Since We Got Home...

We arrived home late Friday, which meant I had Saturday to get Bentley and Kendra all ready for FSY on Monday (and do a bunch of laundry, of course)!  This shouldn't have been a big deal, but Bentley had outgrown all his church clothes (and shoes!) and Kendra needed dressy shoes that she could wear all day (ie, NOT her heels).  So we needed to go shopping.  This was the absolute last thing I wanted to do, but sometimes we just don't have time for Amazon deliveries, so off to Target and Kohl's we went!  And it was in the Target parking lot that we realized...  we were all wearing yellow!  How cute are we?

I love that Bentley and Kendra went along with this dumb photo.  My kids are nice to me!

We were also looking for new water bottles at Costco.  We found these monsters:

 Seriously, who's lugging that thing around???  It's like a joke from Parks and Rec...

Monday the three of us headed out early because I was driving the youth the two hours to FSY in Williamsburg at William and Mary!!!

I had 9 teenage boys and all their stuff packed into my van.  Woohooo!!!  (The girls plus one little brother all opted to ride together in the minivan.)

When we got there everything was a mess!  They'd had to change up everyone's rooms AND there were no keys for any of those rooms.  So we stood around for a couple hours and I spent another hour driving people to various dorms and ultimately dropped a bunch of the kids off at the student center and hoped they'd get everything sorted out before bedtime (which they did).  I was gone all day and so grateful to my in-laws who'd come and stayed with Ryder, Colton, and Camille for me.  Dragging them along for that right after our road trip would have been cruel.  And they had SO much fun with Grandma and Grandpa!

And Bentley and Kendra had so much fun at FSY!  I might see if I can get them to type up a post about their experiences there.  We'll see if they'll cooperate...

With them gone at FSY, I couldn't really go to work and leave Ryder in charge.  So I had another week off!  And Colton and Camille got to go to summer school part time, so that was fun for them.

Colton's teacher was nice and sent me pictures of him during the day!

Who doesn't love making volcanoes?

And we celebrated my birthday.  43 isn't a particularly exciting number, but I'll accept any excuse to eat caramel brownies!  Ryder had gone to spend the night with his grandparents, so I actually had a few hours that morning all to myself-- happy birthday to me!

And Craig got me a new piano bench, since ours was falling apart.  Everyone is enjoying finally having a padded bench!

And that weekend I decided it was time to earn a few bucks, so I helped out at a wedding, this time at Veritas Winery.  I was only there during set up, and everything seemed to be going wrong: the stage was too small so the band was unhappy; the lead singer got Covid; the cake table collapsed and Adam had to put it back together as well as he could (I think a tier was lost in the process, but really, that's a pretty impressive save!); and worst of all, when the bride and groom arrived at a lovely scenic area for pictures, they were told they had to wait a bit because someone had just committed suicide there.  I think I would cancel my wedding at that point.  I was quite relieved to leave and join Craig and Tom & Donna for dinner at Mission BBQ for a very belated Father's Day celebration!

That is a mighty tall ladder there!

The venue was lovely!

And the bride and groom looked gorgeous and happy, so I guess that's all that really matters!

The other thing of note is that, after weeks of begging, I finally managed to get Camille into a gymnastics class!  She is in heaven.  Gymnastics seems to fit perfectly with her brand of crazy:

And we're still enjoying the pool.  Craig and I figured out the ideal way to hang out on the floaty mat together (while Colton pushes us around).  It's heaven.

I love summer.

Beautiful Church Artwork

I saw a lot of artwork that I really loved while we were in Utah.  I wish I had taken more pictures, honestly.  But here are some of my favorites...  (Most of these are pictures I took, but whenever I could, I linked to a website so you can see a better version of it.  A few of them I forgot to take pictures, so you actually get the best version of those, rather than having to deal with my iffy photography skills!)

This is called The Color of Water I: Colton so, naturally, I had to take a picture of Colton with it.  It's meant to portray a moment in the memoir, The Color of Water, where a biracial boy asks his mother if God is black or white, and his mother responds that God is the color of water, we can all see God in our reflection.  I love that so much.

The light is doing weird things to this, but it's called Man of Sorrows. This is not how we usually portray Christ, but I think it's an important aspect of who He is.

Our Divine Family Tree.  No photograph can ever do justice to a sculpture.  But this is made up of different kinds of metals and the leaves are butterflies and it's so lovely!

The Redeemer of All.  We rarely show the angel strengthening Jesus during the atonement, but this is very powerful, I think.  

Growing Light by Elspeth Young.  This portrays Mary Elizabeth Rollins, whose family joined the church when she was 12.  She was so determined to actually read The Book of Mormon that she kept seeking out various copies to borrow.   When Joseph Smith learned of this, he was so impressed that he gave her her very own copy to keep.  

