NY GIRL TRIP!!!!

When Courtney got her mission call she requested that we take a Girl Trip to New York to go see a Broadway play, then go to upstate New York. So of course, working for a fabulous airline, I could totally make that happen. This week, we did just that. We left Tuesday night, after I worked a full day, and rode jumpseat to get someone's buddy pass riders on. That is why this first picture I look exhusted already. This is us in Time Square. We had to pick-up our tickets for the play, then we had a quick lunch. This picture is for Dad...since he is ALWAYS watching the NASDAQ, Courtney had to take a picture here.

And here we are on BROADWAY! We have been to New York so many times, it was nice to just do a couple of things, and not try and see everything. It is such a crazy busy place, even in the rain, it was hussling.
"THE LION KING", this is the play we went to this time. Courtney really wanted to see "Beauty and the Beast", I got checking into it and found that it closed in NY, July of 2007. So this was the second choice.

Courtney in front of the SCAR costume. We were both in AWE of the amazing costumes and how the scene's really came to life. So amazing, you have to see it to believe it!

After the play, since we attended the matinee, we wanted to just stop by the Manhattan Temple. We knew it was closed for cleaning, but still wanted to see where it was. The security guard took this picture for us. While we were talking to him, some workers came out of the temple. Then another man. He asked us where we were from and we told him Draper, UT. We told him we wanted to go to a session, but when we looked up the schedule, we saw it would be closed while we were there, but we still wanted to see it. He smiled at us and asked if we had our recommends. We said YES, then he asked if we had them with us and could show him. We both showed our recommends and then he smiled again and said he could let us come in and look around. We found out he was the Temple President. He gave us a private tour of the beautiful Manhattan Temple. Such an amazing experience. One that made our whole trip!

After our private tour, we decided to find somewhere to eat in this quaint little neighborhood. The streets were all tree lined and it really reminded us of "You Got Mail". This is Courtney by one of the cute shops with beautiful flowers. There were several shops wih flowers, we loved it! We did find a great Italian resturant and had a fabulous dinner.

When we got back to our hotel we noticed some missionaries waiting to check-in. I stopped and asked one of them if they were leaving or coming home. They were all coming home, and were all heading to Utah. Of all places, they were coming from the Ukraine! We let them know that Courtney was leaving in October for Russia, they knew some of the missionaries in her mission. Now Courtney needs to tell them "Hi". It was such a fun day!

The next day we flew up to upstate New York, to see the Church History sites. This is us on a cute bench that was at the Rochester Airport. We wanted to bring it home and put it in the back yard. It wasn't for sale and wouldn't fit in our suitcase. We got our car and set our GPS (AKA Chickie Doodle) for Palmyra. Our first stop. The site where the first Book of Mormon was printed.

We met Sister Esper, from Argentina. She was our tour guide. She found out that Courtney was going to Russia and had her be her companion for the tour. She put her name badge on Courtney and gave her scriptures to Courtney, then had her help behind the scene. Doesn't Courtney make a great missionary?

Courtney demonstrating how to put the ink on the letters for the printing press.

After the tour of the printing press, we headed out to the Whitmer Farm in Fayette, NY. It was an hour drive by car, so it must have taken at least 1/2 day on horse back for Joseph to run over to his friend, Peter Whitmer. This is Courtney and Sister Trujillo at the Whitmore farm.

Courtney and me in front of the Whitmer Farm.

After the Whitmer Farm we headed over to the Hill Cumorah. We drove up to the top. I wanted to take a picture of the cool road, but Courtney wanted to be in the picture...so she is.

Here we are at the top of Hill Cumorah. We met more people from Utah. They knew I was from Utah because of my great watch. Funny, I never knew that my watch say's "Your from Utah". Now I know that little secret, I will be using it!

Just s shot from the view at the top of the Hill Cumorah. It was so beautiful.

Next we headed over to the Smith Farm and Sacred Grove. The next picture is taken from the back door of the Smith home, the path leads to the sacred grove.

This is Courtney and me in the Smith family home. The glass case on the table holds the bible that Father Smith read with the family each night.

This is just a picture of the fence that lines the family property. I thought it was so neat.

And this is the Sacred Grove. Courtney and I just sat in the stillness and beauty of the grove. It was so peaceful, and you could feel a great spirit there.

