Utah trip 2009

Last week was our trip to Utah for a family reunion on my mom's side, 4th of July, and my grandma's 88th birthday (which is on July 4th).
So the trip started on Wednesday. We made it out of town at 11am. The kids had a great time playing together in the back of the van. I had borrowed my mother in law's portable dvd player to help entertain them but most of the time they were too busy playing anyway. I also had fun doing flashcards with them. They would each take turns saying the letter or word. It's probably the first time I didn't sleep at all on the way to Utah, and I wasn't even driving. We made a pit stop in Logan to visit the temple and take photos and then went to visit my very good friend Heather that I grew up with. It was great to see her again. I haven't seen her since the hospital after Garrett's 1st surgery. Then on to Aunt Deb's house where we had a wonderful dinner of hot dogs, hamburgers, and some delicious salads.
It was late Wed night that we discovered that my niece Katelynn had pink eye. Lucky for us we didn't have anything planned for Thurs so we hung out at the house all day and my sister and her hubby went to get medication for their daughter's eyes. There ended up being a big afternoon thunderstorm with lots of rain. And I couldn't believe that I saw my aunt's neighbor outside mowing his lawn in the rain and lightening. That guy was just asking to be electrocuted.
So now that Katelynn has been on her eye drops for 24 hrs she is not contagious and Friday we were off to Deer Creek Canyon to have some fun at the lake. We had a little fun trying to find the right site though. We thought we went to the right place but discovered it wasn't and as we were backing up to turn around, out of nowhere a big blue dumpster got right behind us and it wasn't seen before we hit it. That bully beat up my poor van's rear end but luckily it will be fixed and look as good as new on Monday. I didn't show a picture of the dent yet. I'll wait until it's fixed so that I can show before and after pictures. Anyway, after finally finding the right place we were able to enjoy chatting with relatives and getting in the freezing cold lake. We decided that we were too tired to do anything else the rest of the evening so we just headed back to my aunt's to relax and watch a movie.
Saturday was our busiest day. We drove out to Hobble Creek Canyon where we had a reserved picnic area for our reunion. The day was filled with lots of activities, a nearby playground,wading in the creek, singing happy birthday to my 88 yr old grandma and the weather was beautiful with sunny and breezy conditions that felt good. I felt like I was going in 3 different directions at once though trying to make sure I knew where my kids were and what they were doing, helping them if they needed it, and trying to take pictures of everything. Which would explain why I neglected to get sunscreen on my baby and so his head and part of his face got sunburned. Afterwards we went over to Grandma & Grandpa's new house in Springville (technically it's my uncle Gilbert's house actually) where we visited, the kids played with toys, the boys played basketball, and we ate dinner. Then it was back to SLC where we watched fireworks from the top of my other grandparent's condo. It was beautiful up there. We were all so tired from the day that we had a hard time getting out of SLC to get back to my aunt's house in Bountiful. My brother in law Chris kept turning the wrong way. My sister Tamara and I couldn't help but laugh every time he did. I think we laughed the whole way home. It was great.
Finally, Sunday morning we went to church, ate some yummy leftovers for lunch, and hit the road for home. I've never taken so many pictures on a vacation before, partly because my new camera can hold a ton of pictures where as my old one could only hold about 100 or less. As it was I took over 250 pictures this trip but I'll just keep it to two slideshows. It was hard to decide which pictures to not show but then there were also a lot of the same poses sometimes. Sooooo here are the pictures from our trip for your enjoyment.