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| Card I made for Nate |
We stayed at my parents' house Thursday evening. They watched Austin for us while we went and did sealings for some family names at the Mount Timpanogos Temple where we were married. While we were there, we had someone take a picture for us at the same spot we had one of our favorite wedding photos taken 10 years ago:
Friday morning we headed to Heber to go horseback riding. This was particularly apropos since Nate took me horseback riding when he proposed. It had been way to long since I had been on a horse, so I was thrilled with the chance to ride again. I loved that the place we went didn't make us ride nose-to-tail. And as it turned out, we were the only two on the guided tour...
After horseback riding, we stopped by Dairy Keen for lunch and then headed to Park City to browse a couple galleries with some nice photography up. We also ended up stopping by a jewelry shop that had the largest geodes I have ever seen on display. They were narrow, but they were about as tall as Nate. There were some other incredibly large geodes, geode slices, and other amazing crystal specimens on display as well.
After leaving Park City we headed to a bed and breakfast to get washed up and ready for dinner. Then we headed to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building to eat at The Roof Restaurant. That was quite the food splurge...both cost wise and eating wise. It was delicious, and it was fun to dress up and go to someplace much fancier than usual. The views while we ate were really nice too.
Nate pretty much looked amazing! He wore the new shirt, tie, and shoes I gave him for the occasion, while I wore the new dress he got for me. My new dress even has pockets! I hate that it is so hard to find dresses with pockets...I am a big fan of pockets and like to have functional convenient pockets on all my clothes as much as possible.
Actually, the traditional gift for 10 years is tin. I was thinking this would be a challenging theme to fit a gift into, but I really wanted to stick with my trend of giving something based on the traditional anniversary gift. Then I had the thought I could just wrap my gift, or at least part of it, in tin!
Nate also got a tin of Altoids...so the tin thing worked out nicely in the end.
After dinner, we stopped by the Beehive House for a tour since Nate had never seen it. It had been years and years since I had been, and I was pretty disappointed at the tour. It was nothing like the tour I remembered from years ago. That tour had been incredibly informative...I learned so much about how things worked in Brigham Young's house. We learned that not all his wives lived there with him, we learned about the insanely busy schedule that started with bread making in the earliest hours of the morning...and much more. The tour was a lot longer too, and then afterward I remember being offered horehound candy. The experience definitely left an impression on me.
I am not terribly disappointed that I didn't get the horehound candy this time around, though I do have family members who really like the stuff. However, the much less historically informative tour was disappointing. It seems that the LDS church has shifted the focus of all its tours to be more about spiritual topics. Spiritual topics are wonderful, but shifting the focus of tours of historical sites to be almost all about spiritual matters makes it seem really forced to me. Seeing the spiritual applications of things came a lot more naturally when I could learn about the events and history behind those places in a lot greater depth. When I learn about the faith of early saints by learning more about their actions, sacrifices, and story, the spiritual aspects manifest themselves almost on their own. It is a lot more natural than having a missionary tell me a couple sentences of fact and then telling me about their own convictions on a spiritual subject they can tie in or else asking me about my own spiritual experiences in relation to the matter. That sort of tour just doesn't leave the lasting impression and newfound understanding that I gained from the much more historically based tour I had years ago.
The next morning we slept in, ate breakfast, and went around the inn taking pictures and enjoying the place some. We thought the large front door with a latched peephole was particularly fun.
There were a couple fish ponds in the back with some tiny waterfalls between them too.
After heading out, we went to play a game of miniature golf, which surprisingly I won (Nate usually wins). It was fun, but unfortunately quite cold. The day before had been beautiful and warm, but that day turned out to be windy and chilly. That wouldn't have been too much of a problem if we had actually remembered to bring our jackets...
We ate lunch at Leatherby's before picking Austin up from my parents. Our trip turned out to be a really fun weekend retreat.
And I am so grateful that Nate is my husband! That is truly something to celebrate! I feel like we have grown a lot over the last 10 years and have only become closer as we have worked through the various challenges we have faced along the way. I am so grateful for the wonderful relationship we share!
