Monday, we spent the day at Kirtland. One of my favorite places was the Newel K. Whitney store. I love the story about Joseph Smith showing up at the Whitney's store and saying something like, "You prayed me here. Now what can I do for you?" It was so cool to stand in the very spot Joseph stood. Here we are inside the store...
And here we are outside the store. You like how we got Jaime in the picture?
The Santillan fam as we're leaving the Visitor's Center.
The group of us in front of the Kirtland Temple.
Eliza & Amanda at the front door of the Temple. It's SOOOOO tall!
We left Kirtland and went out for ice cream (July is National Ice Cream Month, so we tried to make it a point to eat ice cream every day!) and then we went to the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame.
Notice the sign above us says WOMEN WHO ROCK! We SO totally rock! :0)
After the Hall of Fame, we went back to Kirtland to see a few places we hadn't seen on the tour since we left early to make it to the Hall of Fame before they closed. I was so glad we did that because it was really neat to see the Kirtland Sawmill and the Ashery. We had two wonderful young sister missionaries, one of them was from Korea, to give us the tour and tell us about the Saints building and working in these places. It was so interesting! On the way home, we went out to eat at Cracker Barrel. Yummy!! We don't have a Cracker Barrel anywhere near us, so it's been ages since we've been there.
On Tuesday, we went hiking through Hocking Hills to Old Man's Cave. It's incredibly beautiful there! We had such a wonderful time together. I love this picture of Tammy & Jaime. This is how we saw Jaime through most of the hike!
The next 10 pictures are of us on the hike. We had such a great time!
After Hocking Hills, we went out to eat at the most wonderful little restaurant close by. It's like a log cabin style, bed & breakfast kind of place. It was so beautiful there! And the food was wonderful!
Next we drove for what seemed like a thousand miles to a horse ranch and went horseback riding. Unfortunately, we couldn't get any pictures, but we had a wonderful time! My horse's name was Hank, Eliza was on Sunny, Amanda had Gambler, Daddy rode Slim, Tammy was on Juice, Jaime rode Jake, and Emmy's was Denver. Some of us had pretty obstinate horses who only wanted to go when they wanted to go and only wanted to turn when they wanted to turn (yes, my horse was one of them!). Couldn't have been the riders' fault, right?? It was Tim's first time ever horseback riding. It wasn't his favorite thing in the world to do, but he and Slim got along great and at least now he can say he's done it! Some of us were pretty sore for the next day or two. It was SO worth it, though, cuz it was really pretty wonderful!
Wednesday, we planned our Harry Potter party and went grocery shopping and to the mall. Before leaving for shopping, we played the Friends trivia game and had a blast! Wednesday night, we started our Harry Potter movie marathon and Kim, Megan & Heidi arrived! Yay!!!
Thursday, we watched Harry Potter movies and prepared food for the party, all day long! We're not obsessed with Harry Potter at all! Here are some pictures of us in the kitchen, pictures of all our Harry Potter treats, and some great group pictures before we left for the movies. For dinner, we had "Toad-in-a-Hole", a traditional English casserole which is basically sausages in a pastry kind of thing. We also had chicken wings, snake shaped rolls, mashed potatoes, peas, and butter beer to drink. It was AMAZING!
Can you believe it? Professor Trelawney showed up at our party!!! Isn't she lovely?? And Sara and her friends look SO COOL in their Harry Potter glasses!
I think maybe Professor Trelawney got a little tipsy from all the butter beer!
We all got Harry Potter T-shirts at the mall. Tim and I have matching "MUGGLE" T-shirts. Amanda's is a Slytherin shirt and Eliza's says "Butter Beer."
Here we are at the movie theater. They had people dressed up as characters to take pictures with. This guy is the Snape look-alike. Crazy how much he looks like the real guy!
The Hogwart's Express.
The Sorting Hat.
The girls with Fred, George and Mrs. Weasley.
And then, of course, was the midnight showing of The Deathly Hallows, Part Two! Wow!! It was so awesome! It's pretty great when you have super high expectations of a movie and then the movie exceeds your expectations! We all loved it. We laughed, we cried, we were on the edge of our seats. Some of us, who shall remain nameless, were crying in the opening credits!! It was just awesome! We didn't even notice it was the middle of the night. It was so great to be all together - I was so happy Kim, Heidi and Megan drove all the way to Ohio to see it with us!
Friday, we slept in after getting to bed around 3 a.m., and then Tammy's own personal hairstylist came over and gave us all haircuts. (Seriously, he CAME TO HER HOUSE! How cool is that?) Then Jaime took my little family to a beautiful park there called Innis Woods for pictures. He took Eliza's senior pictures, family pictures, pictures of just Amanda, just Amanda and Eliza, and some of me with the girls. We will be forever grateful to Jaime for doing that for us!! The pictures turned out great. I'm pretty sure we can find a few we like...he only took 659!! Just a few...(wink, wink)!
Saturday was one of the best days of the trip. We went out to eat for lunch at one of Jaime's favorite places, a Peruvian restaurant! It was SOOOOOO delicious! Wow!! We still talk about how amazing the food was...especially the Tres Leches cake! YUMMMMMM! Then, we went back home, got ready for our bike ride, and took off, in an attempt to work off some of the calories from lunch. We rode to Hoover Dam and saw the Swallow's nests, which were really cool, then on to Innis Woods where Jaime took beautiful pictures of beautiful Megan, then to Graeter's for ice cream... in an attempt to gain back all the calories we worked off! In my opinion, Graeter's has the best ice cream in the world, so it was totally worth it! The day was SO awesome! I didn't realize how much I would enjoy bike riding! The day was also awesome because it was the only full day we got to spend with Sara since she had work and school all week. We love you Sara!!
Saturday night, Tim and Jaime watched soccer - the Peruvian team was playing, of course! All us girls went downstairs and played games. One was the Michael Jackson dance game on the Xbox Connect. I didn't know Heidi and Emmy and the girls could move like that!! Then we laughed hysterically for hours playing Apples to Apples. We didn't want to go to bed because we didn't want to get up in the morning and leave. It really sucked saying good-bye! It was such a wonderful wonderful week!!! We had so much fun, just even on our car rides. Emmy and the girls totally bonded - found out they all like Michael Jackson, the Backstreet Boys and the Beetles. We love you, too, Emmy! We LOVE hanging out with family...I wish we could have seen ALL of our family this year! We miss you and love you all!!! Thanks to Tammy & Jaime for hosting us all week and making us feel so welcome and at home. You guys are awesome! We love you!!
