The San Francisco Treat

For our anniversary, David took me to see Wicked...in San Fransisco! I took pictures of every inch of the trip just for this moment. You need to check it all out and be super excited that I'm writing a blog about it. That's right. This makes blog number 2. I'm no longer a one blog wonder.
Anyway, to get there, we flew from Nashville to Detroit, then from there to San Fransisco. Here's a few pictures from the plane. Don't judge. I told you I took pictures of EVERYTHING.






Here we were coming in to Detroit. There was a lot of snow. That meant I needed to take a picture.











And here we were going over the Sierras...not to Detroit...to San Fransisco. I thought it was pretty cool.






OK, so we got to San Fransisco and made it to our hotel. I'm pretty sure they support FHU, because this is what greeted us as we walked in the door:
Literally...when we walked in the door, we pretty much ran into him. He's right. there.
Anyway, we made it up to our room and gave each other our notes from Andrew. He had written us each a note and gave it to the other one with the explicit instructions not to give it to the other person until we got settled. I was all ready for this sweet little note about how much he loves me and how he'll miss me. Here's what we got:
Just in case you can't read it (he's not the best with spacing between words), mine says, "Dear Mommy, I miss y. I hope you don't lose your ipod. From Andrew." David's just says, "Dear Daddy, I hope you don't lose your ipod. From Andrew." Well.....at least he misses me....or the letter Y.
So, on to check out the room and the view from our window. Here's the awesome view:
Across the street was Rainbow Pizza....uh huh...and a cinema. Since the insanely bright lights were on, it's hard to tell what the marque says. I'll help you out: XXX Hotest Porn...something something. I didn't memorize it. Please notice that I said "Hotest" instead of "Hottest." Bless them. Why should they know how to spell? They make enough money without it.
Since I was a little nervous now, I decided it was time to open the bedside table drawer and take a little comfort with the ol' Gideon Bible.


Wait...there's no Bible. Trust me when I say they do not know the Lord here.
There were some complimentary ear plugs, though. Thank goodness, because the noise got so loud at night with all the street noises and the homeless people having parties on the street right below us, that it was almost impossible to sleep without them.




Right outside the hotel was this awesome fountain. Guess what? I have a picture:





We went past it later at night. Turns out this is where a lot of the homeless people take baths.







The rest of the trip was fun, though. We went to China Town, Fisherman's Wharf, the sea lions (which of course, right before we got there, we saw an article that said that most of them had migrated somewhere else) Alcatraz and of course, to see Wicked. Here's just a couple random pictures from there:


Wicked was amazing. The set was beautiful and it was in this old, amazing theatre. Too bad they wouldn't let me take pictures of any of it. :(

Now for my favorite picture of all. There were SO MANY homeless people EVERYWHERE. Most of them were super nice. The others may have been...they were just asleep. I gave one some food. I felt like I did a good deed, even though he probably just sold it for beer. Most of them were trying to earn a little money by doing whatever they could to entertain people...a few were playing instruments, some were trying to be robots, etc. This one was my favorite:

This man didn't have anything out to collect money...I think he was just trying to amuse himself. He had taken a chunk of a tree, and held it in front of himself...then whenever anybody walked by, he moved it and said "HEY" in this super deep, gravelly voice. He looks pretty dumb from the side, but from the front, he makes a pretty convincing shrub. He scared the crap out of me when I walked by him. Then I had to walk down the other side to get this picture. You can see a couple people turning around. He scared them too. Amazing.

That was about it for our trip. It was great....definitely not Tennessee, though!

Thankful Thursday

I was reading my friend Stephanie's blog, and saw a post titled "Thankful Thursday." She tries to sit down every Thursday and think of 10 things that she is thankful for so far that week. I thought that was an amazing idea, and something I could stand to do. However, I didn't have a blog, so I posted my first one as a note on Facebook. I really don't want to make a Facebook note every week, so I decided to break down and start a blog. My goal is to keep up with the Thankful Thursdays, and to actually add other things every now and then like real bloggers do. :) So here I go....
Today's Thankful Thursday actually comes on a Saturday. That's because I was ridiculously busy this past week with Lectureships, but more on that later.

