On Tuesday afternoon, 6/30, we drove to St. George. We arrived at Paul and Emma's at about midnight and spent awhile trying to get everyone to sleep. Of course, our kids still woke up early, and we hadn't thought to ask what time Paul's family wakes up, so after we had been up about an hour and a half, we decided to continue on to Utah County before Paul's family was awake. We learned a few lessons on planning...
Wednesday was the 10 year anniversary of Mike proposing, so I had Ring Pops for every one and told them the story of us getting engaged.
We spent the afternoon at Miriam's playing with her and Elizabeth. Benton kept calling them, "those two girls" and later accepted "Aunt Mimi" as a substitute for "Miriam" since he insisted he couldn't say it. That evening I met up with some of the girls from my New Zealand study abroad 10 years ago. I had SO much fun catching up and reminiscing with these awesome girls! I was so glad to see Steffani who was my roommate there. We really connected and would have so much fun if we could just live near each other!
The next morning we took the boys to see BYU since they hear about it so much. Mike was telling them to yell "boogers!"
And then a nice passerby offered to take a family shot. We graduated 9 years ago.
We walked to Kiwanis Park where Mike and I met and where our first date started, I think. We are still a little hazy on the timeline. We met at the beginning of the summer playing frisbee (my ward and his friends) and the two groups continued to get together every Wednesday evening throughout the summer. The boys enjoyed playing frisbee there with us.
After frisbee, Mike went to Miriam's dentist because he had woken up with something weird going on with his gums.
The boys and I wandered around campus and went to the BYU Bookstore where they each picked out a stuffed animal Cosmo (Ethan loves stuffed animals, or "bedtime animals" as he calls them).
That afternoon we drove up to Heber, checked into our hotel (where Mike got us an upgrade because our room smelled like smoke), and then went to Provo Canyon to meet up with the family.
Pictures by Ethan:
We had no service and the WiFi didn't really work at the hotel, so we didn't carry our phones around and have very few pictures. Miriam did a fun interactive family activity one morning in the conference room. Here is Uncle Paul with Asher and Benton during that.
One evening Jennifer organized a bunch of Minute to Win It games. That was a lot of fun! Here is a picture of me winning my game!
We swam, watched movies, ate, hiked, ate, talked, went to a yoga class, ate...The boys had tons of fun playing with cousins, everything you could ask for in a family reunion. One of my favorite Ethan moments was when I wasn't going to let him go to the movie night. It was starting at like 10pm and he was very sad he wasn't going to get to go. I asked him to tell me about how he was feeling and he said, "I feel like when we are at a family reunion and everyone is invited to something, that I should get to go." That seemed hard to argue with, so I told him we could compromise and he could go to a short part of it and then he would have to leave nicely when I asked. He said, "that sounds like a good compliment." I love how well he can express himself and how he is feeling.
When the reunion ended on Sunday, we all went to Mignonne's house where she hosted the baby blessing for Paul's baby Jilean and a delicious luncheon with food from Emma's uncle's restaurant.
When we could, we took off and headed to Park City leaving the kids with Mignonne, who kept them for five days so we could go on an early anniversary trip! It is so hard to get long babysitting so we were very very grateful.
We walked around Park City Main Street that night before getting a very long night's sleep! It was fun actually getting to stay up late and wake up late, although I think I feel better with early to bed early to rise (imagine that!).
On Monday we checked out Olympic Park and did some hiking.
Then we went down to Orem to go to Tucano's, get discounted tickets to Olympic Park from Costco, see Mike's best friends since junior high, and pick up my wedding ring that was being fixed up at Sierra West.
On Tuesday we went to Olympic Park and did the slide, zip lines, rope courses, free fall...It was so much fun! It rained on and off, but we got everything in by the time the main storm came through.
Free fall:
The ropes course was pretty challenging, and scarier than I would have though considering I was attached by a harness and cable.
Wednesday we slept in, did a little biking in the afternoon, but didn't do a whole lot.
Thursday we went biking for quite awhile and then got dressed up to go to The Roof for dinner. Well, the dinner part is just an excuse I think for the many many desserts.
We came back to Park City and saw West Side Story. It was a local production, but still good. We sat up front at a little table because the seating map made it look like a box seat. So that was kind of weird, but I've never been right up front before, so it was good to experience it.
Friday we slept in one last time, went to Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory (because we went there in Park City while we were on our honeymoon) and headed back to Mignonne's. We got to hang out and chat with Mignonne on Friday, which was a lot of fun.
Saturday we packed up and started on our way to St. George. We stopped by the cemetery where Mike's dad is buried (another great Ethan quote: "they aren't playing hide and seek; they are dead"), and then stopped at Mike's mom's house. The boys played Uno with her while we helped her with some computer problems and I got her set up on Facebook.
I thought this display at Jil's was neat.
Then we drove to St. George, had pizza at the park with Paul's family, and stayed the night again. In the morning we drove back to Phoenix and real life. We were gone for 12 days, and it seemed like a nice long vacation!
And just to finish out the week since:
Asher really likes to play with balls and throws them around the house, no matter the size. He also got back to using a pacifier more in Utah. He doesn't need it, but he likes it more.
We want to make it a habit to do one on one activities, "dates", with the boys, so I took Benton on a date to the Crafty Kiln and Scooptacular on Wednesday. He really liked it.
Then I took Ethan on Thursday. He also had a Meet the Principal open house at his school that night that we went to and I volunteered at (helping PTA with refreshments, crafts, clean up).
Friday we did our monthly family date night to the Member's Only Night at the museum. Being able to walk has opened up a lot more fun for Asher at the museum. He can finally go in the big climber, which he really enjoyed (no cameras allowed in the climber, so no pictures).
There is a website that shows pictures of kids thinking their parents are terrible for ridiculous reasons. Here Asher is so sad/mad because I wouldn't let him scrape a fork on the stainless steel fridge *cringe*. This was the theme of the evening as I couldn't let him climb on the dishwasher rack or play in the garbage, etc.
Saturday Mike and I went out to dinner and mini golfing.
Sunday I was back at church for the first time in three weeks. I love doing Primary Chorister and several people made nice comments about being glad I was back, which is always nice. I also got to reintroduce myself to one of my 4th graders in my last class who just moved into my ward. He is now a senior in high school. He said, "I'm going to tell all my friends that I get to see Ms. Abegg. You were my favorite teacher!" And I had a few other cute moments with some Primary kids, so it was a great teacher day, especially for someone who hardly gets to teach anymore.
Today, I went running by myself at 5 am, and then took the boys and a friend to a big indoor playground. We were there for about 3.5 hours. It was hard to get pictures, but the boys played really hard. I somehow managed to get Asher to take a nap while we were there so that he wasn't totally cranky.
And now I am caught up, hooray!
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