San Francisco visit

We had a terrific family vacation in San Francisco last week.  We really liked flying down on December 25; traffic is light, lines are short, everyone seems to be in a good mood.  We rejoice in our children being old enough to tote bags, and they rejoice in the toting.

In the Seattle airport, Jordan had the following conversation with a lady in the bag check line, regarding a new dinosaur shirt:

Lady:  "What a cool shirt!  Did you get that for Christmas?"
Jordan:  "Yes; even though we're Jewish, we were at someone's house who celebrates Christmas and I got this shirt."
Lady, looking astonished and pleased: "That is the best answer I ever heard!"

Granty Jes spent much of the week with us and was in quite good shape considering that she had knee replacement surgery less than three weeks ago, and Aunt Deena spent pretty much all her non-work hours with us too.  We hit the California Academy of Sciences, the newly restored salt marsh that was once Crissy Field, and the deYoung Museum observation tower.  Here's a picture from there: Dad's house is in the middle, near that biggish mustard-yellow building, which is my former elementary school.

The other side of the tower faces the Academy, which is the building with the lumpy green roof.

Here's a shot of the whole family at the monument to Cervantes near the museums:

And here we are at the bench dedicated to Mom, which is in the renewed Rhododendron Dell around the corner.  As you can see it was pretty sunny a lot of the time.

Not all the time... When we went to Crissy Field, it threatened to rain on us.

So we spent a fair amount of our time indoors.  Aaron wowed us all with his new Saxaflute, a fabulous buildable instrument contraption that was an inspired gift from Aunt Kari.  

It was a great trip! We'd like to make it a tradition.