New York City

 Daniel and I took a trip to New York City for our 15th anniversary. He came home one night a few months ago and surprised me by saying, "So... I am taking off a few days around our anniversary... you wanna go somewhere?" And I was like, "SURE!" We started brainstorming about places we would want to go. Mexico and NYC were the only serious contenders, although we discussed other cities in the US. I've always wanted to visit New York City, so that's where we went. 

We flew in and got to the airport in New Jersey in the late afternoon. Daniel had been doing some research and figured we could get to our airbnb (which was in New Jersey, just across the river from NYC) by using public transportation... which, we could. And we did. But it took us a couple of hours, at least. We had to take a shuttle, a couple of trains, a couple of buses and walk a few blocks to get to our airbnb. And all of that was difficult and confusing to figure out, and we had to back track a bunch and walk around looking for the correct bus stops, etc. It took a while, which was unfortunate, because we had plans to walk around Jersey City a little bit, get some food and look at the city from across the river. We ended up doing that after checking into our airbnb. But it was late and dark, and we had less time to enjoy. The view of NYC from across the river was dazzling! It was so pretty and cool looking! We sat on a bench in the park and ate about half of our much-too-hot takeout food that we'd got on the way and marveled at how crazy and huge the city was and how it got to be that way.

Our airbnb was one room in a little house in Jersey City. It was fine, but nothing special. Clean enough, but we had to share a bathroom with another guest. And no AC, so we were hot and sweaty some nights. We spent almost no time there, while we were visiting, so it didn't matter all that much.

DAY 1 -- Our 15th Anniversary!

The next morning, we took a bus and subway train into the city to the neighborhood we wanted to go. When we walked up from the Subway station, it was raining pretty hard. We ran to the building right across and stood under the eaves of the building, right under the Applebee's sign, to wait out the rain. It started raining harder and thundering and lightening. And the rain would abate some, but then start in again harder. Our shoes got soaked, just standing there waiting for the rain to stop. But there was actually something magical about just standing there in the city with it raining cats and dogs. There were cars and trucks everywhere, honking at each other. There were digital billboards in every direction we could see, and people walking up and down the sidewalk nonstop, despite the rain. I immediately loved the city! Even though we were just standing there and couldn't go anywhere without getting soaked. It was just such an ambiance, so cool and like nowhere else I've ever been!

After trying to wait out the rain for a good 20 minutes (or more), the rain started to slow, and we decided to make a break for it. Our original plan was to go to the Top of the Rock, a rooftop viewing area, where you can see the whole city from up top. And it was a handful of blocks away. So we started jogging through the rain in that direction, getting quite wet in the process. We made it to Rockefeller Building, but we weren't sure the viewing would be good, since it was still raining. So we decided to change our tickets to that evening, so that we could enjoy it without the rain and clouds. 

We walked around Midtown afterwards, going to a bunch of the sites we'd wanted to see:

• St. Patrick's Cathedral -- a beautiful old cathedral in the middle of the city. We went inside and walked around, but felt a little awkward because they were in the middle of Mass. But the windows were lovely, and I always love the feeling of cathedrals.
• Shopping -- there were a lot of stores close to the cathedral, and Daniel wanted to check some of them out. He was mostly interested in getting new shoes or socks, since his were soaked. So I went to Victoria's Secret while he went to the Nike store. And let me tell you. Stores in Midtown NYC are a whole different animal! Both stores that we went into were several floors high, just the bottom few levels of super tall high rises. At the top floor of Victoria's Secret was a champagne bar! And they were not only huge, but super fancy, too. But, of course, everything was way more expensive than other locations around the country, as well. 
• The Lego Store -- we hit up the Lego store as well, which was fun, and made each of the kids their own Lego guy that they could use for the Lego game that they always play together. There were all kinds of cool things made out of Lego. And they had this cool kind of kiosk where you could build your own Lego person, that had bins of all kinds of different pieces to mix and match: heads, torsos and legs, accessories, weapons, whatever. It was kind of fun!
  
