Sunday, February 22, 2009

San Francisco

As many of you may know, my little sister Cayla competes on the Sacramento State Gymnastics team. Jake and I decided that since I had a long weekend for presidents day that we would go and watch one of her meets and then head to Alcatraz for fun.
Cayla did very well on her meet, and to my surprise it was only 2 hrs long! That is a great improvement from the all day meets that she used to have before she went to college.
On presidents day we headed to San Francisco with my parents. I was expecting there to be really nice weather, but instead it rained the whole time we were in California. Basically I'm trying to give a reason why my hair is so ugly in these pictures and why Jake is wearing his gross hat.

This was the cute boat that we got to travel to the island on. The water was very choppy and I hated the whole ride.


San Francisco has such neat bridges over the ocean. This is a picture of the Bay Bridge from inside of the boat.
When we got to the island the first place we wanted to go was on a tour of the prison. Now this is the first time that I have ever been on an audio tour. I thought it was a little strange at first but ended up really enjoying myself. It was nice because you could stop and take more time at different parts of the prison that you found more interesting. It was very funny to see all of the people in the prison walking around with headphones on and this thing dangling from their neck. So these are some pics of the jail cells.

As you can see they have three rows of cells all stacked on top of each other. To be quite honest, the whole place reminded me of the movie Shawshank Redemption.

This is a picture of their exercise courtyard. You look out and wonder how they ever stayed inside the walls, but if you actually go out in the courtyard, you will see that the walls are much higher than they look.
San Francisco is only 1 1/2 miles from Alcatraz. It looked absolutely amazing from the island.


This is us all grungy from all of the rain out in front of the Wardons office and guest entrance to the prison. That is San Francisco behind us.

This is a picture of Alcatraz as we were leaving on the boat to go back to San Francisco. The ride was much better on the way back.

I just realized what a horrible sister I am because I didn't take a single picture of Cayla at her meet. Next time I will record a routine so that everyone can see it. This was a very fun trip for both Jake and I. The only crapy part was that we hit bad weather on the way home and it took us 20 hrs to drive. I have never been more angry at people than I was on Donners pass with all of the California drivers holding up traffic so they could put their chains on. Please! I have worse roads in my subdivision people!

Sunday, February 1, 2009

My wonderful family.



Today I have been thinking of how lucky I am to have such a great family. I was raised in the church with wonderful parents.


Not only that, but I have been blessed with In-laws who are wonderful. I have never met such loving and giving people. We are truly blessed.