Are you going...

To San Francisco

I'm currently waiting at the airport in San Francisco to return home on a

 "delayed" flight (delayed by 8 hours!). So while Lea and I wait to pull an all-nighter to get home, I figured I'd share our trip with you! Justin and I decided we would treat Lea to a special trip while she stays with us, and we settled on San Francisco for January 1-5th (just Lea and me! And this is the longest I've ever been away from my kids! I've done pretty well with being away until I realized I couldn't hug them goodnight tonight.... But the delayed flight won't last forever, and justin has been doing great with the kids).

 One of the big perks about going to San Francisco was that we were able to stay with my childhood friend, Drew, and his wife Whitney. It is so very nice to have a friendly face to visit on a trip, and Drew and Whitney were fabulous tour guides. So, I'll walk you through some of the trip's highlights:

"Full House" is a bit before Lea's time, but she took our word for it that we were in a pretty famous spot.

It was very special for me to get to attend a service at Holy Virgin Cathedral - Joy of All Who Sorrow. This is a Russian Orthodox Church where St. John Maximovich served, who my church back in Atlanta is named for. The service was all in Russian, but it still felt very familiar. The icons were breath-taking covering floor to ceiling. This was the most monumental part of the trip for me, and I felt so blessed to be there.

This tree was pretty great too. Muir Woods redwood forest was beautiful.  

It was nice to go outside the city to see some beautiful California landscape. 

Like my sweet hubby, I love me some trees!

We had fun in China Town, where it feels like entering another country just by turning down a different street. 

We visited the 'original fortune cookie factory' in a side ally in China Town and paid our 50 cents to take the above picture.  

The streets in San Francisco just baffle me. I'm so glad I don't have to park there!

Lea and I got to see the well-known pier 39 sea lions. They made me smile and feel genuinely happy. I loved hearing them bark and watching them climb all over each other. 

Drew was kind enough to wait in the tourist traffic to drive down Lombard Street. He was also kind enough to listen to Whitney and I jabber on and on about birth since we are both doulas. It was fun to see San Francisco from a more local perspective... And I was really excited to see San Francisco has a great city-wide compost program! They were doing a great job at reducing waste, which was cool; and maybe other cities will follow suit. Well, I could write a whole separate blog about all the yummy food we ate and cool shops we saw. And probably an additional blog about Justin's time with the kids while I was away, since it included dissecting a beaver and playing a game called "distracted Daddy" (in which the kids got candy whenever they caught Justin with his phone out). But for now I'll go plug in my phone to charge it back up and read my book while we wait for nighttime to roll around for our flight back home. Can't wait to hug my kiddos!