Home Sweet Houston: Aspen Grove: Heaven on Earth

This summer we made a long overdue ~~trek to the homeland~~ visit to Utah for our Ellis family reunion in Aspen Grove.

Off to Utah!!

Utah in the summer is magic; warm, blue skies, no humidity, soft green grass, beautiful mountains, and always lots of family and friends to visit.

Tired children resting whenever and wherever possible

We made a few stops before heading up to Aspen Grove. First order of business was Jacqueline/Jacob picking us up at the airport (thank you!) and going to visit Grandma Emma's new pad at her retirement home.

We got the grand tour, had a delicious lunch in her fancy restaurant, and disturbed all of the peaceful residents with our crazy-train of kids. It was nice to see where she is living now and hear about her new life in Utah. We love her so much!

Aunt Lani met us for lunch and we got cozy on Grandma's couch

For our next stop, Jacqueline and Jacob let us use their car for the rest of the week (THANK YOU!!!) and we headed south to Provo to revisit our days at BYU almost 10 years ago (!!!).

Our first apartment after we were married

Rob shared a Peanut Butter Moo'd with the kids--his traditional post-testing center celebratory treat

We also visited some old professors, ate lunch at JDawgs with Mary and Spencer, and stocked up on BYU paraphernalia at the heavenly BYU bookstore.

Then we had dinner with some of our best, best friends from law school who happen to be live in Utah now. I can't believe we didn't get a picture!!!

The next major event of our trip was a celebration of Nolan and Elle's decision to be baptized! It's so fun to see these kids growing up, making good choices, and turning into such wonderful people. We are so blessed to be a part of such a WONDERFUL FAMILY!

Kit & Elle, Joy & Nolan

This girl has never taken a bad picture.

The blessing and curse of big families--everyone is just a teeny blob in the group photo!

Finally, after spending a few nights at Chez Linkous with a lot of our Ellis cousins (a dream come true to our girls), we all headed up the canyon to Aspen Grove.

Aspen Grove is a family "camp" owned and run by BYU. It is basically heaven on earth and the perfect spot for big family reunions. The setting is spectacular; nestled in the mountains above Sundance. The lodging was ideal; all of us in separate family suites connected to a big main common room. The food was adequate; 3 square meals/day prepped, cooked, cleaned up with zero effort from us.

Where Aspen Grove really shines is all of the age appropriate activities they offer for campers from 0-100. All of the kids spent most of each day in their age-specific groups (with their cousins), run by fun-loving counselors, doing activities and games that kept them busy and happy for the entire week. Meanwhile, the parents are free to participate in any (or all) of the games/tournaments Aspen Grove sets up for the adult campers. Rob and I won the shuffleboard tournament (we're kind of a big deal), I almost won women's badminton, we played tennis most days, had our traditional Ellis Ultimate Frisbee game, dominated sand volleyball, and basically were outside enjoying life all day long.

In the evenings they arrange big themed activities the whole family can enjoy. Water games, Western Night, Aspen Follies, etc, etc.

By the end of the week, everyone was still having a blast in the fresh mountain air, and just not quite ready for it all to end. Perfect.

And now, a million pictures: