Utah Trip: Days 1-4

Last week we all headed off to Utah together for a variety of reasons. Alex and Nathan would be at EFY at the U of U, I had my Stampin' Up convention in downtown SLC, and Dennis and the rest of the gang were going to stay in play in Park City. It was to be quite a week for everyone!

Our first stop - toot toot - was at Kelso station. We have driven by this old abandoned train station for years every time we take those back desert roads (Amboy & Kelso) toward Vegas. But recently, they have restored the station, and turned it into a visitors center for the Mojave Preserve.

It is so nice, and a great place to get out and stretch our legs.

There are displays and interesting information, a short movie that we really enjoyed, and even an old time diner if you are hungry.

They have restored the baggage room and the ticket window, and you can look into the old ticket office.

It is a really cool place way out in the middle of nowhere.

We actually spent the first night in St. George where I got up early and hit some Saturday morning garage sales. They were all incredibly bad! What is it with Mormons and bad garage sales? Geesh. What a waste of time. But I made up for it by going to Tai Pan - my favorite store. All was well again.

We drove all day and made it to our timeshare, the Marriott Mountainside Resort in Park City. It was a great place, and we spent the rest of the evening exploring the amenities.

They had this giant chess set there, and before long Dylan had challenged Dennis to a match.

It was intense.

The audience was mesmerized.

Later, my parents arrived to join us for the week. They had so many helpers.

We went to church the next morning there in Park City. It was a wonderful experience. We filed in right into the 2nd row. There was a youth speaker and then a musical number by 2 sweet girls that were about 12. I thought "oh, how sweet" until they opened their mouths and it became clear very fast that these gals were professionals! Whoa! I should have expected that when the announced that they would be accompanied by Merilee Webb who's name I immediately recognized as a big time choir director in the church. They often call her in to lead large guest choirs for general conference and such. In fact, she directed the instant choir I participated in a few years ago when I went to Women's Conference at BYU. She was truly amazing!

Their song was amazing too. It left me in tears.

The speakers were Sis. and Elder Clarke who had recently been called as a Seventy. They had recently returned from being mission president in Bolivia, and they shared their experiences with us. It was terrific. Sis. Clarke even referred to our family when she said that as she watched all the visitors come in, especially this family with the six kids, she was reminded of her own six kids and how they travelled so much and always had to get them all dressed and out the door and file into strange wards, but it was such a great experience for them. I agree. I love visiting strange wards, because the are not strange at all. They are always the same, and the saints are the same. Sure, you don't know them, but you almost feel like you do. It is such a testimony builder for me.

Sunday school was amazing, and so was Relief Society. It was so funny. One gal sat next to me and said "Aren't you the one with the 6 boys? I was sitting right behind you in Sacrament meeting." Oh no. My kids had been terrible. I was embarrassed. But she told me how wonderful my children were and how she had enjoyed watching them, especially the cute little guy with the glasses who was just so reverent and intently watching the speaker the whole time, never moving a muscle. She meant Derek, who I knew had been asleep the whole time! From behind he must have looked so attentive. She also told me how cute Luke was on my lap, so loving and affectionate, but at the time he was driving me bananas, climbing all over me, never sitting still and making me crazy. She hadn't noticed Alex stealthily terrorizing Caleb apparently, and told me what a wonderful loving dad Dennis was the way he was sitting with his boys (he was actually separating them so they would stop picking on each other.) I got a kick out of what she saw as compared with what was really going on in our pew. Hope the rest of the congregation saw what she saw.

She went on and on about my 6 boys, and how wonderful that was, and how darling they were, and such. After church, in fact, I found Nate coming out of his class with a bunch of other boys. This same lady was coming down the hallway, saw all the boys and asked several boys, one after the next. "Are you one of the six?" "Are you one of the six?" I finally pointed out Nate as one of the six and she was thrilled to meet him. But it was funny because as we kept walking down the hall the boys she had questioned kept asking each other "What does she mean by one of The Six?" "What is The Six?" "Why did she ask me if I was one of The Six?" Nate got a huge kick out of it. He didn't realize he was part of an exclusive group.

