California vacation

 started out chilly in oregon

 

then sunny in san francisco but windy (of course).  spent time running on the beach and then walked the piers and up to see the cable cars.  then we ended up at the bottom of lombard street and decided to trek up to see the crookedest street.  we walked from the bottom of the hill (the below picture is after we walked up 3 or so blocks from the base) and continued all the way up to the top of lombard street and down the other side back to our hotel.  at the point of the first picture below we each had a kid on our shoulders and continued to march right up to the top.  that was our feat of strength for the day. phew!  that was a workout.  that was my replacement for boot camp for the day.

 the next day we enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and took in a great Giants game at AT&T park.  Giants won 9-2.  there were 4 homeruns.  boys really enjoyed watching the game and did great even though it was right through naptime.  had to carry them back to the truck though.  did a lot of carrying each on our shoulders once our arms gave out.

  the boys once back to our hotel.

 the boys did pretty good sharing a bed each night.  zachary sure is a mover.  he rolled over nathaniel a few times and malled his face many times through the night.  no one fell out of bed any of the nights so that's a success.

 

we were lucky enough to see the space shuttle riding on top of a 747 as it flew over san francisco and down to LAX.  this was in monterey bay doing a fly by at about 1500 ft.  not the best picture but it was so cool to see.

 

i'll post a separate post with just wedding pictures but after the wedding we went to palm springs and nathaniel saw this huge statue of marilyn monroe and immediately said, "can i go stand by that and you take my picture?"  he was pretty excited-it was hard not to crack up.

 vintage airstream trailer behind a 59 buick that the boys had to go checkout and take pictures of. 

 boys and i in front of our road tripping truck.  was perfect for the trip but really scary to drive in san francisco.  pete didn't think it was that bad in SF but i thought the only way it could have been worse was to actually hit something. 

 Joshua Tree National Park.  lots of Joshua trees and cool rock formations. 

 Palm Springs Air Museum.  Nathaniel had a fever the night before and still didn't feel well so he was the one in the stroller and zach had a blast taking pictures.  he absolutely loved it.  he took lots of pictures.  many of them are of the ground or his shoes but this was a series of them taking pictures of each other and the resulting pictures.  above is a Texan.  Nathaniel has been learning about different airplanes and saw a good majority of the ones from a calendar Pete's dad gave him and could easily identify them. 

 Then the longest day of driving up to Sacramento where we went to the train museum.  lots to see outside and inside.  boys loved it.

 a really huge toy train layout with 4 trains going.  boys could push the buttons to start them each going.  very cool.

 Our hotel room in Klamath Falls had an iron rack in the middle of the wall over the couch.  Odd, so of course i made Pete take a picture of it.

 Zach's standard smile for the camera face now a days.  he would smile like this even when he was taking pictures too which was cute.  Now, we are at Crater Lake.

 In the lobby of the Crater Lake Lodge.  beautiful day but a little smokey.

 All in all a great trip and everyone had fun.  Boys did great driving that with 50 total hours of driving we didn't have to break out the DVD player or even all the toys/trinkets we bought.  I way overbought on snack foods but we only ate out at most once per day.  everyone was a little sleep deprived by the time we got home but we had the weekend to recover before today (monday) where it was hard to go back to work/daycare.  all the boys friends were very excited to see them though and they had a good drop off.