Last May, we went to San Francisco with Andrew’s family and it was awesome.
I shared a blog post of the first few days of our trip back in June and, now that it’s January and the trip was literally over half a year ago (!!!), I figured it was high time I share the rest of those photographs! And, you guys! I am super excited about this! My life – as a wedding photographer, as a senior photographer, as a mom, and as a wife, is absolutely bananas from mid-March to late December and I am so excited to share more personal posts over the next few months while I have the downtime (and stamina!) to write them. So! Let’s talk San Francisco!!
Since there were three (amazing!) kids under five on our trip, everything we did was super kid friendly. And our kids? They LOVED San Francisco! They loved the tide pools and they loved walking around and they loved the bus system and they loved feeding ducks (they saw the biggest swan at the Palace of Fine Arts and Max talked about it for, like, three months, and they loved the aquariums (especially the sharks!) and Muir Woods and the beach and the tide pools and, honestly, our week was a bit of heaven. It was seriously so wonderful and we totally fell in love with this city.
And funny story! Andrew arrived really late on Thursday night and, when Max woke up on Friday morning, he started chattering about how excited he was to see the “Tall Trees!!” that day and, Andrew, half asleep, lifted his head up groggily and said, “Hey Max, did you know that Star Wars was filmed in Muir Woods?” and, then, for the rest of the trip, Max called Muir Woods the “Star Wars Place” and when we walked around the paths, Max kept grabbing my hand and said, “Hey Mom! Did you know that Luke Skywalker saw these trees during filming?!” and all of Andrew’s lifelong dreams came true. Y’all may have noticed that I don’t talk about Max a lot on this blog or on any of my Social Media anymore – I used to all of the time but, now that he is five & a half and totally his own person, I’ve made the choice to leave him (mostly!) off of the Internet because he’s old enough to remember all kinds of things about his life and his stories are his stories (I will do the same with Henry when he reaches school age). But! I couldn’t help but sneak in that Muir Woods story. He is such a sweet boy and he loves everything his dad loves – Star Wars included.
And even more exciting! I finally got to tour a prison! I am the biggest history nerd of all the history nerds who have ever history nerd-ed and there are no words to say how excited I was to go to Alcatraz. I mean, my Netflix history shows this pretty well (so many documentaries… also so much Pretty Little Liars and Criminal Minds and Gossip Girl and Revenge and Hart of Dixie and Jane the Virgin) but, really, I was so excited to go to Alcatraz that I bugged everyone for, like, an hour before we needed to go that we should hurry on up and catch the bus so we could be the first ones on the island. I mean, I was super bossy about it and I should probably be embarrassed by how much I love prison/criminal/mob boss history (and any history!) but I can’t help myself! I love it! Then! On the island! Andrew made, like, five thousand “Escape from Alcatraz: Part Two!” jokes and I’m pretty sure I’ve never eye rolled at him so hard. I love him… and I love the fact that he did a headset tour with me, too. Who doesn’t want to walk around a freezing prison with headphones on telling them stories? Everyone does, right?! Ha! Here’s some photographs!!
Our trip stretched over Mother’s Day so, naturally, we took a ton of photographs of us moms with our babies – and we made the grown up kids participate, too (Andrew included). Love all of these with my sweet mother-in-law and her kids and grandkids!
We spent our last day in San Francisco exploring tide pools and hanging out at an aquarium. The tide pools were awesome but they also made me crazy nervous. Max tromped around those things like he owned the place and Henry, naturally, ran around like a maniac and it’s possible that I fantasized about getting him a child leash as he ran everywhere (fun fact: he now has a child leash after running away from me and shutting down Target). But! Even though my little explorers made me nervous, I loved having them see the tide pools and wish we lived near something like this – could you imagine this being your backyard?! This was seriously the most gorgeous spot.
We stayed in the cutest house in the Marina district during our trip and, on our last day there, Andrew and I left our kids with their grandparents and walked around for an hour. San Francisco is seriously so beautiful and one of my favorite cities ever. I love it and am so glad we got to visit here!
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