I was thinking I was caught up for once on the blog and ready to do one more post before all the holidays began with Halloween next week, but as I organized my pictures, I realized that I totally forgot to do entries for our trips to Utah and Wichita Falls this summer. So I guess I'm not caught up, but I am ready to post the rest of our summer pictures, so here they are. First, was our trip to Utah which was over the week of the Fourth of July. We knew we were getting together with Tyler's family over the weekend, but we always take an entire week for the trip, so we planned some fun family adventures we could do whether we had family with us or not. I took this picture at one of our stops on the long drive north.
We usually take a long route around the state and stay with each of Tyler's siblings, but unfortunately this time, Tyler's sister Tiffany's family was sick the day we were supposed to stop and see them, so we had to change our plans a bit. Luckily, Tyler's other sister, Tara, had healthy kids, so we stopped to see them first. We also added an extra leg to our trip as we got in to Utah and decided to head all the way up to Idaho to see Tyler's cousin's missionary homecoming. Tyler's parents and brother Tim and family met us at the hotel in Idaho Falls. We had enough time to walk along a bridge by the hotel the morning before we headed to church. The Idaho Falls Temple is in the far background of this first picture. It was fun to see all the first and second cousins who were there and hang out with them after church.
We drove back into Utah that night and stayed with Tyler's brother in Stansbury Park, UT. We wanted to go to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake during our trip since we have the discounted zoo pass, and we wanted to take the girls to Temple Square as well. Tyler's sisters and families were going to meet us for some of these activities, but they still had sick kids, so we did the Salt Lake trip on our own. We started at a Planetarium and Science Museum. The girls had a lot of fun checking out the cloud-making machine and looking at all the planets.
They also had some really fun exhibits set up like the moon and Mars, where the kids could walk around and I could get some pretty cool pictures.
Taryn also had fun even though she was confined to the stroller for the trip. The girls got to pick out souvenirs from the gift shop and they ended up with rings and a bag of fancy rocks to add to their rock collection which they started on this trip by finding rocks in each state as we drove from Texas to Utah.
We walked from the Planetarium around some outdoor shopping areas, ate lunch at Applebee's, and found this splash area. It took the girls awhile to decide to get wet, but with the random shooting fountains, there were times they got wet even when they weren't expecting it.
We took a ride on the tracks that circles downtown Salt Lake and it was the girls' favorite part of the entire trip I think. Here's a picture I took as we waited for the tram to arrive and I liked how you could see the name of the stop (Planetarium) behind us.
We took the tram to Temple Square and walked around with the girls, which we hadn't done since Tara and Andrew's wedding which was when Tessa was a baby. The girls really liked all the statues and flowers around Temple Square. They also liked the Reflection pool in front of the temple.
We walked towards the Church Office Building which was where I worked for a year while Tyler finished up at BYU. We found this spot outside the Relief Society Building which was where Tyler proposed to me almost 13 years earlier. I made them sit in that spot so I could get a picture, and I had Abby take a picture of just me and Tyler too.
On our way back through the temple grounds, we went through one of the visitors' centers and looked through their church displays. The girls liked all the videos, wax figures, and the huge Christus Statue.
We did get to the zoo and Tara and her two kids joined us, however, I just realized that those pictures were on my camera (instead of my phone) and they are now currently lost on the broken hard drive. Maybe one day if I ever get those pictures back, I will be able to upload them to the blog later. We had a fun time at the zoo. The girls loved the polar bear, the peacock that roamed freely, and the sea lions.
We stayed the next couple nights with Tara and her family. Her new baby, Grayson, was so fun to see since it was our first time since he was born. Taryn especially loved him and really liked helping him swing and borrowing his Bumbo to sit in herself. Abby was probably the best helper, either taking turns holding Grayson, or playing ball with Parker.
It's become a tradition whenever we go to Utah to make a stop at the Cabella's by the point of the mountain. The girls love all the animal exhibits and we always get really cute pictures. They love to look scary like the bears and they each got to pick out where they wanted their individual pictures taken.
Abby wanted her picture by the mountain lion because that is their elementary school mascot, hence the LU symbols for her school, Lundy.
We also promised Abby that we'd walk around the BYU campus, which she loves to do. We walked through the bookstore and I grabbed this picture. The girls each picked out a little purse from the clearance section. The girls had fun searching for the right patterned one, although Dad did not think it needed to take as long as it did. :)
On Wednesday, we drove out to Grandma and Grandpa's in Vernal. Everyone was there by the Fourth of July, which was Thursday. We saw the parade and the kids had fun with boom sticks and rainbow wands.
I caught a picture of Tessa and Makaela with Grandma.
The kids had fun at grandmas making t-shirts, playing outside, playing kickball and volleyball, and just hanging with their cousins. The Dinosaur Museum in town had free admission on the fourth so we headed over there to check out those dinosaurs. They had this guy welcoming everyone at the main lobby.
I let the girls pick which dinosaur they wanted their picture next to. (Apparently Aubrey never decided on one because I did not have an individual picture of her.)
This was my favorite picture because the girls and cousins decided to look really scared in front of this huge T Rex. We also walked around the exhibits on the inside and the girls' favorite part was having an artist draw pictures of dinosaurs of their choosing for each person. We had to wait awhile for each grandkid to get his or her own drawing, but the drawings were pretty amazing, and we had a large variety of dinosaurs by the time he was done.
Here's a bunch a girls piled on Andrew. He didn't seem to mind and I thought it was a cute picture.
We spent one afternoon taking new family pictures. It seems we do this about once a year, but there's always at least one new family member since the previous one, so it has to be done. Here are just a few of all the grandkids. One with Grandma and Grandpa and one with just the kids. All the kids did pretty well considering they were forced to stand still and smile when all they wanted to do was play together. But we were near a playground, so we kept bribing them to be good so they could have play time afterwards. The photographer even came over to the playground afterwards and took a lot of candid shots and some of those are my favorites as the grandkids played together and showed off for Grandma and Grandpa.
One of the main reasons we went out to Utah this particular weekend was to be there for Anna's baptism. We didn't get to see Tiffany's family as much as we would have liked since they kept passing the sickness between each kid, but it seemed like by the weekend, everyone was better, so they had the baptism as scheduled.
This included the luncheon at their house afterwards. The kids had fun playing, and I finally got a picture of the three young grandkids who enjoyed playing (and fighting) with the toys together.
We left straight from the luncheon to head home over the next two days, but the sickness that we thought was gone ended up hitting our family by the time we got to the hotel that night. It passed through most of our kids and we heard every family that was there also got some form of the sickness as well. No fun, but we were glad we were able to be with family and have as much fun together as we did. We love our family and can't wait until the next time we get together.
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