Random Utah Activities

The first night of our trip we drove to Vail. Nate had some hotel nights that were expiring, so we thought we'd get a little of the drive behind us. Plus our kids LOVE hotels, so that was fun. It made the rest of the drive the next day pretty easy, and we were able to make it in time to see Uncle Andrew (who was supposed to leave for Virginia that day). Andrew lives in a beautiful townhouse that is bigger than our house. And he shares it with one other guy! His friend's parents own it and so they don't want a bunch of college boys living in it, but they trust Andrew. They each have a floor to themselves plus the middle floor to share. The thing about Andrew is, he is the most laid back guy and doesn't really care where he lives. He spent the summer sleeping outside on a balcony in Uganda. Anyway, the kids adore Andrew. He is non-stop fun for them.

Nate's parents were going to Hawaii for Christmas, so they hadn't put up a tree. Of course, we needed a tree, so we put one up. The kids had fun decorating it and I let them be much more involved, because I already had my tree the way I wanted it at our house!

It was fun to see some of Nate's ornaments from growing up. Did every primary child get a red plastic apple ornament with their name on it in 1984? Or was it just the 5 year olds? Or out of all the kids in the whole church, was it just our two primary teachers that both had this gift idea?

The Sunday before Christmas we enjoyed going to Church with Nate's sister, Becky's family. Their last two kids are the same age and gender as ours, so they had fun going to primary and nursery together. We also got to hear Becky give a heart warming talk. That night we all went to see the lights on Temple Square. They were beautiful, but it was SO cold!!!

Here's the whole gang.

Harrison said, "I want to live here all the time." I said, "Don't you think you'd be really cold?" He said, "Well, Jesus lives here, he could warm me up." Good point.

Remind me that the red coat buttoned all the way up is not a great look for me when I'm 8 months pregnant.

Elizabeth wanted me to take a picture of her and the picture she colored at Nursery.

Cabella's is a huge outdoorsman store very close to Nate's parents house. We drive right by it several times whenever we're there and we'd heard it was a cool place to take kids. With Nate on business and his parents in Hawaii, we were looking for things to do, so we decided to check it out. They have a huge taxidermy display which my kids really enjoyed. They could not stop talking about all the "dead animals that were real." Harrison truly talked about it NON-STOP from there to IKEA (which took at least 20 minutes.) He barely took a breath. Later he got started up again and continued going ON and ON. (I really don't know who my children get their incessant rambling from.)

They wanted a picture with the bear. I insisted on one more with the moose, because it is a dream of mine to see a moose in the wild. I really like their huge antlers. If I saw one in the wild without the huge antlers, I would not consider my dream fulfilled. Considering how many opportunities I create for myself to be "in the wild", I highly doubt seeing a moose with or without antlers will ever come to fruition. But one can always dream.

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