We continued our road trip and finally passed into Utah. On our way to Grandma and Grandpa's house, we decided to stop and fish at a lake since Tyler's only opportunities to fish are when we visit Utah.
Since we were on the back roads, on the way to the lake, and no one else was around, we let Abby have her first attempt at driving. The other girls thought it was funny and after the shock wore off, Abby was excited to try. She did okay considering she's never driven before, but the roads were unpaved and pretty bumpy. Plus there were no curbs, but little drop-offs instead of gutters, so as soon as she swerved right instead of left and almost ran us off the road and into the ditch, we decided that was good enough for her first time.
Unfortunately, the fish were not biting, but we stayed for quite awhile trying different baits and different spots. It was also quite windy which may have been part of the problem, but when the girls got bored, I started taking pictures. The view was gorgeous. Here's Tessa fishing.
And here's Aubrey. They were all hoping to catch a fish, but the location didn't matter; nothing was biting.
I thought this picture of Abby and Taryn was darling. The girls were good sports even after we ran out of snacks and got a little sunburned. We finally made it to Grandma's house where Tara and her family were waiting for us. The girls were excited to see cousins and they loved playing with little Ava.
That night, and the next day, everyone else arrived and we hung out at Grandma's house. We headed to our usual spot for the parade on the morning of the 4th of July. Here's the clan while we waited and watched the the flyover that signaled the beginning of the parade.
It was very sunny and warm, but we remembered umbrellas to at least have a little shade. I took some pictures of the different groups of kids. Here's Lucy and Taryn under the umbrella. And here are the middle kids - Tessa, Makaela, and Julia with Ava.
The teenagers were always together. They even had unplanned, matching red striped shirts. Halley, Anna, and Abby. And then the boys which usually included Aubrey. Here she is with Grayson, Parker, Jacob, and Anson. Aubrey's closer in age to these boys, but being the only girl always makes it hard for her to decide who to play with. Sometimes she's with the littles, sometimes with the boys, and sometimes with the middle girls.
We stopped by to see Dutchess a couple of times. They had recently moved her to their property so she wasn't in their backyard anymore where it was easy to just walk out and see her. Sometimes we drove to see her and sometimes we walked from the house because it was less than a mile to get there walking. The kids (and Tyler) loved feeding her carrots and petting her.
The boys moved her fences every couple days to give her access to new areas of brush to eat along with the hay and water that they gave her. Dutchess is very friendly and loves to see what you have for her, especially if it's something she can eat out of your hand.
We had a water balloon fight and the kids really got into it. I was super impressed with the camera on my phone. It takes live pictures so it's a little bit of movement around the second that I click the picture, and I was able to get some really awesome action shots as water balloons were crushed. Halley apparently was the best water balloon buster. She even got Tyler really good from behind.
Grandpa always pulls out his four wheeler at some time during the vacation, so Taryn made sure she got a ride with Grandpa. He takes a couple loops around their backyard letting the grandkids go for a spin. We tried water balloon volleyball which is where the water balloon fight came from, but the kids had fun attempting to catch and toss balloons with their towels.
After watching the fireworks on the 4th, we went home to do sparklers. The kids had fun taking pictures in the dark with their sparklers. Here are all the teenagers. They love hiding in the room in the basement and talking for the entirety of our vacations.
And here are the "middles," the girls in between the teenagers and little kids. The tweens. Tessa, Julia, and Makaela. They like hanging out together, sometimes tagging along with the teenagers, and sometimes trying to rule over the younger kids. After getting Abby and Tessa in a picture with their sparklers, I couldn't leave out the other two, so here are Taryn and Aubrey enjoying their sparklers.
We took some time to go visit Barbara and Berk Hall, Tyler's second parents when growing up. Barbara showed us the fort that her grandkids spend time in when they visit. They built the fort on their property back by a canal that runs through the area, and all of the kids make booths and end up trading and selling homemade items. Our kids loved exploring the area, climbing on trees and seeing everything that the other kids had created. The kids we spent the day with in St. Louis are some of the grandkids who built and play at this fort, so that made it extra special for our kids to know who goes there. I took this selfie with Taryn and thought it turned out pretty cute.
We decided the morning after the 4th of July that we needed something to do, so we thought about floating the river. All the adults said they loved doing that when they were younger, and we realized that a lot of the in-laws (myself included) and almost all of the grandkids had never done it before. We figured the kids were old enough to enjoy it, so we quickly made the decision to head out to the river. It was a little bit of a drive, but we picked up the rafts and life jackets on the way, ate lunch in the parking lot, and then hiked down to the river's edge to get ready to float down it.