• The Museum of Modern Art -- we were both very unimpressed with this. Neither Daniel nor I love modern art, and some of the exhibits were bizarre and weird and didn't seem like art at all. Plus, so many of the pieces and exhibits were focused on social justice issues, which I believe turned us off. I'm not sure either of us were glad we went there, but I tried to have a good attitude about the experience over all. 
•  Grand Central Terminal -- we walked around a bit trying to look for Grand Central Terminal, and finally found it. It's massive! Crazy big! And quite pretty on the inside, with the ceiling painted bright blue and the walls so detailed. And it was fun to see in person, since it seems to be in every other movie that takes place in NYC. 
• New York Public Library -- mainly this was a big museum, with library rooms in it. We walked around the exhibits in the museum, which was fun (we saw the actual stuffed animals that Winnie the Pooh is based on!!). And we tagged along with a tour group for part of it. And then we wandered to the other floors of the library, which seemed to have more exhibits, but not many books. There were quite a number of areas in the library that were restricted, so maybe that's where the books were hiding.
• Bryant Park -- we sat on chairs in Bryant Park for a while and just watched the people around us. It's this cute little park behind the library, with a big lawn, some walking paths around it, food trucks, tables and chairs and benches, and lots of trees. It was lovely. 
• Los Tacos -- Daniel really wanted to eat at this taco place. He'd done a lot of food research as he was preparing for this trip, and this place stood out. We walked over for a late lunch and stood in a super long line to get a handful of tacos, chips and salsa, and horchata. It was delish!
• Times Square -- when it was time in the evening, we walked over to Times Square. What a crazy place Times Square is!! So many billboards, so many people milling around, food trucks, tourist companies trying to sell you on stuff, so much music and noise. It was so cool! We didn't get much of a chance to see if in daylight hours, because we were on our way to see the Lion King. But afterwards we walked around a bit at night, and I just loved it. All the people and cool things to see. 

The Lion King was really cool! I would say that the costumes and music were the highlight. And the actor that played Scar did an amazing job. Apparently, he is THE Scar. He's played Scar forever, and it's just his. The storyline was pretty much exactly like the movie, with a couple of things added in, which I think Daniel and I were a bit disappointed about. We figured the stage production would have a little more depth or be somewhat different, but it really wasn't. We still enjoyed it, though. It was fun to see it on Broadway!

After walking through Times Square a bit more, we walked back to Rockefeller Building for our Top of the Rock reservation. It was quite late by that time, so we didn't have a ton of time to spend up there. But I actually really loved being up there and seeing the city at night, all lit up. It was beautiful and majestic, in a way. We stood and looked at it, and from different sides of the building for a long while. It was also a bit freaky up there, being so high up. I'm not a fan of heights, and add to that the feeling that the building was swaying side to side. We looked it up afterwards: most high rises in NYC sway up to 12 inches from side to side. Yikes!

It took a long time to get back to the airbnb. We had to walk back towards Times Square to the bus terminal, find the right place, stand in a forever long line for, like, an hour, and then finally get on the bus for the long bus ride back. And we were quite tired at that point. And it was very late. But what a great first day it had been!

DAY 2

The first thing we had on our agenda was a walking food tour. We took the Subway into the city and walked to this industrial and slightly shady part of town to find the meet up place and beginning point of our walking tour. It was a small group; just me and Daniel, a father and son, and our tour guide. We walked around the city into different neighborhoods while our tour guide talked about the history of the city and the peoples that had settled there, and we had some food stops along the way. We went through Chinatown, Little Italy and the Jewish Ghetto, among other places, and we had Chinese dumplings, pizza, some bagel with cream cheese and onions (can't remember the name of it), pickles that we bought, and empanadas at an indoor market similar to the one in Florence. We had a great time and learned a lot. The one thing that bugged me was the lady, our tour guide, was super woke and was spinning everything with a slightly negative and condescending tone. She was nice, but she kept saying "WE" when referring to what white people way back in history did. And I kept thinking, "What is this 'we' you keep referring to? Because I personally didn't persecute any of these people or do any of these dumb things you are talking about." And she just had this attitude about white people, which is ironic, considering she was one. 

We had an appointment at the Tenement Museum where we took a tour of part of a tenement building. We learned about some of the families who had lived and opened up businesses there and what their lives were like. It was quite fascinating. 

Afterwards, we walked around the area some more and tried to find Little Italy and some fruit stands that we had passed by on our food tour. We didn't find the same stands, but we found others and bought a large quantity and variety of fruit and other things, and then walked to a nearby park to rest our feet and snack on what we bought.

