Springtime... with a little snow

The kids and I have been in Utah this past week, and as always, it was wonderful! Even with most of us taking turns being sick, we had a great week and did a lot. The highlights....

Dad drove with me from Arizona to Utah... oh how I know that 12 hour drive so well... the best part was this-


We played a lot of games, namely Qwirkle and Monopoly. Monopoly got a little heated, but we all still seem to like each other all right. ;)


We ate lots of goodies... the best was experimenting with mom's new chocolate fountain (more than once).


I love to visit my Grandma and Grandpa Smith in Salt Lake. They are amazing people and awesome great-grandparents too! And they have a really cool backyard. :)










The Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point was once again quite impressive. Becca missed out on this outing because it was her turn to be sick and stayed back with Grandma. Did you know that this museum is the largest dinosaur museum in the world?! wo!











Hmmm... this picture turned out strange


The girls helped Grandma plant some flowers in her front yard - they really enjoyed it.






I hadn't been to the Tracy Aviary since I was really little myself, so we planned in advance to make a trip up to see it. It was fun! And the weather was very pleasant. After experiencing the large variety of birds, we fed the ducks at Liberty Park.



























Emma really wanted to roll down this hill at the park
So, remember how the weather was pleasant... well, the next morning there was this (it melted by the late afternoon)-


We went out to lunch at this crazy hot dog place in Orem. Aaron's hot dog was so big, it was practically eating him.


It was wonderful to be able to be able to go to the temple with my brother and dad one evening. This was my first time visiting the new Draper Temple. It was lovely.


We went geocaching with Grandpa and it definitely turned into an adventure. We were prepared with coordinates to 5 different caches, thinking we'd find all sorts of fun stuff... but the first 4 were failures and we were unable to locate them. We gave it one last go with the 5th cache and finally had success! It was a multi-part cache and the first task required us to read through the historical marker at an old LDS church nearby in order to piece together the coordinates to the actual cache - we then traveled about a mile south to sign the log and collect our treasure... there is nothing nerdier than geocaching - it's so great! :)





Dad diving into the prickly pine tree to unhook the small container attached inside


There was a hill near the cache, so once again, the kids wanted to roll down it

Jake's first birthday was going be just after we left Utah, so we did a little pre-birthday party and Jake got his first taste of his very own cake... yes, he very much liked it... so much so that he then tried to eat the plate.








So, yes, it was a full, busy, and great week in Utah with my family! I'm so glad when I can go see them. Another highlight from the week that I didn't get a picture of was visiting with my wonderful friend Charis - we met at a nearby park one morning and visited while the kids played, but it was SO windy we didn't quite manage to pull out a camera... but I was so glad to see her! Even though our trip is now over, our fun continues with my sister now staying with us for a few days here in Arizona. And I'm staying up till the wee hours of the morning to get this post done because we've been quite busy doing fun things during the day. But more posts to come soon. I need to go bed!