Mark's brother, Rick, got married in August so we all joined him and Janice in California to see them get married in the Oakland Temple. We made the decision to fly and rent a car - so glad we did. And that way we were able to make it a mini vacation instead of spending days driving.
San Francisco
We spent the first day around downtown San Francisco. First, we sat in traffic for about an hour and a half. There was a baseball game just getting out right when we got there, perfect! After that we ate dinner at In-N-Out, walked around the Piers, saw some cool submarines, went in an antique arcade, then made our way down to Fisherman's Wharf. It's a good thing we packed winter coats for everyone we needed them! I remembered as a kid it was always freezing in SF and we always had to buy sweatshirts, but we were warm in that freezing ocean wind.
The Zoo
The next day we went to the San Francisco Zoo. This was way fun, and little warmer too! The SF Zoo has way more animals than the Hogle zoo and lots of space for them to roam. Of course Bailey made all the animal noises she knew and we even got to hear the lions roar! They had a special Tarantula exhibit while we were there, YUCK! I still get goosebumps thinking about those, some were HUGE!
Wedding Part 1
That night we headed over to the church to help set up for the reception. We got the ceiling put up and since that was the part Rick and Janice worried about the most I thought the worst was over. Nope. We spent the next two days setting up for the reception/ring ceremony/dinner, it was a ton of work, we did everything you see in the photos. But it was Janice's dream come true - she had been designing and planning this since she was 12 so it was all worth it. It's a good thing we love her! Jake and his family also baptised Isaac and blessed Sadie during this time.
Before
After
The wedding day was beautiful, we spent the morning in the pool, later in the morning finishing the church, then the ceremony. There were a few bumps along the way including Jake's car breaking down. We had to stall the temple for 30 minutes, but everyone made it safe and it was a beautiful ceremony. Then we headed to the church and had a ring ceremony for all of Janice's friends and family, a delicious dinner, a program, and DANCING! Dancing made me forget how tired I was from setting up and how bad my feet hurt. I even danced while cleaning up! Clean up took until about 1:00am, but we lucked out and only stayed till 11:00pm to take Bailey home to sleep. Bailey was such a trooper through all the craziness. She was able to fall asleep in her car seat wherever - even through the dancing!
The next day we woke up late, really late, threw everything in our suitcases and sped off to the airport to catch our plane. We've never been out of a hotel faster than that and we got to the airport 10 minutes before our plane LEFT. We got through security super fast since we had a baby, they even passed me with 2 water bottles! Then we RAN about 1/4 mile to the gate I was pushing Bailey in the stroller and was ahead of Mark and Marcie. People were yelling "You're going to make it!" Ha ha! Then I heard a hostess yelling "Thompson?!?" down the hall of gates and I said, "THAT'S ME!" They let me on without a boarding pass... and then let Mark and Marcie on. Whew, we made it. We got to the SLC airport, but since we were so late our checked bags did not - and that's where the keys to our car were. They came on a later flight! Ha!
A week later we did it all again for a reception in Utah. All the girls made 125 cupcakes, we frosted, made sandwiches, decorated, and I made my very first wedding cake! I think it turned out beautiful! I learned that you can cover all your mistakes with ribbon and flowers :)
All in all it was a busy, tiring, but super fun trip! We loved spending the time with Mark's family!
