Utah Revisited

Happy times are here again! Our trip to Utah wasn't all sadness. Since we had to make the trip anyway, we decided to go up a little early and enjoy a little bit of the Christmas season Utah style. When we left Phoenix, the highs had been in the mid-70's, which meant it didn't feel like Christmas time at all... Salt Lake City had highs in the mid-50's, which was unseasonably warm for them, but just cold enough to feel like Christmas to me (without freezing my buns off). Even though we didn't end up really needing hats or gloves, the kids were eager to wear the new winter gear I had just bought for them. Here they are in the window at Macy's downtown.

The Lowell Observatory membership we had bought when we visited Flagstaff got us in free at the Discovery Gateway center. I had never been there before, and it ended up being a pretty cool children's museum. The first room had a giant beehive with all these ways to make balls travel through it.

We managed to eke out a song on the xylophone, although we were totally upstaged later by a couple of guys who worked there.

Even I had fun in the grocery store. "Price check at register 2!"

Brandon would have played at the water works all day if we had let him.

Paige's paper airplane was a success!

Who hasn't dreamed of hosting the evening news? Even I had to take a turn at the anchor desk... thinking of something to say was harder than it seemed! I needed a teleprompter!

They had a camera set up for stop action animation, and the kids and I made a movie about dinosaurs and Mr. Potato Head.

Around the corner was a full on stage with backdrops, curtains, stage lights, and costumes for the kids to wear. We watched several shows where all the characters just ran around in circles.

Their special exhibit was all about Tinker Toys.

This was a collaborative drawing. Paige and I had fun writing secret messages to each other by writing with the same color as the background and then switching the background color to reveal the message.

That evening, we drove up to West Point to visit our old stomping grounds. As we drove through the neighborhood, we pointed at house after house and tried to remember names and stories... sometimes successful, sometimes not. Our old house was up for sale again and there were new trees in the backyard, but all in all everything seemed quite familiar. We said, "Oh yeah, I remember that!" a lot.

After our trip down memory lane, we headed up to Ogden to visit their Christmas Village... in the rain.

Brandon and Kallie were willing to stand in the rain to visit Santa Claus while Russ and Paige went to find shelter.

The rest of my family arrived that night, and the next night after the funeral and dinner were over, we tried to go shopping at the City Creek mall downtown. It was super crowded and hard to keep all the kids together, so we gave up pretty quickly and went over to Temple Square. It was crowded, but beautiful as always.

Everybody got some hot chocolate.

The kids enjoyed the manger scene from the back side... they thought it was so funny that the sheep's rear was facing us.

After walking and walking and wearing out my mom's back, we made a final stop at the reflecting pool. Lori and I were snapping this photo at the same time, and I like how the kids just seem to know whose camera to look at.

The next day, we went to our old ward in West Point and enjoyed a warm welcome. We seemed to fit right back in, and it was almost as if we never left. The only people who changed were the kids! But as a cold winter storm started to blow in that afternoon, I reminded Russ once again (as I had many times on that trip) how glad I am that we moved to Arizona!! The thought of flying out before the weather turned freezing was a beautiful thing.