Star Valley

On Friday the 3rd, Rick picked me up from Lava Hot Springs as we sisters were checking out of our rental  home.  While everyone else headed towards their homes Rick and I went the opposite direction toward Afton Wyoming.  We have a goal to get to ten new temples this year, and Pocatello was the first earlier that week.  I found out that the Star Valley Temple was just a couple hours away from Lava and suggested that we add that to our list of ten.  We drove through the mountains through Montpelier over to Afton.  It was a beautiful snowy drive.  We loved it so much!  There was SO much snow!  The roads were clear for the most part so that wasn't an issue but everything else was snow covered.  As we arrived into town the temple came into view.  I was very surprised at how small it is.  I think it's one of the smallest I've seen.

Small but nevertheless, beautiful.

We drove into town and stopped at a little restaurant and had a little lunch before going over for our appointment at the temple.

We got to do initiatory work and then spent a little time in the Celestial Room.

 

After leaving the temple we stopped at Star valley Mercantile a cute home decor store.  I found a couple of items to buy.😀  After that we drove around the streets of the town admiring the homes and stumbled upon this cool building.  It is the Afton Tabernacle and was built in 1909.  I wish we could have gone inside, but it was locked.  We stopped and talked to an older couple who knew the building very well and they told us a few things about it.  One thing that is cool about it is the bell tower.  I don't know if there is an actual bell in it but we were told that the Sunday School boys in the early days liked to climb up there.

Anyhow, it was a beautiful building.

                                        The icicles around town were HUGE!

We got to see two herds of elk on the way back to Montpelier where we were spending the night.  

Five of them were bull elk with huge racks.  We saw a total of eighteen.  Pretty cool.

We stayed at the Super 8 in Montpelier and enjoyed a delicious dinner at a Mexican Restaurant next to the hotel and then relaxed for the rest of the evening.  

The next morning we lounged around a bit and went for a swim in the pool and enjoyed the hot tub.  We headed towards Logan where we stopped at the Lazy Ones Outlet and bought some jammies for the grand kiddos.  Then we  headed on home.

In Sardine Canyon we saw this giant snowman someone had built.  You can't see how big it is by this picture but a man's head would come up just to that bottom button.  I have no idea how they were able to get that head on top!  

Fun times with my sweetie!

Lava Hot Springs Girl's Trip

I'm a little late in posting this ....

This year's girls trip was held a couple of weeks ago at Lava Hot Springs.

We left on February 27th and stayed in a nice older rental home that Darla found.  It had five rooms so we all had our own room (which I enjoyed:) except for Karen and DeeAnn who shared an upstairs bedroom.  

I rode up with Kathy and DeeAnn to Layton where we stopped at a Winco and met up with Darla.  We wanted to get some groceries for the week.  I tried not to buy too much because I knew we were going to eat out quite a bit.  We still ended up with a fridge and pantry FULL of good stuff.  

As we pulled into Winco DeeAnn got a call from Destinee who thought she was going to have a baby very soon, and so DeeAnn was thinking that she would have to travel to CA instead of ID for the week.  Luckily, after we finished up our shopping Destinee had found out it was a false alarm so we were able to continue on our way.  DeeAnn hopped in with Darla and I stayed with Kathy.  

We had been concerned about the weather and traveling that day because the weatherman had called for storms.  Just the week before Utah and Idaho got soooo much snow.  We did get into a bit as we passed through Malad but it eased up and we made the trip just fine.

After getting settled into our rental we had dinner at the Chuckwagon Restaurant.   We had nice conversation and I believe everyone really enjoyed their meal.  

It was kind of late when we got back to the house so we all just relaxed and visited a bit.

The next day we all slept in.  Darla did not wake up until 10:00, which really surprised me.  We enjoyed just being lazy and getting a late breakfast.  Darla, DeeAnn, Kathy,  and I got into the hot tub for a bit and really enjoyed the hot water.  The hot tub was out in the open and covered in snow.  Someone had come and shoveled a narrow path to get to the hot tub.  There was a LOT of snow in the area and, we even saw a collapsed roof across the street.  There was easily three feet of snow on top of every roof!

Later that afternoon we went out into a couple of shops in town.  There really wasn't very much but an old time western shop (I bought a few funny birthday cards) and the hardware and grocery store.  You can bet we went to all three!  HAHA!  Got to get our shopping in!

That evening we ate dinner at 78 Main and had good food!  DeeAnn's chicken dinner was HUGE and she brought most of it home.  We then watched a cute show called Finding You.  It was fun eating popcorn and relaxing in the basement, albeit was a little chilly:)

  

The next day we got up a little earlier and spent some more time in the hot tub.  We left around 1:30 to drive in to Pocatello to go to a session in the temple.  Dennis, Brent and Lar, and RICK drove in to meet us. (Lar did not join us on this year's trip)  We enjoyed an endowment session at the temple and then met at Sizzler there in Pocatello for a nice dinner together.

Afterwards we parted ways with Rick heading all the way back to Grantsville while the rest of us went back to our appointed places.  

We got back with enough time to play games that night.  We played 5 Straight and Probe.  I love playing games.  It's super fun!

The next day was Thursday and was very laid back again.  Some of us got in the jacuzzi.  I sat and talked with Karen for a while, so I missed the hot tub. Ruth decided she wanted to travel back home thinking that there would be a storm coming in the next day.  She got left around 11 AM.  Kathy wanted to go back as well fearing the coming storm and that meant having DeeAnn go back with her! They both were all packed up and ready to go.  I did not want to see them leave so I was happy when Kathy decided to stay after all.  DeeAnn was too.  She did not want to leave until the next day with the rest of us.

We threw together a lunch of salad, nachos, taquitos with guac and salsa with lots of sweet treats and watched a double feature.  We started with Once there was a Beehive which I (nor Karen) had seen, and all the others insisted that we watch it because they liked it so much and thought we would, too.  It was really cute!  We finished it around 4:30 and decided to plug another show in and decided on Little Women.  It was really tender.  I love that show.  Right at a really tender part where Joe and Beth are on the beach and Beth starts telling Joe that she knows that she is not going to live much longer, Karen blurts out, "Are we going to have dinner tonight, because it's getting late!"  DeeAnn retorted with, "Karen!  This is a tender scene!  Why are you asking that?"  It was pretty funny.  Karen's timing was really off.😆

We ended up finishing the movie and just snacked and ate leftovers for dinner.  We got to play some more games that evening and enjoyed our last night in the rental home.

Karen putting on her morning make up.

Our snowed-in hot tub.

Selfie!

Our cute rental covered in snow!

Kathy and Darla packing up the cars.

The last hurrah on the steps of the house. 

Another fun sisters trip in the books.

Until next year!