Beehives and Temples

After the planetarium we took a walk down a few blocks to Temple Square and to the Beehive House (the home of Brigham Young, for all of you non-Mormons out there… including us, I guess).  I saw it in a painting at a local gift shop and thought the house looked pretty cool, so I wanted to check it out.  The tour was free, so you can’t turn that down, and the house was pretty impressive.  The tour guides, however, were amazed that my sister and her hoard of children were not members, so they quickly went to work trying to save their heathen souls.  I don’t think it worked though, so I guess all is lost for those Missouri Non-Mormon Millers.  Oh well, maybe they’ll get them the next time they visit Salt Lake.

Paul James making the trek from the planetarium to the temple on a cold December day.  Good thing he bundled up.

Stop for a photo-op with Grandma and Grandpa, Adam, and the two oldest Miller kids.

The true Elder Sellers outside of the Beehive House.

Amber and two of her many nephews making up the back of the pack.

This one I think they just call Miller #5, though I have heard of him being referred to as Liam Joshua.

 A traditional Fundamentalist Mormon family...

HRH Prince Mason, the Duke of Herriman, the Earl of Wasatch, the Baron Snitzey, the eldest Sellers grandson, heir to the throne and second in line of succession to... well, probably not much...

Mase, Mo, and Paulie J all in red and trying not to freeze to death in Temple Square.

So just an educational and chilling trip downtown to see a few sites, and yet another fun time while everyone was here.

To the Stars... and the Planets!

The entire Sellers/Miller families were here in the Salt Lake Valley last week for an early edition of the holidays, so naturally we took a few photos worthy of a blog post.  All in all, my side of the family now consists of nine children, and including Great-Grandma Steele, there were eighteen people staying in Josh’s house here in Herriman… so it was slightly chaotic at times, but definitely fun.  Of course, there was plenty X-Box playing with all the boys, but we also made it to downtown Salt Lake and to a few sites.  We took a little trip to the Clark Planetarium and watched an “interesting” Japanese anime-like movie in the dome theatre about the constellations.  The dome was cool, and we all destroyed a couple of buckets of popcorn and gave the cleaning lady some job security.

Jasmine learned about the power of electricity.  Now if only she could learn to harness that power... the world would be hers!  

Moon Landing 2011... it looks like Adam would rather keep his feet on the Earth, right next to his mom.

Liam rolled around on the planet Mars for a few minutes... looking for Martians I guess.

Mason and Jasmine learned all about the planet Earth... ok, probably not really, but they did see this giant globe, which was cool.

Gotta stop for a moment and share a really large Pepsi.  Helps wash down the bucket-loads of popcorn.

And that's almost everybody, excluding me, who was taking the photo.  Had a good time, gotta love space exploration and moon-walking.

Those were the places...

So it’s winter time in Utah, but it really hasn’t always felt like it.  It’s been pretty mild so far, with some sunny afternoons and very little snow.  I imagine January is going to be rough,with as nice as it’s been so far.  But when I have a day off or two, we’ve been trying to get out and see some of this massive state.  There are a lot of national parks within a days drive, but those will have to wait, though I do want to see them all.  In the meantime we’ll have to just check out some of the more local sites.  So we took a little trip down to this place called Thanksgiving Point one day, and we went up to “This is The Place” at Heritage Park a week or two ago.  

Thanksgiving Point has a resort like feel, an interesting market/shop, a dinosaur museum, and a dairy farm.  We went to check out the advertised reindeer.  It is almost Christmas you know.

Adam was impressed.  He’s a big fan of animals. Regardless of whether they actually fly or not.

“This is The Place” was the place where the first Mormon settlers came into the valley and decided that… well, this was the place they were going to stay.  We didn’t pay the entrance fee to the real part of the park (a replica town of an early Utah settlement), but we did check out the monuments and statues.  Including a replica Pony Express Depot.  Paul was terrified apparently.

 

So just a few quick stops, nothing too exciting.  Maybe slightly more exciting than a tall smoke stack, but who’s keeping track really?  Anyway, we’ll have more I’m sure… since Amber said I’ll pretty much go see anything.  Yeah, she’s probably right.  If it’s on Wikipedia, it must be worth a drive to see…  

Tall Stacks and Salty Lakes

We are now the Traveling Sellers... I guess.  From Florida to Maryland, now to Utah and a lot of places in between, the general purpose of this blog has been to share our adventures with family and friends who weren’t there at the time, and we’ve had a lot of exciting travels here and there!  Well, “exciting” is used liberally, but if you enjoy pictures of cannons and random parks, then this has definitely been at least an interesting blog to read.  Hopefully.  So here we go again… this time we took a little drive up to Magna, UT to see a couple of things.  Now Magna is a little rural area to the west of Salt Lake on I-80, and if you ask Becky… it’s her future home.  Ok, not so much, she wasn’t too impressed.  But it lies on the southern border of the Great Salt Lake (which we’d never seen from the ground), and it was home to – and this is the exciting part – the 33^rd tallest free-standing man-made structure in the world!!  And that is why I had to go check it out.  Seriously.  The Kennecott mine dominates the Oquirrh Mountains, pulling copper and other precious metals from the ground, and they built this smokestack 1,200 feet tall (more than twice the height of the Washington Monument) to spew chemicals up into the air and out of the valley.  Impressive, but it didn’t actually look that tall.  

