San Francisco Sites

It was so fun exploring San Francisco as a family.  Some of the highlights include traveling down Lombard Street twice, taking a trolley and cable car, touring Alcatraz, seeing the Painted Ladies, the Fisherman's Wharf, and driving across the San Francisco Bridge.  It was also cool to explore Fort Baker and drive through Sausalito on the other side of the bridge.  And of course, the boys absolutely loved going to a Giants game at Oracle Park.  We did our fair share of public transportation, but Joel was also a champ driving all the windy, hilly roads of San Francisco.

It was a sweet victory of 4-3 over the Cubs.  We even got to see a pitcher make his Major League debut from the 4th row!  The boys were in baseball heaven!

Oakland!

We're spending most of our time in San Francisco, but we needed to go to Oakland for 2 things: Fenton's ice cream, and the Oakland Temple.  My parents were married in the Oakland Temple, and Fenton's has a long tradition among my cousins on the Stuetz side.  We went there several times with the Cuttings.  It was a nostalgic afternoon. 

The view from the temple is spectacular!

We crossed the Bay Bridge, checked into our hotel, and then decided we needed a view from the San Francisco side.  My cousin, Greg, told us about an amazing view at Twin Peaks. 

The incoming fog was the location of the Golden Gate Bridge, so we had to wait another day to see it.

Flowers

My sister is pregnant, and this will most likely be my last niece on the way.  I wanted to try to get her quilt done by the family reunion, but it was a tight turn around.  I got the quilt top done fairly quickly, but it was a time crunch to finish the quilt before leaving town.  I finished it the day before we left (thus, the dark finish pictures).  Phew!

The back is a pink cuddly flannel.

Sweet Baby James

It was a trip down memory lane to watch James Taylor in concert last night at Starlight Theater.  I grew up listening to him, because my parents loved his music.  It was SO good!  It made me miss my dad and I wish my mom could have been there.  I sang along to the entire thing.  It was so enjoyable and he had such a great sense of humor. His son was one of his backup singers. 

We had such a great night together.  Kara and Kimber are so much fun.

Crazy Storms

We had a severe thunderstorm pound down on us Saturday night.  The winds and hail were crazy.  We woke up to limbs of our huge tree all over the ground a the main branch in the middle of the tree broken midair.  It didn't look great, but the very next night another huge storm rolled in for just about 30 minutes, but it was enough to damage another large section of our tree.  It's all very high above the house, so we've called a tree company to come give us an estimate to cut down all the broken limbs.  Sigh.

It's hard to see all the damage in the pictures, but I'm worried it won't get cleaned up before the next big storm.  I'm just grateful all the branches broke in the direction away from the house instead of into it.

You can see the whole middle of the tree is now gone.

One of the trees in the front of our yard also split.  The city owns this tree, so they're coming to take care of it next week.

MJ

Holy Moly - the lead was out of this world amazing!  It was like going to a Michael Jackson concert.  We loved it!

Heart Blocks

I got my March and April blocks done the very last week of April for do.Good Stitches.  We won't mention that they barely went in the mail yesterday.  I really enjoyed these blocks.  They were a fun scrap buster.