When traveling to Utah, we try to catch up with some of friends who have moved away from Colorado to Utah. We were sad when the Boswells decided to move a couple of years ago, but have enjoyed catching up with them on our visits.
Chris worked with Boswells and planned to meet up at Kneaders for breakfast. Apparently they had a great all-you-can-eat french toast meal on the menu. We arrived a little after 9 am and were fortunate to be able to find tables for all of us. It seems to be a popular place on a Saturday morning so it was a good thing we arrived when we did. It filled up fast and people asked if we needed all of the space we were saving. Yep! Misha couldn't remember the name of the place and thought maybe it was Knuders? Nope, but it was good for a laugh.
It was good to see our friends and enjoy breakfast while catching up. They had a busy day of kids' sports ahead, so we didn't linger too long.
We headed down to Provo/Orem area and explored a little. We drove by the first apartment Chris and I lived in after getting married. It was a dumpy basement that had lots of worms at the entry. We had to wind through lots of grape vines to get to our back door and we couldn't have mail delivery to our own address because it wasn't a legal apartment. Gotta love when the landlady rifles through your mail. We lived there for about ten months before we bought our first condo.
We saw the new Provo temple being constructed, and ended up at the BYU bookstore. My girls wanted a lot of things from there, but had to settle for only a few things with their limited cash stash.
We made a stop at Kohls to use my cashback $$ and buy a baby gift for my niece. Misha tried on a shirt, but her father was not a fan!
Lunch was an elegant affair at the University Mall food court. I wish that malls such as that would thrive here in Colorado, but as it is, they are knocking down our closest mall as I type. Open-air malls...who needs them? Especially in the winter.
Our family was responsible for breakfast Monday morning, so we stopped to get items for our breakfast burritos. Word to the wise: breakfast burritos are a lot, LOT of work for that many people. Word to my family: let's work out schedules in advance of who will be there and who won't so that we don't buy so much extra food. I think next time it will be small boxed cereals and muffins. That's easy.
We arrived at the cabin (or mansion as my girls liked to call it) just after 4 pm on Saturday afternoon. It was located a mile or so past Sundance in Provo Canyon and had a fabulous view of Stewart Falls. Lots of my family were already there, as was Kristen. She gave me a quick greeting and was off playing. We found our rooms, put our groceries away, and settled in.
My sister had dinner laid out for us which was followed by a Survivor-type game planned by my youngest brother. We were divided into three teams. The first challenge was for two members of each team. One person would direct another person who was blindfolded through a ropes course. Kristen was the voice for our team, and Chris had to keep telling me to be quiet. From there it was a bucket brigade with red Solo cups punched with holes, water, and buckets. Each team had two members trying to fill the buckets with the leaking Solo cups. Then a few team members had to tie shims together so that they were long enough to retrieve a bag out of a pine tree. After that it was a memory challenge to try and recreate an arrangement of objects in the exact order. That was my job. It was more challenging than you would think. At each station, a bag of blocks was retrieved. We all worked on the final challenge after Chris and I untied all of our team's bags of blocks. We had to figure out a phrase and then use key letters from that phrase to open an alphabetical lock. We came in second literally two seconds after the first team.
The rest of the evening was spent attending a baby shower for my niece who is expecting a girl in December. It was a guys optional shower. Chris chose to opt out and headed to Heber to visit a co-worker. My girls enjoyed participating in the games. I think it was their first baby shower. Treats are always good.
Anytime the kids had downtime, they were playing Hide n' Seek. They had a blast and some of them found great hiding places.
I got some great candid shots. My sister posed for me any chance she could.
