Alcatraz

My lovely cousin and her beautiful family were in San Francisco for one day, and one day only on a long layover and invited us to join them on their tour of Alcatraz in the city. 

Jen and Chris lived in Virginia when we moved to the east coast and graciously let us stay with them, their two boys and three month old baby girl, until we found our apartment. We spent many weekends together after that. Lane and Chris really bonded and I befriended my cousin, who I had never really known well until we moved. It was just like old times being back together. Except that their three month old is now ten years old. Has it really been that long?!

These girls immediately hit it off, becoming inseparable for the entire day. 

Here's our crew on the ferry to Alcatraz. Now we can check "take the ferry" off our summer fun list. 

 Chance and Jackson. I went to Jackson's kindergarten graduation and now he's in high school. What?!?   

http://laneandelena.blogspot.com/2007/06/all-done-with-kindergarten.html?m=0

We were so glad that Lane was able to take a day off from work to join us. Easton enjoyed being goofy for daddy. 

Here are the big kids

The kids found the audio tour fascinating, especially Easton who felt pretty important with his own headset. 

We read from a couple Alcatraz books ahead of time and Gabriela taught us about one of the 14 escape attempts. Easton later told Uncle Matthew that he escaped from Alcatraz that day. 

 Easton and I took a shuttle ride up to the top of the prison so I wouldn't have a steep uphill walk, being gigantically pregnant. We kept ourselves busy on the way with a few pics

A former Alcatraz prisoner was signing copies of a book he'd written in the gift shop that day. Gabriela got to ask him some questions about what he remembered most and was thrilled to meet a real published author. She has been very clear with us lately that she is determined to become a published author herself. Now we'll just wait five years or so to read the actual book. 

Gabriela was crushed when it was time to say goodbye. She wanted to spend the next week with Michele. We had a little picnic, the kids ran and climbed trees before we headed home in awful friday commute traffic. But it was totally worth it for fun family adventures!

We ended the day with a viewing of March of the Penguins, feeling lucky that we had an entire extra day home with Lane.