Salt Lake City Birthday Trip!

In the car before we head on our adventure!

 My birthday is August 27th. Danny kept asking me what I wanted and I just said and stuck with "I just want to have fun with you that's all I want!" I planned a little weekend getaway to Salt Lake city for us.  This year we missed both of our birthdays, valentines day and our first year anniversary.  Plus a couple of other random holidays.  So I asked mom to take Rowan for a few days, booked us a motel, purchased a cooler, and hoped and prayed he'd get that second visit, and he DID! We were so excited!!!

So we dropped Rowan off at my parents early thursday morning, I skipped to the car yelling "I'm free i'm free!" and we hopped in and were off!

We stayed at the Sharaton in downtown SLC. It was pretty nice,  the part we stayed in was older but re-modeled.  We were super excited it had a pool and hot tub to relax in! 

Kisses in the temple stand... cubby things... 

After checking into our motel we were transported by the hotel's shuttle service to downtown SLC.  I really wanted to do that the first day to "get it out of the way" so to speak, not in a negative way but in that it was our priority.  To not put off the temple and spiritual aspect of our trip until our last day so that we wouldn't suddenly find ourselves too tired or with not enough time to do it at all.  Danny has grown so much in the gospel over the past couple of years.  He couldn't remember being on temple square before and I had wanted to take him around for some time! So our first day was spent on temple square, we visited the JS History Museum, watched the film of Christ Visiting the America's....stood behind the pulpit made out of president Hinkley's tree with the beehive carved into it at the prophet's exhibit..  the thing I was most excited about was showing him the Conference Center. Unfortunately it was closed so that security could do a sweep before a concert. We had a good time and learned so much! 

In front of the beautiful temple doors

 Our first night we went on a date to the cheesecake Factory! Neither of us had been before.  It was D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! And fancy :) I got a cashew chicken dish over whole grain rice and Danny had a burger.  Both were pretty fantastic! Then we split a slice of peanut butter cheesecake. How romaaaantic!

After relaxing in the hot tub and having fun in the pool I crashed for my first baby free night in a long while.  It was nice and we missed our bubba.  The next morning We went and did a live session in the Salt Lake Temple. WOW! It's so beautiful! It was amazing to see all of the detail and ornate craftsmanship that went into the rooms.  Of course we took some pics :) Isn't my sweetie handsome? 

After the temple friday morning and lunch in the temple cafeteria we went to Hogle Zoo.  I had been wanting to visit the zoo with Danny for so long! I don't think he really got why I wanted to so bad... but its just fun!  It was still pretty hot and luckily a friend of mine had lent us one of their special "Hogle Zoo" cups so we could get ice water from the restaurant in the zoo.  Part of the park was under construction.  They are adding an "African Safari" Part. 

This gorilla sat RIGHT in front of the glass facing the people munching his hay. It was so crazy!  There was a sign off to the side warning us not to look directly at him or to make eye contact because he will feel
threatened and charge the glass. YIKES! 

On our last day, Saturday we went to Lagoon. That morning we met up with my friend  "Freaking Kim O'Barr " lol for breakfast, it was great to see her and she looked awesome, it had been like two years! We were roommies my freshman year. I was top of her list .. out of twelve roomies, listed from greatest to least liked, not something I recommend doing... :P 

We met up with Danny's best friend Mikey, his sister Erin and his soon to be fiancé Teva at Lagoon.  Don't mind the photo bomber in the background. lol

Lagoon was ok... the vey first few rides mad me sick and the heat made it worse, I felt bad I kinda ruined it for Danny, we left early... Sorry babe. :(  He hadn't been and I have been a bunch of times.  We went in September when Lagoon is only open on the weekends, it was CRAWLING with people by noon.  We waited about an hour for one log ride! It was crazy. We were missing our little Rowan by then and even though we left early we didn't get home till around 11. 

Us before lagoon...

Us after lagoon...