.our last big hurrah.

As summer winded down I knew I waned to do one more big day summer activity. I thought about taking frontrunner down to Salt Lake last year but never got around to it. This year I was determined to make it happen. Thankfully Rachael agreed to come with us, it always makes going on such a big adventure easier when you have a friend along.

Planning took some effort. I was thinking we could get on the most northern stop in Pleasant View to head down. After navigating their confusing website, I finally figured out that it only made that stop very early in the morning. So we had to pick it up in Ogden instead. We bought our family passes and for $13 round trip we had a pretty sweet ride down to Salt Lake and back. The train was fun. We rode on the top and everyone loved looking out the windows at the scenery. The ride was nice and they had free wi-fi which was neat.

We were dropped off downtown and then jumped on Trax to take us up to the Gateway. The kids played in the fountains and then we went to the food court for lunch. After we took Trax up again to Temple Square and went to the Church History Museum first. They had a fun children's area where we spent most our time. Then we walked across the street to the Temple grounds for a few pictures. We left that afternoon and got on all the right connections and were on frontrunner going home in no time. Brynn even fell asleep on the ride home. It was alot of fun and I can't wait to do it again!

.an 'A' for effort.

They announced in sacrament that the Angel Moroni was ready to be placed on the Brigham Temple. I knew I wanted to take the kids down to witness such an event. They scheduled time was to be at noon on July 12th.

I knew it would be crowded so we left our house just before 11:00. The weather that day was cloudy and I grabbed an umbrella on the way out, just in case. We parked and walked about 4 blocks to the Tabernacle grass. It was crazy crowded. We did find a spot on the lawn with a view of the top between all the trees. Good thing I brought the umbrella because it rained pretty much the whole time. After an hour waiting in the rain with my antsy kids it was noon. It looked as though there was an attempt to place the statue because they hoisted some workers up to the spire more than once. Noontime came and went and nothing happened. I said before my kids were antsy and after about 45 additional minutes...almost 2 hours sitting in the rain on the wet grass, I decided to bag it and go home. At the end TJ kept saying "this is stupid" and I didn't want the experience to be remembered as that!

Once we got home, I fed the kids and then checked an online webcam to see that it did in fact get placed that day! Dang, I think we missed it by about 40 minutes or so! Oh well. I told the kids it was up and we ran to the top of the driveway to see it. Its pretty far away, but we could all tell it was up there because we could see the sparkle! We've since driven past it in town and we all can't believe how big it really is. My kids keep telling me that its "huge". I still have yet to get the picture of it with my kids that I have envisioned in my mind. That is still on my to do list!