Thankful Thursday (actually Saturday)

1. Lectureships--I'm so thankful for the opportunity to be surrounded with hundreds of amazing Christians and getting to listen to them talk about their work in other countries.
   
2. The weekend--Whew! Thank you for weekends to recover from insane weeks! There is a downside to being with all these amazing people at Lectureships...it's crazy busy at work! I was in charge of the Information Center, where we sold probably 587,672 Lectureship books and answered 7,982,846,012 questions. Talk about learning patience--on top of that, I was shown the same trick from a man with Alzheimer's no less than 15 times, and escorted a woman with a walker to her car just in time for her husband to drive off without her. Fun times.
   
3. My coat--Yeah...sounds like I'm stretching here, but I sure was glad to have it this week. It's a beautiful long black coat that David got me for Christmas. The Information Center was located right inside the doors to Loyd Auditorium, which meant that the doors were opened and closed no less than 8 gazillion times. And what was the temperature this week? What do you think? It was LECTURESHIP WEEK! Of course it was FREEZING! There wasn't as much sleet and snow as there was last week, but it was colder. It was windy and the wind chill was usually in the teens. Which meant that I stayed huddled in my coat all day long every day. So thank you for the warmth of my coat, or I wouldn't have survived the arctic temperatures at work.
4. Sweet kids--Thursday night at karate, there was a black belt ceremony for Brandon and Wesley King. Wesley is about Andrew's age and Brandon is a year or two older. The King kids are SO precious. I got to coach Wesley in soccer one year. He wanted me to call him "Spongebob" the whole time, so that's what I still call him. They also have a younger brother, Jonathan. They are the cutest things....really, you just have to see them. I'm going to be a creeper and steal a picture from their mom's facebook to put on here. Didn't I tell you? Just as cute as can be...even though Wesley/Spongebob looks terrified here. It's one of THOSE families...you know...the ones that know and are loved by EVERYONE in town. Anyway, I had never been to a black belt ceremony, and if I tried to describe it, it would sound really dumb, so I won't. Just trust me when I say that it was sweet. And look how little they are! For kids that young to be black belts just really impresses me. I was so proud of them!
   
5. Visiting best friends--One of my favorite people in the world, Brenda, was here this week. She's in the middle of a 10-month teaching contract in China. School is out there for Chinese New Year, so she got to come home for a bit. I miss her. Whenever I'm with her, my face always hurts from laughing. Even if we're whining and complaining about something, we start laughing about it. Here we are in an old picture trying to look sad. Also in the picture is another good friend, G. Fine, her real name is Ginny. Look what a great sad face she makes. Brenda and I are NOT good at it.
6. Music/bonding time--I am not a morning person. At all. Neither are my kids. So school mornings here aren't usually pretty. We all move around like slugs, and are usually so irritated that if we talk to each other at all, we're yelling. That all changes when we get in the car. Oh, how we love our Glee soundtrack. The kids know the words to all the songs, and we spend the ride to school with it cranked up and all of us singing at the top of our lungs. It wakes us up and I don't know about them, but it helps ME start the day off in a good mood. Hopefully, it helps them too.
7. My country--We spend so much time complaining how *insert President here* has screwed up the nation, we don't remember how blessed we still are. We have so much. We can worship freely without worry that someone will kill us for our beliefs. I learned this week just how difficult and dangerous it is in so many other countries.
   
8. New opportunities--David works so much that it's started feeling weird on those rare times that he's home. It's almost like having a guest. Tonight at supper, we realized we couldn't remember the last time we got to use four plates. We're getting used to doing everything without him, and that makes me a little sad. Well, yesterday, he was offered a job at another company. He would still work a lot, but not AS MUCH and most importantly, he would get to go to church with us. However, he would be going back to doing something that he HATES, and he would probably be miserable. So now he has to decide what he'd rather do. Please pray for him to make the right decision.
   
9. Countdowns--FOUR DAYS! In four days, David and I leave for San Francisco! I'm so excited (and scared of the plane ride), I can't stand it! I don't know which of us needs this little mini vacation more!
10. Life itself--I may hate mornings, but that doesn't make me any less thankful to be alive when I wake up.