Utah Part 1 - C-ville

Our journey begins at the Baltimore airport.  This was Lucy's 2nd time flying.  Her first time she was just a little weeblit that slept the whole time (bless her!).  We were curious to see how she would do being 13-months-old and full of energy.  Here we are at the airport (she stayed in her jammy jams for the flight).  She loved looking out the window at all the planes and running around trying to make other people smile.  This girl loves attention!

The flight went really well with a little help from Vitamin B (aka Benadryl).  Lucy's doctor gave us the okay so I was all for it.  She fell asleep and slept on me for about an hour and a half and then she woke up so happy and crazy.  She was good though.  She just climbed all over us, watched Pocoyo, and read lots of books.
 Trey & I started getting giddy when we looked out the window to see that we were flying right over the Wellsville Mountains.  It was so neat to see our beloved Cache Valley from a bird's eye view.  We both forgot how big those Utah mountains are.  We definitely miss those mountains.
My parents picked us up at the airport and we headed to C-ville for the next 2 weeks.  It took Lucy a day or two to warm up to her Grandma Ma and Grandpa Dean, which was totally understandable since the last time she saw them was when she was 4 months.  Sad, I know.  It was so fun seeing all my fam!  We had such a fun time catching up with everyone and seeing how all the kids have grown!  It's crazy how fast they all grow!  Lucy had such a blast being around all the kiddies.  She loves all her cousins.
Luce enjoyed taking baths in Grandma's gold jetted tub.  Check out that hair in the back.  It's a reverse Alfalfa spike!  She's definitely got a sweet little rat tail going on, ha ha.  Is it sad I just can't bring myself to cut it yet?  Maybe when she gets more hair I will allow it.

She loved reading Grandma's books, especially with Grandma and her cousins Alyssa and Nate.  I thought this picture was so cute, Luce and Nate look so fascinated.

Doing the naked dance.  This girl is CrAzY when she's naked, she loves it too much.  The poor thing had a nasty diaper rash so we let her run around naked a lot, which she enjoyed.  A lot.  Obviously. :)

Helping G-ma water the plants.

Reading with Grandpa Dean.  She took quite a liking to him.

Here we are with Trey's sister Lauree's kids at Ragnar.  Trey's mom, bro, and bro-in-law ran in it.  Park City was beautiful!  We rode these fun little gondolas up to the finish line at the Canyons Resort.  We had a grand old time and Lucy warmed right up to her cousins Wren and Dylan.

Here are the Surveillance Does at the finish line.  Success!

Posing

My parents have a little fireplace thing out in their backyard so we just had to make us some Smores.  My bro Mike, SIL Mandy, and their kids joined us for a Monday night treat.  I just loved how cute Max's little cast was.  He was pretty proud of it.  He liked to use it as a weapon against his sister. :)

Trey enjoying a delicious Smore

Haha, okay, I have to tell the story behind this picture.  My mom had some baby wipes out because the Smores were getting a bit messy, as they usually do.  Mandy asked my mom to toss her the wipes.  Meanwhile, Luce was standing in front of me posing for the camera. My mom tossed the wipes over to Mandy but they slipped right out of her hands and smacked Lucy point blank in the face, knocking her to the ground.  I can't believe I captured the precise moment it hit her!  Look how unsuspecting poor Lucy is, she was just posing for a picture.  So we were trying to console her and my mom felt so bad.  I grabbed the camera to check out the picture I got and I started snickering.  I brought the camera over to Mike and said "you've got to see this!" and he just busted up.  I have never heard him laugh so hard in my life!  His laughter was so contagious we all started giggling uncontrollably.  Then we all had to pass the picture around and we were all just dying.  Poor Lucy.

Mike Dee bouncing all the kiddies

Luce had fun playing with her cousin Jaycee in the swimming pool in Gma's backyard.

She didn't know what to think about it at first.

My niece Tayler was in a soccer tournament so we went to one of her games.  Those girls they were playing were brutes!  I couldn't believe how physical they were, and they were supposedly 11-12 years olds...hmm curious.

Me and my newest niecey Peyton Michelle.  I've never had anyone named after me, I was so touched!  I feel like we have a special bond because we share the same name.  And I could have just eaten up all those rolls!  I love me some chubby baby. :)

Luce loved the piano at Gma's.

Helping Gma Ma out with the chorus

Let's see...I'm trying to remember what else we did that I didn't get pictures of. 

• 
  
  We went to the Bountiful Rec Center and swam
• We ate the best fro yo I've ever had at the Orange Leaf
• We went on a super fun double-date with Mike and Mandy to Boondocks and mini golfed it up and had a good laugh at the Arctic Circle drive thru
• We played some tennis
• We played with some old friends
• We filled up on our fresh mex (that we miss so much!) from Costa Vida, Cafe Rio, and Bajio
• We went to the Bountiful Temple with almost my whole fam (minus Phil & Julie)
• Trey & I both got food poisoning and were deathly ill on Father's Day.  I felt bad that Trey's first real Father's Day was such a drag.  Dang Iggys!
• We were there when my parents opened their mission call to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!  They actually just arrived in PA yesterday, wahoo!

