Play Park City!

According to Google, it's a good 30 hours or so to drive all the way down to Southern California. That would mean at least a two or three day drive down and back, so almost a week just in travel. Ugh. To fly it is super expensive, too. So, we haven't gone down much, but the Jerdons invited us to meet them about half way in Park City to hang out and enjoy their time share condo! We were pretty excited. Jake's Reserves weekend would take up the first part of the week together, but we figured that he could join us when he was done and then we'd drive back to Spokane together. 

After the accident, I was a bit stiff and sore, but Brendan and Riley made it with me to Butte, Montana on that first leg of the trip. I have to admit that I am NOT a good long distance driver. I get sleepy. That is part of the reason why I've never complained when Jake has wanted to do all the driving on road trips. It was really hard for me to go five to six hours! I tried to keep snacking, sipping water, singing to music, being engaged with audio books and just flat out bite my tongue and cheek to fight my sleepiness. It worked and we were alive. 

After all that time in the car, we were excited to realize that our motel was right next to a park. It must have rained there recently because the grass was super soggy, but the boys enjoyed running around and climbing on the equipment. There was a little girl there who wanted to play, so they all ended up playing tag and getting some energy out.  

We noticed a huge, while Christus looking statue up on top of the nearby mountain. We were fascinated by it, so I Googled it and found that it is a huge statue of Mary on top of the Continental Divide. Who knew?

My the afternoon the following day, we were in Park City and met Tom and Louise at the Marriott Summit Watch Resort. It was very nice and right in the downtown, trendy area of town. The boys immediately zeroed in on the pool and Silver Station where there was an air hockey table and video games on a big screen tv. There was a schedule of activities and Riley was keen to do them all. One of the first activities we did was go to the "dive-in movie" and watch the new Jumanji movie while hanging in the pool and spa. This is the life!

The week we were there, the FIFA World Cup was underway and, with cable to enjoy, there was a lot of soccer to watch. Brendan was schooling Grandpa about all the ins and outs of the game. 

Riley enjoyed watching Cartoon Network and Teen Titans Go! A LOT, but also went to the pool almost every day, and even made some friends along the way. He enjoyed playing with Grandpa, too.

Grandma was so good about making sure there were yummy things to eat, especially for breakfast since Riley is an early riser. He got to enjoy time with her chatting and sharing watermelon.

Riley also learned how to play solitaire, since I brought a deck of cards with me.

We went to church on Sunday in what we figured out is a "visitors ward" there in Park City. It is a ghost ward with a time set aside for visitors to attend sacrament meeting only. It is manned by the wards in the stake who take turns administering the sacrament, conducting the meeting and music, as well as giving the sacrament talks. It was a pretty fun chapel, too! And as soon as the service was over, everyone left. Just visitors. Crazy!

Sunday afternoon/evening, we went down to Alpine to have dinner with the Domikes. Kristin grilled us a yummy dinner and the kids enjoyed getting reacquainted. Brendan and Monty hung out down in Monty's room, shooting hoops and goofing around like the young teens that they are. Riley, Clara and Gwen ran around on the tramp outside. It was great. Tom and Louise enjoyed getting to know Kristin's grandma and admired her brand new violin teaching studio, which they'd built into the third garage. It turned out beautiful.

After dinner, the Jerdons took the boys back to the condo and I headed out to the airport to pick up Jake. It was nice to be reunited again.

Then next day, he and I snuck out to explore downtown. We found a fun sock store and decided that we'd go back there at the end of the trip for some fun souvenirs.

We purposely didn't over schedule ourselves, but did plan a couple of bigger activities. One day, Tatumn came up to join us and we all went to explore the Homestead Crater. Apparently, it is a dead volcano with a hot spring inside that you can swim in. All the boys decided to go in. The ladies decided to chat instead.

Then we headed over to Heber to take a ride on the railroad. They had music playing and some fiddlers came through the cars. We bought some snack snacks and enjoyed the ride.

Jacob and I decided to plan a day to go to the temple and decided to go do a live session in Salt Lake. It had been YEARS since we'd been there last. I think we must have been first married because I didn't remember it hardly at all. We ended up being asked to be the witness couple, which was kind of intimidating since things are done a little differently for a live session. We did our best to follow along and watch for cues. Every room while moving through the endowment was A-MAZ-ING. Rooms covered top to bottom with intricate paintings and gorgeous chandeliers. I felt like a child wandering wide-eyed into each one. It was amazing.

We were going to meet up with Tom, Louise and the boys at the newly renovated Family History Center and, since we had some time to kill, decided to walk over to the Church office building and take a tour. They took us up to the top where there are viewing spots and you can see the entire valley.

We really wanted to show Grandma the Family History Library. We knew that she would enjoy getting to see her genealogy interactively. Riley and Brendan already knew what to do from our last visit and showed Grandpa what to do. Riley decided that as soon as he is eight, he wants to have his OWN FamilySearch account so that he can do it himself. 

After exploring, we went to grab lunch at the Nauvoo Cafe on the other side of Temple Square at the bottom of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. It was really nice and had some yummy sandwiches. We also found a mini Family History Center nearby and the boys enjoyed hamming it up in their photo studio.

Getting closer to the end of our time in Park City, we decided to take the downtown "trolley" up to the sock store and have the boy pick out a fun pair of socks. Along the way, we stopped to find one of the Banksy pieces down a random alleyway. Another one of Park City's claims to fame.

On our last full day in town, we went for lunch at a neat pizza place called Davanza's right near the condo and then went to the Olympic Park one more time to see which activities had been closed when we were there in early April of last year.

We started out with the Discovery Course that we'd done last time. Riley was a whiz and everyone did great. Then we were also able to go on a zipline, Brendan and I went down the extreme tubing slide, Riley, Brendan and Jake went down the smaller tubing slide, we got to watch some of the ski jumping camps practice jumping into the huge pools of water, Brendan showed us that he could be a good stunt man by jumping off high platforms onto the stunt bags, and then the boys and I did the drop tower where you zip line to a high tower and then bungy jump down. Boy, were we feeling the adventure!

After all the excitement, it was nice just to chill for awhile.

It was a great time hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa. The weather in Park City was pleasant (not quite as hot as in Utah Valley), and the boys loved all the activities and non-activities. Sometimes, it's an even better vacation NOT to have to do a bunch of stuff, and just be together.