Chuck E. PLEASE!

My dad, aka "Silly Grandpa", drove down from Idaho one weekend during our Utah vacation (see also video clip of my dad laughing a few posts down) and no time spent with Silly Grandpa is complete without a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's!

So here we go!

And no trip to CEC's is complete without the Chuck E. portraits!

So for one token, this machine takes your picture and spits out a "sketch" and they always turn out really cool.

As you can tell from the collage below, we don't bother with family pictures and photographers, we just hang out at the Chuck E. Cheese photo/sketch booth with a bunch of tokens.
Hey, at least the sketch thingie doesn't show ALL of my wrinkles!

Cowabunga Baby!

A new sight on the landscape of the Wasatch Front via I-15 is a colorful and bright waterpark that Quinton pointed out to me at least 100 times during our vacation in Utah. One sunny day, I finally relented and took my niece, Sara, and Quinton to the famed Cowabunga Bay!

One of the major pluses was that both kids were free since they were "3 and under."

Sara and Quinton were completely happy to ignore the slides and two giant tipping buckets and frolic in the kiddie pool. Both of them did THOROUGHLY enjoy themselves in the lazy river.

The picture below is a shot of the slides and buckets in the main part of the park.
Another main attraction for Quinton and Sara were their ice cream cones that came complete with 'sunburns'. The sunburned part was funny because they sprinkled reddish/orangeish sugar dust on the ice cream which made them really look like the cones had sunburns!

Here is Sara enjoying her sunburned chocolate cone!

Quinton wearing his cone...

Our self-portrait of silliness!

Quinton suprised me and actually braved the kiddie slide.

Once he went down the first time, though, he never wanted to go back to the kiddie pool. He must have gone down this slide a couple of dozen times!

And this was Quinton after about 4.5 hours at Cowabunga Bay.

He looks like he's having a great day!

I think we might make this an annual stop on our Utah summer vacations!

Q Likes to Play While Mom's Away

While Matt and I were partying it up at the wedding, Quinton was lucky enough to stay overnight with my sister, Jessi, and her three kids. Quinton LOVES hanging out with Taylor, Evan and Sara so this was AWESOME!

My oldest niece, Taylor, had a horseback riding lesson and was nice enough to take Quinton for a ride on her horse. He looks so natural, huh?

Quinton loooves his cousin, Sara, and who wouldn't?

Sara says the funniest things and has the mini-attitude of her mom which makes her a lot of fun to hang out with!
Aunt Jessi said Quinton did great with Taylor on her horse. I think Quinton took a pony ride when he was a year and a half old but looking at this picture, you'd think he does this everyday!

Thanks Aunt Jessi and cousins for taking great care of Quinton!

We miss you lots!!!!!

Going to the Chapel...

Besides going to Park City to enjoy the lovely Utah mountains, we had two other activities planned. One of them was a triathalon for Matt to participate in and the other was a good friend's wedding.

Scott was Matt's boss when we lived in Chicago from late 2001 to late 2004. Matt learned a lot working with Scott and we frequently enjoyed dinners at Scott's place across the street from us in Winnetka, back in the day. When Scott announced he was getting married, earlier this year, we were totally excited and knew we didn't want to miss the wedding!

The day of the wedding couldn't have been more perfect in Park City!

The chapel was decked out and the bride looked like she was straight out of a modeling shoot!

My pictures aren't the greatest but hopefully, it conveys just how beautiful the ceremony was for Scott and Stephanie.
One of the other good parts of the wedding was being able to see so many friends and colleagues of Matt's that we hadn't seen in years.
Here is Matt with our friend Sean:

Sadly, my camera battery was dying so I wasn't able to snap many shots at the gorgeous reception. It was at a place called the Sky Bar in downtown park City and the view from the patio was magnificent!

Congratulations and best wishes to Scott and Stephanie!

Living it Up in Park City!

We were lucky enough to spend the first week of our Utah vacation in lovely Park City. My grandparents graciously gave us one of their time share weeks that we were able to use at the Marriott Mountainside resort which was AWESOME!

One of the best parts was that the resort had so many activities for kids Quinton's age. I really hadn't expected to hang out at the resort much but it was impossible not to since all of the activities sounded so fun!

One of our first afternoons in Park City, Quinton and I strolled through downtown. We had a lot of fun just window shopping with no where particular to go and no time constraints.

Here, Quinton is becoming acquainted with some of the wildlife: As I mentioned, the resort had lots of different activities. Below, Quinton and I attempted to play chess with game pieces that were as big as Q!
In the end, Quinton had more fun knocking the pieces over than playing with them. Quinton also became pretty good at foosball while staying at the resort. It was fun to simply take the elevator down to fun games and Q really enjoyed this luxury!

And what is vacation without throwing in a little exercise?
Yeah, he's a maniac :)

This is our friend, Wes, whose Mom and sister came to visit us in Park City and spend an afternoon enjoying the pool with us. Mariah, Wes and Jane were welcome company and it was so fun to catch up with Mariah!

On one afternoon, my sister, Jessi, was fortunate enough to come up and visit us. She came just in time for the tye-dyeing activity Quinton and I had signed up for and it was a blast! Quinton LOVED tye-dyeing a shirt and he LOVES to wear it!

Quinton and I ended up tye-dyeing the next day, too since he had so much fun. We ended up dyeing a shirt he already owned because it had a stain on it that I couldn't get out but still loved the shirt. It turned out awesome, too!

I think Quinton would have tie-dyed the room if we would have let him!

This is Q just hanging out in the hotel room.

At the end of our week in Park City, it was pretty sad to leave our nice little resort but we have great memories!

Things That Make Me Go Hmmmm?

I admit that I love to people watch and thanks to the digital age, I can now snap pictures and share with all of you some of the crazy things I see...from my travels in Utah, I have a special blog post about weird, wacky and stuff that makes me say, "WHAT?"

Like this gentleman.

I was snapping a picture of Quinton coming down the inflatable slide and turned my head and saw this:

I probably should have warned you!

This next woman's tattoo makes me wonder what the heck she was thinking when she said, "I just LOVE Mater!"
And then I saw this gentlman walking around Temple Square, as normal as you please, in a kilt. Silly me, though, I am a sucker for kilts!

And you would think that because of the grainy-ness of this photo that this young lady is a celebrity of some sort but nope, I just found her outfit to be.....BRIGHT.

Notice the zebra print boots (it was 90+ degrees out), pink tights and tye dye shirt.

Who knew this was in fashion?

There you have it.

My collection from Utah of wacky stuff.

Art at BYU

I am a bit backed up in my blogging posts so enjoy the ride of pictures and memories from the past month or so!

After all of the fun we had in Provo for the 4th of July, my mom, Quinton and I headed back to Provo to check out some fun art at the BYU Art Museum. I actually don't think I ever stepped foot in the art museum during the 4.5 years I attended BYU...I guess it shows where my priorities were back then!

When we first walked in, there was this exhibit:

It's made from dry cleaning hangers...

Can you imagine how much Quinton loved this art installation?

Um, it was definitely hard to explain to Quinton that he couldn't play with the exhibit!
And this was the last picture I was able to snap before I found out that it's strictly verboten to snap pictures in the museum...oops!
There were a bunch of other cool art exhibits by the guy who does the I Spy books and how he puts the scenes together for which he is famous.

I can really recommend going to the art museum, plus, it's free!