Us, again.

We hurried and changed to our skirts because we had a 6 PM temple session scheduled. So this is us just before we went into the temple.

And this is when we came out. If you look close at the glass, you can see the trees from the sacred grove.

Courtney, outside the temple. After our session we had a great home cooked meal then head to our hotel. Thank goodness I brought our "Chickie Doodle" to help us find our hotel. We ended up at the wrong Radisson, but finally made it to our hotel around 10 PM. What a fun, filled to the brim day.

The next day we spent on planes getting home. We got home around 5:30 PM. This is us on the flight. Ahh.....what a great three days we had. We sure did see alot of blessings happen on this trip, and felt we were soo lucky to have this time together. Glad Courtney wanted to take a GIRL TRIP!

The Last of the Teens at the Leavitts

So last week, the last of our teenagers said GOODBYE to the TEEN years. Cameron offically turned 20 on August 7th. We sent a BIRTHDAY package to celebrate this milestone in true Leavitt fashion. We hope he enjoyed his birthday PIZZA and BROWNIES he shared with his companions. Here are just a few funny pictures from Cameron's teen years. This is him on the day of his farewell.....ALWAYS the JOKESTER! Courtney just wanted to make sure Cameron got this lovely picture of her playing HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Cam, on her harmonica. Don't you love her Russian hat in August? They are so RELATED!!!
Here he is all slimmed down, and looking great in the Philippines. Such a beautiful sunset in the background.

Goofing off in Germany! He had to give up this suit for......

This outfit, and handy umbrella.

And here he is being the "Jolly Fat Guy" with his favorite siblings and our exchange student Thomas. He gave up this red suit for.......

This suit and red tie. We hope that he had a FUN Birthday. We know that he is being blessed for the work he is doing in the Philippines, and even though he is getting closer to my age, I still love him and hope he is the same crazy, caring,loving, and strong boy I sent out almost a year ago. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAMERON! Here is our favorite 20-Things we love about Cameron.

20. Strong muscles.

19. Movie Trivia skills.

18. Gopher catching skills. ( Dad is REALLY missing these)

17. One liners...from his favorite movies and TV shows.

16. SHOES...he LOVES SHOES, the more unique, the better.

15. Tech support, he knows how to get us all the latest in techy gadgets.

14. Creative Time together, He thinks of the craziest things to do.

13. Game Skills. He can play any game and make it FUN...even SCUM!

12. DDR moves....can't wait till he gets back and gets us all dancing again!

11. TIES...yes, he had a thing for ties before his MISSION.

10. Most Feared ALBINO BULL in all the Land!

9. Poses for PICTURES....never a dull one in the bunch.

8. LOVEABLE PERSONALITY!

7. SOMBRERO...it has it's own story!

6. EYES...enough said

5. Scripture Chasing skills....no scripture has escaped him yet!

4. Singing....it will melt your heart!

3. Jokes...he has great ones, and can make anyone LAUGH!

2. COOKING skills....Duh has he ever cooked for you?

1. HUGS....they literally take your breath away!

Welcome to the twenties, it's a great place to be!!

The Great Green Jello Festival...Only in Utah!

Only in Utah would you have a "Great Green Jello Festival" ! This is our Stakes fourth year of celebrating this great event. It started as a joke, and has grown to one of the FAVORITE activites our stake has. I got to thinking, there are alot of GREEN things out there we all love. Like SHREK, the HULK and KERMIT THE FROG. Let's face it, we are all trying to go GREEN. I am sure this is a trend that will be catching on in other states and Stakes! So when I got there, I saw this great sign, then I looked down at the table.....

Talk about funny, someone had taken the time to make our Stake Presidency out of Jello. Kinda freaky, but soo funny we had to have a picture. We wondered how they did this, who has a jello "Face" mold? We are going to have to get one of those!

This is our friends the Thaynes having fun at the festival. we wanted to get a cool balloon hat, but the line was way too long. In fact, the lines were long every where. There was rock climbing, face painting, dunk tank, fish pond, balloon jump houses, even a tour of the fire truck. The only booth that didn't have a line was the Missionaries......they should have been offering Moroni hena tatoos, that would have attracted a crowd I'm sure!

