UTAH 2014: Pioneers

We got to spend Pioneer Day in Utah this year!  Pioneer Day means waking up early to watch parades, so that's what we did, along with the families of Christina, Gina, Jessica, and Shauna, and Grandma and Grandpa R.  We went to Spanish Fork and saw all their local school bands, queens and their courts, dance teams, karate studios, politicians, drama groups and BYU's Cosmo, and one lady in a roller derby team skating along while pushing a baby stroller who had a pioneer bonnet on, as the lone Pioneer Day representative.  Ben provided all kids with boxes and boxes of snaps, which kept them quite happy.

 It was perfect parade weather--slightly overcast and warm.  PS--there are no fire ants in the grass in Utah, but there are plenty of roly polies.

After the parade and visiting Jessica's new home, we came home, and I suggested that we might need some chocolate chip cookies, and Ben made some!  What a man!  He gave all the kids some as soon as they were ready.  I guess Tess was a little too tired to finish:

(Benson and Lucy decided clothes get in the way of jumping.)

 PS--Benson still talks about playing with Lucy.

We went to an Orem Owlz game that evening.  It's fun to go to a minor league game, because we got to sit so close, and they did pioneer themed games all through the breaks.  The Owlz lost--boo, but after the game, there was a huge firework show, lit off from the field.  Hooray!

For reference, here are Hoots and Holly Owl, and the small men in the background under the flag are setting up the fireworks:

This is how my children watch fireworks:

Benson is the lone hold-out for not covering his ears:

It was a great show!

No one got lost on the way back to the car through crowds in the dark, and even better, we didn't get a ticket for parking in a possibly restricted lot on UVU's campus.  Happy Pioneer Day!

UTAH 2014: Wednesday

Yikes, these pictures are out of order!  Well, we'll go with it.

On our last full day of the reunion, we had breakfast at the hotel and headed over to BYU (hooray!) for family pictures.  My favorite ones are at the end of this post.  It was a pretty decent experience, as far as being part of a huge family photograph session goes.  Benson was one of the few resisters...

We all headed to Lehi for lunch at a park and then to spend the afternoon at Trafalga/Seven Peaks fun park.  Well, everyone else did that, while we took an unplanned detour to the Creamery on Ninth to get BYU ice cream cones, which we had been promising for days, and then to buy diapers and wipes (and to use the bathroom) at another store, since the Creamery only had one size of diapers there, and no wipes.  What kind of on-campus grocery store is that? :)  Neither errand was as fast as we were hoping, so we missed the lunch at the park, but we made it for a fun afternoon with everyone!

There was an outdoor mini golf course (modeled by our amazing event planners/organizers/providers extraordinaire, my fabulous parents)

an indoor rock wall, modeled by Gracie and Maddox,

 (thanks for the pics, Laurie!)

an indoor glow mini golf course, modeled by Emma,

bumper boats, modeled by Scott and Caytie,

Benson, Ben, and Tessa,

 Emma,

and Gracie,

some more rides outside, modeled by Gracie,

 and a ride inside, modeled by Tessa, since this was her absolute favorite thing to do.

There was also laser tag, mini bowling, arcade games, Dippin' Dots, a playset for Benson, and go karts.  For some reason, our kids did not want to leave.  It was worth it when we were able to pull them away, though, because we met up with everyone again for a buffet dinner at Chuck-a-rama.  I think we were able to meet our sugar quota for the day.  Regan, Gracie, Emma, Ruby, and Mikelle are some satisfied customers.  They had so much fun sharing a hotel room together!

 Several families had to leave that night for various reasons, and we planned to get an early start at a parade the next day, so we had one last huge family swim in the hotel pool, packed everything up, and said goodbye.  Sniff sniff!  We won't be all together again for another four years.  All the kids will have such great memories of being together!  It was an amazing reunion, and I can't thank my mom and dad enough for putting it all together and helping us all to have a great time.

