The End

WARNING:   I am hereby dumping all the rest of our pictures from Utah into this post, and there is nothing chronologic or interesting whatsoever about it.    

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What trip to Utah would be complete without a visit to the ubiquitous LIGER found at the Monte L. Bean museum?  What is a liger, you ask?  This particular liger has an African lion for a father and a Siberian tiger for a mother.   Ligers do not occur naturally and they cannot reproduce,  but this beautiful one lived  at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City for 24-years.  

This is a zebra, not unlike the one Cami saw in Yellowstone. ;) 

Are you scared? 

Trying all sorts of ice cream on vacation is a tradition of ours, which made the BYU Creamery  a favorite stop whenever we were in Provo. 

The Salt Lake temple is beautiful and so distracting that the kids kept wanting to look at it instead of the camera! 

Weirdly I can't remember exactly what this building on Temple Square was.   Maybe the old tabernacle??  

We stopped at Cove Fort on the way home from St. George.  Don't laugh at my obnoxious hair that desperately needed to be dyed.  

We learned interesting facts about the cove...

and the kids enjoyed the old-fashioned activities.  

Park City--expensive, hot, and a my-stomach-hates-me-attack. 

In other words, the kids loved it, but you'd have to twist my arm... hard to go back.  

K and Nana

Nana and a few of her great grandchildren

Thanksgiving Point Gardens

Koi pond. 

Thanksgiving Point Natural Curiosity Museum.

Aunt H with Ellie and Adam. 

Ellie and Nana. 

Us with Nana.

Me and Mom. 

Ellie and Mom. 

Fancy hair-dos and trying on old formals. 

Granny's milkshakes in Heber

A random beautiful sunset one night. 

3/4 of the sisters. 

And this hereby concludes the travelogue.  The next post will be our saying-goodbye-to-Cami post and then I'll be on to blogging about life, the universe, and everything again!  

Pics of the Week

In case you haven't noticed by now, I rather like my camera.  Much to the chagrin of a couple of my kids, I keep it slung over my shoulder (or tucked surreptitiously into my purse) almost everywhere I go.   And for those of you who have seen my camera know that it's not of a size to be easily "tuckable" or "slingable". 

So what do I do with all these pictures?

I used to print them all and try to scrapbook them, but I would invariably get overwhelmed with the mess scrapbooking always created and it always seemed like I was a year or two behind the times trying to keep up with the pictures.  Then in 2007 I started blogging, which I instantly loved because it was mess- and cost-free and was so easily shared with family and friends.  Shortly after beginning to blog I not only stopped scrapbooking, but also stopped printing up pictures altogether.  Now once or twice a year I'll print all of my posts into a hardcover blog book, which have become our new scrapbooks for our family.  I'll often walk into a room and find one of my kids curled up with a blog book and laughing about some funny story (this classic called, "Princesses Don't Toot" is their very favorite). 

The only problem with this method is that there are often great pictures that don't fit perfectly into a blogpost, which means that these great pictures often get lost in the archives of my iPhoto never to be seen again.  I'm going to try to remedy this problem by occasionally (possibly weekly) posting a blogpost just dedicated to my favorite pics.  They may or may not have a cool story to go with them, but mostly I just want them to be remembered. 

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I love how you can see the water droplets zipping onto Ellie in this picture as she hunkers down while a sibling sprays her with the hose.... 

I wish I could take credit for this amazing photo of a butterfly and bumblebee resting on our neighbor's flowers, but it was actually my sister, Heather, who took the photo.  Adam and Emma were the ones that had noticed the butterfly in the first place and demanded that I go get my camera immediately. 

My sister, Kristina, and I made some hairbows this week which required burning the edges of polyester circles with a candle.  By the time we were done, the candle looked like this and I couldn't help but take a picture of it.  My family thought I was certifiably weird when I pulled out my camera, but I was just so enamored with how charming and old-fashioned it looked that I couldn't help myself.

Don't know the story behind this photo, but I found it downloaded onto my computer and couldn't stop laughing.  Apparently it was taken by Cami very late one night. 

Here is a picture of Senator Mike Lee (from Utah) eating one of Cami's cupcakes. We have a friend who works in his office who had ordered Cami's cupcakes for a co-worker's birthday.  Cami called me super excited after receiving this picture. 

Cami really, really missed her big brother while he was in the hospital all those months and I LOVE seeing Spence and Cami hanging out together again. This is them at Chinatown (in DC) today.