The best thing about Utah in July...Part II

Ohhh love that I will get to do a couple of these posts this month. Like I said, this month is filled with visits from loved ones....yay!

So last week, the Smith family journeyed all the way from Rhode Island. They come out each year for harp camp (yes, they are a super amazing, talented family). We quickly got to see Dallin and Matt on the 4th (not enough time!), but Alysa was around a week longer for the music camp. She was staying downtown and we planned a night to meet and go out to dinner. The night turned out so much more exciting than we even anticipated. We had Alysa's mom and two sweet girls join us for dinner (wow, they are well behaved!). We hopped on Trax (always a great time people watching on Trax) and headed to the Gateway to eat at Thaiphoon. Dinner was delicious. The evening took a fantastic turn when Diane announced she and Alysa needed to go bra shopping and she wanted my help! All of us, including the kids were in the fitting room discussing fit and comfort...what a riot! I tried to talk them into a purple push-up, but they opted for a more conservative white. Either way, they both looked very "uplifted" when we were finished! lol What a fun night...thanks Alysa and Diane! :)

A few days later, the Carpenter family headed into town. We met the Carpenters while living in Colorado and they now live in Texas (much to Diane's chagrin). I was so glad when my mom took my kids for two days which left me free as a bird. Jackie and I headed downtown to pick up Diane. She is staying at her in-laws in a beautiful neighborhood behind the capitol. When Jackie and I eventually got there, we were thrilled to meet the two new additions to her family: JJ and Abby. We then headed to Zupa's for lunch and took a tour of some of the south end's great shops; Rodworks, Interior Elements and IKEA. We had such a great time (no kids!) wandering around at our leisure. We ended the day with ice cream (Coconut from Marble Slab mmmmm!) a Dunford doughnut (the best around) and a ice cold freshies (soda, fresh from the fountain). Yea, I didn't have any dinner that night because I was so full! We laughed ourselves silly trying to get a self portrait that didn't cut one of us off and show too much double chin. ;) Diane will be here for the rest of the month so we are looking forward to heading to Chili's for one of our traditional chips and salsa nights. Good times, good times!