Summer trip to Utah 2009

This year Shaney was accepted into the highly competetive BYU ballet camp. She was one of only 60 girls chosen out of the whole country to go to this ballet camp. She spent two weeks on campus dancing an accumulative 70 hours. She loved it and wants to return for next years ballet camp! She was there alone for the first week, then Me and the boys (Dave included) drove up the next week to spend some time with family and to pick her up and bring her home. Here are a few highlights of our week in Utah while our ballerina was dancing her heart out...

On Monday Dave and I took the boys to see the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House. WOW! What an amazing temple and what an amazing teaching tool for your children. Dave and I took every opportunity we could to teach our boys about the importance of temple ordinances and about temple marraiges and about families being sealed FOREVER!!! I can hardly wait for next year's Utah trip. I plan to go with Dave for an endowment session there.

One of our favorite places to go while we are in Utah is BYU. We love the campus and the wonderful spirit you feel there. Although I graduated from UVSC (which is now UVU) I still consider myself a BYU coed. The places on campus that we always visit are the Dinosaur museum and the Bean Life Science Museum.

This year we introduced our boys to the Carillon Bell Tower on campus. They got to hear the bells chime the hours and "Come, come ye saints".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdy-z57hFO0 (This is a link to "Inside the bell tower". The girl who plays them is Lisa Nielson, a girl from OUR ward. It is interesting and only about 2 minutes. Worth watching.)

(This is a little oasis just under the tower. The boys played in the water while we waited for the bells to chime!)

Another fun place Matthew LOVES to go on BYU campus is the BYU Museum of Art.   Dan Steinhilber is the featured artist there. He is AMAZING, so thought Matthew and I...

http://moa.byu.edu/fileadmin/moa/steinhilber/steinhilbersplash.html
We were not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, but boy, did the boys have fun refreshing themselves in the wading pool outside. 

(If you look closely at the pictures on this web site, you will see black trash bags melted together on a large flat surface, more black trash bags blown up, about 25 or so feet high, with a metal trash can on top (really cool), dry cleaning hangers hanging from the ceiling in a spiraling pattern, and packing peanuts blown into a corner. You may even see some blow up balloons...very fun! This guy is a genius with everyday ordinary objects!!!)

Another favorite place is, of course, Temple Square in SLC. We got a private tour of the amazing Conference Center, and visited the Joseph Smith Building, and my favorite, The Beehive House. That house has 27 rooms in it. I love that house and never tire of touring through it. I want a house built for me just like it. (Did you hear that, Dave?) LOL

(Roof top garden of the Conference Center)

On Friday we got to see Shaney's ballet recital and pick her up to reclaim her. We checked her out and she belonged to us again. Yikes we really missed her!!!

All-in-all we had a great week, even without Shaney...AMAZING, I know!

(Time to start saving up so we can send her next year.)