Nauvoo

 For Thanksgiving we went to Iowa to hang out with some of Dustin's family and one of the days we drove to Nauvoo for a day. Nauvoo has been on my bucket list for a long time so I was very excited to finally see it. The tours were closed because of Covid which was too bad but at the same time no one was there so it was nice to have the place to ourselves. It rained all day but the two hours we were walking around, it was perfect. It was so pretty there, I can't imagine how the saints felt about leaving that place to move out West.

Summer Vacation Part 3: Salt Lake City

The last week of our trip we headed to Utah for Dustin's brothers' wedding, and I don't have a picture of the married couple... oops.
Our first stop when we arrived to Utah was the Temple square and we met up with my sister-in-law Bri. Again, I took a lot of pictures, temples are just so magnificent, and Salt Lake has a special place in my heart because we got married there.

Our first night we stayed at Paul and Bri's house and the following day Bri taught the kids Pre School. She was pretty amazing, and inspired me for when I do Pre School with my kids.

Then some pictures of the wedding day. It was such a beautiful day, and we had some yummy food at the Joseph Smith memorial. Then we walked around one more time with one of Dustin's brother and Thomas wanted to see the Statue of Jesus one more time.

Now we are home and working like crazy getting our house all set up while Dustin is getting ready for the new school year, I will put pictures up of our new house once we are somewhat settled in.

Summer Vacation Part 1: Rexburg

I don't even know where to begin....
I have been MIA because we were traveling all of June and a little bit of July. Our little family had driven 80+ hours this summer! And our boys did awesome, during all those hours, I'm sure having movies playing almost the whole time helped.
It's been a crazy summer but also a blast. We closed on our house (more on that later) moved and unpacked as much as we could and left two days later to Rexburg.
We just hung around in Idaho between reunions and a wedding so we got to spend a lot of time with my folks. It was great, and now that my mom has retired we got to spend even more time with her, the kids just loved hanging out with grandma. I also got to spend time with some old friends it was great.

While we were in Rexburg we were able to do a lot of fun things.

We went to our usuals; Taco Time was our first stop, and of course we had to go to Porter's, Pizza Pie Cafe, Millhollow, and my mom watched the kids while Dustin and I went to the temple, it was crazy busy.

 The Rexburg temple is so beautiful, I couldn't stop taking pictures. I miss being able to see a temple everyday. One night we took the kids to the temple grounds. Thomas loves the Rexburg temple he told us that's the temple he wants to be married in. He also said there were "so many churches" in Idaho, ha ha,

Walking on temple grounds.

We also bought a pass to ride the carousel while we were there,  so we did that several times, we went with some friends, and ran into some friends there. That's another thing I love about Rexburg, running into people all the time, even people we met when we lived in Orlando.
The kids loved going.

We also took the kids to the Gardens at BYU-Idaho.

We went to Smith Park a lot. Thomas went down the "big" slide by himself. I remember being terrified of that slide when I was a kid, I didn't blame Oliver when he didn't want to go by himself. It was fun seeing my kids playing at the same park I grew up playing in. So many memories...

And just hanging out at my parent's house:
We enjoyed the nice grass, building Lincoln logs with Grandpa West, playing in the basement with the huge Waffle blocks, making breakfast with grandma.

We also visit BYU-Idaho a couple of times. What a great place BYU-Idaho is. We were fortunate enough to be there the last week of school and Dustin and I were able to talk to most of our art professors! It was so great, we were probably there for four hours. Not too many colleges could you go back 4 and half years later and your professors still remember you. I could be bias, but art teachers are the best, they are so inspiring in so many ways, spiritually, artistic-ly, and in life in general.
We also took the boys, and got them all BYU-Idaho attire. 

Dustin went down to the library everyday to work, and sometimes he would bring Thomas. This picture is so deju vu to me, I would find Dustin at this exact spot working on art when we were in college doing the exact same thing, drawing.

And more pictures of the temple as we would pass by to get to my parents.

It was so good to be there. Rexburg is seriously the best and is good for the soul. I do miss it very much, but I do love Texas too... and now I have a house!