April 20 this year was Ben and my tenth anniversary. It feels crazy that is has already been ten years. We loved celebrating together and are so grateful for our eternal marriage. 💗
With some of our other big plans this year, we knew that doing a big trip for this milestone wasn't going to be realistic. We started thinking about what might make it special and we decided to go back to Bountiful temple. We haven't been since we got married. This spiraled into an idea of reliving some of our memories from earlier in our relationship. I was very excited for it, but most of our ideas ended up not working out. We managed to have fun and realized that we relived our early relationship in spirit more than actuality (by our plans getting messed up but having fun anyway).
Our trip started off with snow. (side question: Will it ever actually stop snowing?)
I was really hoping for nice weather during our trip, but it was cold, snowy, and rainy the entire time.
The Airbnb we stayed at was amazing. It was a cute little house built in 1902.
This is the original stove.
Some of the history of the house.
A little walkthrough of the house. It was small but used the space well and Ben and I absolutely loved staying here. We want to come back some time.
On the way to the Airbnb (after dropping off the kids at my mom's), we stopped to have my wheat grinder looked at because it had stopped working and I was scared I had ruined it. There is a place in Sandy where they repair them and the guy there was super cool. He fixed the problem really quickly and at no charge and it was such a relief! Then we grabbed lunch at Five Guys before heading to Bountiful. On the freeway, some giant truck passed us and sprayed us with something (dirt maybe?). It made our car look totally ridiculous 😂 this picture doesn't even do it justice.
We were pretty worn out by the time we checked in and got settled, but we still had a lot we wanted to do that night. We decided to take a break and lay down for a bit. We watched an episode of the show we're in the middle of (Lockwood and Co). Then we headed to DI. One of our first dates when we were dating was picking out accessories for each other at DI before going to a dance in Weber.
We went to DI but found no accessories. We ended up spending all our time in the book section and buying only books. Ben said, "Books are the best accessories anyway, right?" He's 100% right.
Then we drove up to Ogden. I'd forgotten how far it is from everywhere XD We went to Weber and parked where I used to always park when I would come to visit Ben. We wanted to walk around campus, but it was freezing, so we didn't stay long. It was still fun to go back though.
After a Smith's trip for snacks and breakfast food, we went to a local dance place. It's mostly swing dancing and line dancing and was really fun. Ben and I had a ton of fun watching other couples and figuring out new moves to try. It was a fun night. Then we left a little early to grab some ice cream and drive back to Bountiful.
The next morning we slept in (I still woke up early, because I am physically incapable of sleeping in, but I stayed in bed reading) and had a relaxing, slow morning together. It was perfect.
Then we went to the Bountiful. We had found out a few weeks before coming out that the temple would be closed, so we couldn't do sealings. It was a big disappointment (the biggest of the trip). We thought we could at least walk around the grounds and take some pictures, but when we got there, the grounds were gated off and closed as well 😭 It was also really cold and rainy, but it had rained the day we got married (though it was not really cold then) and we wouldn't have minded if we could have just gotten onto the grounds. We were pretty sad about it.
We had spotted a local bookstore the day before, so we decided to head there for the morning. It was the most perfect, charming, little used bookstore. The prices were higher than DI, but the books were all in really good condition and they had a much wider variety of more popular books. We were in heaven!
This was the bookstore, in case anyone is dying to go.
I am definitely going back!
Then for lunch, we decided to go to a local restaurant that was close, a pizza place. It had a fun atmosphere, with old albums covering the walls and the food was delicious. Ben's favorite was his salad and my favorite was the pizza.
Then we stopped at Wal Mart for some sock puppet supplies. At this point, I didn't know that our plans would all be derailed, so I was trying to recreate some of the pictures from earlier in our relationship. We got a weird look from a lady while we took this one and it was fun. Ben also found a pro controller (which he hadn't been able to find at the Vernal one), so it was a successful shopping expedition.
