Monday, July 16, 2018

Spring Break 2018

We wanted to go somewhere with Gracie for Spring Break. Sometimes it's hard cause she is so much younger than the other kids so none of them could join us. We decided to go up to Yellowstone National Park especially since Gracie loves animals.

We stayed at the Stage Coach Inn. 

In the morning we went to the visitors center to see what we could do and they told us that the park was closed to cars. We could only go in walking or riding bikes. Hmmm. Didn't plan ahead there. But we went for a pretty drive that morning anyway.


Then we went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center


We got to see the wolves up close! Pretty awesome!




Lots of snow still :)

Gracie participated in this activity where kids can go into the area where the bears and and they hide food for them. Of course the bears are not there while the kids are but it's fun to see the bears find their food when they come out.


We could only find on restaurant open and while we waited for our food we took some fun pictures!



On Friday we wanted to go see a waterfall but found out the road was closed because there was too much snow so we decided to rent snowmobiles so that we could go see it. It was an AWESOME ride!


Might as well make snow angels!

There was no one else there! We had the forest to ourselves! 


Later that afternoon we walked into Yellowstone Park. It was beautiful!


Gracie had fun in the snow!

Although the trip didn't quite go as planned we had lots of fun with Gracie, we experienced nature, and we made lots of memories!

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Arizona Mesa Mission Visit

We decided to take a few days and go back to Sidney's Mission. They will be remodeling the temple and the grounds so we wanted to have to opportunity to go to the temple, see the Easter Pageant, and visit the areas Sidney served in. Sidney's Spring Break was a perfect time. 

The first day we visited the temple grounds and the visitors center.








Such a beautiful temple and grounds!


My parents got married in the Mesa Temple 50+ years ago and we wanted to recreate a picture that they took. Final result at the end of the post.

Orange trees are everywhere including on the temple grounds. Casey had to pick some!

We walked around downtown Mesa





That night we went and saw the pagent in English.




The next day we went on a hike!


I had to hug a cactus!


After the hike we went to see the Phoenix Temple.




We stayed with Yvonne (my cousin) and her family and we saw the pageant together on Saturday night.

On Sunday we went to a Spanish branch where Sidney served. On our way back we stopped by the Gilbert Temple. 

Gracie had fun playing with her second cousins. We had a good dinner with them on Sunday!

This is the recreation. The temple has been remodeled since but I thought it was still cool!