A Day In Provo

Emily is starting to babysit. I know that there are things that I am forgetting to tell her, and sometimes it is good for her to hear what I have already said from another person. So I thought it would be good for her to take a babysitting class. I did some research and decided that the American Red Cross class that was taught at their facility was the best one. It is only taught once a month at each office and the two closest were either in down town Salt Lake or Provo. I decided to send her to the Provo one, because it was on July 13th. If we had waited for the Salt Lake class it would have been after school was in again.

The class is only one day, but it goes from 9am to 5pm. Since we hardly ever spend any time in Provo, I thought it would be fun to make a day of it.

Lucky for me Ryan's mom decided to come with us. We were not sure how it would go. If we would be able to fill the whole day and keep all of the kids happy. But it sounded more fun than driving to Provo and back twice, and I knew with the extra help we could handle it.

Grandma suggested we go up to Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon first.

There was a nice little path to walk to the falls on, and now that Valerie is walking and we had lots of time, we let her walk a little. As soon as we got her out of the car she started pointing at things and saying "Ooh getagetagetageta ooh." She loves being outside.


The boys love being outside too, but they wanted to go fast. Grandma had them race to a point on the trail ahead of us and then race back to us until they got their energy back to normal levels. Then they were happy again to walk and look at things. They got really excited when we had a river on one side of the trail and a stream on the other.

We made it to the falls in good time, and then the boys wanted to get in the water. This would not be a problem, because the falls go into a stream that is only a few inches deep and perfect for wading. But for some reason my boys will not wear shorts. Every day I tell them how hot it is going to be, but they always come out in pants. After this trip I think they finally see the benefit of wearing shorts.........They are better to play in water. So we rolled up their pants and they stuck their feet in the water.

Eventually they were crossing the stream and at one point they were using the big rock they are leaning against in the above picture as a slide. So no, their pants did not stay dry, but they had lots of fun!


I thought Valerie might like to stick her feet in the water. So I crossed the stream with her and took her to a very shallow part. She did not like the cold water.

She did like the water falls, she just didn't want to be in them. She was happy just to look around while the boys played in the water.

After a while the Falls started to get a little crowded, so we headed back to the car.

On our way back into town we stopped at a book store. My kids love books. It was fun to watch them look through the store for a book they wanted. Valerie was in Heaven and liked everything she saw. Joe found a really cool book that had model parts with it so you could build a jet. Josh saw books that interested him too, but he ended up choosing the same book as Joe. (surprise, surprise.) Grandma felt bad Emily was missing all of the fun, so she got her the next book in the series she is reading.

We had lunch at the brick oven. Then headed to the Provo mall to see "Despicable Me," and have a little rest. The boys loved the movie. Valerie took her nap for the first half of the movie. When she woke up I gave her a bottle, and that kept her happy, but once the bottle was gone she was ready to go, and started talking to everyone. So I watched the end of the movie from the entryway of the theatre.

After the movie we still had a little bit of time to waste. At the waterfall, Grandma decided that the boys needed shorts, so we headed into the mall. It didn't take long for Grandma to see that it is not the lack of shorts that is the problem. The boys just don't like them for some reason. The stores were having great clearance sales on their summer stuff, and we did find one pair of shorts the boys agreed to wear. Ryan's mom and I both think we need to shop in Provo a little more. The Women's selection seemed to be a little better there in the clearance sections.

Soon it was 5:00pm and time to get Emily.

Emily is now a certified babysitter!

She had a fun at her class and learned a lot. especially about CPR and other safety things like how to handle a temper tantrum. (She wrote more about it on her blog). She is really glad she went.

The kids were pretty tired on the drive home, and a couple of them took naps, but they were still happy. I was impressed with how good they all were. We did not have one fit, and the only time Valerie even started to cry was when I put her feet in the cold water at the falls. It was so nice of Ryan's mom to come with us. She really knows her way around the area, and the kids always love playing with Grandma.

It was a really fun day!