our last stop...salt lake city.

our last major stop on our big summer road trip was salt lake city.  i hadn't been there for some time and my kids had never been there expect for jack who was like barley one so that doesn't really count.  i forgot what a beautiful place utah is and how special temple square is.  there is so much (mormon) history in that one little area and it makes me a teensy bit excited to maybe start doing some research on our church history myself.  but it probably won't happen any time soon even though i am fascinated by all of it.

we had a good day in salt lake.  some of our highlights were finding the one and only dunkin donuts for breakfast, walking around the temple grounds, taking an elevator to the top of the church offices building to get a view of the whole salt lake valley, eating at the lion house and enjoying some of the best rolls of our lives, touring the beehive house (aka brigham young's old home), and doing some back to school shopping.

we finished off our day with some swimming at the hotel pool which is always a kids dream and then trekking in our pj's to the olive garden to get some take out for dinner.  one of the many bad parts about traveling as a single parent with four young-ins is you have to take them everywhere regardless of what time it is at night.  for example, the night before, we arrived in salt lake and it was close to midnight and we hadn't had dinner yet.  so, i gathered the troops and we took to the street to see what was open this late at night.  we found a pizzeria that was filled with loud drunk college kids who looked a little scary and stared at me as i walked in pushing my stroller and had three other kids trailing behind.  bottom line, we got our pizza and it was actually really good considering the awkward situation i had to encounter in order to get it.

so, there we sat in our hotel room on the last night of our almost three week road trip eating olive garden and watching the much anticipated premier of disney's teen beach movie.  i think it was the perfect ending to our big adventure. (my kids had been counting down until the showing of this movie and since then i think we (they) have seen this movie over a hundred times.) thank you disney for bringing so much joy into my children's lives.  i cannot compete with you.

next stop.....HOME!