Christmas fun in SLC

I love going downtown.  By that I mean downtown Salt Lake City.  I always have.  I will jump in the car and drive there for any reason. In fact I make up excuses to go.

Leading up to Christmas we went downtown for some fun festivities:

As usual Grandma, Heidi, and I had an overnighter and all day shopping spree.

One of our favorite things to do together.  

We met up with the family at the Conference Center for the Christmas concert and dinner.  So Good!

Millie and her cute friends planned a "Mother Daughter" date night.  We went to Temple Square and dinner at City Creek.  It was fun to hang out with the other moms who happen to be so nice and cool. I adore her friends and we had a great time!

Sydney, Mckayla, Maddie

Krisha, Sydney, Kiersten, Millie, Maddie, Aliyah, Mckayla, Brynn, Kennedie

 

December Doings Part 5: Downtown SLC

Another favorite tradition for us and probably every family in Utah is to go downtown to see the lights at Temple Square.  Added bonus:  Front Runner Train, Trax, Dinner at Market Street Grill, and shopping at fantastic City Creek!

Sam's Fish and Chips.  When the waiter set his plate down, Will couldn't stop chuckling.  I wonder why?

The boys love their Zip up all the way hoodies :)

***Something else I must mention:  I don't have pictures, but we went to see a live nativity in nearby Riverton that is incredible!  We had to wait in line for over an hour, but we were with our good friends The Banks and enjoyed catching up with them and their kids.  The realistic town of Bethlehem and perfect nativity scene at the end was one of the most touching and awesome things we have seen.  We could tell it touched our children's hearts.  This will also be added to our family's annual traditions.

Camp!

I still can't believe my Millie is twelve.
In June she went to her very first YW {Young Womens} Camp.  This year it was at Mutual Dell up in beautiful American Fork Canyon.  Every four years the whole Stake goes together and this was one of those years.  The group of YW in our ward is small so we were glad that there would be a lot of girls at camp.  I was so excited for her to have her first camp experience because I have great memories of camp when I was her age.  But I was a little nervous about sending her away for 4 days.  It was the beginning of June and the weather was really cold at night.  There is zero cell service up there but luckily it is only 25 minutes away and some of her leaders are my good friends so I knew they would take good care of her.

I was stoked when the Camp Leaders asked me if I would spend a day at camp doing crafts with the girls.  Of course I said yes, mostly because I knew I would be anxious to see Millie after she had been gone for a couple of days.  After browsing Pinterest she and I came up with some crafts that would be fun, cute, easy, and cheap.  That can be hard to find!

The girls left early on a Tuesday and I went up on Friday {they camped until Saturday}.  BS had volunteered to be the Priesthood leader for Friday so we got to go together and spend the day at camp.  I was eager to see how Millie was doing because she doesn't have a good track record when it comes to sleeping at other places without her Mom.  She is quite a home body late at night.  But when I entered their campsite this is what I saw:

Tatum {silly}, Mills, & Morann waiting to Zip Line

Wouldn't be camp without braiding and hair wraps

Team building activity. She's the smallest :)

 It was great to see her and the other girls having so much fun together!  Smelling smoky with braided hair, dirty hands and feet, dirty clothes, and happy faces.  I quickly knew that indeed my little girl is growing up.  She could handle this.  She had a great experience and came home with a stronger testimony.  Gotta love girl's camp!  I am so grateful for her awesome YW and Camp leaders!  They did a fantastic job!  And she said the food was delicious :)

Reina - Camp Leader.  We didn't plan the shirts {from Goldilocks Bike Event}

For the crafts we made Sharpie Tie-Dye shirts and jar lanterns.  Their theme was "Arise and Shine Forth" so the lanterns were perfect.  They both turned out really cute.