Till We Meet Again by Elspeth Young.  This portrays Jane Manning, another early convert to the church and a close friend of Joseph and Emma Smith's.  

I didn't get the title or artist of this one, but it's hanging in the conference center.  I mostly like the woman in the foreground looking at you-- she seems to know that even though everyone is excited to see Christ coming into Jerusalem, things are going to south very quickly...

Certain Women by Walter Rane.  Rane is one of my favorite church artists (it probably helps that the building I grew up in commissioned some of his works and he gave a fireside there).  This portrays the women who followed Christ during His ministry.

I Remember Those Who Are on the Isles of the Sea by Shelby Stroud.  The picture doesn't do it justice, but it's a mosaic made from seashells.  The first time I saw it I was too close and I didn't even realize that it was actually a picture of a girl!  I still thought it was cool, if a bit abstract.  So then when I glanced at it from farther away and actually SAW it, I was blown away!

I also really liked this painting, Greater Love Hath No Man by Casey Childs, at the Church History Museum.  This depicts the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith (which we learned a lot about in Nauvoo).  The way the artist uses the door to divide the painting, and John Taylor looking at you (I guess I really enjoy artists breaking that fourth wall?) is very powerful.

I've always been something of a snob when it comes to church music, so it made me so happy to see such wonderful artwork created by my people!  If you want to see more, there's tons here and trust me, I did not scratch the surface of what was good here!  

When I hung out with Laresa I told her how impressed with everything I was (she's a fellow humanities major, so we have a lot of fun geeking out together over stuff like this!) and she said that President Kimball had prophesied that we would have more great artists in our midst.  She sent me the talk later, and it's also wonderful!

Utah, Day 5

We got up early again so we could hike the Y before it got too awfully hot.  Craig came up with the brilliant idea to promise the kids a trip to Soda-licious if they could do the hike without whining.  We had to take lots of breaks-- that hike is steep and I'm still blaming the high altitude.  But we did it!  And we didn't complain the whole time, so I count that as a huge success.

Trailhead

Enjoying the view of Provo et al.  (Seriously, we had to take so many breaks!)

Bentley got sick of wearing his bucket hat, so I took it.  Ryder and I are so cute together!

Getting so close!

I love how, once you get there, you can see how weird the Y is shaped in order to look good from the ground.  I could never figure out something like that!

Colton has this way of sitting so stoically

Similar to hiking Delicate Arch, the trip down was easier on the lungs, but harder on the feet and knees.  We kept seeing people running down the mountain, and I just can't comprehend the point in doing that at all.  Save your knees, people!!!  Plus, with all that loose gravel, I'm pretty sure I'd slip and fall if I tried to run.  Other people are nuts.

We went straight from the hike to a nearby waterpark, which is called Splash Summit, but will forever be Seven Peaks in my mind.  I dropped Craig and the kids off and went to visit my good friend from grad school, Laresa.  As I've done with everyone else, I forgot to take pictures of the two of us together (seriously, what is wrong with me???), but we had a great time catching up.  And since Laresa has about a billion cats, it was really good that Craig didn't come along with me!  He would have died.  And then I joined my family back at the water park (I may have stopped at Waffle Love on my way-- their Nutella waffle with raspberries is to die for!).

I found Bentley right away.  He did NOT like the water park and was protesting by sitting under a tree.  Apparently they made you pay extra to use the innertubes (?!?!?!?) and he got yelled at for using one in the lazy river, so he was done after that.  I can't say that I blame him-- that's a pretty stupid policy, and totally different than any other water park I've ever been to.  Eventually I found Craig and the rest of my brood.  We splashed in the wave pool for a bit and they showed me how they could jump into the pool from the trapeze and then it was time to get going.

Ryder is tricky!

We stopped at Sodalicious, as promised, and also got me some Creamery chocolate milk.  Everyone LOVED their dirty sodas, so that was great.

Then we went back to the townhouse and showered, which felt delightful (even with that stupid, lame-o shower head).  Craig and I had a date night all planned: we were going to eat dinner at the Bombay House and then do a session at the Provo City Center Temple.  We used to attend Stake Conference in that building, back when it was the Provo Tabernacle.  It tragically burned down in 2010, and so when they rebuilt it, they made it into a temple and tried to preserve the historical aspects of it, which is really cool.  I was excited to see the inside!

The kids were all set to make mac'n'cheese for themselves (the thick and creamy kind!), and I had just finished putting on my makeup and was about to start washing a load of towels when the doorbell rang.  Craig answered it and came running back up the stairs looking slightly ill as he explained: "I messed up our reservation.  We were supposed to have left this morning and the people who actually reserved it for tonight are here."

Oh, dear.

