Kyle had his Fall Break October 8-12 so we decided to head up to UTAH! Kyle's sister has lived up there for a few years and we had yet to visit them. They had a baby 1 week after Bentley was born and were planning on blessing him that weekend. Since Kyle was on school break we decided it would be the perfect time to go. His Mom and Kathleen were already up there for a dinner that Kathleen put on for work and Brian, Jane, and their family were up there dropping off Austin at the MTC so it was kind of a little family reunion. We drove up saturday the 6th and we were pleasantly surprised at how well the kids did. Bentley did AMAZING. He seriously didn't cry once on the way up. We stopped about every 3 1/2 hours to give the kids a little break and to feed Bentley and I really think that helped a lot. We stopped at a really cute park in Kanab, Utah and ate lunch and let the girls play on the playground for about an hour to break up the trip even more. It is a really pretty drive from here to Utah. You get the forest, AZ desert, the reservation, and the Utah desert. It took us about 12 hours and we got to the Johnsons at about 9:00 pm.
The first day (Sunday) we just hung out at the Johnsons and enjoyed conference and family. The girls had tons of fun playing with their cousins. Kellie has a little girl a few months older than London so it was fun to watch the 3 little girls run around and play together. Macy played with the old boys quite a bit too- Kyle went outside once to see what they were doing and Macy was bossin' them all around- and they were actually listening to her. She has 3 older boy cousins and there were a few neighbor kids playing with them. Macy said she wanted to do a race so the boys all stopped and asked where to start, she told them where. She said go and they all ran past her so she turned around and headed back and said "I won!" . They all agreed she won, but then they decided they should set a definite finish line. They she decided it was time to play something else and they just kind of rolled with it and did whatever she said. We're in trouble with that one.
The next day Kyle and I took our kids to temple square and enjoyed the LDS sites. It's amazing how pretty the Salt Lake Temple is. It is such a castle looking place. Sadly we forgot our camera at home so didn't get any pictures. We took a tour of the conference center and then headed back to Kellie and Karls.
Tuesday we headed over to the This Is The Place Monument and Pioneer Village. This Is The Place Monument is a ginormous statue of Brigham Young saying that this is the place that they needed to stop and settle. There are lots of other monuments and carvings around it, it's actually really cool. We remember our camera but forgot to take a family picture with the monument in view. In the picture below you can kind of see the side of it :).
In Pioneer Village the kids had A LOT of fun. There were so many different things to do. We started off in a cabin that had little crafts for the kids to do. Macy is making her necklace and her cousin Ava is coloring on her bag.
London and Me trying get London's necklace they way she wanted it.
They were getting the buildings all ready for their spookfest so we had to look past on the scarey cobwebs. London didn't mind but they really freaked Macy out.
We headed over to the school house where the kids colored on chalk boards and they taught us about the alphabet that Brigham Young tried to start, it was actually pretty interesting.
Ava, London, and Macy
They had this adorable kid sized village that the girls just ran around from house to house. They were too cute. This is basically what they did, Macy would run to a house, Ava would follow her, and London would follow Ava.
There was a cute stationary train at the little village that the girls could run around on.
Next we went over to the petting zoo. The girls had tons of fun on the horses, they look like pros.
This little guy was tricky! He escaped out of the petting zoo once and tried to get out when we were leaving. The girls really liked him because he was little.
Macy really liked the sheep, but London would scream if one looked at her or walked too close.
The girls all love their Grandma.
Macy found these sunglasses in the little stationary train and sported them for the rest of the day.
We also did some gold mining. This was the gold miner. Back then a man would own the river/stream and if you wanted to mine gold you would essentially rent a piece of the lake from him. They would do a daily rate with each person and if you got 10 pieces of gold you have to give him 3. We didn't end up doing much, I think the girls each got like 3 pieces so the gold miner actually ending up giving each girl about 10 extra gold pieces.
They opened up this little kid train just in time for the kids to ride it. They had lots of fun. The little family in the car behing the girls were too cute. There were 3 boys and 2 girls and you could tell the Mom took lots of pictures because when they would pass their Mom they would all smile and keep looking at her until they past, it was really cute.
Mr. Bentley was, of course, awesome. Hung out in his seat most of the time. He got hungry once but after that was taken care of he was his happy self.
Our last stop was the bank where the girls all traded in their gold for some candy.
After we got home from the village we did some Deseret Industries shopping. I got Macy 2 sweaters, a jacket, and a super cute dress. Their DI was seriously amazing, so much nice stuff there. The next day we headed home. Bentley was a little more fussy on the way home, but you can't blame the kid. We had a lot of fun visiting Kellie and Karl and hope it do it again!