When we got home, we decided to read in bed to see if we were tired enough for a nap. We were. Then we broke out our ice cream and relaxed some.
Then we made sock puppets (which is what we did on our first date). I did mine wrong 🙈
Another recreated picture.
Then we played a new deck building game we had gotten for Christmas and hadn't tried yet. Deck building games have been something we've loved to play together for a long time.
For dinner, we went to Outback Steakhouse. In Vernal, there is a local steak house that we love, and Outback just couldn't measure up. We got steak and salmon to share (what we get at the Vernal one). They both came out pretty undercooked, so we sent them back and the steak came back first, pretty overdone this time. There was a mix up and we didn't get our fish until we were done with the rest of our food, and it was also overdone and pretty dry. The waitress was so nice about it all and they ended up taking off the price of the fish meal, so it all worked out. We had to laugh at the experience though.
The next day, we wanted to go to the Gateway. We'd spent a lot of our dates right before we officially dated at malls and we had some pictures/experiences we wanted to recreate. Unfortunately, almost none of them worked out. Most of the Gateway was closed and under construction, as well as most of Temple Square (I knew it would be the case with Temple Square, but had researched to try to make sure the places we wanted were open, but my research was apparently wrong).
Because all our Gateway plans failed, we decided to go to the new DND movie. It was one we've been wanting to see and we really enjoyed it! The characters have great chemistry together and we loved the heist aspects of the movie. We also splurged and got an ice cream as well as popcorn while we watched. It was nice to be unhurried with the movie, since we weren't on a time constraint to get back to our kids.
The one thing we were able to do that day was have lunch at Tucanos. Right before we were official, we went on a date there. I had a coupon that I thought made my meal free, but it was only a percentage off. Ben just paid for it and didn't tell me (until like a year ago XD) because he didn't want to make me feel bad. Ben served his mission in Brazil and we love the food at Tucanos.
The rest of the night didn't go well. We tried to go to the Christus in Temple Square, but found out it's no longer there (they have a smaller one somewhere else, which is why I think my online research about it didn't work). We were feeling tired and discouraged at this point and I was disappointed that everything I had planned had fallen through.
I decided to push and try to make Barnes and Noble happen, despite Gateway being closed. We drove to the nearest open location, which was in Sugarhouse. It was a nightmare. The traffic was awful. We parked and went into the store, but we hadn't had dinner and we were stressed from the driving and didn't feel well. Ben couldn't find a book he wanted.
We had been planning on going to another dance thing. It was the place we went the night we became official. I mixed up the times, though, and we desperately needed some food, which would make us late. We tried to get some food in Sugarhouse, but the traffic was so bad and stressful. We decided to just head back to Bountiful and get food there and watch a movie instead. We were both disappointed about not going to the dance thing, but also both felt it was the right choice to head home instead. If we were to go back and do it again, we would have just gotten dinner at City Creek and then it would have been fine to go to the dance thing. It all turned out fine though, and we watched a Rom Com together after getting some take out. We ended the night by answering some relationship question cards we'd gotten recently.
Some pictures of the kids at Grandma Dee's (we're so grateful to her for babysitting!):
Then it was time to go home!
On Saturday, we took the morning slowly and checked out of our Airbnb before going to pick up the children. They had had a blast at Grandma Dee's house! Jon came over and we hung out with him and my parents for a bit before eating lunch and packing up the kids' stuff into the car. The drive home was uneventful. Oliver only took a ten minute nap (Rylee took an hour and a half nap), but he did pretty well on the trip regardless.
Here's Oliver climbing in the car while unloaded everything.
We were all tired and happy to be home.
Oliver thinks he's big enough to drive the car now.
The girls loved the books I found for them at DI and The Book Garden 💗
Despite it being a different trip than I'd anticipated, it was a great trip and I'm so glad I got to take it with Ben by my side. He is my everything and really, the trip is just an extension of life. No matter what disappointments or bumps we hit in life, I'm just glad I can navigate them together.
