Halliday Family Blog

Today was Zach’s big eighth birthday!  Happy Birthday little man!!!

Zach’s morning started off with a cinnamon roll with candles from Grandma.  He laughed when he saw it.  Grandmas like to do things like that!  🙂

He then opened all his presents and really liked that.  He got his first set of “big boy” scriptures that he carried around with him much of the day.  It was funny to watch.  He’s very excited for his baptism on Saturday and can’t wait for that.

Tonight we had a hot dog roast and everybody joined in.  All of my family came up and is joining us for the weekend for Zach’s baptism as well, so we have quite the crowd.  We all sang to Zach and had lots of food and fun.

Today we left North Ogden and traveled up to Salmon Idaho.  Brittany drove most of the way which was GREAT!  She’s racking up the hours so she can get her license!  🙂

When we got to Salmon, we had a relaxing afternoon (at least for most of us)!  🙂  Some never relax and are always going 100 miles per hour!  We had a hot dog roast and Carla threw a surprise birthday party for Angela’s 40th birthday!  She made a big cheesecake that tasted wonderful!

After that, we flung water balloons for the kids to catch in towels and had some great laughs watching that!

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Today was crazy busy!  We started off the day making our way down to Salt Lake City, visiting my uncle Marv along the way.  He hasn’t been doing so well lately and is pretty sick.  It was nice to see the family.  We haven’t seen them in probably 12 years.  That’s one of the drawbacks of living so far away…  When you do come out to see family, it’s usually immediate family and there isn’t much time to travel around seeing all the extended family you’d like to see.

We then went down to Salt Lake to spend the day.  We were going to go see Cliff Higbee (my Regional Leadership Forum leader) at the Church Offices but missed him.  We went to the top of the Church Office building and the kids thought that was really cool.  Brittany had been up there before and remembered a little bit, and Kirstyn had gone up when she was a baby, but the boys never had. We also got pictures taken at the same place that Angela and I had our wedding pictures taken 21 years ago!

We then walked around Temple Square for a bit and then went over to the Conference Center where we listened to an organ recital of one of the Tabernacle Choir Organists.  It was really good and Kirstyn loved it so much, she took her program down afterward and had him sign it.  🙂

We took the full tour of the Conference Center (something we had not had the chance to do yet), and it was very fascinating.  It’s amazing how far engineering has come to build something like that.

After the tour, we rushed over to the mall and had a quick bite to eat before high-tailing it to the airport to see Mark come home from his mission.  We went to the baggage area that we were told to go to, but they ended coming in at a different terminal so I’m sure that Mark and the other Elder he came home with were pretty confused when no one was there!  🙂  They finally found us, and the reunion was very large and loud!  It was good to see Mark and he had a great and successful mission.

After the airport, we went to Grandma Burns for a smaller reunion.  It was really funny…  She wouldn’t even hug Mark because he was still a missionary.  🙂  We had a good laugh over that!  We also got the yearly 4 Sarah picture taken.

We are really tired and ready to hit the sack now!  We’ll sleep great tonight!

Today we had a relaxing day in North Ogden.  We were pretty tired from our travels and the last couple of days in the Denver area, so it was nice to relax.  We all went and saw the movie Brave, came back and kicked back and ended the day with a family back yard BBQ.  Yum!

Today we got up and attended church today at the Liddell’s ward.  I purposefully wore a colored shirt to church becuase I could, and Terry Liddell laughed when he saw me.  He asked me if it was rebellion Sunday, to which I agreed!  🙂  Their ward was nice although about half the ward was gone on vacation and such.  I wanted to go see Steve Graves (who works for me) and his family as well, who live here in Castle Rock, but they had all gone on vacation as well.  🙁

After church, we had some lunch and then took off for the 9 hour drive to Ogden, Utah to see my family.  The kids, as usual, did really well again.  They slept a lot so that was nice.  Angela and I got to have some nice conversation.  🙂

By the time we got to Ogden, we were ready to go to bed, so we ate a bunch, and then crashed.  It was great to see Mom and Dad/Grandma and Grandpa Halliday again.  It’s been awhile.  That’s the hard thing about living out where we do.  We don’t get to see family near as much as we’d like.

Today we got up early (some probably due to the time change) and got a start on a busy but very fun day.  We toured all through Castle Rock and saw about everything you could see.  We really like it here, especially the weather (dry but not too hot).  There is a huge fire burning south of hear near Colorado Springs so you could smell some of the smoke and the mountains were a little obscured from the haze.

We hiked up Castle Rock (hence the name of the city) and looked out over the valley.  It really brings back memories of being out west!  🙁  We sure miss it.

While on our hike we took a lot of pictures of each other, the scenery, and we even got some great shots of wildlife…

Yes, the picture above is real.  It’s a zoom shot of the nesting area.  You could hear the babies wanting their mom as she squawked as well.  Pretty cool!

We are going to get some good sleep tonight!  🙂

Today we left for our summer vacation/family reunion/baptism event/college prep trip.  🙂  We decided to leave a couple days earlier and today, we started off early and drove to Denver.  We will be staying until Sunday afternoon with the Liddell family, our friends from the Naperville 2nd Ward who moved to Denver back in February.  The drive went well and the kids were really good.  We are so blessed to have kids who don’t whine and cry on trips!  🙂

We arrived in Denver this evening and it was good to see the Liddell’s and catch up with them on how things have been since they moved. We have a fun-filled and packed day tomorrow, so we’ll get some sleep!  🙂