Happy New Year!

January 01, 2018

Happy New Year!

2018 Here we are!!! I heard the phrase the other year that every missionary has a black out year. 2018 is your black out year! This whole year you are a missionary! It will be a year that we won't see each other but it will be a year you will remember the rest of your life! It will be considered one of the best years of your life! Kind of cool knowing that going into it!

I think in our Christmas call with Landon we mentioned to him about our trip to San Francisco, but I don't think we told Mason. Well, during the few days between Christmas and New Years we went to San Francisco. Remember those flight vouchers when our flight we significantly delayed last January. They expire towards the end of January so we are trying to use them up. We left our house at 3:30am on the 28th and got to San Francisco at 7am. We stayed one night and left the next night at midnight. So for those two days we tried to pack in as much as we could, and packed it in we did. It was a lot of fun and also exhausting. Here are a few pictures of some of what we did and saw.....

The "Painted Ladies" They are in at least 50 movies.

And a significant fixture in the show "Full House"

We took a bus ride around SF and saw Chinatown, some pretty decorations, and the tallest building in SF (rode on the top of the bus) San Francisco is similar to Seattle. Kind of feels like a Seattle/NYC combination!

We also visited a Science Museum in the Golden Gate Park

(a park that reminded me of Central Park in NYC)

(Getting up at 3:30am for Gracie resulted in a day of messy hair)

Above: We drove down the most crooked street in America "Lombard Street" was pretty cool.

We biked the Golden Gate bridge! The above picture is of us approaching the bridge.

The one below is us after we crossed the bridge!

On the bridge!

A funny (stressful moment was going up these stairs trying to cross the bridge to go back to the city). 4 big bikes and one connected to a bike trailer. Good think we have a strong dad that got us up and down those stairs safely!

A boat ride under the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz

Alcatraz

Saw the San Francisco Sea Lions. (After a big earthquake in 1989, all the sea lions came in to port, since then they have never left- it has become a natural tourist attraction)

Ghirardelli Square!

Famous for their chocolates! It was a our last stop to get some ice cream before heading home.

We had a fun two days, but you both are never far from our hearts and our thoughts. We are constantly seeing things and are reminded of you. Here is one example! The name "Mason" is pretty popular in SF, and we loved seeing it often! We couldn't find a street named "Landon" unfortunately. But as we walked passed all the sourdough bakeries along the pier we couldn't help but think of our bread loving Landon (and Mason)!

We got back to our own beds at 4am Saturday morning and boy were we tired! We took it pretty easy and Lydia spent the afternoon getting ready for her first dance. We had encouraged her to go and were grateful that Lizzy and her friend Claire were up for going too. They went to the multi-stake New Years dance. Lydia was really nervous to go so we reviewed with her some dance moves (dad showed her how to really dance- if you could imagine) and got pizza to feed her friends before and had ice cream for after the dance for whoever she wanted to invite over after. Well she ended up having a blast! And after the dance at 11:30pm we had 4 boys (3 from our ward), Lydia and Lizzy. Lizzy's dad picked her up first so that left Lydia with the 4 boys, which startled Lydia a little bit but overall it was a good night! Lydia now can't wait till the next dance.