San Francisco

Dave had a training in San Francisco,

so the family (including Grandma) decided to tag along.

First stop was to pick up a nice family friendly vehicle.

Oh wait.

Actually we just went into the Ferrari store to make the workers (and me) nervous.

Considering I probably can't even afford that bitty thing in the left corner...

We really just had one day to explore the city so we decided not to go home with wicked buff legs from walking all of the hills and opted for the overpriced trolley day pass.

Thankfully, it was worth the dough because the kids enjoyed that as much as most anything else.

Except for Bradley who appears to be seriously concerned about whomever is sitting next to him.

Our first stop was Pier 39 which proved that there were actually people under the age of  18 years old somewhere in the city.

I had previously considered giving each of the kids little collection cups 

because it felt like we turned more heads than half of the street performers.

1...2...3...4...

Are they ALL yours?!

We stopped for this photo for Jack since he's such a shark lover

and ended up being brainwashed educated by a super crazy hippie lady.

Save the Earth my friends, save the Earth.

Here we are trying not to gouge out the eyes of any unsuspecting sting rays.  

Then grandma whipped out her "grandma's can spoil kids, but mother's can't" card

and decided to take the kids on the 2 story carousel.

Which basically made their day.

Then she bought them ice cream cones.

Which I probably never would have done.

Those kids are pretty darn lucky that grandma came along.

After all, life is always considerably more enjoyable with grandparents around.

Someday I will be one.

Then I will buy carousel tickets, ice cream cones and popcorn at Target.

But until then

my kids will have to suffer with squished PB&J and water bottles.

The real highlight of my trip was

*drum roll please*

The Bushman.

He is a street performer who basically sits behind a bunch of bush clippings.

Waits for unsuspecting by-passers.

And then scares the daylights out of them.

Hi-lar-i-ous

Seriously.

This guy was Dave's favorite memory from SF as a child,

and always talks about "the bushman."

So we naturally had to hunt him down.

And it was worth the hunt.

I'm pretty sure I could have just set up a chair to sit and watch all day.

He did give Bradley a little scare as we passed.

Which explains the concerned look on his face.

Later that evening we took a stroll through China Town.

(Oh Hi Dave, thanks for joining us.)

Crazy place, that is.

We walked all the way there for delicious...

pizza.

Shameful, isn't it?

But hey, when you want to make sure that everyone eats...

you take the safe route.

As we walked home we passed a cute little park

which looked terribly out of place in the middle of the city.

We bounced them on the springy teeter totter

and let them run around on the fairly pathetic toys.

And what do you know?

We spend the whole day providing them with all kinds of new experiences

and they are really just as happy at a fairly frightening inner city playground.

Go figure.