Monday - Salt Lake City / This Is the Place / Thai Food with Ken

On Monday we had to be out of the Lodge by 10:00 - on our way out we had breakfast in Garden City with the family.  Most everyone had already gone because they had long drives back to AZ, CA, etc, but we were just going to Utah.  

Bear Lake is a lake that goes into two states, so we drove up to Idaho just so we could say we'd been there.

Leaving Bear Lake we drove through Logan, UT and stopped at the temple - see other post.

From Logan we drove to Heritage Place, "This is the Place"  This place is where a monument was built to honor those that were pioneers and traveled so far to Utah.  This is where Bringham Young declared they would stop their journey and live here.  Seeing all that Salt Lake City has become from that time where there was nothing but the Great Salt Lake is amazing!

Mark and Devon talking

Our kids favorite activity - climbing trees

We were able to go into Heritage Place for just 30 minutes because they were closing early for the day. It was the only day we could come, so they were nice and let us in.  We had to stay just on the main street - but that was enough for now.

John Gardner's Cabin

Robert walking on stilts

Betsy at the Huntman Hotel

From Heritage Place we drove down to Salt Lake City and did our usual routine.  We parked on the back side of the Conference Center, toured the outside of the Conference Center before touring Temple Square.

Love this!

Temple Square was beautiful.  All the flowers were in full bloom.  We had a wonderful time.  It was fun to see the changes in our children over the years.  The first time we came Robert was only 3 years old.  

Mark and Marissa in front on the temple

A view of the temple

Today we were able to walk around the open side to the temple.  Robert and Devon were on "immediate investigation" mode.  They went exploring.

Mark, Marissa and I were introduced to the cousin of the Osmonds.  We talked to him for a while (too long).

Betsy, Mark and Marissa (fingers of the Osmond missionary)

Marissa has always wanted her photo taken here - ever since Jessica had her's taken here.

This is in front of the Church office building.  We went into the church office building and were reminded that Mark's cousin, Steven Lowe works there in finance.  He came down and we had a wonderful visit with him.  Most of his children are married and starting families of their own.  Their youngest is about 2 years older than Jessica.

Our family at the Salt Lake Temple

From there we went to Ken Cramer's house.  We had a great visit with his family.  We had all sorts of different Thai foods for dinner since Ken and Mark served their missions together in Thailand.  Ken had just recently been on a mission trip to Thailand with their second son, Nicholas.  Their oldest son, Tyler is serving a mission too.  It was a great visit.