We arrived at Carrie's house in Boise on Saturday, April 9th, around 7 p.m. She treated us to BBQ hamburgers for dinner and the kids enjoyed playing in the hot tub with Carrie's youngest child, Naomi, that evening.
As we were driving into Utah Valley on Sunday, April 10th, we stopped in South Jordan to spend the afternoon and eat dinner with our good friends, the Florences, who used to live up the hill from us and who sadly moved August 2020.
Since the Florences live in the same neighborhood as the temple where Spencer and Hannah were sealed this past September, I made a quick detour there to show the kids where they were married. He is a picture of them in front of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. We then drove to Sundance and arrived there at 8 p.m. at night. After unpacking our car and getting settled, the kids and I all crashed for a good night's sleep.
On Monday, April 11th, Sarah agreed to let Josh skip school to spend the day with us. I drove the kids down to the Bridal Veil Falls trailhead at the bottom of Provo Canyon. Although it was quite chilly, I managed to convince the kids to go on a short hike with me to the bottom of the falls.
Logan, Emmett, and Josh walking down the trail.
The kids playing in the stream at the base of the waterfall.
A group shot of all five children at the bottom of the falls.
Sweet Emmett walking back to the car.
Another group photo atop a boulder before finishing the hike.
While I made lunch for all of the children, they enjoyed playing in the indoor pool and soaking in the hot tub on the deck with amazing scenery all around them.
Logan, Ella, and Emmett soaking away.
Lia, Ella, and Emmett playing in the hot tub with one of Sarah's dogs at their side.
Ella discovered Sarah's piano the first morning we were there and played on it multiple times a day all week long. Sarah was so nice to play duets with her both on the piano and on her violin.
Sarah had us all make personal-sized pizzas for dinner Monday night with homemade pizza dough. It was so delicious and the kids had so much fun making them.
Here is Emmett spreading the pizza sauce on his pizza dough.
On Tuesday morning, April 12th, Sarah introduced all of the children to her amazing jewelry making corner in the loft upstairs. She let all of them choose almost anything they wanted to use to make their necklaces and bracelets. Here are Lia and Emmett working on Sarah's side of the table.
Ella and Logan beading away on the other side of the table.
We then left about 10:30 (after the two inches of snow had melted enough that I felt safe driving down the steep and windy roads in Sarah's neighborhood) to head down to Provo to spend the new few hours at my alma mater, BYU.
After walking the kids through the two buildings where I spent the most amount of time during my BYU days (the JKHB and the library), we finished off in the Wilkinson Center to peruse the bookstore. I was surprised to see that they have added a fun, children's area complete with a slide down a miniature version of the "Y mountain.." Here is Ella getting ready to come down the slide.
Ella and Emmett posing next to the Y mountain.
We then met up with Kelsey, my one niece who is studying at BYU, and treated her to lunch at the Cougareat. It's hard to believe that next year there will be FIVE of my nieces and nephews at the Y, but this year Kelsey is the only student there in the cousin department. We had so much fun visiting with her!
After lunch, Kelsey walked us down to the Eyring Science Center where she has the majority of her classes to see the crystal collection and the dinosaur bones. Here are the kids posing with Kelsey before saying goodbye to her.
Aunt Beese with Kelsey.
We then headed back up to Sundance for Emmett to take his afternoon nap while Sarah took the kids back down to the valley to go shopping at two of her favorite nurseries. Since Sarah has gone crazy with making fairy gardens in the past few years, she promised all three older kids that they would have the chance to make their own to bring home with us. All three of them had such a good time picking out plants and accessories to put in their gardens.
Sarah's house has an amazing loft room on the top level with a swing attached to the ceiling that Emmett and Ella loved playing in all week long. Logan tucked Emmett into his special blanket with his head on his pillow on Tuesday evening and I just had to take a picture of this darling site!
The snow started falling again on Tuesday evening and fell on and off through Wednesday afternoon. As a result, we woke up to about six inches of snow on April 13th. We had to reschedule our plans to go to Salt Lake City until Friday since the roads getting in and out of Sarah's neighborhood were way too slippery for my front-wheel van to drive while covered in snow.
:Luckily, Sarah had enough snow clothes to outfit all five of us so that we could go out and play in the snow. We spent a funfilled morning and afternoon (after Emmett's nap) sledding in her yard that is full of steep hills and woods. It was such a fun and unexpected surprise to get a snow play day on our Spring Break vacation!
Lia and Emmett getting ready to sled down the hill.
Logan and Ella walking back up the hill with their sleds.
Ella flying down the hill on her sled.
Emmy and me getting ready to go down!
Logan coming down towards me!
Sweet Emmy giving me a smile.
The boys making snow angels.
The view of Emmett walking down Sarah's road covered in fresh snow.
After playing in the snow, the kids and I had the best time soaking in Sarah's hot tub while the snow was still falling down on us. This was so much fun as I have only had the chance to go hot tubbing in the snow one other time in my life when I was a child on a family trip to Leavenworth.
