Utah in July

 I love Utah summers.  When I come to Utah I tend to book myself, and my poor girls, to the max.  We run around trying to fit all the visits and obligations and never have much time to just enjoy.  This trip we did try to fit in a bit of fun.

We spent a much too brief afternoon at Bridal Veil Falls in Provo Canyon with Karla and her family.  We hiked around the falls, something I would never allow my girls to do as I'm a giant worrier and am always convinced everything is too scary and dangerous.  This is probably the genesis of  "Karla is the fun mom" sentiment my kids now have. I try to tell them that Karla being the "fun one" is the exact reason I was her friend.  I agree--Karla IS fun!

Caroline had already climbed to the top and had come back.  This was Maggie's first time. Her look is exactly how I felt inside letting them be kids and climb up.  I followed behind this time and Caroline spent the entire climb complaining and whining about how she wanted to be ahead of Maggie.  She was so mad about a 3 foot distance between her and Maggie that she pouted to the point where Karla offered to piggy-back her down the mountain. The special treatment was right up Caroline's alley so she was pleased.

We visited the Bean Life Science Museum:

The girls seemed a little stumped by the taxidermy.  Caroline asked "Mommy, are they advertising the monkey or the hyena?":

We also hit the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point:

Caroline, who is usually not scared of much, really did not like this bridge.  Her dad had to really help her though it:

And finally we did the traditional family July 4th picnic and games:

Karla's parents live right next to the park we have our family picnic so we got to nose in on her homemade slip and slide.  It was awesome!  Well, it was awesome until my sister Julie broke her toe!  Poor thing.  This was not her first broken toe so she knew when it happened that it was broken.

Summer in Utah is fun.  Amazing. Truly the best.  But it's also exhausting!: