Last summer we had such a great time on our road trip home from Bear Lake that we decided to make it even bigger and better this year.
Now, when I say “we” I actually mean “I” because the word “road trip” kind of gives Dave the heebie geebies (how do you spell that??) …until this year. I think 🙂
I think car travel time is pretty much the best talking time you can get. I love having my kids enclosed in a small space and having hours to talk. They are head-over-heels in love with that kind of stuff as well.
In case you didn’t sense the sarcasm in that line, I will tell you we did have a few eye rolls, but I do think in their heart of hearts they really loved it too.
Sooooo, we had a few kind of fun stops on our way back to the desert this year.
The first was tennis camp at BYU because Elle and her cousin were lucky enough to get that fun thing for their Christmas gifts this year.
Dave and I had brought Elle down to camp right after the reunion.
We dropped her off with her cousin and had our own little adventure with our car that suddenly wouldn’t work.
It was a big, long fiasco, but in the end Dave was able to fix that thing (he rocks) and we still got to stay up late discussing the world overlooking that beautiful temple on the right below.
It was a long story, but we were just happy to be able to meet everyone down at BYU the next morning to get them all situated. (It made me SOOO grateful to have a car that usually works!)
These two girls were going to tennis camp, their cousin on the right was going to pole vaulting camp, and they had three other cousins going to EFY that same week.
Now THAT is fun 🙂
When we dropped the girls off we were laughing at how Elle is really Julie (Dave’s sister)’s niece. There’s just a little bit of a height difference there…
They knew they were in for fun.
We stopped for a sec. at the BYU diving facility…Julie’s old stomping grounds (she was on the BYU dive team).
We would go watch her there back in the day. Crazy how time flies and now she has six kids.
Here are the girls in their orientation…see them up in the back?
I tried to follow them for as long as I could but they were off and never looked back.
I’m pretty sure they never stopped laughing the whole entire week. It was fun to talk to Elle on the phone and hear about all the funny stuff that happened that week.
We had lunch with the parents of the other cousins staying at BYU that week:
And then Dave headed back to work at home and I headed back to linger for one more week at Bear Lake (back
HERE).
Ok, back to road trip…After that week at Bear Lake THAT’s when the road trip started. I packed up those girls of mine in the car and we said our tearful goodbyes and headed out.
I made them take pictures for me when we saw something pretty.
They took pictures of themselves too.
We met Dave and Elle at the final matches and closing ceremony of tennis camp.
So fun to watch this girl play on the BYU courts and do so well.
She got an award (I think for sportsmanship). That’s the BYU tennis coach high-fiving her there…
Friends from back home:
New friends from that week:
Their future tennis coach. Ha!
Their dorm:
When you are at BYU and you actually attended that school it is mandatory that you go down memory lane a little bit.
And explore the new stuff they have there. The kids obviously thought that was a SUPER idea.
But seriously, you HAVE to go to the art museum each time you go to BYU.
They have the coolest stuff.
I made everyone choose their favorite piece of art work and tell us why it was their favorite.
This was mine:
Isn’t that beautiful?
We stopped at our “first date” location:
(more about that in our “love story” back
HERE.)
And we visited our old apartments:
(more about that in part one of the love story back HERE.)
I think it’s so important for kids to know your “stories.” I read a really cool article about that at the beginning of the summer. I can’t remember where, but it inspired me.
We went and visited my cute niece and her husband who are still near the beginning of their own “love story.” I talked about their wedding back HERE.
Then we were off.
For the next leg of the road trip.
Which was actually in the opposite direction from home, but oh so worth it…
I know I'm just 'no-one' on the other side of the world to you (Australia), but I really love your posts about bear lake, the reunion, your summer holidays in general & the road trip. My family is young right now (4,3 & not quite 1) we are the first of all of our siblings to have kids and as much as I love the stage we're at, I also look forward to my kids having cousins & being part of a larger extended family. Thank you for sharing, it reminds me of my own childhood!
Thanks, as always for keeping us in the loop! Love the peek into the what happened after you left!