My month long stay in Utah! Woo hoo!

WARNING - This is a little long - 31 pictures or so.

Kirsten and I spent a month in Utah, from May 7th to June 5th. We had a great time! Neil and Kirsten and I drove down to Utah on May 7th. We spent Mother's Day with our two daughters, Michelle and Julie, and their families. Both girls told me that this was the first time I had spent Mother's Day with them since they lived in Utah. Wow! I had not realized that. It was very special!


Neil drove us down and stayed the weekend and then flew back home to go back to work. It was nice having my van down there. Neil flew back up Memorial Day weekend and spent the last week with us and then we drove back home to Washington on June 5th. Sniff! Sob! How I miss my girls and their families in Utah! It is not fun being a long distance grandparent!

It was so great spending time with both daughters and their families. We worked on projects, did service. Dad helped Julie and Bob with their water heater that had to be replaced. He did other small repairs for both Michelle and Julie. I just helped out where needed and kept plenty busy. The last week we also took a tour with Julie of the Montesorri School where she teaches. I am quite impressed with the school! Bob took us on a tour of the Utah Valley University where he works. I did not realize just 'how large' that campus was!

We also had a campfire with S'mores at Chris and Michelle's and looked at the stars through their telescope. I even saw a shooting star very close and was able to see it burn out before it went dark! Cool!

In Orem their latest place to visit is Farr's Icecream. You serve yourself the icecream, custard and yogurt and put on all the toppings you can dream off, including slurpy/slushy stuff like you put on snowcones. A kids dream come true! It's 39 cents per ounce. They have a scale and you set your cup of icecream on it and they weigh it and tell you how much it will cost. It's not too much different cost wise than Cold Stone, only you can put all the toppings you want. Michelle and I took McKenna and Brooklynn there the night before we left. I have to say that the Chocolate Almond bark soft serve was oh, so yum! The Huckleberry custard was so delicious! They also had a golf ball size cordial like chocolate cream with huckleberry flavor inside that was sinfully delicious! I'm afraid I'd have to stay away from that place and only go once in awhile or I'd be 50 pounds heavier! I worked so hard to lose 25 pounds (5 more to go!) it would be for naught if I worked at that place!

Chris and Michelle have 3 children attending Hillcrest Elementary. While I was there the school had a medieval festival. They did a really great job!

Tyler is in 6th grade and there are two 6th grade classes. They dressed in costume and looked great! The two boys above were dressed like friars. I loved the bald spot on their hair pieces!

This is Tyler's teacher, can't remember her name, and she is so wonderful! Her class fully participated and did great! Since there are two 6th grade classes, each class had a king and queen.

This is Tyler. He was a guard and he is holding a small crossbow, which they rented for the event. Hid dad made him a sword. See above picture of king and queen and the king is holding his sword. He forgot to bring a prop. Tyler was generous and loaned him his sword. Chris cut it out and Tyler painted it.

This is Sir Kill'em. I'm not sure how he spelled it. He lives in Utah and is the reigning US champion, 4 years running, jouster. His horse weighs around 1,000 pounds, he weighs 250 pounds and his armour weighs 140 pounds! He has to stand on a two foot high box to get up on his horse. On his upper right shoulder is a specially made armour plate where other jousters aim and thrust their pole to knock their opponent off their horse. If you click on the picture you'll notice a collar that protects the neck. When they charge each other and try to upset their opponent they clash at 40 mph! With the weight of the horse, man, armour, and speed and impact of their poles that is some jolt!

The other rider is from Canada. They were in Utah putting on performances at several schools, one of which was Hillcrest. It was spectacular! You can see pieces of their poles in midair from the impact.

The man on the ground is a squire and helps dress the knights in their armour.

These are the two knights on their horses.

This was a 4th grade performance. Lauren is in 4th grade.

Lauren's 4th grade class. She is in back row in the middle. She is dressed like and Indian princess.

Tyler and Lauren's piano teacher had a piano recital and held it at the church. Tyler gets so nervous playing so she had him go first. He did a great job. He played two pieces from memory. The downside was a few days prior he injured is ring finger on his left hand at school playing basketball at recess. His finger was twice its normal size and he had to play through the pain! He did great!

Lauren also played two pieces and did great! She would race through the pieces at home and make mistakes and start over. The night of the performance, a totally different Lauren played! ??? She did great! :o) She likes to give her mother a tease!

This is their music teacher Stephanie and she is so sweet!

May 24th - It's snowing!!! Go figure! They got about 4 inches of snow. I woke up at 7:15a.m. to see it snowing and the ground covered. It snowed hard until 10am and then tapered off. The mountains were gorgeous! But really...snow in late May? It melted off the next day.

