Next Stop, Oakland Temple

This is now one of my most favorite temples. I love the carvings of the last supper and Christ's coming to the Americas. It was a perfect day to go too. The breeze was blowing just enough to make it nice and cool. On our way from San Francisco to here we were able to drive on the Bay Bridge. Awesome bridge! We went over so many bridges and through so many tunnels Aine is obsessed with them. I wish we had some around here so I could give her the pleasure of driving them again.

Anyways it was really nice to leave the chaos of San Francisco and go to this temple. Did you know that they have their own visitor center and a tri-stake center on the lot? Spencer thinks the center had like 23,000 seats or something. It felt like there should have been more going on with so many church buildings. But the temple was closed and they were working on the tri-stake center. So, it was actually kind of quite.

The temple, of course, is placed on a hill. You can see if from everywhere and the views from up there into the bay were beautiful. This was probably one of my favorite stops of the trip.

This part of the temple grounds was really cool. They had a scripture on the wall of the temple from the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 17 where Christ commands them to bring their children. It was sweet to have our kids their and to feel like they were wanted there. Sometimes the temple feels like such a sacred and quite place I feel a little nervous about bringing my noisy kids to see it. This was especially the case that day when they had been riding around a lot in the car and just wanted to get out and jump around and play. But after bringing them forward to the temple and reading this scripture I remembered how much Christ loves the children, even their playfulness and noise.

China Town

Next stop on our vacation journey was China Town and the Financial District. While everyone else went shopping, we hung out at a gated city park. A test city alarm went off right over the top of our heads and scared us all. After the park, we drove all over China Town and the Financial District. This is where I took all the pictures, from the comfort of the car.

Stolen Pictures :)

I have shamelessly stolen these pictures from Catherine to show you what I was talking about in my previous post. I hope you will forgive me Catherine!

San Francisco

On Monday of our vacation we made our way to San Francisco. It was more challenging than we expected to get out there. At first we had to turn around and retrieve the umbrella strollers we forgot to pack. We also had to make several stops for the kids. But it was a fun trip and once we got there it was beautiful weather. (Sorry, somewhere in all the mix of this we couldn't find our camera that night, so no pictures.)

We stayed across the bay from San Francisco and were able to drive the Golden Gate Bridge several different times, fulfilling one of Spencer's life dreams. That night we first visited Ghirardelli Square and tasted their chocolate. It was cold enough by this point that I convinced Spencer that we needed some hot chocolate. It was delicious. After our dessert we made our way to Fisherman's Wharf for some shopping and dinner. We ate some fresh clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls. We also visited Pier 39 and Aine was able to ride on their merry-go-round. We didn't get to see any sea lions but we did see Alcatraz. It was a fun night and the kids were troopers as the fog set in and the temperature dropped.

Arriving in Sparks, NV and the Reno Temple

We arrived in our resort in Sparks, NV Saturday evening and made a run for the grocery store to get food for the next couple of days.

On Sunday we went to sacrament meeting at a local ward. The meeting was really great. Their theme was on the pioneers and on sacrifice. I especially liked a talk a woman gave where she talked about how our true sacrifices and growth come when we go the extra mile. Which means going beyond making the initial sacrifice we are asked to make and giving even more. This made me think a lot about the current sacrifices I have to make right now in my life and the attitude I have about them.

She also spoke about how the advesary uses good things to crowd out the essential things in our life. This was humbling for me as I realized that this is truly what has happened in my life lately. I recommited myself to sacrificing the good things to make room for the essential things like personal scripture study and prayer. It was also nice to be able to listen to the talks in sacrament meeting with the extra hands to help with the kids.


After the meetings we made a visit to the Reno temple. This was the first of three temples we got to see on our trip.

Vacation Stop # 2

The greatest park ever! A park in Elko where local businesses each donated to build a section of the park. It was huge, but very hot! I think the key to our vacation of road trips included a lot of stops at parks. Mom, Dad, Catie and Anna were very patient while Aine and Tanner burned off energy at the parks. I can't say enough about it, but as a mom, I was really impressed with this extensive park. It had 3 or 4 towers and slides, tire swings, a boat and bridges. It also included plenty of room in the middle to run around from one to another.

Vacation Stop #1

The Salt Flats was our first stop on our family road trip. It was overcast, but with all that white salt it was still very bright. The Flats made a great place to run after some time in the car. I love all the wide open space to play. Just don't forget to wash your shoes off before you jump back in the car.