The last part of the day, we took a ferry ride across the river to Brooklyn Bridge park, which was a beautiful lush and green park just across the river. Really big, with walking trails and lawns and bridges. We walked all around Dumbo on a walking tour Daniel had found. Dumbo is this super modern and trendy neighborhood right under and around the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a cute little area. There were a lot of people hanging out over there, walking the streets and trails, eating at the restaurants. We stopped at a restaurant for dinner on our way out. 

To cap the day, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, which was really very cool. The sun was setting as we started out. There were a ton of people walking across. It was really beautiful, watching the sun set behind New York City as we walked across, with the river under us and the cool old bridge. And the city started lighting up as we walked, as the sun set lower and lower. It had the coolest ambiance.

We went back to the airbnb a little earlier because we were tired (or at least I was tired), and we tried to get a little more sleep. 

DAY 3

The first thing we did after grabbing some breakfast was take the train over to the city to go to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. We stayed there for FIVE HOURS. Mostly my fault, haha. Daniel was very patient with me and sometimes found a bench to sit on and wait for me. I was fascinated and horrified by the whole thing. They had this timeline in one part of the museum that showed everything taking place that day hour by hour. Pictures. News clips. Videos. Audio. So much of it I had never seen before, and it was all so emotional and awful and interesting. I felt a little like I did in my Titanic phase. Just overwhelmed and fascinated. It was so sad. There was a room dedicated to all of the victims and their families. Going through this museum might have been one of my favorite parts of the trip. 

We stumbled out of the museum at around 2:30pm, starving and blinking in the sun. We had a good conversation about the museum and what had happened on September 11th, remembering where we were when it happened, as we sat on a bench outside of the museum and snacked a little. Then we wandered over to another block of the city and found a hotdog and some other food at some food trucks. We had to have at least ONE New York hotdog! It was a requirement. And it was actually pretty good!

We walked around the financial district that day, finding the Charging Bull (which was swarming with people and we could not get a picture) and the Fearless Girl statue (which was less swarming with people) and Wall Street. We went to see Trinity Church (which is where Alexander Hamilton was buried), which was beautiful, and the cemetery outside was perfectly peaceful and serene and creepy. It was lovely.

Our last activity of the day was taking the ferry across the river to Brooklyn to see the Statue of Liberty. The ferry is free, and it goes right past the Statue of Liberty, so that's how we decided to see her. It wasn't east to see her. There were a ton of people on the ferry, and she was kind of far away. We got off the ferry in Brooklyn and then got right back in line to go back to the city. It was another great way to see the city, and it had some beautiful views. 

When we were back in the city, we walked a little ways to Joe's Pizza for dinner. We had to have New York style pizza at least once while we were there. There was a huge line to wait, but it went pretty quickly. Mostly people just buy a slice or two, and they have pizzas right up there at the counter, and you look and tell them which kind you want. Kind of an interesting way to order pizza. Daniel and I got a couple of different slices (mine was a margherita slice), and then we walked to a park to eat. The problem was that the park looked a lot closer on the map than it actually was, and so by the time we got there, the pizza was kind of cold. We weren't that impressed with it, but maybe it's because it wasn't warm by the time we ate. We probably should've just eaten on the street like real New Yorkers. Ha!

DAY 4

Our first stop on this last day of our trip was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Which was massive! We only had a few hours there, and so we had to kind of pick and choose what we wanted to see. We went to see some Egyptian artifacts and and reconstructed temple. I loved the art best, especially the American art. The famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware is in the Met, and it's so big in real life! It takes up an entire wall all on its own!

After the museum, we took busses and walked to where we would be going to sacrament meeting. When we were walking around the neighborhood, it was hard to imagine there would be a church building in the city. But when we started seeing a bunch of people in shirts and ties and dresses, we knew we were close. The ward we went to in Manhattan met in what looked like a Catholic church. We guessed that a bunch of different denominations met there, because we saw our hymnal, a Presbyterian hymnal and a Catholic prayer books. It was so odd having sacrament meeting in a Catholic church! 

We walked a few blocks to Levain's bakery, which is pretty well known and apparently the best bakery. It was this kind of hole in the wall place, in the basement of a big building. But we got a bunch of things to try. The raisin scones were absolutely delish, as was the chocolate chip cookie. We also got some breads that were pretty good. We took our goods over to Central Park and found a place to sit and snack. It was a small lawn surrounded by shrubs and trees. There were a bunch of people there, but we found a rock to sit on a little away from people. 

