Our Adventures in Utah

At the beginning of July I went to Utah with Miranda and Jacob, and we had so much fun. While we were there we were able to go down to lake Powell for a few days, celebrate the 4th of July with my family and the most important (and real) reason for going was to celebrate the wedding of my SIL Tiffany and her new hubby Cameron.

There really is too much to tell so I will just throw in some highlights. I was so proud of Miranda for being so adventurous while we were down at Lake Powell, she was a little fish in the water and loved to hike all around on the rocks, Jacob also loved the water and I am sure he will be right along side his sister wanting to swim and splash.

We were also able to so see the Oquirrh Mountain Temple open house. It was so fun to take Miranda to that. She loved the sealing rooms.

For the wedding Miranda got to be one of the Flower girls, she did such a great job and my kids looked so great in the cute outfits. Thanks for having us mom and dad, We had a wonderful time.

Also Congratulations Tiffany and Cameron, we are so excited for you and are so glad we were able to be there.

Traveling Alone With Children

On Tuesday I am flying out to go be with my family in Utah for My SIL, Tiffany's wedding. I am so excited to go and see everyone. It has been almost a year since we have been there and unfortunately Steven is not able to go with me. That is correct I will be traveling with Miranda and Jacob by myself. Now, Miranda has traveled allot and is very good at flying and the whole airport scene, I have not been too worried about it until I spoke to some friends out here about it the other day. These friends made the same flight and missed there connecting flight in Denver and had to spend the night in the Denver airport. If I have to do that with my children I have no idea how that will go, so it makes me a little nervous.
Anyway lets just all hope that I make my flights and that everything runs nice and smooth. We are so excited to go and see everyone so I will just stop worrying about the flight and prepare to have fun.

Our Ballerina

Miranda loves to dance. She will dance and sing and entertain Jacob for hours it is great. She now fits into her purple leotard, put that with her skirt and she is our little ballerina.

Indianapolis Zoo

We went to the Indianapolis Zoo on Saturday with some good friends and had so much fun. This is Jacob feeling an Eagle claw, if they would have let him hold it I am sure he would have tasted it also.

Miranda with her good friend Johnas.

Miranda got the chance to feed a giraffe but when she got close there was no way she was going to, so Steve did it.

Both Steven and Miranda's favorite part was the aquarium. I asked Miranda what her favorite animals were that we saw all day she said, "the penguins and the bird fish that have wings (that would be the sting rays)"

Thanks for taking us Hafen family, we had a blast.

Archeological Dig

While we were in Kirtland Steven and Jeff had the opportunity to go and help some of the Church Historians clean out an old building. This building was the Joseph Smith Store and has been added onto and changed through the years. It was a very dirty job but they both said it was very cool.

Each of the boys found some very cool things throughout the day, Jeff found a book that was dated back in the 1930's and was a rule book for a school for boys. The historians said that the doors they are standing in front of are possibly the original outside doors during the time of Joseph Smith. The floor in one of the sections was most likely the original floor also.

This was Steven's find for the day. It is a 4X4 piece of wood that is hollowed out and if you look closely you can see on the one end of the wood that there is a long notch that was carved out of it. This was an original pipe from the time period. It was so fun to see how excited the historian got about this. First of all he said that this kind of thing rarely survives because of water damage and was imagining that Emma Smith washed dishes from this very pipe.

All in all it was very cool to go and see all the things that were in the building, it had a little piece of history from every era since the 1830's.

Road Trip to Kirtland

Last weekend we drove up to Kirtland Ohio to visit Steven's aunt and uncle who just moved there. Steven's grandparents were also there and they have been on a mission for the last 2 years in Korea. We had a great time with them and were able to visit all the great historical sites. There are lots of pictures to see on this post and the next, we took plenty of pictures and had lots of fun.

Road Trip to Kirtland Continued

Swinging on the swings, I love that smile.

Visiting Lake Erie

Making smores around the camp fire in the back yard, and in their back yard you really feel like you are camping because we are surrounded by large trees on three sides, it is great.

And of coarse we had to take advantage of the hot tub. We loved it, thanks so much or having us Sherri and Kevin.