going back....New Year's

This post is dating back to January, but since this blog is serving as our family journal and I plan to turn it into a blurb book at the end of the year, I needed to post about our trip to Utah.....

We rang in the new year in Salt Lake this year. We left new year's eve at 3:00am from my mom's house in Worland. (We got on the road super early because Chris was working in the night and got done at 3, so rather than go back to bed for a couple of hours, we just headed out) The kids slept most of the way....it was so nice. We stopped in Park City for a little bargain hunting and then headed on into Salt Lake where we ate lunch and checked into our hotel. We then headed down to temple square to see the lights. We had never seen them before! We have planned several years in a row to go over Christmas, but we always get snowed out....and we got snowed out 3 times this year too, but we were finally able to make it.


Temple square was BEAUTIFUL!!!...and because it was new year's eve, they had different musicians set up around temple square, in the Joseph Smith Building etc. It was so fun. The girls loved it. They loved the lights, and the Christmas story outside the visitors center and they especially loved the luminaries and all of the different nativities. We were able to get a few good pictures of the temple despite my lackluster photography skills and a kind passerby in the visitors center saw us and offered to take a family picture.

We spent several hours walking around temple square taking in all the sights and then headed to our hotel. We stopped for ice cream along the way. Once we were in our room, the girls geared up for the all-nighter, they were sure that they'd make it till midnight to ring in the new year. So, we ordered pizza (we had already stocked up on other party food) and settled into watching the Disney channel's all-night line-up. By 9:30pm all the kids were asleep and since Chris and I had been up since 3, we turned in for the night too. AND we all slept until after 8am!....We haven't been able to do that in years...seriously...I kid you not. Our children are super early risers and we just never sleep in. Anyhoo, I can't think of a better way to ring in the new year! It was the first time I have woke up in the morning and not felt tired in soooo long. Chris and I decided maybe we need to invest in some of those black-out curtains that hotel rooms are equipt with.

So...new years morning, we spent some time swimming, shopping at IKEA, and did a tour of the beehive house. I was a little surprised, the girls really loved the tour there. We had two sweet sister missionaries show us around and they really connected with them and asked a lot of questions later about girls being able to serve missions. I think in was the first time it really donned on them that there are sister missionaries. We spent one more night and visited Deseret Book and the church museum (another thing the kids really enjoy).

We usually jam pack our trips to Salt Lake...we do Lagoon and get the Salt Lake City connect pass which gets us into the zoo, the living planet aquarium, the planetarium, the imax, the childrens museum, Thanksgiving point, lunch at the Lionhouse...and more. This time after debating what we wanted the trip to entail, we settled on temple square being the highlight...we didn't want to take away from the beauty of the lights and the spirit we felt there. Those were the things we really hoped our kids would remember about this trip.

Owen at the church museum