Utah II

The Wedding

After our hike, we drove up to Provo and drove past all the places we used to live there. It's amazing we were there for 2.5 years and lived in 3 places!

This is an old house that is divided up into 5 or so apartments on 279 N. 400 East in Provo. We lived in a small yet nice one (even though it doesn't look like it) here. The front door to our apt. is off to the left of the house. The house was white at the time we lived here.

We lived in this little apt. attached to this bigger house next. The apt. is the door near the right of the picture. The address is at 397 N. 400 E. in Provo, very near to the other place. This place was a light yellow when we lived here. And it was here, that our first child was conceived.


This is our Apt. building when we stayed in BYU on campus Married Student Housing. Building 9D at Wymount Terrace, Apartment #554. We were here the longest and it was here that we brought our first baby home from the hospital.

Tyler had fallen asleep in the van and so we wanted to allow him a chance to nap so we all wouldn't be totally miserable! After driving around for a bit we went to the Wilkinson Center and had lunch at the Cougareat. Boy, has that place changed since we were there!

My favorite thing for lunch used to be the build your own sandwich. I was going to get Subway, since I couldn't get my old favorite, but while I was getting everyone else's food at 3 different places Tyler got lost. Laren had gone back to the Van because he forgot his laptop so he could do some work and I had told my kids to stay put and I would bring the food back. Apparently when Tyler saw me walk away so did he. We ended up finding him after about a 5 minute search. A BYU Coed had found him and was helping to look for his parents, bless her!

But after that, I had little interest in food. Small rant, between Tyler and Rilyn I lost 1 kid a day for 3 days last week. I can't tell you how it makes my heart stop. These kids are just so precious to me! And losing them is one of the most horrific things I can imagine.

So we had lunch, shopped in the BYU Bookstore. I always love to browse their clothes in there. I found me a cute skirt and my girls got some Down East Tanks. We got a few other miscellaneous things and went downstairs.

We took the kids bowling there. It is such a great bowling atmosphere for families. It was lots of fun.






We bowled 2 games simultaneously. It did seem to take a long time with the kids though. And Tyler wanted to bowl for everyone, not just himself!!

Then we walked around campus and went to the Museum of Art and saw some neat exhibits.



Some of my kids enjoyed it and others were bored, especially the younger ones who wanted to play hide and go seek in there.

We are trying to impress upon our kids how great and important College is. So we went into the Clyde building since it was Laren's home, pretty much for the entire time we were at BYU, to show the kids inside a college classroom.

The classroom/lecture room in the Clyde building. Laren and the kids pretending to be students!

We explained to them how college works. The professor doesn't care if you don't come to class, as in he/she doesn't take attendance. But if you don't attend class you will miss valuable information and do poorly on tests. And you may miss the in class quizzes and lower your grade in that way.

Most of the kids are excited about college, thankfully. But one, my second oldest, has little to no interest. She would rather work in a store. We have tried to explain how little to nothing she would make working in a store and how it would be mundane compared to doing a job where she could use her mind, but I think we didn't get very far. She is still just 9 and so I'm hoping we will be able to make up some ground on this topic in the coming years.

BYU isn't BYU without a stop at the creamery.

Us having ice cream and frozen yogurt at the BYU Creamery.

We all enjoyed a frozen treat and then drove to Salt Lake to attend the rehearsal dinner the night before my nephew's wedding.

At the Old Spaghetti Factory in Trolley Square in Salt Lake, a family dinner the night before the wedding. My brother, Mike, picked up the huge tab for this.

It was because of Richard's wedding that we even went to Utah this year. He and his bride, Brie, are both from Montana but her dream was to be married in the Salt Lake Temple and a lot of the family was within a few hours from there anyway.

The sealing was beautiful. The sealer talked about other's being present at their sealing in spirit, including their unborn children. After the sealing we waited and waited for the bride to come out, apparently she had been seated inside while the groom had been seated outside in the lobby and both were told to wait for the other. After an hour, my sister in law Mary, the mother of the groom, went to find out what was going on and thankfully discovered this and so we were able to hurriedly get a group picture and get on with the day.

My brother Mike, Father of the Groom, taking pictures outside the Salt Lake Temple after the wedding.

Laren and I left to go and get our kids from his Sister's house in Payson. On the way down there we stopped off in Draper at Cafe Rio to experience that. And I will just say it was YUMMILICIOUS! We didn't get there until about 1:30 or 2 pm so I would say it was after the lunch rush and the place was still packed! We shared a Chicken Burrito Enchilada Style (they are HUGE) and had some chips, salsa and this Cheesy Jalapeno sauce. It reminded me of Jenny's Creamy Jalapeno that she raves about from Chuy's.

When we got to Diana's the kids were sad to go. They had a great morning riding the horse and playing on the slip and slide with their cousins. Thankfully they were mostly cleaned up and in their dress clothes for the reception. We wrapped the gifts and packed our stuff and drove back to Salt Lake to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building for the reception.

It was such a beautiful place for a wedding reception! I got to see many of people who I hadn't seen in years, including many from Mary's family (my sister in law) and other's.

They served chicken salad filled croissants, punch, water, chocolate mints, cut honey dew melon, cantaloupe, watermelon and grapes and of course wedding cake.












Then having had a busy few days of vacationing and Laren wanting to get back to work he decided we would drive back home to Colorado that night. So he started out driving, I do not like driving at night because it's hard to see and makes me sleepy. But after 30 minutes his hurt knee was bothering him too bad and I had to take over.

I reprieved him until Evanston where we stopped for gas and didn't think I could do anymore. But then I remembered the "No Doze" pill that my Mom had given me so I took that and was wide awake within 5 minutes. I ended up driving the rest of the way until Cheyenne, WY. We stopped for a gas and bathroom break and Laren took over the last hour and a half. We got home at 5:30 am!!