A quick trip to Utah

It was a quick 5 day trip to Utah including 2 days of driving, but it was super fun and we packed as much into it as humanly possible. 

We started out Friday at about 1pm after getting the kids out of school early. We hit some traffic through Las Vegas and then had a hard time finding a place to eat, so we didn't end up getting into Sandy until after 1 in the morning. The last two hours were brutal to have to drive, but we made it and were glad to get to sleep in a bit Saturday morning. 

We missed most of the morning session of conference getting ready so that we could head out to Salt Lake City to watch the afternoon session in person. We took the trax train to Salt Lake to avoid traffic and got there in plenty of time.

It was a beautiful day and I think this picture says it all! Love the Salt Lake Temple.

And yes, we had this awesome of seats.

And yes, that is President Monson, Elder Eyring and Elder Uchtdorf you are looking at in this picture. It was so exciting!

Afterward, we met up with Christie and walked over to the City Creek Mall where we walked past a Cheesecake Factory. We were all super hungry, so it was a definite no brainer. We were stopping for dinner.

After that we headed back to Temple Square to tour around a bit.

This is the EXACT location that Paul sat me down at, to propose to me. It was 13 years ago this past month. Best decision I ever made was saying yes to him.

The girls were being silly. They didn't like any of the pictures I was taking. 

The next day was Sunday and after some lounging around the house, watching conference, making cookies and getting Christie to the airport......

we decided we needed to get out of the house and went for a picnic in the mountains.

It was a BIT more chilly than we had anticipated, so our picnic was eaten more quickly than we would have liked. We did walk around a bit afterward, took a bunch of pics and then drove up the rest of the canyon to look at the amazing Fall colors. It was so pretty.

On Monday we got up bright and early and headed out to meet up with Lauren at BYU and take Callie  on a tour. It was the first time I have really walked around campus much since graduating 10 years ago, so it was really fun for me too. So much was exactly the same and it brought back so many memories. Ones I had totally forgotten about. 

Random picture, but Paul and I use to meet up in the eatery area in between classes for lunch. So it looks insignificant, but it was super cool to me.

I let these two walk around by themselves a bunch and chat. I think Lauren was a good help to Callie who is currently in the application process at BYU and REALLY wants to come here. It was so fun to see how great Lauren was doing and how much she was loving it there. 

THEN.... after walking around BYU for a couple of hours, I met up with my mom (who had my boys) and we went to Cafe Rio. No trip to Utah is complete without a trip to Cafe Rio. YUMMY! And I'm super excited to be getting one in our Valley in the next month or two. Yahoo.

(I should have taken a picture there, but I might have eaten my food too fast to do that).

After Cafe Rio, Lauren had to get back to school and my mom had to get to work, so I took Callie and my kids and went to visit my cousin Chelsea right there in Provo. We just hung out and let the kids play while we chatted for a few hours together. It was so fun to see her and her cute girls. 

The next morning it was time to head home. So we packed up the car and headed out mid morning. The drive home is never as fun and the kids were definitely tired (some Carter meltdowns definitely happened), but they were pretty good all things considering and we made it home that evening. I'm so glad we decided to go even though Paul couldn't come with us. Everything worked out so well and we had such a good time. It's exciting to have little trips get easier and easier as the kids get older. One day we might actually make it out to Iowa. I know Paul's parents would be happy about that. 

A few random pics

Carter thought it would be more fun to trace his foot than it would be to trace his hand. Funny boy.

Ashlyn got the Star Achiever award for excellence in Language Arts and Math this year. I was really proud of her for getting it in math also, because that's a tough subject for her. Way to go Ashlyn!

Paul took the day off and came into volunteer with me to Brandon's class. We surprised Brandon who was definitely confused when I walked in with Paul, but he soon figured it out and was ecstatic.

And this is a shout out to my brother who's birthday was this past Friday. I happened to look at my phone at 10:04 on 10/04. I thought it was cool! So I took a screen shot of it.

The Carter show

Paul teased me yesterday that my instagram account is now full of Carter pictures. Well....I guess he's right since Carter's the only one that is home with me all day while the other three are in school. 

He's definitely a lucky boy. He loves the zoo and with just one kid in tow, it's not too hard to go out and do fun stuff. 

So yesterday morning we headed out to the zoo for the morning. It's been very empty at the zoo lately. I think because the school field trips haven't started up yet. It's quite nice. We walked through the reptile lair with plenty of space and then saw lots of other animals on the way up to the playground. Carter loves the gorillas and spends a lot of time looking at them. We got up by the giraffes and saw a huge fight going on between the chimpanzees. It was SO loud and they were really fighting. Not just playing around. We ran over there to see what was going on. There were a few with blood dripping down their face and legs. My guess is the males were fighting over first dibs of the females, but who knows. There were a couple of zoo keepers out watching (I guess they don't break up fights. Not that they could have anyway without getting hurt. It was pretty intense). They were talking amongst themselves and I heard them say they've seen quite a few fights between the chimpanzees, but never one this bad. So it was quite eventful. 

After that "show" we headed over the playground and then took the long trek back down the side of the zoo where there are barely any animals. Carter was getting tired by then, so we took a quick stop at the elephants and headed out. 

I love his hilarious poses lately.

On the way home, we always stop and say hi to Paul and have lunch together. It's been nice to be able to do that more lately. Carter decided he needed his own table and so he became the biggest attraction in his own little zoo. Everyone that walked past him stared at him and smiled as they walked by. I guess a 2 year old munching on crackers and watching a show on Daddy's phone is quite entertaining when he was the only one that size around. 

I can only imagine how much of a show we would have put on if I had all four kids with me.

SO Proud

Do you see that? Ok, so they spelled her name wrong, but that's okay.

 MY Ashlyn played a flute solo in front of our entire ward congregation during church this past Sunday. And you know what....she did AMAZING! She was SO nervous and practiced more than I've ever seen her practice, but I was so incredibly proud of her for overcoming her fear and being willing to do it. It makes me teary eyed just thinking about it. Sure love that girl of mine!

And while I'm on my mommy brag, which I can do since it's my blog and all, I have to remember this story. 

So Brandon has this kid on the playground (we'll call him Justic because well...that's his name and I don't care about protecting his identity. LOL) He makes fun of Brandon. Calls him names and such. Well, Leah heard Brandon telling me about him. So one day after school while the kids were all waiting in the valet line, Leah hears this kid call Brandon a mean name. So Leah goes right over to him and says, "Hey...that's my brother. Don't call him that"! 

When the kids got in the car and told me the story, I think my heart was about ready to burst out of my chest I was so proud of her for sticking up for her brother. And who knows if this kid will really stop calling Brandon mean names (he has so far, but we'll see in the long run), it just made me so happy to know she wasn't gonna let some bully make fun of her brother. That Leah doesn't miss a thing. 

And just for fun, for some reason I think it's so incredibly adorable to see Brandon doing his homework. So I took a picture of it. 

This was actually at his class today when I got to go in and volunteer. I have to be grateful he wanted me to sit right by him in class since some day I will most likely be an embarrassment to him at school. Haha....

Crazy boys

At least they have each other to wrestle around with, because I certainly do not want to. It's hilarious to me that they think this is "fun"!