Utah Trip, Part 1

We decided early this year to make our family vacation a trip to Utah. It seems like we're always driving THROUGH Utah to get somewhere instead of doing all that UT has to offer. We wanted to take our kids to a BYU game and decided the homecoming game actually worked best for our schedules.

We left Seattle Tuesday after school and picked up Allen from work. We had been up late the night before getting ready and I ended up driving much of the way while Allen worked and we were tired. We rolled into Boise at about 1:00 a.m. to stay overnight with Allen's mom.

This was our first road trip in our new car and we LOVED it. It is so roomy and offers a lot of seating flexibility. We were debating about installing an entertainment system in our car but Allen found a cool contraption for our iPad that was a perfect and inexpensive solution (you can see it hanging over Emery's head)

After not nearly enough sleep we got up early for breakfast with Grandma. Allen's mom loves to cook for her family and we got a good laugh that she made us homemade apple pie and creme brûlée for breakfast. It was a perfect beginning to a week of glutinous eating :)

 We drove into Ogden and went to Grandma Frost's timeshare that she very graciously lent us for the week. We had a couple hours of sunlight left so we took a beautiful fall hike:

I love the way the sun is coming through the trees in this picture. We played some games at the playground before heading to the hot tub. We had a fun dinner and watched The Legend of Sleepy Hollow with the kids before heading to bed.

On Thursday morning we got up and drove down to temple square for the morning. We stumbled onto a tour of the conference center which ended up being fascinating. I loved seeing all of the original artwork all through the conference center.

We spent a lot of time wandering through both the visitor centers on temple square. The kids loved the model of the temple, seeing the Christus statue and the display about the welfare system. We spent 5 hours on temple square and did not even see everything. The girls loved walking on the temple grounds to see brides that were out having their pictures taken. 

After we left temple square Carter pulled Allen aside and told him that he thought it was going to be a boring day but that he ended up loving temple square and really felt the spirit there. That conversation alone made our trip worthwhile.  We headed over to City Creek to grab some lunch and walk around for awhile.

We spent the rest of the day at This is the Place park. Neither of us has ever been there before so it was fun to see all the fun activities they had. We started at the petting zoo and randomly ran into one of my cousins and her family there which was really fun. The kids all had fun riding the ponies, except for Emery who bawled and clung to me like we were sending her away forever. She loves animals from afar but freaks out if she gets too close.

 The favorite part of the day was panning for gold. The kids spend a good hour playing in the stream and picking out pieces of "gold" to trade at the bank. Addie proved to be the most adept at finding the pieces. The kids were able to the bank to trade the gold for candy but all the kids chose to keep their gold pieces. We also visited the school house and general store, rode the train and played in the teepee.

Grandma Frost met us for part of the time we were at the park and she bought the kids a fun souvenir at the gift shop.  We left the park and met my brother for dinner at In N Out (yum yum yum). We also stopped by Allen's aunts house on our way back to Ogden where we visited for a couple hours and had a great time.

{I'll come back with lots of pictures from Friday}

We stayed with my cousin in Provo on Friday night and were up bright and early to spend the day in Provo. We started the day by having breakfast with some young men from our Arizona ward. Allen was the Hancock's home teacher while we lived in AZ and was also their boys Priest quorum adviser. Both are at BYU now and it was fun to spend a morning catching up with them. It is was so fun to see the new student housing (in the background). BYU has really stepped it up since we went to school there.

The kids were dying to hit the bookstore with promised of candy counter treats and souvenir purchasing. The little girls picked pom-pons, Makenna chose a stuffed cougar and Carter got a BYU tie. The kids were all decked out in their BYU attire and were so excited to be on campus and go to the game.

Steve and Meghan were also in Utah for the homecoming game so it was so fun to spend some time with them and meet baby Ben (6 weeks old). Despite losing, we  had a great time at the game. We love being in the hoopla of the game and doing all the traditions of BYU football.

We left town after grabbing some dinner at El Azteca (our favorite taco shop from our early married years) and drove back to Boise that night. We had a very full 5 days on our trip and are so glad we were able to see so many friends and family and make some great memories with our little family too. Until next time Utah!