San Francisco and Peyton's Baptism

The day after Christmas, me, Gam, and Pa flew to San Jose where we met up with Tucker and Lexi. I got up at 4 in the morning and my dad dropped me off at the airport by 5:30. Flying on a plane is always really cool. We landed in San Jose and Tucker and Lexi were there to pick us up. We spent the whole day in San Francisco! I've never been before so that was really fun to go see everything. We came in through the back of the city so we got to see everything. Tucker had heard of a really good place to get breakfast, Hollywood Cafe, so we went there for breakfast. I had some great French Toast, one of my personal favorites. After breakfast we walked around by the Fisherman's Warf for a while, just seeing there is to see.

 The Fisherman's Warf

 We walked along some of the piers and could see Alcatraz in the distance.

 This thing, the arm wrestling machine and the creepy lady, can be seen in the Princess Diaries when they are enjoying the city. I arm wrestled the machine and got just past 300 and it maxes out at 400. The creepy lady has been scaring people for decades and San Francisco feels like she needs to continue to do so.

 I knew Malsue would love this. Someone had a Snoopy on a motorcycle on their boat.

 Small part of the beach from which you could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.

 Ghirardelli Square, also known as chocolate heaven.

 Malsue loves mini stuff and they were selling tubs on mini chocolates.

 So much candy...

 Tucker and Lexi were so great to drive us around all day and show us everything. Thanks!

 The houses in San Francisco were really interesting. I didn't see one bit of housing that didn't have a bay window. Many of the houses had styles similar to those in this picture.

Pa and I at Ghirardelli square.

After this portion of the adventure, we went to see the Gold Gate Bridge. One thing I didn't even think about but I am grateful for it now, is that we went on a really clear day. I guess San Francisco is often foggy but when we went there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was really fun to drive across the bridge. On one side, you could see miles of open ocean. On the other side you could see downtown San Francisco. I think it is one of the biggest cities I have ever been in, and there were people everywhere.

Last stop on our day in San Francisco was Chinatown. Driving around the city you could guess pretty easily that you were in San Francisco, but as soon as you entered the Chinatown area, it felt like a different world. The streets seemed more crowded, more people were out, crazy signs in other languages were all over, it really felt like we has left San Francisco and were somewhere completely different. We had to find a bathroom and it was just crazy trying to find anything. We didn't stay long. As we parked the car and were walking away, some guy warned us no to park there. Good thing he did because the cops showed up soon and started towing cars away. Thank goodness he warned us.

Peyton's baptism was the whole reason we cam to see the family. San Francisco was on Friday, Saturday we just hung out with cousins and played games, just enjoyed being together. Growing up in Utah, we always did baptisms on Saturdays. Peyton's was on Sunday and everything was taken care of right after church. She asked me to give a talk about the Holy Ghost. I've never spoken at a baptism before so that was new. Right before she was going to get baptized Peyton said she was nervous. She had nothing to be nervous about, she did everything just the way she was supposed to. Everything ran smoothly, Jamie did a great job organizing everything, and Tucker was able to baptize Peyton as a worthy priesthood holder. 

Combine the wonderful trip to California to see my cousins and having such a great Christmas, the break was wonderful. I loved seeing cousins again. If only they lived in Utah and we could see them all the time... Now I have to get back to school and get back in the groove of things in Provo.