My lovely cousin Annie got married in Utah the Friday before our spring break officially started, so we decided to pull the girls out of school a day early to attend the event and start our spring break a little early.
On
Friday, we attended all the nuptial festivities. The wedding was lovely, the luncheon was yummy, and the reception was ... hard to find.
Miriam thought we should pull funny faces for Grandpa Scott's camera while we were waiting outside the temple for the newlyweds.
Seth chasing Winnie around the temple grounds.
Andrea, Winnie, Seth, Analee and Aunt Jessica sitting on the bench after the big group photo. When we realized we weren't needed any more, we went to the hotel, then over to the luncheon.
Since this was the only problem we encountered on the trip, it's something we can laugh about now. But as our GPS tried to lead us through locked gates in uppity neighborhoods that eventually led to a residence and definitely NOT a reception center (the address on the invitation, as we found out, was for the owner's house and not the event center), as we tried calling others at the reception center to give us directions only to get more confused, as we pulled into a church parking lot to use the wifi for looking up the reception center only to plug that into the GPS and get directed to another gated community, tensions were running high. Seth and I, in our frustration, raised our voices to each other, and Miriam calmly told us that if we were going to yell at each other, we shouldn't have gotten married. That led us to apologize and forgive (which was easier to do once the guard in the gate house gave us directions and allowed us to drive through the neighborhood to reach our destination). We got to the reception an hour later than planned, but the brownies and ice cream made up for it.
Saturday we went swimming in the hotel pool, then headed to the aquarium in Draper.
Seth and the girls at the interactive water wall.
Seth and the girls (Analee is hiding behind Rebekah) walking across the rope bridge.
Rebekah taking pictures in the viewing bubble.
Inside the shark tube.
After the aquarium, we grabbed some lunch and met up with Aunt Melissa, Uncle Kent and their girls at the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point.
Analee and Rebekah pedaling to give power to a row of lights.
Miriam playing in the water.
Seth and Kent watching Winnie and Emma playing at the toddler water table.
Ana wearing a water smock.
Then we followed Kent and Melissa to their apartment and met up with Grandma Susan and Grandpa Dennis who had come for the weekend. They watched the kids while Seth, Kent, Melissa and I went out for a yummy Thai dinner and Coldstone ice cream.
On
Sunday, we drove back down to Kent and Melissa's and attended their stake conference with them. Then we left Winnie at their house so she could take a nap, and the rest of our family went north to Temple Square.
Cute girls (and a Barbie) outside the Conference Center.
Looking out the waterfall window during our tour of the Conference Center.
In the auditorium, someone was playing the organ. Miriam thought it was a little too loud.
I was going to pose with the girls on Temple Square, then commented on how my lips were probably black from eating the unwanted jelly beans left by the girls. They wanted to see how black my mouth was.
Silly picture on Temple Square.
On
Monday, we took the girls to the zoo. We thought it might have been bad planning to go to the zoo on the coolest day of our trip, but it turned out to be really good--there weren't as many people at the zoo, and the animals were quite active.
Analee with the gorilla statue.
The absolute cutest animal in the entire zoo.
Andrea, Winnie and Miriam on the carousel. The two younger girls were too wary of the up-and-down animals to ride any of them.
Seth and the girls looking at seals and sea lions.
Miriam the bear.
Winnie sizing her foot up.
The lion showing off his incisors while Analee watches.
In all, the trip was a success. We saw my both sides of the family, we entertained the girls with sightseeing, and nobody got sick, lost or maimed.
To see more photos, click
here.
