Idaho Falls Trip: Part 1

First of all before I tell you all about our fantastic girls only (and Preston & Joshua) road trip I wanted to give a big shout out to Andy. Right now he and a bunch of guys are out having a LAN party. In case you've never heard of a "LAN party" before, which I'm sure most of you haven't, here's a pretty good definition of it that I found here (#3 is my favorite). As much as I tease Andy about it I actually enjoy them just as much as he does and this time I wasn't invited :( Maybe next time. However, that aside, this extra Andy free time does give me a chance to get a blog in and tell you guys about the awesome trip we had.

Wednesday July 16, 2008~
We started out the trip way way early. We got up at 4:30 and left just after 5:00. The kids were all hilarious. Half delirious half just leave me alone. The rest of us were all too excited to be tired which worked out great considering we had about 10 hours of driving to do that day. By the end of the drive I had completed my goal of teaching Evelyn how to motion to the truck drivers to honk (very important to know) and at our lunch stop I managed to take a couple of cute pictures of the kids. We got to my mom's cousins house in Richfield, UT around 4:00 and spent the remainder of the afternoon chasing the kids around. Lucky for Evelyn my Cousin Randy has a trampoline so the kids had a good time jumping until they finally lost all their energy and went to sleep. My sister and her gang, my cousin, and my SIL all braved the outside and slept in a tent. I, on the other hand, opted for sleep, chickened out and slept inside.

Thursday July 17, 2008~
We slept in as best we could with 5 kids and headed out. The drive wasn't nearly as long as the day before so that was a bit of a relief. We stopped at a park on the way and Preston made such a mess eating /cleaning up after everyone. The kids were so excited about playing on the toys that they didn't even touch their food so I set Preston on the table and he scarfed it all down. He seemed to favor the chocolate cookies. When we finally got to our destination, Idaho Falls, everyone was there to greet us. My mom's two sisters and most of their families and my Grandparents were there. We went swimming and had a family pizza party. I haven't spent hardly any time with my cousins since we were kids so it was interesting getting to catch up with them.

Friday July 18, 2008~
Friday morning my cousin went through the temple to receive her endowments. Thanks to my SIL and my cousin who graciously watched my kids I was actually able to attend the session. ::Thank you Tiffany & Cressa, you girls are the best!:: It felt so good to be there with so much of my family and seeing my cousin there was very special. To me this was the highlight of the entire trip. I could have just gone to the temple that day and it would have been a total worthwhile trip let alone all the other awesome stuff that continued to happen. After the session the WHOLE family (bride and groom's) went out to a nice smorgasbord. Mmmm... There's nothing like unlimited food to make a great day even greater. After stuffing our faces with tons of great food our little group decided to split off and we went to see The Idaho falls. I remember seeing them on a trip we took as a kid but it was just as neat seeing them again. I took tons of pictures. To end our little outing we went a few blocks over and down to the temple visitor center. We got to see some really nice pictures of the temple and we watched a couple of short films about Jesus and about families. The kids seemed to enjoy them. They even made me cry a little.