This is the line for balloon hats, next to the missionaries, poor guys, not to much happening at their booth.

This is one of my cute primary kids, TJ. He was soo happy to see me, I told him to stop and smile so I could take his picture. Ahh, to be able to have that much sugar and be soo HAPPY! It was fun to see my primary kids having so much fun!

The only line we stood in was the COTTON CANDY line. It was like a 45 minute wait just to get our cotton candy, but Kandace and Derick were glad they waited.

Leaving the Festival with our goods. I grabbed a cotton candy for Courtney, she was too busy to come join the fun, but I knew she would want some goodies! It was a fun way to spend a Saturday night. Before we went to the GREAT GREEN JELLO FESTIVAL.......

Courtney and I went temple hopping. This weeks temple was the beautiful Salt Lake Temple. It is such a beautiful temple inside and out. As we sat inside an admired the beautiful paintings and all the art work, it reminds us of all the sacrafices the saints made to have this amazing building for us to enjoy. It was wonderful to spend a few hours enjoying this temple.

Yesterday was also my "10 Year" JetBlue Anniversary. I celebrated by going to lunch with my CLASS 11 JetBlue friends. We try and go to lunch every year on our anniversary. It was a busy day yesterday, but soo fun!

Pioneer Day...Blazing Our Own Trail!

So traditionally on Pioneer day we go to a parade and have a family BBQ...well tradions can change. Steve wanted to BLAZE his own Pioneer Trail. Yesterday we finally had a day off at the same time. Steve surprised me and planned a WHOLE DAY away. He told me to wear pants and good shoes. Duh, I knew we were taking a road trip on his bike. We started the day by runnnig a few errands in town, then we came home and packed a few things on the bike, most important, my camera! We left around noon and he told me we were going to Mirror Lake in the Uintas. It was a BEAUTIFUL day for a bike trip. This is our first stop. We pulled off to look at the JORDANELLE. Such a beautiful view of the boats and the ski slopes. Here Steve is checking out how much this lot is selling for. Just 1.5 Million for the lot....Glup! Good thing we were just looking!

The next stop was at Bald Mountain. The top of the mountain is BALD, no trees. We are standing on the BALD part taking a picture of the amazing mountains behind us.

Just a closer shot of the view from BALD Mountain. We could see several lakes, and the tempeture dropped to te 60's. Cool, but felt wonderful after coming from the valley were it was high 90's.

Another picture of us with the bike on Bald mountain. A nice lady asked if we wanted a picture together, heck YES, Thanks nice lady!

We made it! This is us at Mirror Lake. Our great FRIENDS the Barth's were there having a family picnic. Mike snapped this shot for us. Mike is Steve's good friend that rode his bike up too. It was great to see them for a minute. The weather was quite cool, and I almost put on my jacket, but I toughed it out knowing we were headed back to the HEAT!

Connie snapped this picture of us as we were loading up to head back down. I know, you are all jealous of our great DO-RAGS! Hey, it least my head didn't get burned.

On the ride back we stopped serveral times for me to snap some pictures. This is Lilly Lake. What a beautiful world we live in!

I kept my camera in my hand and got some pictures of what we saw on the ride. I thougt you might all feel like you were sitting in the back seat checking out the view. It was soo fun!

This is PROVO FALLS. We took our family pictures here a few years ago. We love this spot. Because it was a Holiday weekend, there were soo many people here. We laughed when we kept seeing people arrive in their swim suits. The water is ICE cold, where did they think they were swiming? Sorry, personally I only swim in WARM water with sandy beaches.

Steve and me at Provo Falls. We ran into our neighbors, Dan and Paula and their boys as we were just leaving. Soo funny we ran into friends soo far away from home. On the way home we stopped and had lunch in Kamas at a cute grill, then Steve called Casey and had him get us tickets to a movie. We went and saw INCEPTION, I may have slept a little, but Steve really liked the movie. It was interesting, not what I expected. Then on the way home we went to COLD STONE. I got my Sorbet, and it was the perfect ending of a perfect day. I told Steve, I couldn't remember the last time we had such a FUN date together. I really did get the Best Guy ever. Thanks for BLAZING your own trail and letting me come along. Now I can't wait to have another weekend off together and sneak away for another BIKE TRIP!