We rented three rafts, all different sizes, so we split up with adults in each raft and cousins with their buddies. Tyler and I had the smallest raft so we started with just Jacob, Aubrey, and Taryn. Justin and Tiffany had the largest raft so they took all of the teenagers.
Tim and Lora, in the medium raft had the middle girls. The view was so pretty. We worked hard paddling and staying down the center of the river, but it really is like floating, since there were only a few faster rapid parts. It was enjoyable for the kids who were able to help paddle, but didn't really need to once we got going.
Once the littles decided they could handle the raft and not be scared, we sent them all into the same raft. We weren't sure if they needed to be with their parents in case they got nervous, but they were fine, so we hooked up rafts, and they all climbed into the medium raft with Tim and Lora and the middle girls. Some of the girls decided it was sunny and warm enough to hop in the cold water to cool off. No one in our boat did that, but I think most of the middles and teenagers did. We just kept hearing splashing and then a little squeal as they realized how cold the water actually was. And then they'd quickly climb back into the raft.
We made it to the end of the river where we get out. Grandpa and Grandma ate lunch and then drove down to wait for us to haul us and all the rafts back up to the top of the river where we had parked the cars. Everyone said they had so much fun and that it was even better than an amusement park. There were a couple scary moments (we got stuck on a rock until another raft bumped us off), and there were a lot of splashing from the bigger waves, but that's what made it an adventure. It was a lot of fun.
Tyler and the dads and a few of the kids ended up staying to fish and this was a much better outcome. They were able to catch multiple fish before the rains came and sent them on their way home. Aubrey stayed and loved fishing with Tyler.
We went to a park one evening and walked down to a little creek where the kids tossed rocks into the water. The scenery was beautiful so I had each of the girls stop so I could take their picture.
We also passed by a spot where we had taken family pictures like 5-6 years earlier. It was fun to think about how much all the kids had grown since the last time we were there. The kids would have stayed jumping rocks and throwing rocks in the water forever if we didn't tell them we had dessert.
Grandma got a picture with Lucy and Taryn as they crossed over a bridge on their walk back to the park.
On Sunday, I had to get some pictures while everyone was dressed up. Tara and Tiffany's families weren't there, so it was just Tim's family, but we grabbed pictures of the different aged kids. Here's Tessa with Makaela and Taryn with Anson.
And Abby with Sara and Kate.
Aubrey had her pick and decided on a picture with Anson and Taryn and then I grabbed one with all the girls and Grandma and Grandpa. We love hanging out with family and being with the Gibbons.
Tiffany's family has a new puppy and they brought her out when they came. The kids adored her. They all took turns playing with her, holding her, and showering her with tons of attention. She was a cute little puppy. After Tyler flew back home to work, the girls and I drove down to Spanish Fork to stay with Tiffany while Abby went to her second BYU volleyball camp. She was very excited to go a second year since she enjoyed it so much last year. On Monday morning, we dropped her off and Anna came with us. While registering, we saw Cosmo the Cougar and I wanted a picture of the girls with him, but they resisted and said no. So sad. I at least got this one before we sent Abby on her way.
We met up with Tiffany and Tara and the rest of the kids and toured some of the BYU campus. We went to their broadcasting building in hopes of a tour, but since they were filming actual shows, we could only see their lobby area. We were really hoping to see their Studio C and possibly meet some actors, but we had to be content with their life-size cutouts instead. The kids enjoyed trying to pose like the Studio C actors, and I thought they made for some really cute pictures.
They had some displays of some of their shows, and one of our favorites was the actual uniform worn by Scott Sterling in the Studio C sketch. It's one of our favorite shows and the girls watch episodes all the time. We even found their main entrance door, but all the signs said no entrance because they're filming. The kids still thought it was cool to see. We even got some bracelets from their front desk to keep and some of the kids said they saw someone walk by who they recognized from the Sports Nation tv show.
We also had to walk through the BYU bookstore. They were amidst construction as they were working on a lot of the store, but they had completed the kids section which included a smaller rendition of the Y on the mountain which was part of a slide. So of course we were there for at least 10 minutes as the kids took their turns "climbing" the mountain and then sliding down the slide. I caught them all for a quick second to take a picture all together.
