Days of '47 Parade, This is the Place Heritage Park & Hires!!!

Both Brooke and Katie spent the night at our hotel because we had to leave early this morning to head for the parade with the Israelsen's. Brooke just came home with us from the dinner with them last night and we went and picked up Katelyn at her apt. on the way home. We watched 2 episodes of the new season of Provo's Most Eligible and it was cringyer than ever! We stayed up until 2:30am watching it and we had to get up at 5:30 to get up to Salt Lake and to the parade on time and to allow for traffic and parking, etc. I've always wanted to go to the Days of '47 parade, but no one ever wanted to go so I never did! The Israelsen's love to do all the things I love, so I FINALLY got to go!!! It was a great way to spend Pioneer Day! It was a fun parade and Elder Holland was in it too! It was such a surprise when he drove past us in a car!! He had A LOT of body guards around him!!! It's crazy that the Prophet and Apostles need that kind of security! After the parade, we met up at This is the Place Heritage Park and spent the rest of the day there! It is such a neat place with so many exhibits and either replica's or original buildings of early church people. Brigham Young's house had been moved there from Sugarhouse in Salt Lake to make room for I-80! Heber C. Kimball's home was a replica and it was HUGE! It was only 1/4 the size of the original house, too! Crazy!! We stopped and got homemade doughnuts and enjoyed just visiting as we ate them. We took a train ride that explained various stops throughout the park and we enjoyed poking around and looking at the different exhibits. It got pretty hot as the day wore on and we were all pretty tired so we figured it was time to go get an early dinner. We drove to Hires (Ben's FAVORITE hamburger place) and had a nice dinner there. We were all so hungry! We drove to the Israelsen's home and visited with them a little more and then we decided to head back to Provo. (Brooke stayed with them and drove her car home later.) We were going to stay and watch the fireworks with them but we realized it would be ANOTHER really LATE night and we were so tired and needed to just get home and go to bed and get a good night's rest. We had a nice visit and then headed back to the hotel-- it felt good to get to bed and get a full 8 hours of SLEEP! It was a fun day though!! I can see why Ben is such a good young man! He has such great parents and we really enjoyed getting to know them even better today!!!