Images by John 'K'

How is it that 3 weeks can feel like a lifetime, and too short, all at the same time?

 

We have my eldest daughter and her family visiting us fro the UK for 3 weeks for Christmas – they’ve been here 5 days already, and in that time we’ve had my youngest daughter turn 16, and have spent some time in San Francisco. With all the preparation for my youngest’s birthday, and with our visiting family members recovering from jet-lag, we’d really not done too much from an activity perspective with them, but have spent time with them at home catching up on things. I’d last seen them 16 months ago, and the boys (my grandsons) have really grown up in that time.

 

Back in the UK, they lived fairly close to us, so we used to see a lot of them, and after 5 days it almost feels like nothing has changed and that the past 16 months have just been put to one side; however because the boys have changed so much it feels strange.

 

I’ve got some time off work over the next couple of weeks – unfortunately this is a busy time for us at work so couldn’t take all the time I would have liked, but will make the most of what I can get. Now we have the birthday stuff out of the way, we can concentrate on other stuff, like Christmas, and having them see some of the places we have here and why we wanted to move here, and at the same time enjoy our time together.

 

So with that in mind, yesterday afternoon we took a family trip out to San Francisco (as it’s only an hour away). The boys have a short list of ‘must do’ things they want to do while they are over here – one of them was to see ‘the wiggly road’ that is Lombard Street, and they also wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge, so we went and did the tourist thing. They’ve been on the Golden Gate, have been driven down Lombard Street, rode the carousel on Pier 39, saw the sea lions, and got a few souvenirs. Not a full day in San Francisco, and there’s more for them to do when they go back later in the week, but after all of that they were pretty much worn out (they’re still adjusting to the time zone difference).

 

It was a lovely day out – the weather was kind to us, and I’ve popped a few pictures up.