Utah Trip

The first weekend in October, we had a mini Judd family reunion in Utah.  It was also General Conference and the first time we had been back to visit BYU since Rachel graduated!  It was a quick trip, but we packed in a lot of fun stuff.  Here is the quick break down of the weekend.  (There are a lot of pictures, but we think you all enjoy them so... sorry, not sorry!)

THURSDAY: We left early from Colorado Springs Airport.  We had to go in and wake sweet Andrew up to leave.  

Here are the mountains between Colorado and Utah!

We had to wait in the airport for a few hours for Rachel's parents and Sam to arrive and Andrew luckily took a nap in his stroller.

He was curious as ever and liked the pay phones in the airport.

We got him a new, big boy car seat a few days before the trip. He likes facing forward allowing him to see what's going on and stretch out his legs!

 Andrew is shy but once he has some time to warm up to people, he is very loving.  He loves Grandma and Grandpa Judd! 

Andrew was exploring our hotel room.

 Kisses from Grandma and Grandpa!!

That night we went to eat at the Food Truck Roundup.  Rachel has always wanted to eat from a food truck and it was everything she had hoped for and more! 

 FRIDAY: In the morning we visited BYU campus and bookstore.  Here we are at Tyler's proposal spot! 

We ran into Rachel's former roommate's mom right after this picture. She was sitting on the bench you can just see the corner of on the left of this picture. How random!

We invited all of our old friends who still lived in Provo to visit and catch up. We had a good turn out.

Zac Strickland grew up with the Judds and also happened to work with Tyler at Heritage Halls.

We had a great time seeing old roommates and re-connecting with friends.  One of Rachel's mission companions even drove down from Salt Lake to visit us.  We love our friends!  

SATURDAY: We listened to Conference in the morning and went to the park between sessions.

We forgot to mention that getting Andrew to sleep was the worst part of the vacation.  He must have been nervous about the new environment, but the first night he screamed for hours before falling asleep.  The longer we were there, the better he was about napping and bedtime. 

 Andrew took notes during Conference!

We ate at Cafe Rio while we were there. Andrew enjoyed some of the leftovers.

We had a picnic lunch at Timpanogas park.

Andrew liked the nice soft grass.

Sam was like "everyone hold hands!" but only he and Bennett did, so they ended up looking... awkward. 

The bell tower and Y, as seen from the passenger seat of our 2014 fully loaded Suburban with ~60 miles on it.

The Beam museum was recently renovated and we wanted to see it while we were there. 

The exhibits were AMAZING.

As they would say on Swamp People, "Choot 'em!"

We wish we could have stayed longer, but Andrew napped so long we didn't get there until 10 minutes before they closed.

From the Bean Museum we took a short walk through our old stomping grounds, Heritage Halls to get some ice cream at the Creamery. 

Andrew loves ice cream.

Really, he LOVES ice cream. 

SUNDAY: Rachel's family attended the Sunday morning session of Conference while we stayed back with Andrew. It was his nap time and children that young aren't allowed in the Conference Center anyway. 

We met back up with everyone as the session got out and took lots of pictures at Temple Square.  

Family photo in front of the Temple

Artsy, from-the-ground-up-toddler-perspective shot.

Andrew was clingy to mommy and daddy due to being in a new place crowded with lots of people. 

Like I said, he only wanted to be held by mommy or daddy. 

That's better!

Rachel's parents went to drop off Bennett's Fiance before heading to visit the family friends we would spend the night with. The Carsons stayed and went to the visitors center while that was going on.

It was surprisingly not that crowded when we were there.

We stopped to visit the Nixons, family friends of the Judds at their house in Bountiful. We stopped at the Temple there before heading up to the other family friends, the Actons, where we would spend the night.

Why would they put big trees between the sign for the temple, and the actual temple?

Andrew and Grandpa Judd paying close attention to the Prophet speaking.

And goofing off during Elder Bednar's talk. He's just an Apostle right? No big deal.

MONDAY: The Judds left early in the morning, but our flight didn't leave until that night. 

We spent the day at Thanksgiving point, and made one last trip to Provo before heading to the airport. We went to see the animals first. Andrew was a little wary of the strange creatures at first, but he warmed up to them. 

Andrew walking with Mommy

For some reason he was obsessed with trying to open this door. It was just a small shed with rabbits in cages, and from where we took the picture was a wide open double door, but he was intent on opening this door and was more interested in it than the rabbits. 

Here he is meeting Mr Ed. (Just kidding, this horse couldn't talk.)

He was a little standoffish of this large horse. 

He probably didn't put together that the animals we were seeing were in a lot of his books, but it was fun none the less. 

Nailed it.

Andrew loved playing in the sand.

Andrew LOVED playing in the sand and water.

He was so cute toddling around everywhere exploring the cool fossils. 

There were a number of hands on exhibits.

And some that were just out of reach of a little guy.

As you will see in a later post, Andrew ended up being a dinosaur for Halloween. This turned out to be a little bit of foreshadowing for him. 

It looks like he is having fun in this picture, but in reality we were dragging him away kicking and screaming because he had so much fun there.

We made it back to the airport with no problems, but while we were waiting to board the plane Andrew randomly threw up everywhere. We used up all of our wipes trying to clean him and the floor up, but he did alright the rest of the trip home. We had a great time visiting Utah again and seeing family and friends!