This August we took a wonderful family trip to Draper, Utah. All of the Kiehl's were able to make it...there were 35 of us in total...all in one house! It was so much fun. Unfortunately, on our flight home, we had so many bags and children to carry that our camera (full of wonderful photos) got left behind...never to be seen again (at least by us...I'm sure someone is enjoying it somewhere!). This is why I haven't posted in so long! So, Marnie was kind enough to email me some pictures to document the fun that we had.

The girl cousins just can't get enough of each other. Tom and I both said that we hardly saw Meg the entire trip because she was having such a good time with the girls. Our little family did take time out to do a few things on our own though...one thing we did was "hike the Y". The campus of BYU has a mountain behind it, well, actually lots of mountains...a whole mountain range, actually. But, this particular mountain has a huge Y on it that people like to hike up to. Tom and I had done this when we were young and in shape at 18 and thought it would not be hard and we could do it with the kids...well, it wasn't quite what we remembered and I'm quite sure we didn't do it with three little kids. As we started our hike we noticed several people coming down the mountain, finishing their hike with all kinds of professional gear. Camel bags on their backs for water, big hiking backpacks to put their children in, etc. We had a 6 year old and 4 year old on foot and a 17 month old in an umbrella stroller with a couple of water bottles in it. It was an adventure, to say the least! The kids did great, but Tom and I ended up carrying them a lot of the way while also pushing Henry in our little stroller. We had to ration the water and food, but we did it! It was quite an accomplishment. There is a picture above of Meg, Chloe and Maddie on the mountain with the BYU campus below. What a memory!

We had a great vacation and countless pictures not here that makes me very sad. I took Henry and Meg and most of the rest of the crew up to Temple Square one night and we had such a wonderful experience there. I'm so glad we went. We are grateful to Tom's parents for doing this for us each year. Otherwise it would be very hard to see everyone; we are so spread out over the country.