Monday, March 17, 2008

California


Wow! What a fantastic trip that was full of great memories! We flew out of Grand Rapids to Cincinatti and then Cincinatti(where we were the LAST people to board the plane!) to San Francisco. In San Francisco, we met up with another Marriage Encounter presenting team couple and our good friends, Al and Pat. Together we shared a taxi ride to our hotel (which I booked and was less than a 3 star, putting it mildly). After "dinner" at a 50s diner called Mel's we crashed for the night. The next morning we were off to explore the city. This was our only opportunity to sight see and we squeezed in all sorts of things like walking the Crooked Street, seeing Alcatraz, renting tandem bikes and biking the Golden Gate bridge, "coasting" down the hill after the bridge going probably 45-50miles/hour - I thought I was going to die and after we stopped in the beautiful town of Sausilito for lunch I found out Pat was thinking the same thoughts as me! After a delicious lunch, shopping and ice cream in Sausilito we took the ferry back to the city. As we were waiting I dropped my sunglasses into the bay, never to be seen from again. (This would be why Kevin doesn't let me pay more than $1 for my sunglasses. I have a tendancy to lose them.)

Once we landed back in the city, Pat and I went shopping while the boys returned the bikes. Our shopping lead us to Pier 39 which is a two story pier FULL of great stores. Here's where we hooked back up with our men and watched the sea lions sleeping and barking away. Oh, and we witnessed a seagull swoop down and steal the ice cream cup right out of a woman's hands and dive (with the cup) down to the water. There she stood just holding her spoon in totally disbelief of what just happened. It was pretty hilarious!! From here we decided we wanted to eat dinner in Little Italy and began the climb up the enormous hill to get there. Al figured that by the time we returned to our hotel, we had walked about 10 miles and biked about 15!! Needless to say, Kevin and I were dead beat and Al and Pat were going strong! We have no idea how they do it!

After dinner, we took our much awaited trolley ride back down to the wharf. It was a blast! We were hanging off the sides just like in the movies!! Dessert consisted of two huge chocolate covered apples after which we began the climb back to our hotel. What a day!!

Friday morning, Kevin began vomitting (which he hasn't done in the 12 years I've known him) however, he got himself together enough to get back in the taxi so we could head to the airport and pick up our third presenting team, Mark and Karen, and our rental van. Kevin laid low the rest of the day once we checked in early to our hotel in Modesto and I tagged along with Mark & Karen and Al & Pat. It was weird to be the only "single" having lunch and running errands. That afternoon we met up with our good friends Heidi and Lloyd Wicker who just moved to Ripon where Lloyd is the pastor at Almond Valley CRC. What fun! Once they left, it was time to focus on the Marriage Encounter weekend. The weekend was an enormous success! We met and fell in love with 13 couples who were forever changed by the weekend, determined to live in the abundant joy Jesus offers us in our marriages! Sunday night we quick took a couple picks of the palm trees and ourselves, snagged dinner at a wonderful pizza buffet joint down the road and drove back to San Francisco where we settled into a beautiful hotel to catch a few Zzzs before we all flew back home Monday morning.

I have no other words about this trip except God is SOOO GOOD!!
Hope you enjoy our pics!

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