Our Month in Utah at a Glance

After spending a few weeks in Oklahoma, it was time again for Nick to go back to work, this time at a pediatric office in Bountiful, Utah. While in Utah we stayed and played with Nick's family, caught up with friends from high school, college, and our Provo days, and visited some of the classic Utah tourist sights. Here's our month in Utah at a glance:

*All three kids busy at the Salt Lake Children's Museum







*The Hoskins family at the Heber Creeper for "A Day with Thomas the Train"



*Dad and the kids crawling through the coral at the Utah Aquarium.

*A few pictures of our weekend at the lakehouse. A summer trip to Utah wouldn’t be complete without a trip to the Hoskins’ family lakehouse to play on the beach and take a ride on Grandpa’s boat.

*Emmie and a few new friends she made during a visit to Provo to check out the latest upgrades to the BYU campus and catch up with some old Provo Buddies. From left to right: Alli McClellan, Samantha Webster, and our own grumpy EmmaLee. Thanks Webster and McClellan Families for another great evening at the Provo Brick Oven!



*Madison and Spencer in their first swimming lessons. They loved having swimming lessons with their cousins Harrison and Isabella, (thanks Grandma Hoskins) and the lessons made a HUGE difference.

*An afternoon visit to Historic Temple Square. We never make a trip to Utah without a stopover at the temple. Maddi and Spencer both want to get married there, just like their Mommy and Daddy and Grandparents did.

*Our Camping Trip to Southern Utah and tour of Zion's National Park

We made this trip with Darren and Jenny Groberg and their family. The adventures started early when our camp sight insight Zion National Park was given to another family. We had to search for a new campsight and could only find space on the side of a great sand dune!! The red sand was a real nightmare, but it did kind of seem appropriate for a camping trip to Southern Utah.

The kids didn’t seem to mind it either.

Even though digging in the sand and catching horney-toads was fun, I think Emmie and Spencer’s favorite part of the campsite was the water pump.

During our three day camping trip, we spent our mornings and evenings at the campsight either cooking, playing games, or swimming at the resevior. During the afternoon, however, we hiked the numerous trails of beautiful Zion National Park.



One of our hikes took us to the park’s famous weeping rock. Here are the kids playing in the “rain”.

Here we are on what turned into quite the hike up to the Emerald pools. We were just planning on going to the lower pool, but somehow we missed the trail and ended up making the much more difficult hike all the way to the upper pool. That is quite the feat with three young children and a pregnant mommy. The kids loved it though. We picnicked at the top and they spent hours playing in the emerald pools trying to catch the tadpoles.

I just had to include this picture of little Emmie. She rode in the carrier most of the hike, but the last half mile Spencer and Maddi were getting so tired that we decided to take Emmie out and see if she would walk. Not only did our little 16-month old walk the rest of the way down, holding hands with little Adlen Groberg, but most of the way she ran, and couldn’t have been happier.

Likewise, here’s a picture of happy little Spencer who finally got to ride on Daddy’s back!

As a part of this trip we were also very blessed to get to visit my Grandma Rogers, my Great-Grandma Graff, make a trip to see Uncle John the family dentist, and take an evening swim at the Veyo Mountain Resort Swimming Pool--a favorite destination of mine as a child.

During our month in Utah we also attended a mission homecoming for Nick’s cousin Cameron where we got to see most of the Hoskins' extended family, we visited Grandma and Grandpa Carter in Garland, Utah, and our course celebrated Spencer’s 3^rd birthday with his Cowboy birthday bash (see birthday post for more).