Weekend of Woods, Water, and Will

This last weekend Will came to visit us for a test he had to take. We had a fun weekend exploring some new sites with him.

On Saturday we traveled north of S.F. to a national monument called Muir Woods. This was awesome! It's just north of the Golden Gate, and is one of the few remaining redwood forests. The trees were so tall, and so beautiful. We took a long hike through the woods, and I must admit, it felt good to be back in something akin to mountains.

Along the way, we discovered that at certain parts there were millions and millions of ladybugs all gathered for mating season. It was amazing to see so many ladybugs!

Will, of course, couldn't come to California without visiting the ocean. After a day of hiking we went to the beach, and Will talked Jon into doing some wave swimming in the freeeeeeeezing water. Not only was it super cold, but we found out too that we were at a frequent shark attack beach . . . nice, huh. But as Jon and Will's wise scout leader used to say: the amount of brainpower is inversely proportional to the number of boys (aka 2 boys=1/2 brain), and these two boys were not going to be deterred by a little thing like cold or threat of sharks! They jumped in enthusiastically, and were shivering all the way home (I'm pretty sure because of the cold -- not fear of sharks :)

All in all, it was great to have Will around for a few days, and we had a great time!

To Stanford and Beyond

Sorry, all, it's been awhile, hasn't it? Well, for fear that my older brother will call complaining about not having anything new to look at, I decided today that I'd better get around to posting something. We've actually been having a good time starting to explore the sights around Stanford, and I've been meaning to post some pictures of our explorations.

Near Stanford, there's a nature preserve, and we saw on the map that it had a Felt Lake in it. We got all excited to check it out. When we actually saw the lake (a.k.a. practically dried up pond), we did our best to maintain our enthusiasm.

Our ward hosted an activity one Saturday where we took a ferry from San Francisco across the bay to Alameda. It was a fun chance to move a little further out and see more of the Bay Area.

Probably our most exciting outing thus far was last week. It was "Fleet Week" in San Francisco, which means that a whole bunch of the naval fleet comes into the bay, and they host a bunch of events, including an air show. Lots of stunt planes, including the famous Blue Angels, performed, so we went up with some new friends, had a picnic, and enjoyed the show. It was pretty cool to sit right by the Golden Gate and watch the planes come in over - and under - the bridge! This one is likely to become an annual event for us!