SLC, and Nadia!

 

The kids and I took a quick trip to SLC over the weekend. You read that right--the kids and I. (I don't even like to take them with me when I run errands, so.......) It was insane. 500 miles in 24 hours? Yep....... Eating out for four meals with a crazed 3 1/2 year old who was determined to lie down/crawl on every restaurant/gas station/bathroom floor we came across? Yep....... He also wanted to go up and down every escalator and elevator, and ALWAYS had to push the buttons, and wanted to be the one to use the hotel key card, and generally was determined to test my patience the entire time. Madelyn was better but had her own whiny, stubborn moments. Ah, traveling. We're so glad to be home.

Anyway, the reason we went up was because my BFF (as Madelyn would say) Nadia, who used to live in New Mexico when we did but now lives on a tiny island in the Pacific on the other side of the world, was visiting. I hadn't seen her since before she moved out there, and since it would cost over $10,000 for us to go out and see her, I figured I needed to make an effort to visit while she was actually in my home state.

Mark had to work on Saturday and couldn't come. His brother James was supposed to come up and spend the night with him and star gaze, but it ended up being cloudy so he didn't come. As I had spent several hours whipping the house into company-ready shape before I left, I was not too happy to find out about that. We didn't get out of the house till around 10:30 am, much later than I wanted. We got to SLC at 2:00 pm and went to Trolley Square to find something to eat.

 

We went to The Old Spaghetti Factory. It has a big trolley car in the middle of the restaurant, right next to where we were sitting. Instead of eating his spaghetti, Luke alternated between dumping salt/pepper/cheese onto his noodles, crawling under the table and trying to sneak over to the trolley car and causing near-collisions with several waitresses.

 We decided to go crash at the hotel after that, since I was really frazzled and Nadia had wicked jet lag, since there's something like a 16-hour time difference between here and Saipan.

We passed by this conference every time we went through the downstairs hallway at the hotel. It was the "Crystal Mountain Pony Con" by the Utah Bronys. Basically, My Little Ponies, nerdified and for adults. It actually looked like fun. Lots of costumes and dancing and general geeky goodness. I do know that they have a Doctor Whooves, who represents the 10th Doctor from Doctor Who. That's about all I know about it though.

 We stayed at the Red Lion hotel, which was really nice and had the softest, cushiest beds. Madelyn's reaction was probably to this:

Messing with the phone immediately upon arrival to any hotel is always his #1 priority. Unplugging it is the first thing I have to do after setting our bags down.

Nadia and I sat and caught up on everything that's been going on in our lives while the kids bounced around the room. Finally we decided to go back out around 6:30 pm to the Gateway Center, which was nearby but still tricky to get to with the one-way street we were on. (What is the point of one-way streets?!)

We'd come here briefly last year (or the year before?...) when we came to see the ballet. I could spend a lot of time there, if I wasn't constantly trying to corral two kids.

 This whole downtown area was spiffed up majorly for the winter Olympics back in 2002--I'd gone to the U of U in 1999-2000, so all I got was the construction phase.

Our main stop was Sur la Table, because Nadia is a great cook and foodie and I knew she'd love it. Not sure what's going on with Madelyn there....

The letter shaped cookie cutters momentarily kept Luke entertained...

 Hot Topic had this sweet Doctor Who stuff. I couldn't actually buy anything (had to save our money for food and gas--boring) but I really loved this shirt.

 In fact, the whole store is full of nerdy t-shirts, which is something always close to my heart. ♥

 

We ate dinner at the food court and Madelyn got to chat with Nadia's boys, Beckham and Ravi. They used to play together all the time back in the day.

 

Oh yeah, here's us!

It was going on 10:00 pm (not even sure how that happened) so I had to go drop her off back at her brother's house. It was such a short visit, but worth it!

 The next morning I woke up with a headache and a cold and was really groggy. We went down and had breakfast and Luke just took off running several times. I swear, one of these days he's going to just be snatched up by someone. Sigh....

I promised I'd let the kids "get their wiggles out" before we left, so after I finally got us checked out of the hotel, we went to this park that we'd driven by the day before.

 It was pretty ghetto...it is apparently the hang-out spot for seven or eight big black guys from the neighborhood. They just sat around the whole time on one side of the park, so we just played on the other side. There was graffiti and this lovely shrine to La Virgin de Guadalupe:

 
(That's the shrine, can you see the candles? There was a big sign on the other side.)

  

 The kids ran around for nearly an hour, and Madelyn was practicing her gymnastics on this bar so much so that she pulled a pec muscle. I had to practically drag them back to the car. Luke wouldn't come until he could see that I was in the car, waving to him. This is why I never like taking them to the park!!

Since we were so close, I decided to drive up to some of the SLC landmarks to show the kids before we got back on the freeway.

This is a cool (LDS) church that was across the street from the park. I wish they built more like that!

City & County Building

 Salt Lake Temple--Luke said, "Look! There's a castle!" It is such a striking building. I used to go down there all the time when I lived in SLC. I really wanted to take the kids and walk around, but....

It was Conference weekend, and right in the middle of the Sunday morning session. So the Conference Center and all of Temple Square was packed with like, 25,000 people. Not really the best time to stop for a quick visit.

By the way--BIG announcement made during the Saturday session of conference--Cedar City is getting a temple!!!!!! We'd been hearing rumors for a year, but it was thrilling to hear the news from President Monson. I basically burst into tears. It is going to be right up the hill from our house! We are incredibly excited. :D :D

 Utah State Capitol. I remember going to a dance there, once. It was awesome.

 

Thankfully, the kids zonked out for about half of the drive home. I was listening to Sense and Sensibility on CD and got halfway through it on the way up and back. LOVE that book.

Madelyn just saw this picture and said, "Is that really how I was sleeping??" Haha

When they woke up, they were quite chipper again. We stopped in Beaver for a break and to get a burrito and slushies a the gas station. We were nearly home, but I'd been needing to pee for three hours and was so tired I was afraid I was going to fall asleep. Shortly before that I nearly got run off the road by some yahoo in a semi twice within a five minute period, so that helped me wake up.

We finally got home, and I have been in sort of a foggy stupor since then. My cold isn't helping...

 I do have this awesome shirt from Nadia to remember her by. (Spam and rice are a big thing in Saipan.)

 

Today, it's back to reality, and our reality = several hours of snow. Ugh. Most of it wasn't sticking, but still I'm hoping my plants will be okay.

  

Luke went out and ate some snow right off the bench. He always knows how to have fun.