Happy New Year! As the new year began, we continued our visit in Utah. On Monday we headed down to Orem to spend some time with Monica's family. Tuesday night we all headed out to Luminaria, a really big Christmas light show at Thanksgiving Point. It was really cool, and a super huge light show. Even bigger than the Trail of Lights we went to back in December. More details on this later though.
Monday we just kinda hung out and chatted, and one of the things that came up was that Monica and I wanted to go see Wonka, so Tuesday late morning we found ourselves at the theater! The movie was great and I would gladly watch it again. I really liked having a go at Willy Wonka's origin, and I'd love to see a remake of Willy Wonka with a more liberal approach to match the style of this movie.
While we were hanging out around the house we definitely had to play some bridge games. Everyone got sucked in eventually, including Gram!
That evening we went to Luminaria. It was super huge, and a lot of fun. They had a whole gingerbread building with some really crazy gingerbread houses, and a nice spot to be a gingerbread man yourself.
There was also a sleigh that you could sit in to get a feel for what it's like to be Santa!
There was an area of these cool lights on the ground that changed colors when you stepped on them. These were a lot of fun to walk around on or tap your foot on, and we were here for quite a bit chasing each other around.
There was a laser light projection area, and you may notice that Winry has a paper in her hand. There were hidden yeti ornaments that had letters on them, and as we walked around we had to find them all to be able to decipher his hidden message and get a prize at the end.
There were also live reindeer! I think one was Blitzen, and I don't remember who else they said was in there. Brooke said it was Dasher. Anyway it was pretty cool to get to see some of Santa's reindeer, and they looked pretty tired after their long night.
That night Grayson did what Grayson loves to do, recruit a story reader. Tonight was Pop's turn! Grayson snuggled up with him on the couch for a great time. Grayson really loves stories, so if you want to get in quick with him, offer to read him some books. That's often how I get him to bed. When he knows it's close he'll start complaining that he doesn't want to go to bed any time I suggest going upstairs, even if it's to play with toys together. But if I ask if we can go read some stories? Well, he often yells he doesn't want to go to bed, but the allure of a story is too strong, and he follows me up to his room and picks some out.
Monica and I took advantage of having close temples and went twice while we were out in Utah. We didn't take a picture at the Bountiful temple, but we did at the Provo temple.
Brooke ended up getting sick, which, unfortunately, seems to be what Brooke does lately on vacation. Hopefully we end that streak soon. Anyway, we got tickets to go to the women's basketball game and got to sit courtside with Gram and Pop! We all had a lot of fun. I got a cougar tail (a ~2 foot maple bar) to share, and at halftime we got ice cream!
Thursday morning we went to the bookstore, and Brooke still wasn't feeling well, so she stayed home. It was unfortunate, because Brooke was really excited to go see "her future school" as she calls it! We still had fun with Grayson and Winry though. We went to see the cougars at the front of the Wilk.
And we went to the BYU store and got a picture with the Cosmo statue! Grayson was having none of it at first, but I'm glad he eventually sat there (after I picked him up and put him there).
The kids had a good time on the Y mountain slide as well.
On Friday we were off to the airport and heading back to Texas. We kind of got lucky, in that it started snowing Thursday night. The lucky part was that we really wanted snow, and when we got up to my parents house there was a couple inches... and the roads were pretty slick and not great to drive. But the good news is that it was just bad up at the top of the hill, everything at the bottom of the hill was totally fine. It was a little too bad though, because we really wanted to go sledding while we were there and never got a chance. Anyway, we made it to the airport without incident, and Grayson and Winry helped pull Grayson's suitcase along! I'm not gonna lie, it's a lot easier traveling with kids now that they can help carry and move their own stuff!
No comments:
Post a Comment