I’ve decided that I am going to try to stick to writing and posting new articles three times a week and then may add another post or two if/when something comes up. Like last week, I’m planning on my posts being about my life on Monday, book review/book related on Wednesday, and beauty related on Friday. Since I hadn’t written much about my life in quite a while, I’m going to work on catching you up on things over the next few weeks.

A few weeks before my surgery a very close family friend (who might as well be my uncle and who I’ll call uncle M) who happens to not only be a pilot, but has his own small plane asked if we wanted to fly up to San Francisco to visit family. I had been wanting to go flying again for several years, but I hadn’t been mobile enough. Of course I said, “YES!” immediately and began working on preparations.

After a few weeks of back and forth planning of trying to work around everyone’s various schedules it ended up working out that the best time would be the weekend immediately proceeding my surgery. While a commercial airplane takes approximately an hour and a quarter to go from Southern to Northern California, a small private plane takes double that. Since we wanted to maximize the amount of time we’d have to spend with family, we got up and left on the early side.

The last time I had been up to visit family in Northern California was over four years earlier since my limited mobility has severely restricted traveling. While I of course wish we could have spent more time up north, I very much appreciate the generosity of uncle M in giving us the gift of time with family. It was so great to get to spend the day with my aunt R and cousin S!

My aunt R had the entire afternoon including lovely picnic all planned out for us. She took us through the city over the Golden Gate Bridge through the windy roads of the Marin Headlands. While I had been on a tour of the bay as a teenager which included going underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, I didn’t remember going over the bridge. Unfortunately, it was quite foggy on the bridge so not all of my pictures came out very well. On the other hand, since it was foggy, that kept the temperate down which made me very happy!

I don’t think I had been to the Marin Headlands before, so that was definitely a new experience. After our fantastic picnic we wondered around the Headlands a bit more stopping as several places along the way. Once we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge back into the city we stopped at a couple of places in the gorgeous, yet massive Golden Gate park where we found a gopher to be much more entertaining than the Bison we actually stopped to see.

We then headed back to my Aunt’s flat to relax and chat. My cousin R was able to join us for dinner which was fabulous as I don’t get to see nearly enough of her anymore. When we were teens, I used to spend a month or so of each summer in Northern California. Cousin R and I used to spend quite a bit of time together, but sort of lost touch when we went to college. So it was so wonderful that she was able to join us for dinner! And she mentioned that she thought she’d be visiting friends not too far away from here later in the summer.

Cousin S is by far my youngest cousin and is only 10 years old. I had a LOT of fun going shopping and picking out a whole bunch of items as that isn’t something that I really get to do because of the geographical distance between us. In fact I’ve only met my super cute little cousin S (although she is quickly approaching my height and has already surpassed my younger sister’s height) a handful of times. Although I plan on changing that once I’m back to being mobile. I really enjoyed getting to pick out quite a few items to spoil her with. I mean, what else are older cousins for?

After a wonderful dinner fabulous company, my uncle T was finally able to return home from work. I just wished it would have been possible to a bit more time all together. I can hardly wait until this time next year when I should be able to visit again, but for a longer period of time. We stayed up fairly late since it was our only night all together. The time went by way too quickly. I really loved every minute we were able to spend in San Francisco!

We all had such a fantastic time on our mini-vacation trip! I can hardly wait until I am mobile again and able to do some traveling on my own. I love my family very much! And I love how unique my family is as it is a blend of biological, married into, and family friends so close they (and their extended family) have essentially ‘adopted’ us. It may not be the most traditional of extended families, but that is just fine by me. These are people who truly care about my dad, sister, and me. And that is the definition of a family to me!

~Jaclyn~