Mini staycation and trip to Idaho Falls for baby blessings

After our day at Topaz Mountain, we headed to Salt Lake City for the night for a mini staycation before heading to Idaho Falls the next day. We headed to City Creek and checked out the fountains and a few shops while waiting for our table at Cheesecake Factory. 

Fun with filters at dinner!

We stayed at our favorite place-- Little America. No trip there would be complete without swimming in our favorite pool. 

The next morning we met up with our friends, the Daltons and Wilsons (who were also staying in the hotel), at the coffee shop for breakfast. It was so fun having breakfast together! After breakfast we made another trip to the pool, then headed to the church history museum. I hadn't been in several years, and our kids had never been. I was really impressed and enjoyed it a lot. I was particularly moved by the section on the prophets and with some of the original artifacts from early pioneers and leaders including clothing from Hyrum and Joseph Smith.

From there we were off to Idaho Falls for the blessing of our new twin nieces who were being blessed on Sunday. 

We had a fun dinner out to Plum Loco with John and Sylvia and my mom and dad. While we were at dinner, there was a crazy hail storm with hail the size of quarters! For awhile it sounded like the roof might cave in! The hail actually did quite a bit of damage to the siding on a lot of houses in Idaho Falls.

We enjoyed attending the blessings of Reese and Rowan on Sunday. They looked darling in their little white dresses and bonnets. 

Topaz Mountain

We stayed close to home for the majority of our spring break. We knew we wanted to do something out of our ordinary daily routine, so we decided to make a day trip to Topaz Mountain. Basically it is in the middle of nowhere and is this mountain you can prospect for topaz. We've wanted to go for awhile, and lucky for us, our friends the Knights and the Meads were able to join us. It was such a fun day! Sean got us all prepped by buying special rock hammers and chisels.

Jackson and Garner ("G") 

Davis and Cameron

We paid to actually prospect on a working mining site. The woman who runs the site with her husband was there to show us what to look for and helped get us started.

We had a great set up. We all brought lunches and lawn chairs and made an afternoon of it. We lucked out with perfect weather and surprisingly, all of the kids were happy the whole time!

Luckily, we all found topaz! It was like a treasure hunt. Bode seemed to really have the knack for finding it and had the best luck of our entire family. He found the biggest pieces and really got into it.

Bode's pile of rocks he kept bringing us and wanted us to go through :)

All of the kids had a good time. I kept thinking it was such a great place for the kids because they could roam freely and had an entire mountain of rocks to throw and smash with hammers.

Davis and Graham

I think prospecting must run in my Whittington blood because I have ancestors on that side who had a successful gold mine and I remember my grandpa being a rock hound. I have cousins who also love it and now my entire family loves it also.

Group shot taken from Darren's drone before heading home!

Easter 2018

We had an awesome Easter this year. I loved having General Conference the same weekend, and our kids were also on spring break. I always like getting the kids dressed up a little more for Easter Sunday, but since we didn't have church, we got all dressed up the week before. :) I made this little dress for Molly and I really love how it turned out:

The kids all looked so cute dressed up. On a stroke of random luck, I came across some cute gingham shoes for Molly that happened to match her brothers' bowties!

Getting four kids to stand still is never an easy feat!

The Saturday before Easter we went to our favorite city egg hunt. Molly was excited to put about 5 eggs in her basket and then she got frustrated because she just wanted to open them.

Davis actually made a killing and collected the most eggs! I didn't get any pics of the other boys during the egg hunt because we had to divide an conquer since they were all in different sections this year.

Egg dyeing 

 Easter was a great day. We enjoyed staying in pjs and watching conference, and the kids had lots of snacks thanks to a visit from the Easter Bunny.

We had a yummy Easter dinner and finished it off with our traditional strawberry shortcake!

And finally, I am just adding this picture of Molly and Sean the day of the egg hunt because I love it so much!