not enough. She just HAD to try to get more of herself in the water. That is why we made the kids get their feet out of the pool and put their shoes back on.

I remember when this area of the yard was a lawn. Looks like they ripped that out and made it more natural looking with stepping stones going right through it. Along the path Lydia found this little elephant. Kyle tried to make her believe it was a live baby elephant, but she was too smart to believe that.

Finally in our tour of Grandpa and Grandma’s property, we came to the orchard. The kids were excited to find apples on some of the trees and wanted to know if there were any ripe ones they could have. Like they have never seen apples growing on trees before. 😛

Grandpa and Grandma offered to take us out to dinner but before leaving their house, I got some pictures of them with the kids.

We ended up going to a restaurant called Shari’s. At the restaurant, Grandpa commented on how amazed he at just how well behaved and happy Adam is. Adam’s face just beamed with happiness. I guess considering he has been stuck in either his car seat or the hotel room for the past few days it’s amazing that he is happy and not totally grumpy and ready to go home. Just look at that face!

Grandpa also exclaimed just how much Lydia reminds him of my mom when she was about that age. He could not get over it. We had an enjoyable evening, even though we waited a LONG time for the food. It took so long to come out that Grandpa decided to get up and go find out what was taking so long. The food finally did arrive, and mine was quite impressive to look at:

They called it “brioche French toast”. French toast made out of some special kind of bread with some pink berry filling, covered in berries and served with whipped cream. It was super yummy too.

When everyone was finished eating dinner, we thanked Grandpa and Grandma, and said goodbye. Kyle had been texting back and forth with Liesl for part of the afternoon and evening, and had decided that since our visit with Grandpa and Grandma was so short, that we had time to drive further south, and visit Liesl in northern California before we needed to head home. And so our adventure continues. 🙂

Today, I had to check out of our hotel rooms while Kyle was at work. I spent the morning packing stuff up and hauling it out to the van, which meant leaving Ethan in charge of making sure that nobody escaped the hotel room while I was gone. To help deter them from getting into stuff or wanting to escape, I let them play on the wii (which Kyle had previously set up for me).

I thought it would be easiest to empty one of the rooms first. I then inspected it to make sure I packed up everything, then I shut the door to keep the kids out of it. I didn’t want them taking stuff back in there and then leave something behind. Then I finished packing up the second room. When I got down to the last little bit left in the room I decided to just take the kids to the van as well as the final bit of luggage. I had them help carry the last bit and then we were out of the hotel. I swung around to the front and dropped our keys off with the front desk to officially check out. Then I drove to Symantec. He had said that there were people on his team that kept asking when he was going to bring his family in so they could meet us, and I didn’t really have anywhere else to go after checking out of the hotel. Apparently his coworkers also asked about cake balls, but I didn’t make any to bring on the trip (I’m not sure they would have survived the trip) and they are not something I could make while in a hotel room! Kyle was still working when we got there, so I made sandwiches to feed the kids in the car.

When Kyle was done working for the day (which was earlier today than the last two days), he came out to the van to get us. He had to sign each of us in, and the lady at the front desk had to make each of us a visitors tag before we could pass security. The building is a large one, with trees growing inside. The kids thought that was kind of weird. Kyle took us up to where his team was and he introduced us to them. A couple of the guys had nerf guns and let the kids shoot them off. Which resulted in needing to go fetch the darts. The rest of Kyle’s team were heading off to go have lunch and then to go play lazer tag. Since Kyle had his family there with him, he got permission to be excused from those activities. Kyle took us on a tour of the rest of the building, before we turned in our badges and left.