Here's a picture of most of our family.  My sister Jenny's husband Shawn and her kids Jacelyn and Jarret had to work, and her Courtney and Kevin are serving missions, and my brother Jeff came to Utah the next week to send his son Brennan off on his mission, and my nephew John was working in Florida, so they had to miss our reunion, but everyone else was there.

The Originals, minus Jeff--Joe, Laurie, me, Jen, Mom, Dad, Patti, Steve, and Carl:

I happen to love this picture of our family:

I also really, really love this one:

And to end, some cute cousins.  Thankfully, Regan only lives 3 hours away, so we'll get to see her often.

Thanks, thanks, thanks again, Mom and Dad!

UTAH 2014: Tuesday

After breakfast at the hotel, everyone loaded up and headed to Salt Lake.  We didn't have a set agenda for the day except for eating lunch at noon, but most of us headed first to the Church History Museum.  Even though we had been there the week before, I was happy to have some more time to explore the treasures there.  They were also doing different demonstrations, like stone cutting, where Scott got to hold the "drill" on a piece of granite for the docent who was hitting it with a sledgehammer.  They also had some young women in pioneer clothes helping anyone interested make their own rag doll.

Grandma D. challenged us to find a display with items from one of our ancestors.  Lucky for us, we walked by it just as we walked by her!  It was a small display up on the top floor with items from when Olaf Andelin was in prison for practicing polygamy.  There are letters with illustrations he wrote, and the wooden item is a toy he carved.  The prison guards trusted him enough to keep a knife.

Of course we spent some quality time in the children's area again.  That area is just as good as any children's museum that I have been to, and it is free!  I was determined to get a picture of Benson with his cousin Evie, and this is the best one we got.  They had a good time playing with (next to) each other.

We all had lunch at the mall, and then again most of us headed over to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, where we watched the movie about Joseph Smith's life.  We were told it is being replaced soon with "Meet the Mormons," which is also being released in select theaters across the nation.  We hope it comes to us! We also spent a bit of time at the Family History area (and the nearby awesome bathrooms, where Tessa entertained everyone unwittingly with her constant chatter and singing).

The evening's event was dinner, a talent show, and crafts, held at Ben's family's church, so we headed back early to get the keys and to set up tables.

Apparently I took no pictures of the talent show!  I did film it, though that is of no help here on the blog.  Our family had learned a simple bluegrass song ("Boil 'Em Cabbage") for our talent.  Ben was on the banjo, I played the mandolin, Scott was on the guitar, Emma fiddled, Gracie played the ukulele, Caytie played the tambourine, Tessa did the triangle, and Benson hit a hollow stick with another stick.  We contemplated bringing all our instruments with us, but when we decided to fly, we recorded our "performance" and just showed it on TV.  I was pretty proud of my kids for pulling it off.  We hadn't played all together before like that.  We were far from perfect, but better than I had hoped.  Come to my house to watch it. :)

I did manage to take a picture of all interested parties singing "Let it Go" again.  (Sorry, Gracie--it seems I always snap the picture just before your dramatic arm gestures.)

 Let's see if I can see everyone in the picture...  From left to right, there is Mason, I think a bit of Austin, Alissa, Mikelle, Ruby in red, Brandon, Brinlee, 1/2 of Claire, tiny Linclon, probably Juliana, Scott's blue shirt, Regan in pink, Caytie sitting, Emma, Tessa, can't tell tiny face, Gracie, Taelyn, Hannah, Kaisey, Rachel, Daniel, Emily, Sarah, I think Bailey, and Annica.  These kids had a great time.

Back to the hotel...and to sleep!

UTAH 2014: Monday

 Bright and early Monday morning, we started a three day family reunion with my parents, siblings, and multitudes of grandkids.  We all met at our hotel and then we were off--to hike the Y!  I had done this once as a student, and remembered it was harder than I thought it would be, especially coming from a low altitude.  I didn't have great expectations for us finishing the hike (I'm way more out of shape now than as a student, and some of my kids are not very...robust), but I thought we should at least go as far as we could.