We always happen to be in Utah when it's free Chic-fila day so for the second year in a row, we dressed up the kids like cows and got free food at Chic-fila. They had a huge blowup cow this time, so we got a picture of everyone in front of the house before heading to Chic-fila and in front of the cow when they were done eating.
I was able to take the older girls to the temple while we were there and it was extra special because it was Tessa's very first time. She was allowed to go to the temple since the beginning of the year, but every time we had a scheduled temple trip with our ward, we were out of town. So this was finally her first opportunity to go. Abby really wanted to go too, so we found an evening, after her practice, that the temple was available, and we headed over as soon as we picked up Abby from her camp. We went to the Provo City Center temple and had an awesome experience. Tessa was so excited. Since the day she was baptized at 8 years old, she had come out of that baptismal font saying, "I want to do that again." I told her she can when she's 12 and goes to the temple to do baptisms for the dead, so she's been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. The girls took their own family names and I was there to watch. The brother who was doing the baptisms asked Tessa as she walked into the font if it was her first time. He said he could tell because of her hesitation or shyness, but also because of her excitement.
The extra interesting thing was that the power went out while we were in the temple. Julia was actually in the font when the lights went out for a second. The generator kicked on and the emergency lights came on, so they finished her baptisms and were able to do Tessa's, but then the temple workers said all the work had to stop until they figured out what went wrong and until the regular power came back on. Abby was the last one of our group who hadn't gone yet, and she was very stressed that she wasn't going to be able to do any baptisms. But luckily after about 20-30 minutes, the power came back on and they were able resume the baptisms. It gave us time to just sit and enjoy the peace of the temple, talk to the temple workers from that area, and for Abby to realize that with patience, her temple service can get done. We took all of these pictures around the temple and in their visitor center. It was a great experience, and Tessa can't wait to go to many more temples to do baptisms.
On our last full day in Utah before heading home, we waited for Abby to finish her final day of camp. We knew there was a HuHot (Mongolian BBQ buffet) restaurant near Tiffany's house, but we hadn't ever been to it. We had gone to one with the Kasallis's in San Antonio a couple years earlier, so the girls talked me into eating lunch there while waiting for Abby. It was yummy, and we had to take a picture of the girls eating their food so they could send it to Sam and Teagan to remind them of our trip together in San Antonio.
The final day of Abby's camp is spent mostly taking pictures and getting autographs. I took a picture of their final huddle, just to show how big the camp is. They did all of their meetings in the Smith Fieldhouse which is where the BYU women's team plays their home games. Abby had a great time this year and learned a lot. She was moved up to a 15s team and worked as their setter. She found Mary Lake who didn't coach this year, but stopped by the camp for a day when she was visiting from Tokyo where she had been playing all summer with the USA team. Abby got a picture with her and her gold medal from Tokyo. Abby loves her!
We also took a picture of Abby with the head coach, Coach Olmstead. Abby even told her that we saw her at Nationals in Indianapolis as we were leaving the convention center one day, but we were walking in different directions and by the time Abby realized it was her and thought about maybe going back, she figured it was too late. But it was fun to tell Coach Olmstead that Abby was there playing on a National team and that we saw her there.
Abby had a close friend, Hazel, who had been at the camp last year too, so they hung out again this year. They had even stayed in touch most of the year through texting, so they had fun knowing someone when they came back for their second year of camp. We also had to get a picture of Abby with her coach from last year, McKenna Miller. She even remembered Abby. McKenna coached an older team this camp, so no chance for Abby to have her again, but it was fun to visit with her and get a picture of them together. Mckenna got married this summer too and Abby follows her on Instagram. We even talked to her about how her sister is serving in the mission that covers El Paso. We hope she serves in a ward in our area so we can meet her and Abby told McKenna she'd keep an eye out for her sister in hopes of meeting her.
We grabbed other pictures with some of the volleyball players from the team. This first picture is Abby with Devin, her coach for this year's camp. He was a previous player on the BYU Men's Volleyball team and now helps coach the men's team. He had Abby set on their team and he gave her a lot of good feedback. She enjoyed working with him. Tayler, a setter from the women's team, worked with Abby a lot on her setting too.
Here she is with Abbey and Kiani who are other players from the women's team that Abby thought was super nice and friendly so she wanted pictures with them. She had another great year at camp and learned so much and had a lot of fun.
