Summer Field Trip #1

Every year, Aidan's preschool, Hugs Hangout, takes the kids on three summer field trips. Here are some snaps from our first field trip this summer. This was before we went on vacation to Indiana and Ohio.

We took a chartered bus from Hugs Hangout to San Francisco, where we were going to catch a ferry ride over to Sausalito. Here's Aidan mugging for the camera before we got on the ferry.



We rode the ferry to Sausalito and then boarded our bus again to get up to the Marin Highlands, where we were going to have lunch and then walk over to the Point Bonita Lighthouse. Unfortunately, after walking all the way out to the lighthouse, we found out we couldn't cross the bridge to the lighthouse itself. The park service uses a lot of volunteers nowadays, and the volunteer for that day had called in sick, so the rangers closed the bridge. But I took a photo of the lighthouse from the other side.



Since we had been planning to spend more time ath the lighthouse, we made an impromptu visit to The Marine Mammal Center. It was very kind of them to let us in for a self-guided tour on such short notice. Afterwards, we headed down to a beach and most of the kids spent time throwing rocks into a pond there.



Then it was back on the bus and back home.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Today was our day to travel back home. We just hung out at my uncle’s in the morning, relaxing and little by little packing up all of our things. We packed lighter this time than our last vacation two years ago. Last time, we had to mail some things home to ourselves because we had picked up so many new things. This time, we had plenty of room in our luggage.

Before we left, we took some pictures. Here's Aidan in the corn.



We had no problems getting to the airport and returning our rental car. We were hungry so we stopped outside the terminals and had some lunch. As we realized time was growing short for our flight we headed for the terminal. When we got to the entrance we were redirected to enter through another terminal, the one we had just been sitting near as we had our lunch. We dashed back across the food court area to the other terminal and went to the family line for security. Our time for boarding was getting closer and closer and they were moving really slowly. Luckily, the family in front of us let us go ahead of them. They said their flight wasn’t for another hour. If they hadn’t done that, we would have missed our flight.

As it was, we had to go back to the original terminal we tried to enter and then get to our flight. They were paging us as we got close to the gate. That’s how close we cut it.

Of course, at that point, there were no seats together. Kelley and Aidan were able to sit together, with Liam in front of the two of them and me by myself across the aisle from Liam. Liam was not happy with that situation, and a kind man moved so that Liam could sit with Kelley and Aidan. I had a window seat because the couple I sat next to didn’t want to move from their seats. This meant that I had to ask both of them to move when I had to get out of my seat and help Kelley with the boys, as I did in setting up the laptop so they could watch a movie. And Kelley and I kept passing things back and forth to each other over their heads, but they wouldn’t budge. They didn’t have to move, but I didn’t feel sorry inconveniencing them either.
Then we landed in Vegas. The flight from there was short and we were back at SFO. We quickly gathered our luggage, found a cab, and were home in no time. Overall, it was a much better experience than last time, when Aidan was younger and we were flying in and out of Oakland.

It was good to be home again. We had a great time on vacation, but there’s nothing like being home again when you’ve been away a while.