Now, I have to say a couple things here.  First of all, Craig literally planned this entire trip.  I was so overwhelmed getting ready for company and end-of-school stuff that my only contribution was to nod in agreement whenever he told me he'd made a reservation or booked a tour.  So if he made one mistake on our entire two week itinerary, he still did great.  I cannot fault Craig for this at all.

Second, there had been PLENTY of clues that we were supposed to be out of there, but we'd been blithely ignoring all of them.  The rental company had been trying to call Craig all morning, but since he didn't recognize the number, he let it go to voicemail.  And because sometimes modern technology likes to be super fun, his phone didn't alert him to any of the voicemails they left until he was literally on the phone with them and suddenly his phone wouldn't stop dinging.  Also, a cleaning crew had been through and cleaned the entire place and made all the beds while we were out hiking and splashing, so we'd been surprised at that when we walked in the door (and wondered why they hadn't waited until we left the next day), but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and I was just delighted to have such a clean place again.  But that definitely should have tipped us off.

And I have a third thing to talk about: a lot of times in a marriage, you take on different roles.  And in our marriage, Craig is the calm one and I tend to be the uptight, bordering-on-hysterical one.  BUT NOT THIS TIME.  I became preternaturally calm as I asked the new renters to please give us one hour to get ourselves out of there, and then we ran around packing up as fast as we could.  It was slightly eery, hearing myself gently encouraging the kids to get everything gathered and calling them Sweetie as I directed everyone's frantic energy like some sort of motherly air traffic controller.  I managed to find all of our own pillows which had been hidden throughout the house by (what must have been) a very confused cleaning crew.  We found Ryder's blankie mixed in with a bag full of clean linens up on a closet shelf, I pulled all the dirty towels out of the washing machine (and counted my lucky stars that I hadn't started it yet so they were relatively dry at least) and stuffed them in a garbage bag.  Bentley and Kendra packed all our food into our food bin.  At one point Craig and I were alone in our bedroom trying to shove piles of dirty clothes into one suitcase, and clean clothes in another, and I said, "So I think we should just begin driving home, right?  There's no point in getting a hotel here so we can begin driving tomorrow" and Craig confirmed that he'd been thinking the exact same thing.

So that was that!

We were in the car and driving in 40 minutes flat, a new record by any stretch of the imagination.  I drove first so Craig could make a hotel reservation for us in Laramie, Wyoming, which we got to around midnight.  6 hours of unexpected driving (out of 30) on Day 1.  And that was the end of our time in Utah!  It was an abrupt, adrenaline-pumping way to finish, and I'm totally bummed that we didn't get to eat at the Bombay House or go inside the Provo City Center Temple.  But I guess I can look forward to doing those things the next time we're in town.  Maybe if Bentley gets accepted to BYU... 🤞🤞🤞

Can you see the rainbow off in the distance?  I really like Wyoming-- there's something so wild and free about it.  And the kids kept seeing antelope, which is just super cool.

The next two days were about 12 hours of driving each (stopping near St. Louis again, but not getting frozen custard since it was 10am and we really did need to get home).  And even though it all felt so crazy, it was awfully nice to get home a day early and have Saturday to catch our breath.

We got home in a terrific rainstorm, the pets were happy to see us, and after living in such tight quarters and having so much company before we left, our house felt HUGE and homey.  Everyone was so happy to sleep in their own beds again finally.

What a great trip!

Utah, Days 3, 4

Monday morning we went back to SLC to tour the Conference Center.  The tour was...  disappointing.  I really wanted to hear about the building itself and the artwork.  It's such a cool structure that can be beautiful and HUGE and comfortably seat 21,000 people (!!!).  But the tour was led by a couple sister missionaries who spoke too quietly to even be heard, and were mostly just interested in teaching us the first discussion.  It was (and I say this as a member who loves this church) cringey.  And there were a few nonmembers on the tour, and I wanted to apologize to them.  Ugh.

Also, thanks to ten years of droughts, they had the fountains on the rooftop turned off.  Which is probably a good idea, but looked super lame.

Oh, well.

We did get a nice family picture with this statue of the Christus.  Apparently the one that used to be in the Visitor's Center is in storage, and this is a 3/4 replica!

And behind us is the scaffolding enveloping the Salt Lake temple!  It's prettier when you can see it!

Colton finds the worst seat at the Assembly Hall!

And we wandered into the Tabernacle, where MoTab practices!  That organ is so iconic.

There was more we wanted to see at Temple Square, but it was the 4th of July and everything else was closed.  So Craig dropped me off at my dear friend Emily Kartchner's house in South Jordan, and he took the kids bowling.  It turned out most of them had never been bowling before, and they had a great time.  Watching Camille watch her ball roll down the lane was the most entertaining thing ever.  And I had a fabulous time catching up with Emily and hearing about her teenage son who is also named Bentley!  And, of course, I forgot to take pictures.  