After eating a bit, we took a long walk around the park, visited Belvedere Castle and the Alice in Wonderland statue, and sat on a bench and people-watched and talked. It was a pretty nice relaxing evening. We read our scriptures together in the park. It was lovely. 

On the way out of the city, we stopped at a little grocery store to get snacks for dinner and our trip back to Utah. It's so weird to see grocery stores in the ground level of a big building!

We were supposed to stay most of Monday as well. But the weather was supposed to be bad, with storms happening in the area for most of the day. We got an update from the airline saying that our flight might be canceled, and we decided it wasn't worth the risk. If we had missed our flight and stayed another night, that would've been an extra burden for Daniel's mom to watch the kids another day, Daniel would miss another day of work, we would've missed activities, etc. Our last partial day in the city was just extra stuff we planned to do anyway, and I was missing our kids. So we decided to change our flight to an earlier one in the morning. Which meant our last day of the trip (DAY 5) was just us getting up, getting ready, eating leftovers for breakfast, and taking an Uber to the airport to catch our flight. 

It was such a fun anniversary trip! 

Thoughts about NYC: 

• There were a TON of people. I mean, I know the population of the city is, like, 8 million people. But there were so many tourists, too. And some areas of the city were hard to walk around in, just because of the number of people! 
• I didn't feel unsafe while we were there. Maybe I should have? And maybe I would have if Daniel hadn't been with me. But on this trip, I didn't have any moments when I was like, "umm, it feels like we shouldn't be doing this."
• I loved the feel of the city. I've never been anywhere like it in the world! Just so many huge buildings, such a vast city. I really loved the feel of it. I would go back in a heartbeat. 
• The culture of the city is so unique, because of how many different cultures are represented there. Anyone can come and be a part of New York City. 
• The Subway was a bit confusing at first. But I can see how easy it would be to use with a few weeks of learning it. Daniel was mostly our navigator the whole time, and thank goodness for Google maps, because it had bus and train schedules, walking to certain subway stops, or walking routes for anywhere we wanted to go. We would have definitely struggled way more without it. 

Sawyer's Birthday

 Sawyer turned 4 this week! My littlest man is growing up! We, of course, skipped school on his birthday so that we could celebrate. We got him a train set from Ikea for his birthday and a couple of books. Recently, when he was at one of his preschool playmate's house, he just loved playing with their train set; so I decided I needed to get him one of his own for his birthday. It was a good thing, too, because by the 4th kid, it's hard to know what to get them. We have basically all the cool toys and things that a little boy would love: magnatiles, lego, blocks, cars and trucks, etc. So I was having a hard time coming up with something I thought he would really like. I also got him a little orange pickup truck (he loves orange) with flames on the side, and he's loved playing with that, too. 

The kids played with Sawyer's new train set for a while, and we just hung out most of the day. But in the afternoon, we had a movie day and watched Cars 3. He'd been asking me if we could watch it together for a while. I sat down and watched with them for a little bit, and then I got up to work on a birthday cake. I just made him a giant chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting and sprinkles. Not too fancy, but he was happy. 

It was an easy going birthday for the little man. 

Sawyer is a little spunky dude. He knows what he wants and gets mad at people who get in the way of what he wants. He is frequently heard screaming at people, or hitting, or kicking, or spitting, or stealing toys... we're working on it, haha. He's also very independent and wants to do many things all by himself. He's so independent, in fact, that I'm often surprised by the things he asks for help with, because I just assume he'd want to try and do it himself. 

He loves his brother, Jack, so so much. He loves playing with Jack and emulating Jack in every way. He's sad when Jack isn't around for whatever reason. He and Jack play with cars and trucks a lot, or they build things with Lego. They also like to go outside when the weather is nice. They dig around in the backyard and drive the big trucks around. I love watching or hearing them play together. Especially when they are playing well together!

Sawyer loves to ride his little strider bike around. He's pretty good at it, and he's loved it ever since last summer when he first started riding. He's so good on it that he would probably be able to ride a real pedal bike, if we were ready to teach him that skill. Maybe next summer. 

He loves listening to truck tunes. It's his favorite music to listen to, and he frequently will ask me to play a specific song. He likes watching the accompanying videos, as well. He likes to watch TV, especially Firebuds or Pupstruction or the Cars movies. But he'll sit down and watch whatever the big kids want to watch.

