June 23-30

Afualo Abbey is in full swing and filled to capacity.  There isn't anything I love more than a full house to cook for.  Only I hate cleaning up afterwards, but the joy of a house filled with laughter and family is well worth the hours it takes to clean up afterward.

All my siblings were in town so we decided to have a mini- Updike reunion.  Obviously my parents weren't there, but they made an appearance via skype.  I think they enjoyed seeing all there children together.  It's been a while.

We had a nice dinner and FHE lesson on eternal families and of course play time.  It was a nice and simple gathering that ended with pictures.

 Monday we treked on down to Provo and stopped by an old family favorite, Brick Oven, for lunch and then Seven Peaks for some good old water fun.  The weather didn't cooperate to well since a storm blew in, but we still managed to have fun.

When I was little we would always come up to see the Manti Pageant.  I didn't remember much from it so now that we live here I thought we should try to go again.  It was fun that the pageant coincided with my siblings being up here as well.  So we drove down to Manti, had dinner at the Tabernacle and then watched the pageant.  It was late and we got back even later, but it was a fun tradition to revisit.

Friday morning Lily had a swim meet.  Neither her nor I were happy to get up after getting to bed at 2am to go to a 7am swim meet, but she did it and she was happy with her swims.  After the swim meet we met the Lunds downtown and visited the Conference center and ate lunch.  We came home and vegged out the rest of the day.  The Mortensen's came over for dinner that night.  We played a marshmallow game.  Fun was had by all.

 Saturday we all went to go see Monsters University.  It was alright.  Everyone came over for dinner again.  More fun was had.  Sunday Damon and I spoke in church.  It's been a busy week.

Dallas

While being in Texas I knew I would have to make a trip to Dallas to visit my college roommate or I would be in serious trouble.  So on our way back to Salt Lake we made a stop in Dallas.  We stayed at the Reed's house for just one day, but it was a fun filled day and way worth the extra time.  Wish we could have stayed there longer.

 Playing in the enormous back yard with all the fun toys.  The kids loved it.  After they got all hot and sweaty we took them to the pool.  They loved it there too.

 Lily and Zoe hit it off instantly (kind of like there moms).  They are the only girls in a male dominated household.  It was an instant bond.  Nothing warmed Michelle's and my heart more than seeing our daughters snuggled in bed reading books.  It was a precious sight!

 Oh how I miss my college roommate and wish we lived closer.  We left the next morning with Zoe begging us to come out at Christmas.

Our drive home was pretty uneventful.  Just very very long.  We stopped in Farmington again for the night.  We drove home the next day.  We stopped in Monticello for one last temple stop and then got home at 3pm on Friday the 21st.  We were all happy to be out of the car!

Downtown Houston

Monday we went downtown to the Natural Science Museum.  We had lots of fun there. We learned about fracking, which would have been handy when Noah had a paper on it in the 6th grade, saw lots of fun gemstones, an Egyptian collection with lots of mummies that freaked Lily out, dinosaur fossils and visited the planetarium.

 We walked past this area on our way to the museum and we were a bit confused for a second thinking that we had made a wrong turn and were now in D.C.

 Then we saw this giant statue of Sam Houston (they have these everywhere.  We saw an even bigger one on the drive to Dallas) and remembered that we were still in Texas.

 Alex got to ride a T-Rex.  He thought that was super cool.  He was a little nervous at first, but he warmed up to it.  All in all, a fun day!

Tuesday we went back downtown again, but this time we went to the Downtown Aquarium.

We started out the day with petting and feeding the sting rays.  We thought that was pretty fun.  Alex was a bit shy about it at first, but he warmed up to it.  Lily refused to feed her fish to the rays.

Next we visited the shark exhibit.  We had to ride a train to get there.  We saw lots of interesting sharks in the tanks there.  We didn't feed those.

 Then after the sharks we went inside (much cooler) and visited different areas of water.  We were in the Bayou, Amazon, Shipwreck Pacific, Sunken City and then in India.

 My favorite place of the whole day.  Seeing the white tigers were amazing.  They have 4 of them and we were able to see 3.  They were so beautiful.  I really could have stayed in there all day.  I'm just mesmerized by them.

After we left the aquarium we stopped by the George H.W. Bush monument.  It was right across the street. We didn't make it to either of the presidential libraries that we wanted to.  I guess that will be the next trip!

Galveston

Friday we decided to check out the Gulf of Mexico down in Galveston, TX.  It was so fun.  We loved being at the beach again.  The water was so warm which is so different then what we are used to.  Fish would jump up right next to us in the water. We were able to drive on the sand and park our car right where we were setting up our beach site.  I could get used to that.

It was a great day! We love the beach!

After we got back from the beach the adults went out to dinner at a place called Gringos.  We were to busy eating to remember to take any pictures, but we all left stuffed and with carry-out boxes.  It was a super fun dinner.

Saturday Damon left to go back to Salt Lake. We had a mellow day and ended up going swimming that night.