The weekend

It's been quite some time since I blogged. We've had a lot going on. Last weekend we celebrated dads birthday, then we went to California, then Friday night the kids and I went to Sparta to spend the night with granny, Saturday Zac had his Spartan sprint race and afterwards met me in Manchester to celebrate his moms birthday and then I had praise team and a solo at our parents church. Oh... And Hank vomited all night Saturday night. Wow, it's been a bit crazy. Last night I went to Clarksville to celebrate my friend Lizs birthday. It was so nice to go out with girls!

I missed awards day at school. I had no idea it we awards day. They said Cooper did so good though. Thankfully Catherine always has my back when I'm not there.

Bonfire and hayrides at granny's. It was fun but I was just too busy with all the kids. I barely even got to speak to my family.

Hank saw this statue on the table next to the basement and would not go anywhere near that side of the house. He even told me he was sleeping in granny's bed because it's on the other side of the house.  I tried to take his picture with it but that wasn't going to happen. Cooper liked the Indian though. 

Cooper made a good friend. He stayed by puff all night. 

Mama went and got us Hardee's for breakfast. I love seeing my kids eat at this table. I love seeing them at granny's house. 

Here's what happened to the Indian. He had to be covered until we left. 

Meanwhile....

5 miles and 24 obstacles later...

San Francisco day 1&2

We left home Sunday morning at 8:30 for our flight. We chose to fly into Oakland instead of San Francisco because that flight had no stops. The flight was about 4 1/2 hours ( I had a hard time sitting still) and when we landed, we gained 2 hours.  So we took a cab to the hotel, checked in and headed right to the bike store. We rented our bikes and headed out on the busy streets of down town San Francisco. We got honked at several times by irritated drivers... To which we just laughed. I think the map said it was 8 or 9 miles to Sausalito. I thought that would be nothing since I'm used to averaging 12 to 13 miles every Monday in spin class. Ha!! Biking on a regular road and bike and those hills.... Wow, so different from spin. We biked around fishermans warf, the bay, and over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was so much fun. I had been so excited to do this and it lived up to what I wanted! The bridge was so incredibly windy. A lot of people stopped when they crossed the bridge but Zac and I went in to Sausalito and we had a little more road to ourselves at that point. We hit some murdurous hills though and discovered why everyone else was dropping off back there at the bridge. I'm still convinced I had a bad chain because my bike wouldn't allow me to stand up on it to peddle up the hills. We found a really good burger place to eat in sausalitos. We ate dinner and then got in line to ride the ferry back to the pier. At this point it was getting dark and starting to sprinkle a little and the wind was pretty cold. We got on the ferry and rode about 40 minutes back to the pier. We got our bikes off the ferry and where most people had rented their bikes at the pier, we had rented ours down town close to our hotel. It was now dark and we were tired because it was 9:30 at night our time but 7:30 in California. There was one other couple behind us going to the same bike rental place. Somehow in the dark though the road we were on curved or split and we took a wrong way. We kept riding and thought we would stop to look at the map, but I could not believe how bad the roads got. I would expect to be afraid at midnight out on a bike but not at 8pm. We could not even stop to look at a map because there were so many homeless/other people out standing at every corner. I've never seen this many out on the streets like this. Thankfully, the couple behind us came up and led the way out of this bad part of town. We turned in our bikes at 8:00 (10pm) our time at home, and then we had a few blocks to walk to get back to the hotel. We got back and crashed!! I use a gel seat during spin class, and being on a bike with no gel seat left by butt bone so bruised. I didn't even think about bringing it with me. This morning we got up early and walked to get some breakfast. We walked through china town on the way to the pier to catch our ferry. We boarded our ferry and it was a chilly ride over to Alcatraz island. It was sunny though so it got hot quick. We took the audio tour with headphones through the prison. I loved it. This was fascinating to me. I have a lot of pictures but not really a whole lot of commentary on this one. It was very interesting though. After this Zac went to conferences and I discovered that the roof top pool I had been so looking forward to was closed!!! I called the front desk and they said there was no where else to sit in the sun and read. So I took this into my own hands and asked the construction workers working on the pool area if I could just sit over on the concrete in the sun away from where they were working. The guy asked his manager and they let me in!!  So I laid out for a few hours and read a book and looked over my music for Sunday. When we were boarding the ferry earlier, I got a text from Todd asking if I would do praise team and a solo Sunday. I have sung this song before at Harpeth heights and already know it so I said yes. Now I'm just relaxing in the hotel room. 

Plane ride snack left over from dads party. 

Flying over the mountains into California. 

Riding past the beach.

Saw a guy on a unicycle 

And now on to Alcatraz. 

The first room was where they showered the prisoners and gave them their clothes.

Solitary confinement. The prisoner narrating said he would pull a button off his shirt, flip it in the air and then crawl around searching for it, and do it again. It was pitch dark with no lights in solitary confinement. 

This was the recreation yard