3 posts in 1 day...

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This one's about San Francisco!!!

One of the 1st things we saw when we got off the plane was this horse in the airport. It looks like it's made of driftwood, but it's actually metal. Pretty cool.

The view from our hotel room--foggy, yes. But you can see the ocean!

The 1st night we attended a reception where our school received a certificate of accreditation for our Certified Family Life Education program. Yay us!
Kristen, Janice, Ron, Me, Alisa, Caryl, Kristalyn, and Roger (a.k.a. Santa Claus)

After doing some volunteering Thursday morning and taking a nap, we got on a couple of tour buses and made our way to San Francisco. This awesome building was there waiting to welcome us! :)

Santa taking a picture of us...he really was a blast to have with us. Thanks for coming, Roger!!

The crew:
Lindsay, Hillary, Me, Janice, Santa
Carson, Kristen, Caryl, Ron

Our evening pretty much took place at Pier 39

Fun sour dough creations

Digging in and feasting on our sour dough

You should have seen all the boats!

Ron sharing our precious sour dough with the seagulls!!
(More of this story to come below)

Janice finally found her boyfriend in San Francisco!

Alcatraz
Someday D and I will go to San Fran and take a tour. It's one of our dreams.

The Golden Gate Bridge

I promise there is a reason a took a picture of this seagull. Here's the rest of the "feeding sour dough to the seagulls" story...
Ron had just given me a chunk of some yummy chocolate sour dough bread with chocolate chips and raisins. I was holding it in my hand and trying to take a picture at the same time, so the bread was up by my head. All of a sudden, my bread was gone! This ginormous seagull (it really was a huge seagull! This picture doesn't do it justice) flew in right over my head and snatched it right out of my hand, then swallowed the entire thing whole! So, if you look at it's neck, you can see the bulge, which is actually my chunk of chocolate sour dough bread. Janice said the look on my face was priceless. Man! I wish we had gotten it on video!
Moral of the story: Don't hold a chunk of scrumptious bread up by your head and expect to hang onto it while you're by the ocean. A seagull will come and steal it!

Tons of sea lions at Pier 39

These random toilets on the street cracked me up. I had to get a picture!

Street performers singing "Red Wine." Love that song!

We ate dinner at Joe's Crab Shack, although we really ended up there because our whole group of girls had to use the restroom. Seriously! You cannot easily find a public restroom in San Francisco! We really had to search! But it ended up being a good find because we had great food (most of us anyway) and some fun dancing with the waitresses.
(*Note: I do realize that I just posted a picture of public toilets out on the street, but none of us would have actually used them...they were pretty gross on the inside!)

Friday was filled with Conferencing at the NCFR for most of our group. I spent the day (and most of the trip, actually) sleeping in the hotel room because I got sick the day after we got there, and was miserable!! I still tried to enjoy myself as much as I could, and I had great people with me who took wonderful care of me while I was away from my hubby. Then Saturday evening our group went back to San Francisco in our mini-bus we rented. We did some driving around the Golden Gate Park, and saw some amazing houses and beautiful streets. We drove down Lombard street in our 12 passenger van, and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge a couple of times. It really was a blast! (Despite being sick and feeling miserable.)

Unfortunately you can't tell from the picture how steep this road really was.
This is an amazing view of San Fran from Twin Peaks. There is a street close by named "Deming." I seriously wanted to stop and get a picture....maybe next time.

Janice & I weren't feeling too great after our delicious dinner, probably from eating too much, but that didn't stop us from going to Ghirardelli Square where we got some scrumptious chocolate!

The next morning, Sunday, we flew back to SLC. Despite not getting out of the trip what I expected or hoped for, I still had a good time. Out of our 4-day conference, I was only able to attend one 45 minute session, and even had to leave early because I was coughing so much! I was sick enough the first couple of days we thought I might have swine flu because I had a lot of the symptoms, but never got a fever. Being sick pretty much forced me to change my plans, but that's why we try to be flexible! Luckily Ron was the only other person who was sick, but he wasn't nearly as bad as I was. Thank goodness!

Thanks, Ron, for allowing us the opportunity to attend a conference and get the experience! Thanks to everyone who came and made the trip a blast! It's so great to be back home with my sweetheart though!