This is how everyone bowls, right?

Emily dropped me back off at our townhouse where Craig was feeding everyone.  And then we went to Thanksgiving Point to watch their fireworks!  We don't usually take the kids to professional fireworks shows (unless it's done by Disney) so this was a real treat for them-- everyone enjoyed it, even if we had to stay up way too late!

I really don't know why Camille insists on making that face in every. single. picture.  

The next morning we went back to SLC to finish up everything we still wanted to see!  We drove around the U of U campus for a bit, just so we could say we didn't only show the kids BYU.  Then we went to the church's Welfare Square and took a tour.  It was Craig who wanted to do that-- I thought it sounded depressing and weird-- and it turned out to be really cool!

They made us guess how long it took to build this grain silo in the 1930s.  Our guesses ranged from 6 months to 10 years.  We were WAY OFF.*

The tour began with a short film explaining the church's welfare program.  In the middle of it, they had a two-second clip showing a bishop meeting with his people to determine the members' welfare needs and-- lo and behold!-- my sister Tracy was in the clip!  It was so unexpected and exciting to glimpse her there!  It was from when she was the Relief Society president in her Manhattan ward.  Crazy!!!

Tracy's FAMOUS!!!

We got to see them slicing up loaves of bread

I think this was the end of the tour, where they were bottling milk, and we got samples of chocolate milk (the same stuff that they serve at the BYU Creamery).  It was amazing.

But my kids' favorite part of Welfare Square was Deseret Industries.  Bentley recently tried thrifting, and when he saw this store (which was beautifully clean and had all the clothes nicely arranged by color) he got so excited.  So we let them run around and buy a few things.  Camille picked out a very fluffy sweatshirt and proceeded to nap like this in the car:

My crazy girl

Next we went to the Church History Museum.  It was great, and my favorite part was the upstairs where they had wonderful artwork (which will get its own blog post soon).  As is often the case, Craig had to drag me away before everyone else died of boredom.  They did have fun with this stand where they could pretend they were addressing everyone at General Conference:

Camille looks like she's actually terrified to be speaking

But Colton's enjoying himself!

We would have liked to have seen the Ancestry building, too, but once again we'd run out of time.  We got lunch at our townhouse and headed back to the BYU Bookstore where the kids got the t-shirts we'd been promising them.  This time campus was flooded with FSY kids, so even though they're younger than the college set, at least my own kids could finally get a feel for what BYU looks like when it isn't deserted!  Camille also wanted a stuffed animal, so she got to buy this with her own money:

We had scheduled a tour of campus for 4pm, so we met at the alumni building (which was still being built when we left 16 years ago).  We'd only signed up for a walking tour, so when there turned out to be a golf cart we could ride around in, the kids were thrilled.  And the young coed who was our tour guide was fun and personable and everyone enjoyed the tour.  I think she undid the damage Craig and I had inflicted on everyone with our overly long, hot tour a few days before! 😂

Getting Camille to stop talking long enough so that the tour guide (and Bentley and Kendra) could get a word in edgewise was challenging, though...

We picked up Lindsy and a friend (boyfriend?) of hers and got dinner at Burgers Supreme.  This is just an old crummy-looking burger joint, but it's where Craig and I had our first date, so we were excited to go again!  They also have really great milkshakes and fry sauce, so there was plenty of reasons to return!

We sat in this booth laughing like we'd known each other for ages, even though it was basically a blind date!

There we all are!

And then right back to BYU again!  There were a few things we hadn't hit: the library and the Wilkinson Center! 

There we are with the sun in our eyes and the "Y" on the mountain behind us

The library was first.  It's so fun for kids who are used to the public library to finally see a nice, big university library!  And my kids were properly impressed!  Then as we were wandering around, it occurred to me that it would be fun to see my master's thesis sitting on the shelf.  I asked someone to look it up for me (I couldn't remember the title any more!) and we found it up on the fifth floor. 

It was fun to show it off to my kids, but I was a little irked that there were a bunch of pencil markings in it.

See kids???  You mom worked super hard for this thing!

Then it hit me.  If there were pencil marks in it, that meant-- gasp!!!-- that someone had actually READ IT.  I flipped to the back of it, and it's been checked out!  QUITE A BIT!!!  And that, honestly, made me happier than just about anything!

Who would have guessed???

Craig and I were slightly disappointed that the food court at the Wilk is now all your standard fast food-- Subway and Chick-fil-A and the like-- but that probably got my kids more excited to one day attend BYU than anything else, so I guess someone knew what they were doing!

It was a very busy day, but we were very happy with how everything had gone.

*Correct answer: 8.5 days.  They built that thing out of poured concrete in just 8 1/2 days!!!!!!