MOUNTAINS AND STEEPLES.

I must admit, I'm loosing a little big of blogging steam trying to document all these Utah pictures. But they are important memories for us, so I will carry on.

Nick finished painting on Friday afternoon, and we were excited to finally get out and do something fun. Jack led us up a mountain trail nearby his house, taking us to a gorgeous waterfall. We admired it, then decided to hike up it. It was awesome. Jack on the other hand, pushed his mountain bike along, and once we got to our trail, he ventured up another one, then road his bike down. Crazy scary. But he's one adventurous kid and made it out alive.

Jack leading us up the mountain.

View of Sandy and Salt Lake City.

Checking out the waterfall, before we decided to hike upwards.

Mother Nature is a wonderful gal, and once again, we marveled in her beauty. 

This is one of my favorite photos of the whole trip. The sunlight pouring through was just amazing.

There are sunflowers every where in Utah. On the mountains, alongside roads, in the ditches,

every where.

It's not an overstatement to say that along with sunflowers, there are Mormon churches every where too. There's practically one on every corner. On our way back down the mountain, this steeple from a Mormon church was just too pretty to pass by.

Saturday brought more adventures as Jay and Jack brought us up to Snowbird, a local ski resort. They have been skiing here for years. With an elevation of 11,000 feet, its one of the highest peaks in Utah. 

We road a tram, like this, up to the top of the mountain. The ride takes 8 minutes.

 I wasn't scared of the ride at the time, but looking back, maybe I should have been. We made it safely up to the top, reaching 11,000 feet in elevation. (To give you some perspective, Jay's house was at 7,000 feet elevation.) Some say it's hard to breath up this high, but I barely noticed a change. Maybe a little tiny twinge at the end of each breath, but it didn't really bother us.

Jack, Nugget, Nick and Jay.

Family pictures are hard to come by, so I was excited that Jay took not one, but two pictures of the four of us. And they weren't even blurry! Yay for Jay for using my fancy camera!

I would love to see these mountains covered in snow sometime. Jay told us that everything you can see has been skied. If you can get to it, you can ski it. Scary. He also said that there is an on site hospital, and about half a dozen deaths occur every year. Even scarier. 

After riding the tram back down, we had a little lunch before heading home. The kids were tuckered out, and both fell asleep in the car, so Nick and I decided to continue on and go into Salt Lake City to check out the Mormon Temple. We know nothing about the Mormon religion, but it's hard not to be curious as you seem to be an outsider if you practice anything but. The visit actually left us even more confused, with lots of questions unanswered. But, it was still a beautiful place to visit.

The temple was enormous, and there was no way I could capture it all with my 50mm lens. So to show you the whole thing, I had to take a picture of these postcards we got. We weren't actually allowed inside the temple, but they had some replicas of it in another building to sort of give us an idea.

It was kind of odd being there, as we stuck out like a sore thumb. Nick was not dressed in a white dress shirt and black pants, and I was not wearing a knee length skirt and close-toed flats, and I'm sure I was showing too much skin on top, as my shirt exposed my collar bones. As much as we really wanted to learn more about the religion, we purposefully avoided eye contact with any of the Mormon members, for fear that we'd get sucked into a three hour long lecture on why our religion is wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they are great people. We were just hoping they had some sort of handout that would sum up our questions in a nut shell, but no such luck.

Anyhow, it was interesting nonetheless, and the kids were well behaved. Which always makes life more pleasant.

This has nothing to do with the temple, but look who got two new teeth while in Utah... I just happened to catch a smile while there that showed them off! He got his top right and bottom left ones, although the bottom one is a little hard to see. This brings him to a grand total of four teeth, at only seven months! Nugget didn't even get her first tooth until she was eight months old. As Nick always says, 'To each his own'. 

Before we part ways for the day, I would like to leave you with this, as promised.

Told you it was hilarious. Nugget couldn't have made a better face if we paid her. She absolutely wanted no part of it, as you can see by her enthusiasm. She's also clutching a rock that we found in a planter outside. Ha. We had to bribe her with a cowboy rubber duck she had her eye on in one of the cheesy souvenir stores. Our only request was that she stand in the picture. Very reluctantly, she obliged.