Utah: Part 2 (Bean Museum, BYU Creamery, & The Manti Pageant)

On June 27th, Sarah and I drove down to Provo with our kiddos. We met our sister Becca there and took 10 of the 12 Uda-Grandkids to the BYU Creamery for some delicious ice cream!!! It was pretty chaotic trying to keep 10 little kids from smearing ice cream all over the world, but oddly enough, when you are wrestling 10 little kids in Provo, nobody thinks twice about you. If we had done that here in Chicago, we'd have people staring, tisking, and asking if they could be seated elsewhere :)

After we finished our ice cream, we headed over to the Bean Museum to check out all the animals.

I usually try to visit the museum when I am in Utah, but this was the first visit ever where I didn't have to do any work! With all the cousins together, we implemented the buddy system and all the kids kept an eye out for each other while the adults got to sit down and relax!

Which we did in the awesome playroom! Sarah got dibs on the "comfy" chair and Becca and I sat on the counters while the kids explored the room. It was pretty fun to watch how different the boy cousins and the girl cousins were. All the girls were circling the room, picking up the animal toys, rocking them, singing to them, and playing house. The boys, on the other hand, were repetitively building a tower and then chucking the animal toys at it to knock it down. KABOOM!

Later that night me and Brooklyn hopped in the car with Rachel, Munro, Mason, and Maile to drive down to Manti, UT for the Mormon Miracle Pageant.

We arrived on time to get seats close to the temple and then we were able to get some scones and shaved ice! Yummo... I think I want to make scones tonight... drool!

It was a beautiful evening to watch a play outside, and we were all super pumped for the pageant to begin.

While we were waiting, Brooklyn walked around telling the cast members how beautiful their costumes were and asking them if they were good guys or bad guys :) They all thought she was so cute that she ended up coming home with a stack of stickers and pictures that the cast had been handing out.

Then right before the pageant started, we rushed over to get a few pictures by the temple. Brooklyn loved being so close to it, but she was a bit bummed that we couldn't go all the way inside :)

When the pageant started Brooklyn was really into it... but half way through she looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said, "This isn't a good play, its a BAD play! EVERYBODY DIES!" I guess she's not a big fan of history, unless it involves rainbows and some type of unicorn/Pegasus :) The volcanoes also caused Brooklyn a bit of concern! When they started spouting fire she just about came undone! (Her cousin Mason, however, thought it was the best part of the whole show!)

Toward the very end of the pageant I looked down at Brooklyn and she was laying on her back staring into the sky. I asked her if she was going to watch the rest of the play, but she kept staring at the sky and then said, "No mom. I'm just gonna stare at the happy, happy stars in the happy, happy sky until we can go back home to happy grandma's house." Hahahaha! Why don't you tell us how you REALLY feel Brooklyn!

At the end of the play I asked Brooklyn what her favorite part of the pageant was and she told me, very sincerely, "When it was all over." Well, the pageant might have been a bust to my 4 year old, but she had a blast spending one-on-one time with her mommy, and mommy loved revisiting a favorite childhood memory!

Anyway, I had one WASTED little girl when I finally tucked her in bed at 2 in the morning, and I was pretty wasted myself! It was a long day, but it was totally worth it!

To be continued...