The Grubers: September 2015 - Utah State Fair and The Gardens at Thanksgiving Point

We went and saw another of Bryan’s mountain bike races. This time it was at Corner Canyon, at the equestrian center. It was so hot outside that they cut the teams’ laps back. Bryan did an awesome job, coming in 18th. After the race we went back to my parents. Jason and I had dinner plans with his high school friends in Sandy, so Kim watched the boys while we went to Los Cuscos. After dinner, we headed back to Draper and played Van Halen Guitar Hero with my family and watched Star Wars IV, in preparation for the new Star Wars movie that was about to come out.

Trevor, Krista, Alli, Parker, Jason, Emily, Nate, Sarah, Richard, Kamilla

We attended the Utah State Fair with the Grubers. Nancy submitted one of her sunflowers and won first place! It was a gigantic sunflower! This year at the fair was especially fun because they had the circus there. It turned out to be really fun! It kind of started off slow, but by the end they had shown some pretty impressive stuff. There were moments that Charlie was really into it, like when the camels were “dancing” and the motorcycles were going around inside of a spherical cage. For days after the fair he would repeat three words: sunflower, camels, and bikes. The fair definitely made an impression on Charlie.

We had a couple of outings with the Phillips cousins. We got together and had dinner at Joe Vera’s, and then just a week later, Paul and Mandy surprised everyone with a visit so we got together again! We went to do dinner at the classic Brick Oven and then came back to our place to play and hang out for a bit. Paul and Mandy moved to Chicago for his work and we really miss them.

We had an interesting and unexpected Saturday. We were all ready to go and getting in the car to head to Thanksgiving Point Gardens when we realized we had a flat tire on the new Explorer. All of a sudden we were spending $1000 getting all four tires replaced. We also had a lot of time to kill. We walked across the street and hung out at the mall for a bit and had lunch. When the car was ready, we walked back and decided to still go to the Gardens. I am so glad we did because it ended up being beautiful and great weather! We saw several small groups there getting their pictures taken, even a high school dance group all dressed up in their formals. Jason realized he had never actually been to the Gardens, and he was quite impressed. It was also one of the last few days before they took out the summer flowers and planted for winter/next spring. On our way home, we crossed under the freeway and had dinner at McDonalds and then did some shopping at the Nike Outlet at Traverse Mountain. Quite an exhausting and eventful day.

The following Saturday, I was back at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens with the boys and Nancy. Jason spent the day fishing, so we decided to have our own outing. As I mentioned, Thanksgiving Point had already started planting for winter. I was shocked to see so many of the beautiful flowers that I had seen just a week before ripped out! It was still beautiful, but the flowers were rather sparse. To be honest though, it was quite fun and interesting to see them planting the pansies, poppies, and tulip bulbs. It really helped me appreciate how much they have to plant! It must be a fortune! We were able to ask the workers questions, and it helped give me ideas of what I could do with my flower garden, but I wasn’t ready to rip up my flowers just yet. On top of that, it was dog days at the Gardens! Charlie and Colson loved seeing all of the dogs (on the leashes) walking around. It was a blast.

That night, when Jason got home from fishing, it was the bi-annual Women’s Conference. My mom was in Idaho, I believe, so I made plans with my friend Amy and headed to Sandy. After the conference, we had dinner at Chilis and then got dessert: Orange Peel for Amy and RIta’s for me. Then we went back to her place and watched Harry Potter. Well, I should say we started watching Harry Potter. Both of us fell asleep rather quickly; Harry hadn’t even been sorted into Gryffindor House by the time I was out. We are getting too old!

We had a fun night with our PG friends. The Dunaways hosted dinner at their house and it was delicious! The kids had a great time playing and running around in the basement and in the backyard.