Park City

After getting a good night's sleep, we hung out with the Rogers for a bit and then leisurely got ready for our day. Our first stop was to see this fantastic guy who I know as Elder Peery.

He only had 35 minutes during his lunch break (he's a teacher) and in that 35 minutes I laughed, cried and felt restored just chatting with him for a bit. I really really loved seeing him in his element as a teacher and getting to see him interact with his students. Serving a mission was colossally hard for me, but I'm still reaping the blessings, not the least of which are the friends I made.

Now that we had lunch, we needed dessert so we stopped by The Sweet Tooth Fairy and loaded up.

Even looking at this picture in retrospect I feel giddy with happiness. Having a cupcake with your daughter is just something every mom needs to do now and again! Brent and I are trying to ease Liesel and Ireland into meal prep and cooking so we encourage the girls to watch shows like Master Chef Junior and Cupcake Wars. Liesel was crazy excited to find out The Sweet Tooth Fairy was a winner of Cupcake Wars. She immediately vowed to find the episode where they competed.

I found a quote by the founder of The Sweet Tooth Fairy Megan Faulkner that I really love, "Yeah, we sell delicious desserts, but we really sell memories. I'm hoping that what I'm doing here is providing a place where people can come to make those memories." It was just so perfect for what Liesel and I were doing at that moment.

We headed out to Heber to visit the Funks. When we moved to Lakewood, the Funks immediately adopted the girls, especially Liesel and Ireland. Once the sacrament was passed at church, they would go sit with the Funks while Brent and I wrestled the two little ones. Sadly, they moved away so we had to stop by their brand-new home and give them a little love from Illinois.

 I'm so grateful for those people who are kind to the girls. It really does take a village to raise a child!

From there, we headed to Park City when I spotted this fantastic fence made of skis. How clever and charming for a place known for the amazing slope action! At the last second I decided I wanted a photo so I whipped around the corner and made Liesel get out of the car.

 Not that she minds posing for photos... she's quite the pro actually.

As Liesel enters the tween years, I'm really having a hard time finding appropriate clothing for her. I thought I might have more luck in Utah since it's known to be pretty conservative and my intention was to hit the outlet malls. However, when I spotted the Alpine Slides winding down the side of the mountain, I knew that's what we needed to do!

Somehow I've developed a fear of heights as I get older. With so many little ones depending on me, I'm hyper aware of my own mortality. As we rode the ski lift up the mountain, I began taking deep, slow breaths to calm my nerves. I looked over at Liesel who was like this:

 The height made her a little nervous too. But really, that view just can't be beat; totally worth it.

 Fall comes earlier in the mountains and walking down this lane to the slides was magical. We were the only ones up there so we could take our sweet time... and we did.

 Even though Liesel did wheels the whole time (see her pushing the lever forward?), she's a tiny girl so she meandered down the slide. She didn't have the speed, but she loved it nonetheless.

 At the ticket booth, I was asked if I wanted tickets to the slide or the coaster. I've done the slide lots of times as a kid when we came to Utah on vacation, and as a college student. I'd never done the coaster. Turns out there was a discount if you did both so I figured, why not? Oh man, I'm SO glad I did! In the future, if I have to choose between the two we are definitely doing the coaster.

The coaster is connected to the track so there is no possible way you can fly off. Not that we were in any danger of that with the slide (again, Liesel doesn't weigh much and couldn't go terribly fast), but as a mother I like the added measure of safety. Instead of taking the ski lift and having to drag sleds over to the track, our sled went along the ground and was pulled up the mountain. It was yet another stunning view of the fall foliage. Liesel was too young to ride alone, so we shared a sled so my added heft helped us fly along. But why try to describe it when you can watch for yourself?

Those screams of Liesel's apparently echoed out all the way down the mountain because several people commented on hearing her. As we got off the coaster, the worker asked if we were going to do it again and I told him I didn't think we could afford it. He smiled and said, "Come on!" and let us ride again for FREE!!! Turns out we were the last ride of the day because they had to shut everything down due to thunder from an approaching rainstorm.

Liesel and I headed to Cafe Rio to share a yummy shredded beef burrito... I'm salivating just typing that. As the rain fell in curtains outside, we rewatched that coaster video about 6 times and laughed all over again. There was a lull in the storm and we headed up to SLC so we wouldn't be caught driving in the canyon in bad weather. We stopped at Deseret Book where we had Liesel's scriptures embossed with her name and purchased a new CTR ring.

We returned to Brigham City a bit late, but with loads of memories made!