I thought that in Utah of all places, a family of six boys might go unnoticed. Guess not.

We all hung around the hotel that day and that evening we insisted the boys go to the youth fireside that had been announced at church. They whined and complained and did not want to go, but we made them get put their ties back on and go to the fireside anyway. And guess what? They had a great time. The speakers were a formal NFL player and his wife and they met a lot of cool kids.

On Monday, we got up early to find a mall because Alex and Nate need a few items before being dropped off at EFY that morning.

We found what we needed at the Gateway, and while Dennis took the guys into the Quicksilver store to get what they needed, I introduced my parents to the wonder that is Anthropologie! Mom and I went gaga over all the cool stuff, and Dad, who's most recent passion is sewing, if you can believe it or not, ogled over the stitchwork on the blouses. My dad is strange, yes, but at least you can bring him into the girlie stores with you.

Later grandpa and Nate were goofing around together. My parents and my kids sure do have a lot of fun together.

And that was good, because we all had to say our goodbyes to Al & Nate before we dropped them off at EFY over at the University of Utah.

Dropping them off was so funny. We arrive and there is a LONG line of kids waiting to check in. There were some parents too, carrying luggage, snapping pictures, etc. Before we had even stopped the car Nate declares "Don't get out!" and then jumps out, grabs his luggage and takes off without even a look backward. Alex at least let us tell him good bye. As we were driving away, we drove right by where Nate was standing in line, but he would NOT look at us, so we just stopped the car there and waited for him to look at us. We waved and called to him, but he would not look out direction, so we kept waving an calling to him. Finally at the risk of being embarrassed, he slightly turned his head out direction, gave us the dirtiest of looks, and with the slightest of motions, barely perceptible to the human eye, he waved to us - or maybe he was waving us away, but I'd like to believe he was waving to us. It was classic. Wish I had a picture. Such a typical teenager thing to do. I loved it. Why do I get such a sadistic pleasure out of embarrassing my kids? Hey, at least I didn't get out and make his pose for pictures or give him kisses all over his face, right? I could have made it much worse for him.

So once the boys were dropped off we spent the rest of the day visiting downtown, Deseret Book, the Distribution Center, Costco, and such, just to make sure we got them all in. Then we went back to Park City so that the twins and Grandpa could participate in the Iron Chef competition at the resort.

Here is how it worked. Everyone who showed up got a can of refried beans, and they had an hour to go back to their room (the rooms all have full kitchens) and make any dish they wanted using their own ingredients. The only rules were that you had to use the beans, it had to be enough to feed 10 people, and you had to bring it back in exactly one hour. Let the games begin!

They rushed back to the room and took stock of what groceries they had on hand. Good thing we just went to Costco. They decided to create something they called Mexican lasagna. They layered spaghetti sauce, tortillas, beans, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, etc, several times like a lasagna, then topped it with more tortillas, sauce, tons of cheese, and the kicker - leftover barbacoa sweet pork from Cafe Rio on top, and popped it in the oven. When it was done they added a few more of Dad's homegrown tomatoes on top too for decoration

In exactly 1 hour they were back downstairs with their culinary masterpiece. They were the first ones back. Look how delicious that looks! eventually the table started filling up with all the other entries - mostly nachos of some sort or another. We were the only ones with a full on meal, and it looked and tasted better than all of them, if you ask me. Somebody even baked the refried beans into a boxed brownie mix. Um, no. But the judging was completely unfair, done by all the kids, some with multiple ballots, and our team didn't win, though it was clear that all the adults preferred the Mexican Lasagna over everything else. The winner had made pumpkin bars. Huh? They were undercooked, looked nasty, arrived at least 15 minutes late, and I didn't find any beans in there. But the kids chose the sweets, so that was that.

But we didn't care because we took home the rest and had a fabulous meal! Great job Iron Chefs Derek, Dylan, and Grandpa!