Utah Trip 2009

I don't even know where to begin. We have been out of town for 6 days, and getting back into my normal routine (which includes blogging ) is challenging. But here it goes. Prepare for one long post.

Our first day we were supposed to leave early in the morning, in time to get to Salt Lake to go to a waterpark. I have been wanting to go to the waterpark for years, and was so excited to go! Instead my Sadie woke up with a high fever, and was miserable. So our morning started with a trip to the Dr.'s, followed by a trip to the pharmacy. We finally left, only to have a ride full of this:

Sadie was miserable, and cried (screamed) when she wasn't sleeping (which wasn't often enough). We made it to Salt Lake too late to go the waterpark, but that ended up being ok, since it was cold, windy, and full of smoke (there were a lot of wildfires).

But it gave us plenty of time to go to dinner, and then for the kids to play in the hotel pool.

The next day we headed to Hogle Zoo with my Dad. Sadie still wasn't feeling well, and right as we arrived she experienced the biggest fit of her life. She was irrational to the extreme, and could not be consoled. You realize that most of the people at Hogle Zoo have children, and are used to fit throwing, but this was embarrassing nonetheless. It took her a good 20 minutes of SCREAMING before she calmed down. But she finally did, and we headed into the zoo.

We knew this little woman would love it, and sure enough as soon as she laid sight on the monkeys, she changed her tune.

My dad, Eric and the kids.

Here is the cute little baby giraffe. One of the elephants was scheduled to give birth that very day. Right after we saw the elephants, I looked around and realized Jackson was missing. Eric and I went different directions and tried to find him. We both came back together 5 minutes later and realized neither one of us had him yet. That is when I started to get worried. We started searching again, and Eric finally found him sitting with a zoo guide back by the elephants. I was so relieved, and so grateful that he had stopped and looked for help instead of aimlessly wandering around. He was probably missing for 15 minutes.

We had a really great day at the zoo. The weather had called for cool temps, and rain, but the entire time we were there it was beautiful. The dark clouds, and wind came just as we were leaving. How did we get so lucky?

Before leaving town we stopped briefly at This Is The Place park right by Hogle Zoo.

We also made a quick stop at the place where Eric and I were married.

It is called the Little White Church, and is directly across from the Capitol Building. After leaving Salt Lake we headed to Ogden so I could have dinner with two of my very best friends from high school. I would like to thank facebook for making this possible.

This was one of the highlights of my trip. They both had their cute baby's with them, while I just relaxed and watched someone else take care of kids for a change. It's so fun being with people who knew you when you were younger. Seriously I feel like we are all the same, hopefully just a bit smarter and a bit more mature (but just a bit).

The next day Sadie woke up feeling much better. Hallelujah!! While all the boys in Eric's family went golfing in the rain, we girls and kids hung out at the hotel. We then went over to the park for his family reunion. The kids played, and played at the park, until it was time to go to lunch at the Golden Corral (Eric's grandpa's favorite restaurant that he insists on taking the entire family to during every reunion. Did I mention there are close to 100 of us). After the Golden Corral we were supposed to head back to the park, but due to inclement weather, Eric's immediate family decided to head over to the fun park.

We played carnival games, ran around a giant padded funhouse, played Laser Tag, bowled, and roller skated. My kids had a blast playing with all of their cousins and Aunt's and Uncles. After the fun house we headed over to a church to play more games.

The next morning we took some pictures and all had a big lunch.

All of Eric's family was able to be there for this reunion. We then headed over for a quick visit with my mom and Ken.

The kids got a lot more playground time, and Wii time. I think Jackson was going through slight MarioKart withdrawals. After visiting my mom, we drove to Bear Lake to stay a couple of nights with Eric's immediate family. Eric's brother Derek works and lives in Bear Lake, and he was able to totally hook us up. We stayed in a huge house, that had room and beds for every single one of us (about 25-30, I am too lazy to add it up right now). And this house was not your normal house. It was decked out with plasma screens in every room, high quality fixtures, high quality beds, major sound system, and about every other nice thing you can think of. The first night we just all hung out and played games. The next morning the guys went golfing (again). Then we all headed over to the lake.

Eric's brother hooked us up once again with entrance onto a private beach, along with plenty of boating and Jet-Ski time.

We left the next morning to come home. The ride involved some screaming, but not as much as the ride up. It also entailed seeing 3 wildfires. 2 of which we could see flames, and one that we could have gotten out of the car, walked 10 feet and touched it. It was right off the freeway in Cedar City.