San Francisco with the JAWs

My brother Jed and his family are now living just outside of the San Francisco Bay Area.  This is the same brother that we visited in San Antonio in April.  The Air Force keeps them hopping.  We used our holiday trip to CA to visit Damon's family and see Jed and Joette (known as the JAWs for their matching initials).

We rendezvoused on the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge and then drove through the Presidio and down to Ocean Beach for a little adventure in the sand and surf.

The aunt &uncles: Jillaire, Damon, and Jed (Joette was the photographer, obviously.)
The cousins: Gunnar, Holly, Maggie, Adah, Anya, Christian, and Kiera

Everyone stayed dried--except Christian's pants and shoes--and was happy enough to run from waves . . .

. . . and write in the sand.

After the beach we found lunch at a little bagel and sandwich place across from the San Francisco Zoo. We didn't see any lions. Then we drove to Golden Gate Park to the Conservatory of Flowers.  What a beautiful building:

Gunnar picked me a poppy. (Surely against the rules, maybe the law! I don't know. Utah's state flower is protected, but is this a California poppy?)

Hey, as long as it was picked, Adah was going to work it.

We wandered through the conservatory looking at interesting plants and flowers. 

In one wing they had an exhibit that was a tribute to Funland, an amusement park/midway/carnival that used to be on Ocean Beach.

These fun house mirrors were a big hit. Check out Anya!

Once we'd seen all the plants, flowers, and wacky mirrors, we decided to call it a day with the JAWs. It was probably only about two or three o'clock, but we knew the kids weren't up for too much more. We send them on their way and we continued to drive through Golden Gate Park and eventually found a spot to get out and go on a little walk by a lake. The kids tried to feed animal crackers to some squirrels.  One took a cracker right out of Adah's hand! Then Maggie gave it a try and ended up getting scratched on several fingers. She's not such a fan of squirrels anymore.

After the park we took a drive through the city and headed over to Chinatown. It was dark by the time we arrived there. We were pretty worn out, and 3 of the 4 children were asleep! We opted to continue our sight-seeing from the car and head out of the city for dinner before bunking at Jotham's and Dana's house for the night.