Back to Bakersfield

My mom helped me drive back to Bakersfield from Utah. We spent a couple of days going to a museum and just hanging out until my mom flew back to Utah and we left for the East coast.

Buena Vista Museum of Natural History

Puzzle Time

My mom is a puzzle fiend, so she helped Peter finish this crazy-hard puzzle. I think she made his day; he is so proud of this that he wants to frame it!

Summer of Temples

We were able to check 4 more temples off the list. We are only missing Monticello from the current Utah temple list!

Ogden, Utah Temple

Bountiful, Utah Temple
I wish we had been able to visit this temple during open hours. I didn't realize there was a very extensive iron gate around the entire thing; as a result, our pictures aren't too great.

Manti, Utah Temple

We tried having a picnic further down on the property of Manti Temple, but a guy that worked for the church said that security would probably kick us off soon. I guess there has been a lot of anti-church stuff going on in this area, so they are fairly strict about people being on the grounds. Since moving outside of Utah, I've noticed that they are much more strict within Utah than outside of it.  I'll admit, it upset me a little, but we were still able to walk around and enjoy our time there after our park picnic.

Vernal, Utah Temple

This temple used to be a tabernacle and was then converted to a temple. I remember being able to go to the open house when I was about 14 years old. Wish we had gotten a better picture, but the fence fence and foliage made it hard to get one without having something in the way.

Vernal, Utah

We have a family tradition of visiting temples when we go on road trips and I have been wanting to get to some of the more rural temples for a few years now. This year was perfect because we didn't end up taking time to go to Yellowstone and I had no baby. We decided to make a weekend of it and visit the Vernal, Utah Temple, the natural history museum in town and Dinosaur National Monument.  

Dinosaur National Monument

Touching a real dinosaur fossil at the quarry.

Rigby, Adeline and Reuben completed some booklets to earn a wooden pin from the park rangers.

Mom & Dad at the quarry.

This "dino bone bench" made for a great picture place. Smile for the millionth time kids!

 

Swimming at the Hotel

Always get a hotel with a pool. It helps tire the kids out so they go to sleep better!

Utah Field House of Natural History

All the younger kids LOVED these plastic dinosaurs. In fact, Reuben and Timothy had a nice little screaming and wrestling match over them.

Reuben had a major melt down because he had to share the package of dinosaurs with Tim (trips are tough with him because of his food issues). So while I took a kicking and screaming 5 year old out to the car, my dad waited with the other kids outside the museum.

The "Utah Raptor"

One of Tim's nicknames is T-Rex, so I thought this would be an appropriate photo!

The kids and I with my favorite dinosaur-a stegosaurus.

 Picnic in Vernal

Scott's Hiking

Scott was able to go with the young men (14 years & up) to hike Mt. Whitney. Unfortunately, he was unable to make it up all the way, but I think he really enjoyed just being able to hike and camp again. We have been living in the South with no mountains and having babies for the past 12 years, so we have only been able to do a small amount of hiking/camping since college.

I think half of the fun for him was researching all the gear he needed to get in order to make backpacking possible. Here he is with all of his gear.

Utah

We came back to Utah for a few days and were able to. . .

. . . play Legos, . . .

. . . feed the ducks at BYU, . . .

. . . play hide-and-go-seek, . . .

. . . hide from energetic Mocha (Marissa & Chandler's dog) in the tree house, . . .

. . . and just have some crazy fun with cousins!

We were only missing baby Sofie from this picture.

Timothy, Peter, Audrey, Reuben, Charlotte, Adeline, Isabelle, Evalyn, Rigby

Silly Picture

(except Isabelle & Rigby, they were really upset with Peter this day)

Idaho & Bear World

We were able to go up to my Grandma Farrow's house in Idaho for a long weekend. We were able to celebrate my birthday . . .

. . . sleep (at least the ones that didn't have to share a bed with a wiggly 2-year old that kept ramming his feet and head into my body all night) . . .

. . . and help my grandma sort through some things in her basement.

I was able to re-purpose an old skirt that my grandma used to wear on trips years ago.

Bear World

We were also able to go to Bear World which is near Rigby, Idaho. It was a lot of fun to see so many bears up close. We couldn't roll down the window or stop, but we were able to take pictures through the window and drive very slowly.

We were also able to see a white elk (never seen one of those before).

Some people paid extra to feed the bears from this truck. For about $100 more a person, you could also feed a baby bear milk from a bottle.

There was a petting zoo with some rather obese goats. There were also pigs, chickens, deer and several more animals that we could pet.

The kids also loved the little carnival rides they had. Oh Peter, just smile and cooperate my boy!

A wet floor warning cone shaped as a banana, ha! It looks like Tim wants to eat it in this picture.