More San Francisco

Sophia waving at the Legion of Honor

Mary & Troy taking over the swings in the sunset.

Nouna & Didi reading to Sophia before bed.

Granpa Jim, Sophia & Troy.

On the carousel...

San Francisco

We had a great week in San Francisco visiting with our Z family. What amazing experiences at the Monet exhibit at the Legion of Honor, the new De Young museum in Golden Gate Park, and
playgrounds around the city. Sophia had a blast... Although, FYI, you are not allowed to touch the sculptures in the garden at the De Young museum. The signs are kind of hard to find. The good news is that the security guards don't really seem to mind...

The San Francisco Zoo

A fun day at the San Francisco Zoo with Nouna & Didi. Sophia was able to take her first Carousel ride since leaving Paris, and she loved playing with the animal sculptures. She was pushed around by Daddy on the tractor, and fed the goats & sheep in the Children’s Farm. Overall, it is a fantastic Zoo. I would highly recommend it to any family that visits San Francisco. The animals are easily accessible, and you don’t have to walk forever before seeing the next theme area.

Party with three 2 year olds...

Liam making friends by showing his belly button...

Sean, Sophia, MacKenzie & Liam enjoying their ice cream cones. It's the new generation of 4th of July kids...

Mackenzie Lee

MacKenzie & Sophia comparing rock throws...

We spent our first full weekend at the lake having a party with Liam, MacKenzie, their parents & grandparents... It was so much fun watching them chase eachother around. And around. And around.

Microsoft team after the hike

Rock face with hikers and carvases at the base

The desired path up, before it visibility when bad

Climbing up the face of the mountain at about 200 feet

Base of Mont Blanc from the Village of Chamonix

Mont Blanc

Who says offsites are about stuffy conference rooms and goofy forced bonding activities. Troy's new team at work decided to turn a business offsite on its ear by taking the whole team to the base of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Western Europe, in hopes of climbing to the summit.

Well we didn't get to the summit thanks to bad weather, but we did just about everything else. I should have known we were in for a wild offsite when we took one step out of the cable car station onto a 5 foot wide ridge with a several hundred feet drop on each side. With our team of four -including the guide - roped together I led off our exposition into the windy, snowy, yet beautiful Mont Blanc.

Over the next two days, we hiked across the glacier to Italy (about five kilometers) through a sea of carvasses. At times we we sank to our hips in the snow. We also hiked several hundred feet up what seemed like a sheer glacier cliff - all with the guidance of our friendly guide Paulo, who was from just over the border in the skiing village of Monterosso. He said it was the smell of pasta leading us to Italy.

With the possible exception of that forced bonding I talked about - we did sleep 17 co-workers side by side in the same room, all of whom had blatter issues in the middle of the night - we had a great time in and around Mont Blanc and the lovely town of Chamonix.