Utah Trip: SLC and Home Again

Monday morning was our scheduled day to go to Salt Lake City to visit the Planetarium, Temple Square and the Conference Center. Colby had the day off, so he came with Cindy and his boys to join us. We parked under the Conference Center and then walked over to the Trax station to ride over to the Planetarium. The kids were excited to ride the Trax because it's like a combination of a bus and a train. They also loved that they could stand up while it moved as long as they held on to something. 

I think all of the kids enjoyed the Planetarium. Jack was actually the most anxious to go. He's been there once before in 2018 when we came to conference with the 3 oldest kids. He had forgotten what all was in there but he knew it would be good. We spent a couple of hours there. Colby discovered our 2nd cousin Trent Haverfield, who was working as the Sheriff on duty there at the Planetarium. Colby and I did not recognize him but he recognized us. He said you guys definitely look like Nortons. Trent is the one that asked to talk to Colby and find out about him. I think Colby was a little nervous at first because the sheriff wanted to talk to him, ha ha. It was cool that he knew we were Nortons.

Bought some bouncy balls and watched them orbit. They used black lights so the balls would glow.

Walking on Mars.

Playing with this two story contraption that has to do with Newton's Law of Motion I think.

Playing some space games.

Green screen for weather reporting on different planets.

There's our two favorite reporters.

Blasting off to space in the play area.

Trying to walk through the tornado cloud without breaking it up. They weren't very successful.

The nice thing is that the Planetarium is free of charge. You only pay if you want to watch a movie or to buy food or souvenirs. After we finished up there, we walked next door to the Mall where Lehi got some pizza from Pizza Hut (inside the movie theater) and the rest of us got some food across the way at Buster's. I ordered Parmesan Chicken and alfredo and it was really good. It was getting late in the afternoon and we needed to hurry over to Temple Square and the conference center before Colby and Cindy had to take off to go pick up their cat from the vet. They managed to see Temple Square with us but then we had to do the conference center tour on our own. It was the first time our girls had seen any of these things in Salt Lake. They were really tired and groaned about being tired while we walked over after getting off the Trax, but I think they enjoyed everything.

Up close view of the Salt Lake Temple construction/renovation.

The smaller Tabernacle. We did not go inside this one.

Inside the bigger Tabernacle.

Over to the conference center and waiting for our tour to begin. The water fountains were not on because the church agreed with the city to try to conserve water during the drought a few years ago. 

Had to get a picture by this beautiful painting of Jesus walking on the water.

It was a big painting.

Inside the auditorium. It looks like they were moving things and getting ready for something.

They had a smaller Christus statue in the conference center than the one in the visitors center on Temple Square. I'm glad I was able to get some family pictures on our tour thanks to the sister missionaries that gave us our tour.

Looking at the model of the Salt Lake Temple and what it looks like inside.

Standing on the other side.

I'm so happy we got to go on the roof! It's been many years since I've been up there. The Salt Lake Temple is behind us. We almost didn't get to because it was really windy that day but we got there at just the right time. It was still windy but died down enough to go up. It picked up again while we were up there and so it got cut short but I was still happy we were able to go up and see what we did.

After our tour we headed back to Colby's house where we just hung out the rest of the night. Cindy and Colby made us some German pancakes for dinner. Then we watched a movie called "Dungeons and Dragons". The next morning we all slowly got up and took our time packing up and loading the van.  We decided that we wanted to break up our drive a little and use our Get Out Pass some more so we stopped in Layton to play a game of bowling and then in Ogden to have an hour of jump time. All of us did everything. I'm definitely not as young as I used to be. The trampoline place sometimes gave me a head ache and sometimes one bounce was all I needed and then had to run to the bathroom, ha ha. I think I liked bowling better but they were both fun. It wasn't until we got to the bowling place that we thought to see if my friend Monica could come hang out with us but it would have been too late so we didn't try.  Maybe next time! I would have loved to see her new house in Bountiful too.

Saying good bye to Elowin.

Got a picture of our whole crew before Tamara and Chris left on Sunday. I had to get this off of Curtis's phone since that's the one we used.

Bowling in Layton.

Thank goodness for the bumpers or we all would have suffered humiliating scores 😂 I guess some of us older people are a little out of practice.

Getting ready to jump at the trampoline park.

When we finished at the trampoline place, we got some lunch at Costco and then hit the road for Nampa. Another quick short visit with my in-laws. They had to be to the temple in the morning for their shift so they left when most of us were still in bed Wednesday morning. The boys and I had stayed up late to watch another movie called "Last Action Hero". It's an older one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I had to take Garrett to an orthodontist appointment at 11:15 the next morning so we cooked up some eggs and bacon and toast for breakfast. Then did a little vacuuming and washed dishes before we packed up and left. Jack actually walked to his friend Porter's house to hang out until we picked him AND Porter up after Garrett's appointment. We had made plans already to bring Porter back with us to our house so he and Jack could spend some time together. 

It was a great trip and I'm glad we did it and what a great kick off to our summer, especially for the kids!