Vacation - San Francisco

Last week during UEA break, Jared had meetings in San Francisco.  We decided to make a family trip out of it and took the kids out of school and drove to CA.   For the most part...we had a great time and the kids seemed to enjoy just being together. Two years ago, we took the kids to San Francisco (more meetings for Jared).  We did a lot of the "tourist" things like cable cars, Ghiradelli Square, Pier 39, the Wharf, China town, and the most memorable to me was renting bikes and riding across the Golden Gate Bridge into Sauscillito.  This time, we decided since the kids and I would only have a couple of days in the city, we chose to do other things while Jared was in meetings. 

The first day we arrived in San Francisco, we drove into Muir Woods National Forest.  We hiked along a trail lined with beautiful redwood trees.  Madison discovered thousands of lady bugs crawling everywhere in an isolated location.  She kept wanting to catch as many as she could in her hand and have me take a picture.  The problem was, the ladybugs were crawling out of her hand faster than she could catch them.  

The next day Jared went to meetings and the girls and I walked around and did some shopping and sight seeing.  We found a cute park in the city and rode the merry go round, played in the park and finished with some bowling.  We finished up with more shopping until the kids were worn out and ready for dinner. 

Tuesday, we drove to the California Academy of Sciences.  I would highly recommend this for kids.  We spent most of the day exploring everything offered...a planetarium, an aquarium, a rain forest, and many other educational hands on activities and movies.  

white crocodile

...touching star fish

3-D bug movie - those are some glasses!

The last day in San Francisco, we decided to go the Exploritorium.  We visited this place a couple of years ago and the kids begged to go back.  It is like a big science fair but you can touch and experiment with everything.  The most interesting thing we saw was a cow eye being dissected.  Abby and Madison were very intrigued by the whole thing, Kelsee was grossed out and Bailey was too busy to sit still to see what exactly was going on.   The favorite thing for all the kids was the magnetic sand.  The kids could have played in it for hours.