We went to San Francisco and the Bay area for a continuing education conference and vacation. Our good friends, the Carters, live in Palo Alto as Chris finishes up business school. Our trip started pretty rough as we forgot we barely made our flight and forgot Clark's pacifier. He squirmed all over the place for four hours straight. The one thing that saved us on the flight is Clark's love to throw things. He would throw the ball ( left handed-which is good for his future baseball career) and catch it over and over and over. I'm not exaggerating here it was probably like at least one hour per flight of doing this. Anyway, we stayed out in Berkeley our first four nights as I went to my lectures. Clark did trash his first hotel room (see pic). Friday, we went to Fairyland (I know it's San Francisco but it's not what you think) and Clark saw his second baseball game as we went to an A's game. We visited University of Cal-Berkeley where some of these pics where taken at sunset. Some students live in the trees adjacent to the football stadium in protest of the expansion of the stadium. On Monday, we made it into San Francisco and went to see Alcatraz. The one thing that really struck me was the size of the cells (5' wide x 7' high x 9' deep). I made Clark get behind bars to see what it'd feel like if he keeps acting as rowdy as he has lately. The Golden Gate park had an awesome playground with a concrete slide on a hill. You went down on a piece of cardboard. It entertained all of us for about 30 minutes straight. Our last night, we had a great visit with the Carters and got to see some of the Stanford campus. I'll speak for Shannon here. Even though we didn't get to do everything we wanted because of nap times, early bedtimes, and general rowdiness, our kids enrich our lives beyond measure and I'd bring them anywhere.
