Utah -- The way home

Were you beginning to think we would never leave Idaho?  Well all good things must come to an end.  Tuesday we headed South and hit up Utah on our way back home.  Our good friends from BYU days, the Stohl's, were sweet enough to offer up their basement for a few nights.  My kids actually cried for the entire 24 hours before we left Idaho because they were so sad at the thought of having to leave.  But if anyone was going to make them excited to be in Provo, it was the Stohl girls!

Libby and Ellie are both 10, Ella and Nate are 6 months apart (and she loves LEGOs and Star Wars), and Sadie and Lucy are 5.  It was perfect.

Nate was kind of worried because there were only girls and he was going to be the odd man out until Ella commented on his awesome Sta Wars shirt.  After that they were the best of friends.  Nate actually said his favorite memory of the trip was meeting Ella.

We went to Ella's baseball game, got a sitter and went out to dinner in SLC, went running and swimming, Ellie and Libby went to Activity Days, The Chocolate, BBQed, stayed up late having a dance party and playing the Name Game and Ticket to Ride, the kids would go down to the creek and entertain themselves, watched old home movies from the boys intramural football days, utube videos, ate Sean's birthday breakfast. . . It was really really fun to just hang out with them and do nothing for a few days.

Every time we go to Utah we have the best time.  The houses and grass are so gorgeous and I miss BYU so much that I swear we are going to move to Utah.  And then I realize that it wouldn't be the same amount of fun if I we weren't on vacation and I can't live in our friends basements all the time.  I am just grateful that my friends all pretend like they love having us come visit them with all the chaos we bring.

Thursday we met up with my sister and our other friend, Holly, at the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum.  Luke had actually seen the building on the way up to Idaho and FREAKED out because he was so excited.  You know what freak out I forgot first??  Sadie and her hair.  I was putting Sadie's hair into braids and she was really really mad at me.  Something along the lines of, "You made me look like a boy and I didn't want to look like a boy!"  Lucy went upstairs to Megan who was wondering why Sadie was so upset.  Lucy informed her it was because Sadie's mom had done her hair and Sadie did NOT like it.  She then told Megan that she could do her hair however she wanted.  Megan put braids into Lucy's hair thinking if they had the same hairstyle Sadie might be happier.  The next thing I know, Sadie AND Lucy are sobbing.  Lucy said, "I didn't mean like THAT!"  Whatever.  They both ended up looking like this:

I swear they are loved!  And their hair looked really spectacular at one point.

The dinosaur museum was fun, even with 14 children, and then we went to JCW's for lunch where we sat in the BYU section of course.

We also went to Temple Square one afternoon and met up for dinner with our friends, the Brooks, who just moved back to Utah from down here.

His family owns and runs Settebello Pizzaeria, so we met at the downtown location.  I love Italian pizza and after going to High School in Austria, that style of pizza is actually more of what I consider pizza than Little Ceasar, but I was worried about what my kids would think.

Luke had been craving pizza the whole trip, but he's pretty picky.  He ended up eating the entire pizza.  It is seriously delicious.  And authentic.  Plus there was a gelato place attached.  Seeing their girls made me so sad though because they have grown up so fast in just the 4 months since we last saw them.  Why must they grow up??