Scott and Gracie scampered off ahead of us in the first group of hikers.  Ben, Benson, Caytie, Tessa, Emma and I pretty much made up the back of the group.  Here we are, "SO TIRED!," and we hadn't even made it to the first switchback yet.

I can't remember how many switchbacks there were--maybe 12?  We had to use promises of fruit snacks or granola bars or a chance to sit down to motivate the kids to the end of each one.  I thought we'd go half way, but when we got there, we got the first view of the Y on the mountain, and that gave us resolve to push on.  Also, each switchback got shorter, which motivated me to keep motivating.  And so, to our amazement, we made it all the way!

Scott and Gracie had been there for a while.  As we walked up, Scott was trying to come down to us, got going too fast, and tripped off the Y onto the part where we are standing in the photo above.  He scraped up his hands and knees pretty good.

Our view of the valley from the Y:

The walk down was much faster, but our legs were pretty wobbly by the end.  I was surprised to find the whole trip only took about two and a half hours.

From the Y, we went directly to BYU for lunch, and then to complete a "Spot This" scavenger hunt my mom put together.  (One of the items was a BYU mint brownie, so we just HAD to get some.)  My kids were pretty quick, since we had seen a lot of the things earlier in the week, so we had a lot of time to play in the Eyring Science Center.  Ben and I were pretty wiped out from the hike and were happy to sit.  We met up with most of the other families as they came through, too.

 We made an extra stop to visit Grandpa R at his office.  Grandpa took us to see a 3D printer at work, and to the animation department, where we saw a clip of a movie the students are currently working on, and the theater where they screen the movies, and, of course, our friend Po, who is a gift to BYU because (at least) one of their graduates worked heavily on Kung Fu Panda.

After getting settled in our hotel rooms, we headed over to Glen Canyon Park.  (We love that place!)  We ate a yummy dinner and played games and threw rocks with a whole new set of cousins.  We were hoping to get over to explore Bridal Veil Falls, but there was just not enough time before we headed over to...

...the Heber Creeper!  This is a good chunk of our crew waiting to board the train.  (Yes, my nephew McKay is fine.)

Juliana, Claire, Ruby, Emma, Regan, Gracie, and McKay were fairly inseparable.

I got to sit with my boys for the train ride.  It was a nice, slow rambling trip through Heber and along the reservoir in the mountains.  Benson loved every single second of being on the train, and we all had fun watching him have so much fun.

Here's Benson, with a bit of the scenery:

During the trip, they had fiddlers come and play for us, and another girl came to lead some singing.  She had a microphone and asked Gracie, Emma, and Regan to start off the song from Frozen, and she couldn't have made a better choice.  They got so into it, it didn't take long for the whole car to be singing along, and there was a lot of dancing, too.  Here's Gracie, about to do a dramatic arm fling.  Brooke, Aunt Jennie, Uncle Carl, and Aunt Laurie look pretty into the song, too!

A content Benson:

And now--to sleep!

UTAH 2014: Fun

We spent the rest of the week playing hard.  On Wednesday, all the kids spent 90% of the day playing in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard, making some great cousin memories.  We went swimming that night at Provo City's new rec center pool.  Wow--it was pretty amazing.  The indoor pool area had a large play structure, a lazy river, two water slides, a deep pool with a rock wall on the side for climbing and  a "cliff" for diving/jumping off of, and a pool for basketball/volleyball.  Everyone found their happy place and we spent a good chunk of time there, before we realized there was a whole outdoor pool area, also with a play structure, two water slides, and a wave pool--but this closed just a few minutes after we found it.  No matter.  We had a great time.  (And PS--that morning my sis-in-law Christina gave me a full pedicure with gel polish--it felt so good, and looked great!  Thank you!!)

On Thursday, we went to a park to play tennis.  It was so, so hot!  We found some shade, though.  I gave Emma the camera while we played and she took it over to the younger kids on the playground.  Now we have some interesting footage from her perspective.  I never thought to go up the slide as I was filming...

