Palo Alto and San Fran

On Saturday, the 7th, we said goodbye to Carlsbad and made the eight hour road trip to Palo Alto.  The drive was long and there is a three hour stretch of farmland that is just so boring.  There is only one radio station in English and I call it ghetto rap.  Now Owen won't stop singing.. "Beez in da trap.. beez beez in da trap".. just one of the many awesome songs we had the pleasure of listening to on our long drive up the coast of Cali.

We arrived at our hotel around 4pm and they didn't have a room with two queen beds like we had reserved, so they bumped us to a suite.  The extra room was nice.  I have no idea why driving drains us, but it does.  We unpacked and relaxed in our hotel for a bit and Rustyn came down from San Fran to kick it with us.  He brought the kids gifts and we went out to dinner together.  

Apparently we are getting old because we showed up at dinner with all the old folk and when we got back to our hotel, all the young business guests were leaving for a night on the town.  We were just thinking of sleep.  I hung out on the patio with the kids and enjoyed the amazing Palo Alto weather until it was time to call it a night.

Sunday morning, we woke up and decided to run to Hobees for breakfast.  They had fantastic whole wheat protein pancakes.. so yummy.  They are famous for their blueberry coffee cake so we grabbed a slice to go and were on our way to San Francisco.

I checked the weather before we left and it said it would be warm and sunny, at around 78 degrees.  Ha!  I must have been checking Palo Alto and not San Fransisco, because it was so freezing!  We had plans to go to Pier 39 and use our free tickets for Rocketboat rides, the mirror mazes and the aquarium. 

First, we went to check out Rustyn's (Carson's bro) new place in the city. He had this really cool drawing computer and Kam was so excited!  She is an amazing artist and is just learning having never taken a real art class before. 

We decided it was freezing so we would just skip the Pier for the time being and went for a walk to the park a few blocks from Rustyn's place.

We were wearing shorts and tees, thanks to my lousy weather checking, but at least we had coats in the car.  We bundled Owen up good.

We played on the swings...

Fed the birds and ducks...

And walked around a bit to warm up.

We decided to meet Auntie Booj for lunch.  {Janesa is Carson's little Sis, aka. Auntie Booj}  We had yummy Vietnamese BBQ and walked through a few fun shops in the city.  We were going to go back to the park by Janesa's place, but it was just so cold.  We decided we'd hit up the Pier on our next trip to Stanford and dress accordingly.

The kids slept the entire 20 minutes back to Palo Alto and we ordered some light room service for dinner. 

We took the kids down to the hotel pool for a little swim before tubby and bedtime.

The next morning we were up bright and early for our day at Stanford.  I already wrote about our awesome {sarcasm} GI appointment and our appointment with Cardiology. We spent our last night in Palo Alto relaxing on the patio, packing up our bags and getting ready for our 12 hour drive back to the desert.  We had a great week together on vacation and know it will be our last for a while. 

When Owen is waiting for a heart, we have to stay put in case an offer becomes available.  There will be no more long trips to the beach or theme parks for a while.  I'm grateful that we had the chance to have this time together.