Of course, Paul wanted his picture by the smokestack.  It's basically a cannon pointed directly up, so it only made sense.  If only we could get him to sit on it somehow...

 The Great Salt Lake was bitter, bitter cold on this day, but it was pretty impressive, and somewhat intimidating with the waves and gusts of wind.  It's the largest salt water lake in the western hemisphere they say, but at its deepest it's only 33 feet deep.  Pretty cool to see.

But we didn't stay long, the arctic winds drove us away as we ran for the cover of the car.  We'll have to go back on a warmer day, I'm sure.  But we did get to see the smokestack, and that of course was a journey only we would take… I think… I hope.  Maybe not exciting, probably not even interesting, but that’s what you get on this blog.  Ha!

Autumn under the Big Sky

So we have to send a big thank you to the State of Montana and its residents for keeping Becky and the boys for a week or so.  They had an awesome time hanging out with the Clayburn girls and the sets of grandparents up there.  I didn’t get to go this time, but hopefully next time!  I do miss Missoula in the fall.  There really is no place that feels quite like it this time of year.  Here are a few pictures from their trip.

Sophia Marie Clayburn... looking ever so excited to be the subject of Aunt Becky's photo.

And big cousin Paul pullin' the wagon 'round the field... not a driver I would necessarily trust with my safety...

"Why does she always make me do these horrible things...??"

"Oh, Adam... do you ever stop crying, screaming, and otherwise annoying me?"

The Clayburn family, with one intruder stuck in there somewhere...

Gotta love the fall leaves.

Brookie B.

Do you like my hat?  No, I do not like that hat.  Good-bye.  Good-bye.

Gotta love playing in the leaves with the cousins.

Oh Paul... these two can't get enough of bothering each other.  Hopefully they'll get to do more of it again before too long, now that we live 8 hours away instead of 45 hours away!  So thanks again to everyone up there for hanging out with the boys and making it yet another wonderful trip back home.

A stop in Idaho (Twin) Falls...

We took a little trip up to Idaho Falls (or Twin Falls as Becky referred to it 200 times and I corrected her 200 times) to make an exchange with Granny G of the boys and Becky.  Thankfully, Granny made it, since Becky told her a few times to come to Twin Falls, which is a couple hundred miles to the west.  But she got there alright and they all traveled on up to Montana on vacation and I came back to Salt Lake to work.  Sounds like I got the bad end of the deal there.  But we got to Idaho Falls a little early, so we stopped at the falls for a minute in the cold park and took a few photos.  It’d been a while since we’d been there, but we have fond memories of that wonderful city… many years ago we broke down outside of town and spent the day getting burned up by the sun waiting to get burned by the mechanic who took all day to fix the water pump on the car.  I have many great memories of a lot of Idaho’s wonderful towns… that’s why I try to get in and out of that state as quick as possible…

Adam had a good time by the falls, checking out the ducks in the water, but he was slightly afraid of the rushing water.  Maybe I shouldn't dangle him by his feet over the falls... 

The two brothers in the park.  This was after the light saber cut off Paul Skywalker's hand.  Yes, that's a Star Wars reference. 

Just a little bit cold down by the waters, but never too cold to pause for a photo opportunity.

So the exchange was made and a week later I went back up to meet Grandpa Bill on the frozen tundra that is the Montana-Idaho border.  See the next post for more on Becky’s visit to the Treasure State.

Happy Halloween again!

This year we got to spend Halloween with the Utah Sellers and their extended family and friends.  Paul had a blast running at full speed (because there can be no other way to trick or treat) through the neighborhood with Cousin Mason while the hoard of children with them followed along at equal speed.  I tried to keep up, carrying Adam, but by the time I got to the door they were already halfway to the next house.  But SuperAdam started to get the hang of things, reaching in and carefully selecting his candy of choice at each house.  It was a blast overall, and Becky and I got to eat most of Adam’s candy anyway… so it all worked out.  Here are the boys dressed and ready:

That would be SuperAdam and Ironhide the Autobot Transformer!