That evening we went to the food truck round up in downtown Provo.  Of course, we had to start with snow cones.  Isn't that how everyone starts dinner?  They had all sorts of trucks there--big fat burritos, wood-fired pizza, Hawaiian food, Cajun food, Mexican food, fancy huge waffles, fancy tiny donuts, and so forth.  We ended up with some lack-luster tamales and some really good corn dogs.  It was fun, but I think all the adults decided it would be better as a date activity instead of a family one, since there was nowhere to sit, and the kids weren't interested in the really good food.

On Friday, we got to go to one of the happiest places on earth--BYU campus!  We did our typical tour of going through the MOA (there was a great exhibit on movie costumes, and it was family week or something, so there were people throughout the museum with interactive displays for kids), and then over to the bookstore to stock up on some BYU gear.  We stopped to get a photo with my favorite little statue:

Not quite a reenactment of the one from two years ago.  I will build up a collection of these. :)

For lunch, we met up with Grandpa after his class for the buffet lunch at the new Morris Center cafeteria.  Um, so yummy.  It's really a good thing I had to cook for myself at college, because if I had this buffet to eat at for every meal, I would not fit into any clothes by the end of the semester.

Here's part of the crew:

Benson got the honor of sitting by Grandpa, and he mostly didn't mind.  Maybe it was the bowl of Froot Loops keeping him happy...or the chocolate pudding with gummy worms...

Since Tessa had recently had her birthday, Grandma gave her a gift.

Exactly what she wanted!  (It has a hood and pockets and [maybe you didn't notice] it's pink--what more could you ask for?)

We got a shot of all the grandkids that were there (with Ben) and Grandpa, before he headed back to class and we headed up the hill to the newly renovated Bean Museum.  There's Benson, Ben, Claire, Zady, Ross, Emma, Tessa, Gracie, Caytie, Ayden (where's Brydger?), Lucy, Grandpa, Remy, Amelia, Collin, Scott, Lily, and Afton (possibly switched).  (PS--my girls loved the little girl cousins, and were so good to them.  They have renamed their baby dolls Lily and Afton.)

 I always liked the Bean Museum--it was kind of quaint, and fun to visit as a student and mom.  It is a lot more grand now that it is renovated--but somehow still quaint.  It was worth it to go up to see it.  Scott had the camera for the trip, and it's fun to see what he thought was worth filming. :)  PS--the exhibits are definitely more...dramatic, and...violent...than they were before.  Just FYI.)

That evening Ben and I went up to see a musical written by my brother Steve for an extended family reunion that was happening that weekend.  I was incredibly impressed at the level of musicianship in the lyrics, melodies, accompaniment, and blending of different songs together (there's probably a word for that).  We also signed a banner to be given to Cassidy Stay, who was the lone survivor after her ex-uncle murdered her whole family, just about two weeks before the reunion.  Her dad is my mom's second cousin (I believe--feel free to correct me if anyone knows differently). 

On Saturday, we probably went somewhere and did something during the day, but my fuzzy brain is keeping that information hidden for now.  I'll update if I remember.  I do know that we had a great evening in one of our favorite places--Canyon Glen Park.  Tessa was pretty funny--"Take a picture of us by the river!"

  "Take a picture of me with the mountains!"

Benson did not want his picture taken.  He wanted to sit and sulk and be grumpy, but I shouldn't be too hard on him, because he fell asleep in my arms after about two minutes of holding him, and he never does that.

We had a yummy dinner, and fun throwing things into the river, playing a huge family game of baseball, and having the kids be run over by Uncle Golden's RC truck.

Tessa, Collin, Benson, Gracie, and Claire reflect on the great day they had.

Sunday was a day of rest (and church--which is not "rest" for our family yet).  Dare I say that Sunday School always gives me new appreciation for being in Primary?  Enough on that.  It was a lovely day, and we all got together for dinner and games that evening.  Grandpa even set up a movie for the grandkids in the backyard with blankets in the grass to end the day.  Summer evenings in Utah beat out summer evenings in Texas (98 degrees at 9 pm??), except for one thing--fireflies.  Transfer them to Utah, and it would be perfection.