Maren and her children arrived on July 22nd and stayed through August 9th. Here are some of the highlights for the July portion of their visit.
The Burgoyne Family Reunion was one of the main reasons for the visit. Here's Tess relaxing before our July 24th breakfast.
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| Kevin riding with his nephews / Maren and Tess riding with us |
On Monday July 27th we traveled by Front Runner to Salt Lake City to visit the Clark Planetarium and to visit the Family Search Discovery Center in the Joseph Smith Memorial building.
Cole really enjoyed the planetarium because he is really into planets right now. After our visit to the planetarium we rode Trax to Temple Square and had a short rest and snack by the reflecting pool. Then we ventured inside the Family Search center to visit the discovery center. Each person was given an iPad that you could dock at different stations where you could see parts of your family history or take a photo in period clothing. Here is one of the pages it generated for me.
We enjoyed a quick dinner at the City Creek Mall then had to run to catch the Trax back to the North Temple station so we could catch the 7:30 train home. It was a tiring day.
Wednesday evening I didn't have mutual because of youth conference so that afternoon we went up Provo canyon for a picnic and to hike to Bridal Veil falls. We ordered JDawgs (they screwed up our order) and drove up the canyon and found a table right by the river.
After dinner we hiked up the trail to the falls. Cole was in rare form yelling at Josh to stay on the trail and of course Josh would not just to rile Cole up.
As soon as we arrived at the falls the kids all jumped into the shallow water and started splashing around. Soon Josh started climbing up the lower falls and was joined by Maren and Spencer. Cole stood at the bottom hollering at the top of his lungs that Josh was going to get lost. It was entertaining if not a bit embarrassing.
They spent a lot of time in the falls to my surprise which was nice because it was quite hot in Provo.
Thursday we decided to go to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. It has been more than 30 years since I've been to the Zoo. The zoo is laid out on a much more natural setting than when our kids were young. Highlights were the elephants including Dari, the oldest African elephant in captivity in the US who died at the age of years old last week, the brown bears and the Polar bear. The kids also really enjoyed watching the sea lions swim around in their tank.
I only took one photo at the splash pad. This was right after I fielded a call from one of my sales reps and had to talk him through dilution rate tables. It was a long hot day and everyone was glad to get back in the air conditioned car and head home.
