Our final day of our trip was Greta's 5th birthday!!!
We went birthday shopping at one of the numerous souvenir gift shops.
It is surely one of Abe's crowning driving achievements that he so successfully maneuvered this fifteen passenger all around the streets of Manhattan. And he didn't even get stressed about it-- rather, he quite enjoyed himself.
We drove by the Manhattan Temple-- that was cool. Another interesting thing is that there were a lot of street banners advertising
The Book of Mormon musical. I completely understand that they think they are making fun of our church and our beliefs. And that's fine, because you know what?
The Book of Mormon is being advertised all over the streets of one of the great cities in the world. What would Joseph Smith have thought of that?!
Ha ha ha! You have no idea!
We ate lunch at Vito's Slices and Ices.
George declared he preferred Little Caesar's pizza-- a highly questionable opinion. Many others declared Vito's the best pizza they'd ever eaten.
That's a good birthday meal! She ate the whole slice.
A little blurry, but still pretty cute.
And before we knew it, it was time to head home.
We left our cooler at the rental car return. She was a good cooler and I believe Abe and I got her as a wedding gift. She served us well. The little kids were incredulous that we would just leave the cooler behind, so we took a picture so we could always remember the cooler.
Pretty impressive, eh? That's all we took home. Well, we try to get one more thing home-- a wooden, toy slingshot George got as a souvenir in Nauvoo. Maybe it would have made it through security, if he hadn't also packed in his backpack slightly larger than marble size magnets. The two items together did appear suspicious. So, that was confiscated and that was upsetting to him. For the record he could keep the magnets-- so that's something.
Greta's first plane right on her 5th birthday!
She was impressed and she treated us to one of her stream of consciousness singing times all about the plane and the little TV.
We got into the Salt Lake airport about midnight which was 2 AM New York time. Greta and Faith's faces are about how we all felt after the especially turbulent descent and landing. To our kids (Faith on down) who were flying for the first time, we kept telling them, it's not usually this bad!
And then we came home to such a kind surprise-- some anonymous soul mowed and edged our lawn and it wasn't burnt to a crisp. We were so appreciative. Plus, our cat was still alive and our house didn't flood in our absence or smell weird. That's about all you can really hope for upon returning home from a long trip.
Final thoughts on The Rolling Foxes Summer Tour: We've got a lot going on with our family-- of course, with a family our size, there is always a lot going on. Yeah, there is A LOT of heavy stuff going on. I'll probably go into it more in a coming post. This trip happening when and how it did has been a huge blessing. My testimony of the restoration of the gospel and Joseph Smith being a prophet of God has been strengthened. I have felt God's peace and comfort and felt encouraged to go on in "so great a cause". We all enjoyed one another's company, we listened to audiobooks and music, we played the license plate game with great success -- curse you Alaska and South Dakota! We worked together to take care of everyone's needs and tried to be patient when we were tired and/or hungry. We shared eleven days of experiences that I pray we'll learn from and lean on for many years to come. It was wonderful and I am grateful.
No comments:
Post a Comment