That final night in Utah, we met up with my family for a little get together. My grandma, aunts, and cousins all met up at my aunt's family cabin. It was so fun for the kids to hang out (we try to get together every year so they remember each other pretty well) and play together. The cabin area was so pretty and the kids played pickleball, explored the grounds, and ate yummy food and treats. My cousin, Heather, has been pretty sick, so my aunt and uncle brought their kids so they could play with my kids. My kids love their second cousins. And I was happy to see my Grandma and have the girls visit with their great grandma and for me to catch up with my aunts and cousins.
We stayed our last night in Utah with Tara's family. My girls love having scenery changes and new houses to play in and new toys to play with. Tara's kids were super happy to host us. We got in pretty late after our other family get together, but the kids all slept on the floor together and woke up early to play until it was time to hit the road. Tara's family was leaving for another trip too, so we were all trying to get packed up and head out. The girls loved holding baby Camden and playing with him. Once Aubrey started the trend, we ended up with this picture of each of my girls "holding" one of Tara's kids. I thought it was a pretty cute picture. I love how much all the cousins love playing together. It was hard to say goodbye, but we knew we'd be getting together again soon.
We weren't really in any rush to get home since it was our summer vacation and Tyler was already at home working, so we ended up stopping at the Hole in the Rock which is outside of Moab, Utah. We always see it as we are zipping by to get to our destination and we decided for once to stop and see what it was all about. They even advertise a zoo, so we checked it out. They had some really fun places to take pictures, like by this car made out of metal and license plates and this wall of license plates.
We paid to go into this zoo and realized it's like a family owned zoo. You could see their house and how their backyard is basically this zoo with exotic animals. It was a small zoo, but they had some interesting "pets". We bought the bucket of food to feed the animals. The goats and deer were friendly and ate the food easily. The camel loved the carrots.
The camel even posed for our picture. You can see the house of the zoo owners behind the camel's pen. We saw a donkey, a big bull, an ostrich, peacocks, deer, goats, and a pot-bellied pig among other animals. We walked into the Hole in the Rock store which really is a hole in the rock that was turned into a house. You can pay to tour the house, but we didn't do that. We just browsed the gift shop and called it good. They had a few outdoor things to explore as well, but now we can at least say, "we've been there."
Another stop we made was at Wilson's Arch. We drive past this arch every time we drive to and from Utah and have never stopped. We decided to hike up to it this time. The hardest part was crossing the road to get to the side where the arch was, but we made it and hiked up the hill and took a ton of pictures. Here are a few of our favorites.
This picture was taken at the arch looking out the opposite way of where we came and the opposite side of where the road is. It was pretty much a sliding cliff down from this side so we were very careful not to get too close to the edge. It was windy up there too.
Here are a few more pictures that we took on the arch. You can see the road that we drive on in the second picture. There were a lot of hikers so we had someone take a picture of all of us so we could be together in one picture.
As we were walking down, we found a little cave in the side of the mountain where we attempted to take a panoramic picture but slow enough for the girls to run and get in the picture twice. It took us multiple takes and this one is still not perfect, but the girls thought it was fun. If you left too early or moved too much, you became blurry or distorted in the picture, which is what made it funny, but we kept trying until we got something like what we wanted. Cute girls.
After leaving our pano spot, we were asked to take a picture of a family so they could all be in it together. She had a pretty fancy camera, so after I took a picture for them, she said she'd take a picture of us and with my email she was able to eventually edit the picture and email a copy of it to me. This is what she sent. It turned out so good. I ended up printing a copy of this picture for Tyler to put in his office since it's a good picture of all of his girls. I was very appreciative of friendly strangers that we met on our trip that shows there are decent people in the world and we can all get along as we enjoy the world together.
As we continued our journey home, we took our final state pictures. Here's the picture we took as we entered Colorado.
And then we decided to make one more detour on our trip home. It was only about 30 minutes out of the way, but we decided to drive over to Four Corners because none of us had ever been there. So we were able to see and take pictures and be in the one spot where you can stand in four states at one time. It's the only place in the United States to be able to do that. It wasn't as grand as I was thinking and it was pretty expensive, but now we can at least say that we've been there. And to get back onto our road for home, we did end up driving a little into Arizona, but they never had a state line sign, so this picture of the corner of Arizona at Four Corners was all I could use to document that we had indeed added that state to our list of states traveled this summer.
We finished our drive home passing through New Mexico and into Texas for the final 9 miles on the freeway to our exit. And then it was home sweet home after being gone for three weeks. It brought our total up to 13 states that we traveled through during our summer vacation. We had a great family and summer vacation doing stuff as a family and spending time with extended family. We love it, but we were happy to finally be home.
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