After our church history tour, the Burton family flew to Utah with us to spend a few weeks with the family! We always love when the Burtons are in town!
It is so adorable to see how sweet the boys are with V, and how excited V gets when she sees her cousins. They have the cutest relationship. To celebrate James' birthday, we all went to dinner at CPK where the kids all got a little piece of pizza dough to play with. They loved it! After dinner we went to Build-A-Bear where James picked out an army teddy bear and named him cookie since he put a scent pack in him that smells like sugar cookies.
Another day, we went to visit Hilde. Hilde has been a friend of the family ever since I can remember. She would stay with us when our parents went out of town when we were little, and she was also the person who set up Karin and Ricky! I remember coming to her house when I was little and having tea parties with peppermint tea. She has been an important part of the family for years and it was so great to see her since it had been a while since we have had a chance to visit with her. It was fun for her to meet all the Burton boys as well as V, who is our little miracle baby.
She was so sweet and served us grapes, cherries and licorice and read us several words of wisdom she has saved over the years. She also has kept all of our family Christmas cards over the years and pulled them out to show the boys.
Hilde is one of the sweetest people I know, and it was so lovely to spend the evening catching up with her.
We also had the wonderful opportunity to have all the girls together to have a girls night out to celebrate my Mom's birthday! We had dinner at Trestle Tavern, where we ate outside and ordered all the appetizers on the menu since we couldn't decide on just one to try. It was a lovely evening, enjoying the splendid summer evening weather while eating delicious food.
For dessert, we walked next door to Sweetaly to get some creamy gelato. It was such a fun night out with all the girls!
A couple of days later, we celebrated Mom's birthday with the rest of the family with the traditional Baker's cake.
Mom with all of her grandkids (that were in town, John and Ben had to fly back to Arizona for a concert and a scout trip)
We all love my mom so much, she made my childhood so magical and it's so fun to watch her do the same for all her grandkids. Everyone always loves to spend time with Grammy, she always has a fun art project to do or something new to learn about. She is constantly serving others, and is the most caring and supportive mother and grandmother. I love you so much mom, happy birthday!
Another excursion we went on with the Burtons was visiting the Natural History Museum which was hosting a special exhibit on Vikings! I hadn't been to the museum since it had moved to it's new, state-of-the-art building so I was super excited to check it out!
It is a gorgeous building and all the exhibits are beautifully curated. While this is a much bigger and better suited space for the museum, a part of me will always miss the old museum in it's classical greek building with all it's fun interactive exhibits like the mine displaying all the gems. I just spent so much time there as a kid, going to summer camps and visiting the museum, but this new building is awesome in it's own ways.
This display wall in the entry way is gorgeous, it might be my favorite thing in the entire museum.
They wanted to take a picture with their viking faces ....
The Viking exhibit was so awesome. I was impressed by the way it was curated, having dappled in curating museum shows in college, I am always very observant of how things are laid out and displayed. I also am pay attention to all the signage and reading materials since I spent weeks creating information tablets for an art show at the Springville Museum of Art and know the kind of research and time that goes into creating those.
My name spelled in Viking letters
After learning about the vikings, we explored a few of the other exhibits in the museum. I was excited to see the dinosaurs since that was always my favorite part of the old museum. They new display is amazing and so much bigger!
We had to make sure to stop by the gift shop on our way out! I always remember getting to pick out a rock candy sucker when visiting the Natural History Museum as a little girl, and the grandkids are getting that same, fun memory!
The view of the valley from the museum is amazing.
Another day, we did a quick visit to Wheeler Farm.
We also had a wonderful time celebrating all the fantastic fathers in the family for father's day! Ricky was back in Arizona and Mike was sick, but we celebrated them as well!
Bethy drove all the way to Heber to get these special pies, made to order pies for our wonderful fathers. They were sooooo good! We got key lime, chocolate, lemon meringue and butter beer flavors.
We also had the opportunity to attend a couple of concerts the Burtons were a part of. The first was the magnificent Millennial Choir Concert at the Tabernacle. This concert combined choirs from Utah, Arizona and Colorado. There were so many singers, the audience was surrounded by the music on all sides, it was such an amazing experience. The music was so beautiful and inspiring. Ricky, Will and Thomas participated in different numbers throughout the concert.
Later in the week, we got to hear Andrew and John play in an orchestra concert. They had attended a week long music camp at BYU that ended with a glorious concert of all the pieces they had been working on throughout the camp. The Burtons are a very musical family, and I am so proud to be their auntie and attend as many concerts of theirs as I can.
We had such a great time with the Burtons! We LOVE when they come to visit!
