The Amazing Date

Have you seen the show the Amazing Race? Well, our church does a smaller version of that for married couples every year called The Amazing Date. This year was the San Francisco edition. So we got up to the city Friday Evening, had dinner, then started the race at 7:30 pm. Then we spent the night at a hotel at the wharf and resumed the race in the morning. We were running all over the place- the wharf, the whole Pier area, North Beach, Lombard street, China town, Union Square, then back to the wharf again. It was super fun, but super exhausting doing the race while being 7 months pregnant!



Before the race started we had dinner at Joe's Crab shack on the Warf. it was a really fun place! They put bibs on you and the middle of the table has a bucket sunk down in it to put all your shells and junk and your napkins are a roll of paper towels on the table. It's messy, but so yummy! Oh, and the servers periodically drop whatever they are doing and do a coordinated dance number in front of all the guests! Our server told us that they actually do that to buy the kitchen some time. Very clever.





The race begins. One of first tasks was to have our picture taken in front of sea lions... check.














Then we had to hold a live oyster...check.












take a picture by a surf board...check.















find the heart crab statue and take a picture by that...check.













identify flavors of mystery jelly beans...check. Thankfully Justin didn't get the vomit or booger flavored ones! He did get black pepper, which ironically was white, and baby wipe.













The next day was a beautiful day in SF as you can see here. Time to start the second leg of the race.













Justin's game face.














Yes, this is us standing by fertility statues, our first task of the day. Notice how I'm trying not to stand too close :)











Another task that Justin had to do was chop up a squid a specific way. Just in case you want to try this at home, and who wouldn't, I would reccomend gloves. He did great, but his hands reeked all day!













One of the challeges of the race to decide how you will get places. Walking sometimes isn't the best option (to the top of Lombard street, for example). So we also took cable cars, street cars, and buses. I didn't even know what the difference was between all of those until this race much less know how to navigate the city using them. Justin did an excellent job of navigating and not getting us lost!






A beautiful church in the North Beach area.















Another task we had to complete was put on crazy outfits and have our picture taken by strangers in front of three of the four heart sculptures at Union Square. Normally, this would be a little embarssaing, but in SF no one even bats an eye at you because you are certainly not the weirdest thing people have seen!

Easter

Before Easter our dear friend Jamie came over to decorate Easter cookies with the boys and we had a lot of fun (and sugar)!


























































On Good Friday my mom came over and dyed eggs with the boys.










































Here's Kiernan bright and early Easter morning.

























Kiernan is still little enough that I can pretty much dress him however I want so he's got his sweet Easter outfit on. Tobias on the other hand insisted on jeans and a T-shirt and refused to be in any pictures in the morning.










my paparazzi shot.















Kiernan at the Easter egg hunt at our church.












Tobias, easter eggs in hand, finally agreed to take a picture.





























In the afternoon we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house where there were Easter baskets waiting for them!











































Here's the boys playing with their new bubble toys.













My parents' next door neighbors, the Levesques set up another Easter egg hunt for the boys, but this time the eggs were filled with money!