A Week in Provo

After a week in California, we had a full week in Provo!  Including church first thing in the morning after arriving late on Saturday.  

And Abigail got to open her birthday present from Grandpa and Grandma Smith!

That afternoon, we all went to BYU to take family pictures (see the next post).  The girls loved the ducklings!

We miss those mountains in Texas!

On Monday (Memorial Day), we played with Daddy as much as possible - and ate at Cafe Rio, of course!, since Andrew was flying home that afternoon.  While the girls and I had another 2 weeks of vacation to go, he had to get back to Lubbock for school (summer classes starting the following week), and work (a clerkship with a local judge starting the next day - too bad his work start was delayed and it turns out he could have stayed with us longer!).

Yummy dinners with cousins!  The girls loved playing with Maren and Lexi.

Visiting the park by Aunt Laura's house.  

Ice cream at Macey's!

Cora was a big fan :)  

Stories with Grandma Smith:

We got to visit lots of different parks with the cousins - this one was a recently opened park in Orem.  When we pulled up Halle exclaimed, "I've been waiting my WHOLE LIFE to come to this park!"  It was super hot, but fun.

Thanks to the heat, we got to play in sprinklers and the pool at Grandma's house!

Cora sat in the shade with me :)

Sno-cones with Aunt Lisa, Uncle Lance, Aunt Laura, Uncle Danny, Maren, and Zoey!  They melted faster than we could eat them!  Partly because of the heat and partly due to their HUGE size!

Splash pads with Aunt Kayla, Lexi, and Dallin:

And more parks!  Cora's all grown up with her (my) sunglasses and phone!

Cora was super wary around all the family, most of the time, but Uncle Eric won her over quickly!

This was a huge, fun splash pad/park/river in Springville, but somehow all the pictures I took there are gone???  :( I'm relying on the few I stole from Aunt Kayla.  Bummer!  

Matchies!  Thanks to Grandma Smith!

As you can tell, most of the week was fun with the Smith family!  

On Friday, Aunt Kelly drove down to Provo with our Brunson cousins and we started an afternoon of fun with lunch at Cafe Rio!

Afterwards, we headed to Lowe's Extreme Air Sports to work out some wiggles!  Our Smith cousins came too!

Eve started on the kids' trapeze, then went with Aunt Laura and Aunt Kelly to the full-size one.

Tramps!  Wait....

Big kid area!

Halle conquering the maze!

A quick trip to Costco (you don't go to Costco on your vacations?) with ice cream!

Then we ended at the duck pond at BYU that we'd been at with the Smiths for pictures on Sunday.  Ducklings were still there and still a hit!

We tried for a cousin's shot, but had some unhappy girls by this point!  

On Saturday, I took the girls to a hair school for trims.  I figured, how bad could it be?  They just needed a couple inches off and it was only a few dollars each.  Three hours later.....!  It was the most painful hair experience I'd ever had.  And to make it worse, I decided to have them cut my hair too (why not?) since I was already taking the girls in.  Worst hair cut ever.  And longest!  Now we know why not....

The before shot:

And I was too fussy (and we were SO late) afterwards to get any more pictures.  

On Sunday, after church with the Smiths, we met up with some Larsen family at the recently rebuilt Easter Cross.  This Easter Cross was originally built by my great grandpa, Nathan Dixie Hiatt, for a non denominational Easter service many years ago.  Sometime in the 1970's, it was vandalized and knocked down.  A lady in my Aunt Jo Ann's ward decided to spearhead getting it rebuilt, so as of this summer, it now stands in the Eastlawn Cemetery in Provo.   

This is how it looked before:

Now:

So cool to go and see it with our family! 

Halle didn't want to get up that high :)

Grandpa Larsen did, though.  And he also jumped off.  I thought for sure he was going to break something!

Grandma and Grandpa Larsen with their grandchildren - just missing Darci, Jarret, and newly born Logan!

The Larsen clan who came!  It was funny because my dad was up in front of everyone telling the story of the Easter Cross and being videoed by my cousin, Roger, for about 5 minutes.  I was trying to keep a fussy Cora quiet, so gave her my phone to play with.  She kept turning Siri on (even though I'd disabled it!) so in the quiet, while everyone was listening to my dad, Siri would randomly call out, "I'm sorry, I didn't get that" or "What was that?".  Oops.  

Last bit of play time with Aunt Laura!

We had a fun week in Provo and were sad to leave - especially since it'll be a while before we see some of our Smith family again.  Grandpa and Grandma Smith leave on a 2 year mission on Brasil in September!

And we left on Monday morning for a Larsen Family Reunion in Hanna, UT!