He's my best eater, probably. He's started being a little more picky, but I believe it's because Jack is picky and he likes to be just like Jack. He's stopped eating beans because of Jack, even though he ate them perfectly well only 5 or 6 months ago. He loves fruit, although he doesn't quite have the concept of eating the whole piece of fruit... he'll take a few or even several bites of an apple or a peach and then when he feels like he's done, or he can't eat the rest of it, he'll just throw it away. It drives me crazy! He also loves pizza, yogurt, cereal. He doesn't eat anything I serve anymore, like he used to. But I expect when this phase is over, he'll start eating most things again. 

He's still sleeping in his crib, even though he can now climb out. He started climbing out of his crib in the mornings when he wakes up a few months ago. So he can come in our room when we're still sleeping. But he doesn't climb out at night after we put him to bed. He's a pretty good sleeper, and it seems like most days he's ready to go to sleep when we put him to bed. 

His best friend is Taylor Frei... but they seem to be little frenemies, haha! They love playing with each other ... some of the time. And the other times, they fight and yell at each other. Something about two 4th children getting together. 

Sawyer is probably the biggest of our children. He's almost as big as Jack (he may even weigh more than Jack), even though there are three years between them. It's a bit of a problem when I need to move him up to the next size of clothes ... but Jack is wearing the next size of clothes! It'll be interesting to watch them grow up next to each other. I also suspect that he'll be our most athletic kid. Only time will tell. 

Sawyer is a cute little man. He's always coming up to me and saying, "Mom, I love you." He loves his Lamby and his Blankie and some of his other stuffed animals. He snuggles with them and bites them. And when he needs comfort, he will sometimes come to me, but often he goes to find his blankie to snuggle with. He says the funniest things sometimes, and he just loves being with his family. He's my little sweet man. I'm so glad he's mine!

Aunt Lynn's Wedding + the Week

I went to Aunt Lynn's wedding this weekend. She invited us to come, but I really did not feel like going. I was going to have to miss an entire Saturday of things, Brooke's cheer show included in that, and I didn't want to miss things nor leave Daniel with the kids all day (not that I don't trust him or know he can handle it, but I feel guilty when I do that). But I felt more guilty about not going, and Brian and Sammy were going and offered to drive me. So I decided to go. And I'm glad I went! When I texted Aunt Lynn and told her I was coming, she was so excited. Plus, she's been having problems with her kids (they're being really awful to her), and a couple of them didn't come at all. It felt nice to be able to support her. 

The drive with Brian and Sammy was great. We just talked all the way up and back. We left early in the morning, drove up and had lunch at a fun little sandwich place in Rexburg, and then went to all of the wedding festivities. We did spend a decent amount of time waiting, mostly just hanging out at Aunt Lynn's house and meeting her friends and things. 

We went to Aunt Lynn's and Bob's sealing in the temple, which was lovely. It was nice to be in the temple with my family. Mom and dad were there, of course, me, Brian and Sammy, and Scott and Melanie drove up as well, separately. 

There was a luncheon after the ceremony, where we ate and chatted for a long while. They had to kick us out in the end, so that they could clean up and prepare for the reception. 😂 And then the reception was in the evening. We stayed for about an hour and a half, had cake, talked with people, and then we left and made the long drive home. We didn't get home until after midnight. 

I talked a little with Jacquie and Jenny, but didn't have much desire to spend a lot of time with my cousins. I mostly just wanted to spend time with mom and dad and my brothers and their wives and Aunt Lynn. So I was not much motivated to chat it up with the cousins. (They vaguely annoy me anyway, especially with how they've been treating their mother.) I didn't talk to Joel at all. We haven't seen each other in years, and I'm sure we have nothing in common. Mom encouraged me to at least say hello, but I really didn't want to, and it made me feel less bad when he didn't make the effort either. I'm kind of at the point in my life when I don't feel the need to do things just for the sake of doing them. I'm not opposed to doing things I don't want to do (I do things I don't want to do all the time); but I don't want to be fake with people anymore, just to be nice or try to please people. I'll be who I am and people can take me or leave me. And I knew that talking to Joel and acting pleased to see him would be completely fake. And I'm just done doing that. I don't feel that bad about it. 

All in all, I'm glad I went. 