On Thursday, April 14th, Sarah decided to keep Josh home from school again so that the two of them could join us for an outing to Heber City. We enjoyed taking the kids on the beautiful drive up the canyon and through the quaint town of Midway before stopping for lunch at the famous burger and shake restaurant, Dairy Keen.
Emmy loved eating his chocolate shake that he shared with Logan.
Since the restaurant is train themed, Emmett was in heaven and had fun sitting on the trains outside after we were done eating.
The kids riding on some other trains in the outside eating area.
During Emmett's nap time, I drove down to Orem to visit one of my college roommates, also named Sarah, who I haven't seen in 15 years. I then came home to join the family for dinner and then led the kids in coloring Easter eggs as I knew that we wouldn't have time to do this at home this year.
Although snow was on the forecast again for early Friday morning, I was so relieved to wake on April 15th to find zero snow on the ground. This meant that we could stick with our SLC plans which was important to me as I really wanted to take the kids up to see Temple Square for the first times in their lives (excluding Lia who had been there when she was 1.5 years old, but obviously didn't remember a thing). After driving through rain and hail on the way into Salt Lake City, we were so happy to see that the crazy weather had stopped by the time we parked the car in an underground parking lot and emerged back outside. We first went on a tour through the Beehive House where Brigham Young and two other prophets of the church, Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith, also lived while serving as prophet of our church. Here are the children standing in front of the door to Brigham Young's bedroom.
The children outside of the Beehive House after the completion of the tour.
Although we knew that the SLC Temple is currently being renovated, we had no idea how covered in scaffolding it would be! With the spires removed, it is basically unrecognizable at this point which was a bit of a bummer since this is my children's first time seeing it in person. Here they are standing in front of a viewing area where you can look in at the renovations taking place.
Luckily, the section of Temple Square with the Assembly Hall and the Tabernacle were still untouched and beautiful. I enjoyed showing the kids around this area and admiring all of the spring flowers.
The kids in front of the organ pipes in the Tabernacle.
We wandered across the street to take a peak inside the massive Conference Center. The kids couldn't get over how huge it is! We then walked back over to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to eat lunch at the only operating restaurant in Temple Square right now called The Navoo. We were all a bit hangry, so it felt great to be able to sit down and eat lunch in this charming cafe inside such a historic building.
After we were finished with lunch, we headed back to the car to drive over to see my good friend, Melissa, who I met during my study abroad in Jerusalem 26 years ago. I hadn't seen her since I visited Utah 11 years ago when Lia was 1.5 years old, so it was so fun to see her and her grown girls and visit their house that they are remodeling. Since Melissa lives right up against the mountains in SLC, we took the scenic drive on Interstate 80 back to Sundance and drove through the mountains through Park City.
After packing up Saturday morning, we headed out around 9:30 on April 16th to start the long drive home. Just like our drive into Utah Valley, we made another stop on our way out to visit a second family from Puyallup who had moved during the pandemic. We made the detour to Eagle Mountain to see the Webbs and their beautiful new home that they moved into last summer. After vising with them for about an hour, we got back in the car and made the six hour drive back to Boise to spend the evening with my friend, Carrie, and her family. I was so grateful again to be able to break up this long drive and stop over for the night.
Although I told the kids weeks ago that we would be celebrating Easter a week late this year, we woke up to join Carrie's family for a delicious Easter breakfast of homemade Swedish pancakes and sausage on April 17th. We then packed back up again and headed out at 10 a.m. to make the eight hour drive back to Puyallup. Here is a group picture that we managed to get with Carrie and one of our her four kids, Gabe.
As we were driving from Carrie's house to the freeway, we just had to stop to get a picture of Emmett with one of the many Emmett signs that we saw on our drive into the Boise area last week. I had totally forgotten that Ron had discovered this 3.5 years ago when he drove to Boise to buy his beautiful Suburban. We all had thought that this was such a crazy coincidence as Ron had already named his Suburban "Big Emmett" before purchasing it since this was the reward I promised him he could have if I was ever to get pregnant with "Little Emmett.."
A close-up of the sign. I just love how this town's name is spelled the exact same way as our son's name. And a funny story to record before I finish this post....after pointing out several Emmett signs to Emmett while driving though Southern Idaho and also showing him several Logan signs while driving through Northern Utah, Emmett asked when he we get to see Lia's and Ella's signs. It had never dawned on me that we would see two of our four children's names on several freeway signs on the drive between Puyallup to Provo. But thanks to Emmett, I will never forget that again!
After a second long drive day, I was so relieved to pull into our driveway at 5:40 local time. I was so grateful that my car (that had several problems this fall) functioned properly the entire time and that we never encountered any danger or accidents or heavy snow on the roads during this entire road trip. Although I am so glad that my kids and I were able to go on this big road trip alone, I was so happy to be safely back home again!
No comments:
Post a Comment