San Francisco Symphony

So we checked off another San Francisco bucket list item by going to the symphony on Friday. We parked a little ways up and followed the road going straight toward City Hall.

And around the corner we found the symphony hall.

We got there a little early so we walked around and found a live jazz group performing in the lobby. It was pretty classy!

Our seats were on the very top of the building, but it also had a balcony that had a great view.

The acoustics were great and the concert consisted of American music (Copland, Gershwin, etc) which was equally cool. There were two encores before intermission and before the concert ended--both Sousa pieces.

Santa Cruz

So we finally made it to the Boardwalk at Santa Cruz and it was a very nice, sunny day. We drove down with some friends from church and had a great time.

We got ourselves some all-day wristbands and went on all the crazy rides. They were all a lot of fun (despite some of the rides making us more dizzy than others).

There were a lot of people at the beach--it kind of made me feel like I was in Southern California again.

We even decided to try our luck and put our feet in the water. But its still just as cold here as it is in San Francisco. I guess it answered the question why no one was really swimming in the water.

Our friends got an extra turkey leg with their order so they gave the extra one to us. I've never tried it before but it was pretty good. I still think this is way too much meat and I feel kind of ridiculous eating one like a barbarian--but it was pretty good.

Then we went on this ride that was like Splash Mountain at Disneyland. It was a lot of fun (and the line for this ride goes really fast so we went on it twice).

We hit up some lazer tag fun and got all glow in the dark. Rachel beat my score by one shot (because she shot me twice while we were leaving the game). Sneaky.

Then we hit the arcades for a little anime fighting games and race car driving. Rachel did really well and kept advancing her player in the fighting game. I guess doing one kick over and over will eventually win every time.

4th of July Weekend

4th of July has come and Rachel was in charge of the pancake breakfast for our ward. We decided to make some crafts to liven up the place and enlisted some of our friends to help decorate the tables.

The pancake breakfast was a success and everyone really enjoyed it. Rachel was pretty busy running around and I was busy flipping pancakes so the only pictures we got was from before the party.

But we mostly wanted you all to see how awesome of a job Rachel did in the decorations and the breakfast went very smoothly (even with the usual setbacks a get-together brings).

We basically slept the entire afternoon after the breakfast but woke up in time to eat some BBQ with friends and watch some fireworks.

The next day we both had the day off and decided it would be a good time to be lazy and do a bit of cleaning around the apartment. For dinner we decided to go to Half Moon Bay.

Rachel got clam chowder (they ran out of bread bowls so we got a regular bowl with lots of sourdough bread on the side) and I got the fish and chips. They were both delicious.

After dinner we went for a little walk on the pier. It was a typical cloudy day but it was still nice. (A self-proclaimed photographer took this picture for us and spent a couple seconds trying to find the right angle--what do you think?)

On our way home we decided to take the scenic route through Pacifica and stopped along the way to take some pictures.

Our main destination for the weekend was to attend an open house for Jimmy and Briana's wedding at Napa. So we stopped by Target on our way home and debated about which card we should get. Which one do you think we got?

On our way up to Napa it was just too tempting not to stop by the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield. So we took a quick tour before lunch at Briana's.

Fist bump with Abraham Lincoln. The tour was great and we loaded up with some great Jelly Bellys.

The open house was very nice and the food was great. And Briana was even nice enough to put on her wedding dress for the picture!

Our next stop was Santa Rosa. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Santa Rosa do not worry--we will give you all the details. It is the 5th most desirable mid-size city downtown in California.

And it has a giant fish when you enter downtown...

And it has a bunch of Charlie Brown characters scattered around town. I guess the creator of Charlie Brown (Charles Schultz) had a studio in this area and lived here since the 60s.

Charlie Brown and Snoopy had the coolest statue of themselves.

We decided to try our luck at some miniature golf. It had been some time since we had gone so it was a good time to try out #5 best mid-size mini golf...maybe not #5 all time but pretty good.

I hit one hole in one and Rachel got two holes in one. We didn't get a video of Rachel's holes in one, but we got one where she got a nice shot.

After the mini golf we decided to have some fun at the arcade and try out the race car games, shooting games, Japanese anime fighting games, and of course--air hockey.

We then went back to #5 best downtown (Santa Rosa) and had some good food at Chevy's. Since we heard they all got closed down in San Diego (where we are moving to) we decided to have Rachel try it out for the first time up here while we still had the chance. She likes it a lot--especially all the free chips that kept coming. And some good leftovers for the next day.

Went to church in Santa Rosa and actually went to the home ward of someone we went to school with at BYU, Jimmy Bliss. His dad was the Bishop and Rachel recognized him and said he looked a lot like Jimmy--and it was his dad.

After church we took a detour on our way home to Point Reyes. We went to the main visitor's center to find a place to visit and decided to go to the light house. We saw this boat in a picture at the visitor's center and Rachel saw it from the road so we stopped and took a picture.

And also had plenty of Jelly Belly's to snack on.

We were pretty excited about going to the lighthouse. But what would we find?

A gray whale! You can kind of see it coming out of the water squirting water.

Then we made it to the steps leading down to the lighthouse. There was a sign that warned us that the steps were the equivalent of climbing a 30 story building. But we were excited to go down.

And we got to see the other gray whale up close at the lighthouse! You can see its tail coming out of the water.

This is about 2/3 of the stairs coming down to the lighthouse.

And Rachel was very excited to see a whale vertebrae and pointed out all the basic parts. (Rachel studies spines for a living for those of you who don't know.)

And we also saw a deer family on our way to and from the lighthouse. It was a wonderful 4th of July weekend.