This was about an hour into the snow. It's pretty, but cold and wet!

The neighbor's trees were weighted down from the snow and the next day he came over and cut those three branches off. Michelle had gone out earlier to shake the snow off a young tree so the branches wouldn't snap.

The day it snowed, at the elementary school they had teachers move their cars parked under trees in the parking lot. It was a heavy and wet snow. It was causing branches to snap and they didn't want the school held liable for damage to parked cars.

This is their dog Roxy who just 'l-o-v-e-s' playing in the snow and jumping up and snapping at the snowflakes!' She loved the snow!

McKenna had her birthday and opened presents before going off to school. She got up early, such sacrifice! :o)

This is a cute elephant and hat for McKenna that Lisa crocheted for her birthday! She loved them! :o)

This was a gift from Brooklynn, an art set with pens and crayons and paper.

Kirsten is barely awake and looking on. She also got an easy bake oven and mixes and several oher things.

The next day, last day of school, McKenna had a birthday party. Michelle had ordered the cute aprons and chef hats and bought little dishrags and put them in the pockets. She also bought a long 1" thick dowel and cut it into rolling pins and put one in each apron pocket. They were so cute!

I snagged this picture from Michelle's blog. McKenna and her little friends all decked out for making their own pizzas.

I got this picture from Michelle's blog as well. I loved the red colors! The girls rolled pre-made pizza dough that Michelle made earlier that morning. She had lots of toppings and sauce for them to put on their mini pizzas. Yum!

Dad and I took Kirsten, Quintin, Brynnly, Tyler and Lauren to the Salt Lake City Temple Square Visitors Center. This is at the South Visitors Center. The previous Friday they had just unveiled a replica of the Salt Lake Temple and they have kiosks that show pictures and has a narrator explaining ordinances and rooms, etc.

You can't tell very well, but in the background outside is the actual Salt Lake Temple. It is quite something to see the replica and then just outside is the temple! Gorgeous! I have seen the Salt Lake Temple many times and never once noticed that on the east outside wall it has the Big Dipper carved onto the granite. Just as mariners seek the north star for direction, Jesus Christ is whom we seek and want to return to the Father and his son Jesus Christ.

Dad stood with Kirsten and she was so happy and smiley here! Quintin an Tyler off to the right.

This was an enlarged photo of one of the spires of the Salt Lake Temple just after it was completed. Yikes! This gentleman doesn't have a safety belt around himself and that's pretty high up off the ground! It makes my feet turn to jello! :o/

This is the Christus at the North Visitors Center at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. It's quite moving to see. It depicts the wounds in his hands and feet and side.

This was downstairs at the North Visitors Center. It depicts prophets mostly from the Old Testament and the Book of Mormon. This is the prophet Mormon. Tyler and Quintin liked the displays.

The prophet Mormon.

After we were finished at the Visitors Center we took the kids to the Bingham Cooper Mines west of Salt Lake City. It was quite interesting to visit.

The mining is done outside. The trucks are HUGE! When a pickup truck sits next to one of those haulers, it looks like a toy!

The shop where they do maintenance on the trucks.

This is one of the tires from a hauler. It dwarfs the kids!

Some of the metals mined from the cooper mine. The winter olympics held in 2002 in Salt Lake City, the medals were all donated from Bingham Cooper Mine. They produce gold, silver and cooper.

A scale model of the mine.

The prcoessesing plant. We also watched a 15 minute movie about the mine and it was very interesting and Neil picked up the DVD of the movie. We showed it at Bob and Julie's when Chris and Michelle came over. While at the museum we walked over to the gift shop and the kids each got to purchase a little something for themselves. I got magnetic rocks! They fascinate me and are fun to play with. Brynnly got colored rocks, Lauren got a pretty white shaped heart rock as big as your palm for her mom. Tyler and Quintin got a small volcano in a one cup canister that you added water and it turned into a dinosaur and it took up to 3 days to grow as large as the container. They were pretty cool!

Braxton liked sitting on Kirsten's lap. That was sort of new for Kirsten as no one sits in her lap at home! Every morning Braxton got up he would run in to check on Kirsten and give her a big hug and kiss!

An example of Braxton's hug and kiss! Kirsten loved being around all her nieces and nephews! Sometimes she was overwhelmed by the 'love' but had a great time!

It was sad having to leave to go back home. It was a wonderful month and man oh, man do I miss my grandkids and their wonderful parents! Good times! Can't want to see them all in July at the family reunion in Oregon City at Grandma Valdine's!