Funny things this week: 

• Jack had his friends birthday party this Friday. He invited Rock, Nathan, Gabe and Grace, Bentley, Cap and Pepper. It was a pretty low key party. We just played don't eat Pete (with a board that Jack drew), did a fun garbage truck craft, played games outside, ate pizza and cake, and opened presents. But it was the perfect combination of just letting them play and having activities for them to do, of being chill and also fun. I think he was really happy with his party. 😊

• Brooke got all dolled up for her cheer performance. She had to curl her hair and put it in a ponytail on top of her head, and she was also supposed to wear some make up (like maybe some blush and lipstick). Since I was gone that day at Aunt Lynn's wedding, Brooke asked Annette Perkins to help her with those thingd. She went over in the afternoon to get ready, and when she came back to the house all made up, Sawyer looked at her and said, "Brooke, you look weird." 😂 I loved and hated how grown up she looked in the pictures they took for me. She invited Claire to go see her perform, and it was so sweet of Sarah and Claire to go see her and support her. ❤️ Such wonderful friends. 

• I was trying to take a short nap on Sunday, and Sawyer kept coming into my room for one reason or another. But he was being super super quiet when he came in, trying to be so sweet and considerate of me sleeping. It was so cute. 

April

 April was a whirlwind. Honestly, I can't believe it's over. 

• I hosted bunco the week after spring break. I wasn't too stressed about it. I'd bought all the gifts (from bath and body works) a few weeks before, and I just did some easy food from Costco. And it was fun! 
• Brooke went to a stake activity over one weekend in preparation for some of the youth going to FSY this year. It was a Friday night and Saturday morning. And she LOVED it. Hearing her talk about it, it was giving me teenagerhood vibes. 😭 She is just growing up so fast. She loved the activities and service project and dance at this stake activity. A few weeks after it happened, one of the stake young women's leaders (who is in our ward) told me that there was a girl who was very emotional and upset, and that Brooke went over to talk to her and help her feel better. 🥰😭 She's the sweetest. 
• We had a host of soccer games. Brooke has been improving her skills a lot this year. And she still enjoys playing soccer. Jack... not so much. 😬 It's almost painful to watch his soccer games. He barely touches the ball, and he doesn't seem to like playing soccer much.
• We had 4 planter boxes put into our yard. Daniel paid someone to come prepare our yard, build them and put them in. They're beautiful! We're so excited about having a garden. We planned our garden early this month, and then stressed for the rest of the month about if the weather was going to dip below freezing and destroy our plants. 😬 They survived the month, so we'll see what happens. It was fun to be out there all together as a family, though, deciding what to plant and planting them. We had a family date earlier where we went to the store and picked out what we were going to plant. Our seeds didn't do well... at least, most of them didn't do well. So Daniel ended up buying a bunch of plants too. The girls and I are excited about having one of the house dedicated to flowers. 😍

• Brooke has also been doing cheer this month. I made an exception this month to our "only one activity at a time" rule, so that she could do her cheer show at the beginning of August. But that's kind of made April pretty crazy and me driving around all over the place and overlapping kids activities, especially because: 
• Camille started track and field this month. She was done with gymnastics. She started fighting me about going every week, and started entertaining the idea of quitting. And she decided she wanted to try something new. She goes to practices twice a week, and they have meets most Saturdays for the next couple of months. She's having fun so far. 
• Normal activities: art class, girls club, piano lessons, preschool for Sawyer, young women's and primary activities, trips to the library, play dates with friends, soccer, cheer, and track practices, and games and meets.
• Normal calling stuff: visiting sisters in the ward, presidency and ward council meetings, self reliance meetings, RS activity. 
• I took the kids to the wool and lamb festival at the Thanksgiving Point farm. It was pretty fun, actually. We learned about raising sheep, shearing sheep and using the wool. We saw cute little lambs and took a train ride around the farm. 
• The girls went to skate night with the Perkins one night and had a blast. 
• I took the kids to the Taylorsville temple open house one day with DeAnna and Sarah. It was beautiful, and I love any time that I can take my kids to the temple, either to walk around and see the inside of a temple, or to sit on the grounds and have a picnic or lesson outside the temple. 

• We also went to the tulip festival, which was lovely. We went on a day that was rainy and stormy, so even though we went after the storm, there weren't many people there. It was a nice day to go.