Which brings us to our next destination...Cache Valley!

Young love

Our friends the Thompsons left to go to Ohio State (boo!) for Joel's residency.  Their little boy Nathan was born 4 days before Lucy (which happened to be Lucy's due date) and Lucy was born on Nathan's due date.  Yes, it was meant to be.  Nathan was Lucy's little boyfriend.  We started sitting by the Thompsons every week at church and those two were so funny to watch.  They mainly just swapped toys but it got a little heated when they both were after the same one.  Nathan is just the happiest little boy, he would always have a big grin on his face.  Nathan's parents are pretty cool too.  Anyway, here are some pics of the kiddos saying their goodbyes.

Looks like Nathan is going in for a kiss and Lucy is pointing at his mouth like what is he doing with that??

Aww, they are touching hands.  What a perfect picture for their wedding video. :) 

 Becky and Nathan are all smiles(even though I'm sure they were crying on the inside)

We miss you guys!

Quick trip to Palmyra, NY

Trey spontaneously planned a trip to Palmyra, NY the week before we left for Utah and I was a little hesitant at first because I like to plan things in advance but I decided to just go for it. It turned out to be soo fun! We just went up for 2 days and 1 night. We stayed at this funny little motel called Scottish Inns(yes Inns, not Inn) that only charged $50 a night. It wasn't the nicest place but it was clean and the bed was comfy enough. Oh and there was cable! Score!

The reason we went up there before we went to Utah was that Trey's former mission president and his wife were serving a mission up there at the sites. They were heading back to Utah in mid-July so we would have missed them if we would have waited.

So the drive up was 4 hours of beautiful green everywhere, it was gorgeous...too bad we got a $150 speeding ticket, ouch! Our cheap trip turned out to be not so cheap in the end. Boo for merciless PA cops.

Anyway...check out our pictures!

When we first got there we went to the Hill Cumorah...sorry for the bum shot, that was the best pic we got of the statue of Moroni.

I thought this was cute of Luce passed out in the car...

Here is the Jo. Smith home #1(the log home). It was so cute and little. I can't believe they fit so many people in there!

Here is a snap of the inside...

Lucy being a silly. She was such a good girl while we went to all the church sites.

The sister missionary giving our tour was the little sister of a girl we used to work with in the computer labs at Utah State! What a small world.
This is where the angel Moroni visited Jo. Smith...it was so amazing to actually be there!

I thought this little wooden chair was so cute!

You can see the Palmyra temple from the Smith farm.

This is the inside of the 2nd house they lived in(the frame home), which is just down the road.

Our little foxy friend...

A view of house #1 from the trail to the Sacred Grove. I love this picture. Maybe one day I'll attempt to paint it.

The Grove.

What a beautiful place...so peaceful and has such a special spirit there. Truly hallowed ground.

Playing outside the visitor's center

Then we stopped by the temple on the way back to our motel.

Rockin the sippy and the baby Vans

My favorite part of this temple is the stained glass on all the windows and doors. It's kind of hard to see in this picture.

That night we met up with Elder & Sister Kinghorn and went to a little hole-in-the-wall place to eat that was pretty tasty. I guess that's the only local place they'll take their visitors too. I'm sad I forgot to get a picture of them.
The next day we went to the E.B. Grandin building where the Book of Mormon was first published. They had a few of the originals there which were neat to see. It was interesting to learn what went into the process of printing back in the day. It was definitely a lot of work, but well worth it...obviously. :)

Here we are at the Peter Whitmer Farm, where the church was first organized back in 1830.

And here is the inside where everyone sat. The tour guide told us they fit 75 people in there, which was super hard to believe because it really wasn't that big of a house.

And that was the end of our trip. I'm really happy I went along with the spontaneity of my dear huzzbee. It was a fun little trip.

Hiking in Mt. Gretna

We finally found somewhere to go hiking in PA! Hah cha cha! There is this charming little town called Mt. Gretna about a half hour away from Hersh. After much searching for the trailhead, we finally found it and set off on our hike.

Luce got to ride in the Kelty, lucky girl!

Family picture time!

This girl is so at home outdoors. It makes me happy.

The trail...

We found some wildlife...can you see our little friend? He's got some pretty good camo.

A view of the hills aka "mountains" out here

So tired from all the walking...

Lucy was so done by the time we got back. This girl just loves to run around and play in the dirt, sticks, and leaves so it was like a tease to be in the woods when she was strapped into the Kelty.

Where to begin...

We're baaaaack!  We had a very enjoyable trip back to the mother land (Utah) and now I've got sooo much catching up to do.  Be prepared for some back-tracking, way back to the first of June before we left.  And so it begins...