Sometimes Getting Lost Leads To Great Family Fun!

I wanted us to go to Chinatown today and then go to the temple afterwards.  But I kinda messed that up.  But a beautiful mess up it was!

We ended up at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.  I put the address to a parking garage in Chinatown...well, I thought I put an address to a parking garage in the TomTom.  Woopsie!  On the sheet of paper that I brought with addresses on it, I mixed up the Oakland temple street address to the San Fransico, thinking it was leading us to Chinatown.  Yeah, we just ended up really close to the beach, so what the heck!  The boys will play in the sand at the beach anyday so they were not complaining!  Plus, I think they were afraid I was going to make them eat Chinese food :)

We didn't stay too long since we were hungry, ok, I was hungry.  We found a little restaurant about a mile away by the ocean.  As we were looking for parking we saw these beautiful, tall cypress trees.  They were right next to the ocean and just perfectly picturesque.  So we ate and headed down to see the trees finding out we were heading for Lands End (Sutro District area).  

It was a wonderful walk down to the ocean as we were surprised to learn that we were heading down to the Sutro Baths.  I had never heard of them but they were built in the late 1800's.  It was huge for that time period!  It had 6/7 saltwater swimming tanks ranging from ice cold to hot.  It was extremely unique with how large it was (it could house 25,000 people with its pools, exhibits, restaurant, etc...  Though, I'm sure safety codes today would never allow that many people.) and how the water was flushed by the tides.

Unfortunately, this is all that remains.  

But it made for a great place for little boys to explore!

We spent most of our time down on the beach and made a friend with Tom (Daddy gave him the name....I would have went with Mr. Crabs, myself ) the crab.  Hyrum told us the crab was "talking" as the crab made bubbles with his mouth, when we would put him in some sea water and then take him out.

As beaches should be, it was very relaxing.  We had no intention of going to the beach today (actually 2 different beaches!) and of course were not dressed for it or had beach toys, but who needs beach toys when you have imagination, right?!

Even though we didn't want to (and we really didn't) we thought we should start heading to the temple just in case we ended up wearing ourselves out at the beach and then backing out.  David went in the temple and did some initiatories while the boys and I enjoyed ourselves outside the temple and in the visitors center.  My favorite had to be outside as Brigham was laying on the grass, stomach down with his head resting on his arms.  He said to me, "You know what I love about the temple?  That it's always so peaceful."  I tried not to show too much emotion but that really touches the heart of a mother of such a hyper young boy.  But he is right, just being outside the temple on their grounds is enough to be at peace.  And this whole day seemed to be about that: Peace.